Chapter 38 — A Mature Child, An Immature Adult, and a Hopelessly Immature Old Man
I, Kim In-gwang, was kicked out of the training center.
Waaah…
This game was seriously too petty.
Sure, there was a remnant of madness inside my body that shouldn’t have been there.
And sure, it had affected not only me but also the other children at the training center.
But what could I do about that?
I didn’t do anything bad!
Of course!
I might be a bad person!
Giving a spear to an old man who could barely straighten his back and making him run wild until he ended up in the hospital was definitely wrong!
And the children who were heavily affected by my madness had almost reached the point of turning into something like those Badger Beastmen.
That was also my fault!
As for bringing an unconscious monster into the city because I thought it was dead and then causing chaos in the market…
Honestly, that one really wasn’t my fault!
Still, being kicked out because I had caused trouble for the residents felt a little unfair!
Damn it!
If there had been some other legitimate reason, I wouldn’t have felt this wronged!
“…It’s not easy.”
The AI was much more advanced than I had expected, making it difficult for me to play my character the way I wanted.
I only realized that too late.
Ah…
Was I playing a game right now, or was I actually enjoying life in another world?
Why did I have to make realistic decisions in the game I wanted to enjoy?
What I wanted to do was simple.
I wanted to accept opposing quests from two groups that were fighting each other.
Then I would complete both sides’ quests right up to the critical point.
And then suddenly betray them!
I would leak the secrets and weaknesses of each side to the opposing faction.
Instead of simply destroying one side completely, I wanted to create an all-out battle between the two groups.
Then I wanted to drive both groups toward total destruction.
It had been my dream for a long time.
Anyway, I would put those pointless thoughts aside for now and seriously think about what I should do next.
I was basically a brand-new player who knew nothing about the game’s information.
I had reached the burnout stage where I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do.
Anyone who had played games would understand.
You follow the quest line, level up like crazy, and explore the game world.
Then, suddenly, you hit a wall where you have absolutely no idea what to do next.
That frustrating and helpless feeling.
My level had only just increased to 2, and I was already facing such a wall.
No.
Actually, I had felt blocked from the very beginning of the game.
That was why I had ended up helping with farming even though farming wasn’t my hobby at all.
“…Yeah.
From now on, I’m really going to do whatever I want.”
“It sounds as though you haven’t been doing that until now.”
She had long, dark-blue hair.
What was her name again?
She was definitely the girl who possessed the power of Diligence.
But she was such a beautiful girl that I had never been able to properly look her in the face.
Because of that, she somehow felt unfamiliar.
Tsk!
She was definitely the girl who had said some nice things to me!
Who was she?
What was her name?
“…Were you kicked out too?”
“I left voluntarily.”
That was unexpected.
Even when the others were halfway to becoming Badger Beastmen, this girl seemed to have maintained a very strong sense of self.
So why had she left the training center?
She had practically been the class leader there.
There was no reason for the training center to kick her out or even allow her to leave.
“But Mister, is it really true that you have the power of Madness?”
“Like I said, I used to.
I’m not using it anymore.
It seems only the remnants are left.”
…Was there a natural way to ask her name?
If I said, Hehe, what’s your name?, right now, I felt like this girl might end up walking the same path as Pie.
Ah, no!
There was no guarantee she would follow me!
Right.
If that was the case, I should just ask everything I was curious about and then part ways without any regrets.
“Mister, do you realize how dangerous your current situation is?”
“Huh?
Why suddenly?”
“It’s not sudden!
Of all the powers in the world, you had to have Madness.
Historically, people with that power have always caused problems.”
“I haven’t caused any problems yet.”
“You say that after turning the trainees at the training center into that?!
The only reason you can walk around freely right now is because there aren’t proper laws concerning outsiders!”
Turning them into that?
To me, they had simply become a little more energetic.
What was the problem?
Of course, if things had continued a little longer, I would have admitted that I had turned them into that.
But more shocking than that was what she said about the law.
I had simply assumed that I had been kicked out for no particular reason.
So there had actually been a legal reason?
Was this what the world felt like to a juvenile offender who couldn’t be punished properly?
“Normally, you would have been captured by the Inquisitors and suffered horribly.
They couldn’t find any evidence of the power inside your body, and there was also what happened in Jageun Village.
Fortunately, everyone spoke positively about you!
You should consider yourself extremely lucky!”
Ah!
I had wasted such a precious event!
If it involved torture, it probably would have been an event where I could gain some really bad power.
What a shame.
“So, I, the Knight of Diligence, Aien de Yustria, left the training center to keep an eye on you, Mister.”
Was she trying to brag?
Judging from her expression, she definitely seemed to be bragging.
I had thought she was unusually mature for a child.
I hadn’t expected her childish side to appear in something like this.
Still, thanks to her, I could avoid the troublesome process of asking her name.
So I decided that was good enough.
Her name was quite long, though.
Aien de Yustria?
If she was a noble, there were probably several more names in the middle.
Just thinking about it gave me a headache.
“But why you?”
“I became a Knight of Diligence because of this incident.
And I have already proven that I can withstand your Madness.”
“Ohhh.”
“…Is that all?”
“What else?
What am I supposed to do?
I want to look around the area.
Can I go?”
“You can’t go alone!”
I didn’t know exactly what she meant by being able to withstand Madness, so honestly, I didn’t know how to react.
More importantly, since I had finally left the training center, I really wanted to explore the world.
It wasn’t like this was the military.
Why hadn’t they even let us go outside properly?
As a player like me, I was curious about everything!
I was the type who would enter a completely empty alley just because I wanted to see what was there!
You know what I mean?
With Aien following closely behind me under the excuse of monitoring me, I wandered around here and there.
She kept nagging me whenever I tried to investigate some random place in case there were hidden game elements.
It was getting a little annoying.
“Ah, this is a clinic.
The people who were injured in Jageun Village are all staying here.”
“Really?
Then let’s quickly take a look inside!”
“Mister!
What kind of person are you?!
Can’t you at least stop by for a moment?!”
Swoosh.
“Since ancient times, whenever a person of Madness appeared, one or two people capable of opposing them would also appear.
It seems that this time, that person is Miss Aien.”
“Eek!”
“Ah!
You scared me…”
I had wanted to quickly pass by the clinic because I knew I would only feel guilty if I went inside.
But unfortunately, I happened to run into someone I had temporarily forgotten about.
The Village Chief.
If I hadn’t stopped because of that coincidence, I might have completely forgotten about him and left this city.
We did have some kind of connection, after all.
“The power of Madness is an extremely foreign power.
It has no distinction between friend and foe, to the point that even demons of the same kind avoid the area when a Demon of Madness appears.
That is Madness.”
I knew that from experience.
Whenever I fought like my life depended on it, the Badger Beastmen and Goblins nearby would become excited too.
Even the monsters I was fighting would become excited and attack more aggressively.
It was like a virus with an insane ability to spread.
If the version of me from back then had been thrown into this place while releasing Madness, it would have spread instantly and turned the whole city into chaos.
Even the trainees who were practicing mental strength had been infected by my Madness.
If this hadn’t been an online game, I would have tried unleashing an explosion of Madness right in the middle of the city.
With a game this advanced, people would have lined up to buy it even if it had been released as a single-player game instead of an online game!
What a shame!
What a waste!
“As far as I know, the power that opposes Madness is the power of Order.
It is another little-known power, different from mental strength.”
“…Really?”
“I don’t know much about it either.
The Village Chief said it was a little-known power.”
Could this game be one of those?
The three legendary swords, plus a fourth legendary sword that nobody knew about.
