Chapter 53 — Why Is It Me Again?!
What had been decided after the previous meeting was that, first of all, they had to find out for certain whether there really were orphans being kidnapped and disappearing.
Of course, even if they really were being kidnapped, given my position, it was impossible to completely rule out the possibility that this was a trap aimed at me.
But if it was happening continuously, we could at least lower the possibility that it was merely a trap.
The village chief volunteered to personally take charge of gathering information.
As for Ien, she had entered the capital to ask the Great Hero directly, but apparently, they kept delaying the meeting with one excuse after another.
“I know the Great Hero is busy, but considering his relationship with uncle, there’s no way he would refuse to meet me.
Someone is definitely interfering!”
“Oh~ my!
Why are humans still so consistent even after thousands of years?
Isn’t it amaaazing?”
By now, it had become familiar for us to gather at our usual café, leisurely drinking a glass of juice while talking about things like this.
Unlike the two busy people, Nanna and Mallang and I were leisurely going out into the field to hunt monsters, so the only truly relaxed ones were the two of us.
The village chief, whom I had met a while ago, had been clutching his head in agony while muttering curses that did not suit him at all.
Ien had even begun doubting the meaning of her own existence.
They must have been having a pretty hard time.
Meanwhile, I was surprisingly relaxed.
Of course, I had also tried writing posts on the bulletin board, asking people for help and gathering various pieces of information.
But I had not found much.
According to Inbang, who was working as a knight in the Imperial Castle, he had not heard any such rumors among the nobles.
The commander of the Knights seemed to know something, but he refused to tell him.
Anyway, because of my attempts, a strange urban legend had begun spreading among the players.
Since it was an urban legend that had happened in such a realistic game, people were apparently genuinely scared and even afraid to play the game.
I felt somewhat responsible for that.
After that, I had practically given up.
But I hated seeing the message asking whether I wanted to give up, so whenever I had spare time between hunting, I kept doing whatever came to mind.
“Ah, I’m getting PTSD…!
Just thinking about the sewers is bringing it all back.
It feels like I can smell the stench of rotten sewage right under my nose!”
“Aww, my poor baby.
You had such a hard time, huh?
Should Grandma just flip the whole place upside down?
If we turn it over and shake it, all those little ants will come pouring out~!”
“…Should we?
Should we really do it?
Should we just go for it?!!”
“Stop it, you idiots.
You and I are beings who are merely allowed to exist here in the first place.
What right do we have to do anything?
And you too, little one.
Do not entertain a plan as a joke when you know it cannot be done.”
I was starting to feel frustrated too.
My level had barely passed 15, and I had only just learned about some system called additional stats, something I had never even heard of before, while everyone else had unlocked it ages ago.
Do you know how it feels to be playing a game harder than anyone else and still be falling behind everyone?
If this game were a game based on physical skill, then maybe I could understand.
But it wasn't!
It was an RPG where you farmed items, equipped your gear, and pressed complicated skills in a simple-but-difficult-to-master way while clearing dungeons together!
“I think I’m seriously going crazy.
I have to find some invisible source of anxiety in this peaceful-looking city.
It feels like I’ve become some lunatic obsessed with conspiracy theories.”
“Indeed, the request we received was like a conspiracy theory.
No one knows anything, there is no evidence anywhere, yet it speaks as though everything is certain.”
We had tried every method imaginable.
We searched for faint similarities between pieces of information that seemed to have nothing in common.
We checked whether something happened on specific dates or according to the movements of certain people.
There was no result.
Perhaps because they were orphans, they did not seem to stay in one place for very long.
And because they had no connections, there was simply no information left behind.
Even when we went to places where children frequently stayed and asked about it, both adults and children simply told us to give them money and leave.
Thinking that perhaps they were trying to hide something from us, I secretly threatened them without Ien knowing.
But they genuinely knew nothing, and I was the one who ended up getting scolded by Ien.
If they had been silenced, they would at least have reacted in some suspicious way.
Instead, they genuinely looked like they were hearing about it for the first time, making me feel like an idiot for even asking.
If the missing people were orphans, there had to be other children who had played with them or spent time with them.
Yet even those children said they had never heard such a rumor.
Seriously…
“What are you worrying about?
That old man is working hard.
He’ll probably show up with some information soon, so don’t be so impatient.”
“The village chief… Ah, right!
Come to think of it, it does feel like the village chief would know something that no one else in the world knows!
One more glass of Monster Tree juice, please!”
“Perfect timing.”
The village chief had been exercising diligently lately and was gradually becoming healthier.
But after spending two weeks running around somewhere I had no idea about, he appeared holding a drink with a hollow and exhausted face.
His eyes were deeply sunken.
He must have been having a truly terrible time.
Seeing him like that made me hesitate to ask him for anything else in the future.
I had given him all the money I had earned, along with Ien's salary and everything else, so he shouldn't have suffered because of a lack of money.
He must have been exhausted from dealing with difficult people.
Was this one of those cliché settings where people secretly doing business behind the scenes were usually eccentric and difficult to deal with?
At the very least, I hoped they could communicate properly.
“…One nourishing meal here!
Something filling that will really put some strength back into me!”
“Alcohol… Just one drink…
Ahh, alcohol…”
“Dear, I know you want a drink, but let’s not fill an empty stomach with alcohol, okay?
Our Ingwang will worry about you.”
“…If you put it that way…”
With a faint smile, the village chief collapsed into an empty chair like a puppet with its strings cut.
He looked so exhausted that I started worrying whether I was about to witness the first case of someone dying from overwork in this game.
Thinking I had to do something, I asked Mallang to use a stamina recovery spell.
But the village chief quietly raised his hand and stopped me.
“That can wait for a moment.
Look at this.”
He handed me the Monster Tree juice he had been holding, then carefully pulled out a bundle of old papers from inside his clothes.
The moment he took out the paper, Jin stared at it as though it were extremely disgusting before turning his head away.
Dolphin also looked surprised.
“Why?
What is this?”
“…It is because of the memories that were implanted into me, but this is an object created long ago by followers of madness known as fanatics, using a sacrifice.
Apparently, that sacrifice was a pure, untainted young child.”
Hmm.
So that was the setting?
Even Dolphin, who had a history of making alcohol out of humans, looked surprised by it.
That meant this was an unusually strange and horrifying object.
“So, old man, are you saying those fanatics are connected to this incident?”
“Yes.”
“I never thought they would be here too.”
“What horrible obsession~.”
“First, let us look at the contents.”
The village chief carefully unfolded the paper.
The moment I saw it, I felt something strangely familiar.
It was more like a vague sense of familiarity.
But I couldn't remember what it was.
Putting that vague feeling aside for the moment, I looked at the contents.
It blatantly stated things like when an item would be moved and what kind of item would be moved.
This was a game.
There would be some degree of cliché and a standard route.
And there would probably be efforts to break those clichés as well.
But things were called standards for a reason.
In other words, this paper, its contents, and this situation…
It felt like a trap.
“What the hell?
What is their purpose?”
“Yes.
I was wondering the same thing to the point that I thought my head was going to explode.”
Ahh, stop…
Just stop…
My head hurts…!
Why do they keep pushing me into stories that give me headaches?
I just want to enjoy the game as a crazy guy with a proper character concept!
While I was looking at the paper and thinking about all sorts of things until my head felt like it was going to explode, Mallang, who was being held in my arms, asked her question in a completely innocent voice.
“What do you mean by their purpose?
Isn't this just a letter for exchanging information between members of the organization?
Why does everyone look so troubled?”
“Hmm, is this a little too difficult for our Mallang?
So~ the reason we're having headaches right now is because we're wondering why this letter was discovered so openly only now.”
“Why?
Couldn’t it simply have been discovered now?”
“When a letter talks about a secret matter like this, it is naturally written in code so that no one can understand it, and only some members of the organization can decipher it.
Even the Great Hero probably uses codes when conveying important information, right?”
“Even if someone intercepted it, they wouldn’t be able to understand the contents.
And even if they could decipher it, it would take time.
That would give the people whose letter was stolen enough time to respond while the code was being deciphered.
So there’s no reason to write something this honestly.
Do you understand, Mallang-Mallang?”
“D-Did everyone think that far ahead?
I thought we had finally found a clue.”
“It is a clue.
Those people will definitely be waiting for us at this exact time and place.”
“The problem is that we cannot know their scale.
The fanatics that Jin mentioned.
I also learned about this organization while obtaining this document.
If an organization that is so skilled at hiding itself and revealing nothing is waiting for us, then they must have a definite purpose and means.”
If they wanted to meet us, why not simply write a letter saying they wanted to meet?
Why throw out such an obvious bait and wait for someone to bite?
But damn it!
If I ignored this bait, I'd become like a dead fish flopping around in a lake that had completely dried up, unable to breathe!
I'd have to bite whatever bait was thrown at me and end up in the bucket of whoever threw it just to have a chance to breathe.
Was this what they called being caught between a rock and a hard place?
But why?
Why throw this bait at me?
Was madness itself their target?
