55. The Strongest in the World
Today, too, the café was peaceful.
It seemed that I was now the only player who came here regularly.
Everyone else must have moved to some high-level area, so I could no longer see them except for me, a naturally homebody type with an incredibly strong instinct to return to my den.
They were probably all having a fun and exciting time farming and leveling up right now.
Meanwhile, I was stuck doing something that was vaguely similar to a spy operation, something that did not suit me at all.
Well, if I thought of it as doing something that other people could not do, I could understand it with a broad mind.
This was also a kind of fun.
Sometimes, you needed something like this to change the atmosphere.
“Can I be honest?”
“What about?”
“When I picked up the communication device, I was actually pretty happy at first. But when I thought about it carefully, I realized that wasn't it!”
I should have just given it to the Great Hero.
My plan had been ruined, and seeing the Great Hero make a gloomy face had made me feel good, so I had unconsciously taken it with me.
Now, I just wanted to hand it over to the Great Hero and be done with it.
I had started this whole thing because I wanted Jin to return to a normal state, but even if I successfully finished this incident, it did not seem like Jin would suddenly find the meaning of his life.
“Uncle, didn't you scold me not long ago for not trusting you?”
“What? What's so pathetic about me! Your role is to be the first one to stop and criticize me for dragging something I couldn't handle into this! If you had stopped me, none of this would have happened!”
“You told me to trust you!”
“Yeah! I did! I have nothing to say…!”
Of course, considering that these fanatics had a deep connection with me, Madman, getting involved with them might actually be good from the perspective of character development.
They would welcome my other half, Madman, more than anyone else.
For me, it might even be paradise.
But when I thought about my immediate goal of meeting Pi, this was such a ridiculously roundabout route that I really did not like it.
Why had I obtained a knight's title, settled in the Empire, and started working under the Great Hero in the first place…?
It was not that the work was difficult or that I simply did not want to do it.
What was truly terrible was that I had gone crazy over a momentary emotion and grabbed something I really did not need to deal with right now.
Ah, idiot…
Such a stupid, foolish idiot.
On top of that, some brat named Jamani had smashed the device instead of simply throwing it away, so I had to wait until it was repaired.
Of course, I had not been spending my time lazily drinking the drinks the café owner had recently developed, like I was now.
I had already taken my companions through many dungeons that numerous players had cleared before us and spent my time exploring them.
It had been a very game-like experience, and it had been quite fun and fulfilling in its own way.
Ah, yes.
My days had been very fulfilling.
I even wrote it in my diary.
Really.
Sigh.
I hated the feeling of waiting for a communication device that I did not know when I would be told was repaired.
I was sure everyone knew that feeling when you had no idea when the results would be announced.
“When you put it that way, you're making me feel bad after I went through all that trouble to make time to come here.”
The Great Hero approached my seat with his usual carefree smile, without making even the slightest sound.
Unlike his words about being displeased, his expression was rather relaxed.
After the incident that day, he had probably been walking around with a serious expression, lecturing nobles one by one.
So perhaps he was simply happy to be outside again and finally have some time to rest.
Thinking that made me feel a little sorry for him.
A little.
“I saw the newspaper.”
The knight who had been caught that day had been sentenced to death.
All of his subordinates had been stripped of their positions, and the count who had directly given the order had also been expelled from the Empire.
I was a little surprised when I read it.
Since he had been killed by an NPC, I had wondered if he would simply come back through resurrection magic.
But after looking into it, I found that the execution method itself prevented resurrection magic from working.
In other words, I would really never meet that guy again.
“Don't remind me. I nearly sweated to death explaining the danger of otherworlders to nobles who didn't understand them.”
“Honestly, I didn't expect him to be executed.
I heard the count had his title taken away and was expelled too.
I'm worried that he might secretly meet up with some bad organization later.”
It was a common story, wasn't it?
Someone would make a mistake, get expelled because of their own wrongdoing, then forget all about their own fault and secretly sharpen a blade of revenge from behind the scenes.
So I had asked the Village Chief to keep track of him.
If he showed any suspicious movements, I had told him to deal with him immediately.
“He still has connections with other nobles, so don't go looking for him and kill him.”
“Eh? I never thought of doing that~.”
**“I know you had the village chief, who isn't here right now, track him.
There's no need for us to hide things from each other.”**
How much had this sharp old man seen of me for him to suddenly act so friendly?
Had he misunderstood what I said before about considering becoming friends with him as me saying I would become his friend?
Seriously!
Did he think that just because I showed up here, he would suddenly want to become friends with someone reliable, kind, and powerful like me?
Of course!
If he asked me to, I had to do it.
Well, there was no helping it.
It was slightly annoying that Dorfin and Jin immediately shut their mouths whenever the Great Hero appeared.
But it was better for them to pretend they were not here than for the Great Hero to accidentally consider them part of my group and have the two of them exposed.
Just imagine Dorfin saying a few words and getting on the Great Hero's bad side.
I did not know how Dorfin would feel about it, but as a fragile person, my spine would turn cold just thinking about it.
“By the way, who is the person behind you?”
He was a handsome man with white hair and a white military uniform, with a gentle-looking face.
I normally found it difficult to look directly at other people's faces, but he was the second person after Dorfin whom I had actually stared at for a moment.
His face practically radiated light.
Yeah.
It felt like seeing an unbelievably handsome actor from television in real life.
More than anything else, the only thought that came to my mind was:
Wow.
He's ridiculously handsome.
There were plenty of handsome and beautiful people in this game, and there were even players who had shown off incredible character customizations.
But this man's handsomeness was on another level.
They really knew how to make faces like this.
This world was full of monsters when it came to character modeling.
**“Ah, this is Eroll, the Great Hero of Salvation from Ipot.
He is very famous as the youngest Great Hero.”**
What was Ipot?
It sounded like the name of a country.
But it sounded suspiciously similar to the name of a certain smartphone.
Was I the only one worried about copyright issues?
**“It's the International Trade City Union.
The union is called Ipot.”**
“Oh, I see.
What is that?”
IEN quietly explained it to me.
All I understood was that it was an abbreviation and pronunciation of the translated English name.
One thing was certain.
It had to be a civilization that the other players had not encountered yet.
I spent most of my free time either playing the game, getting caught by my junior trainer, or living on the World Gate message board.
So if I did not know about it, it was definitely something the other players had not discovered yet.
Perhaps he had heard IEN and me whispering because the white-haired Great Hero cleared his throat and calmly explained.
**“It is an organization made up of numerous cities that formed an alliance.
They possess great wealth and have gained considerable power through that wealth, but they lack the territory and history necessary to establish themselves as a proper nation.”**
[Forced Buff: Peace has been activated!]
[You resisted the status effect: Charm!]
“Oh, is it like the UN?
Or maybe not?”
Politics, economics, and all that sort of thing were things I really did not understand.
If possible, I wanted him to explain it in a way I could actually understand.
But more importantly, this guy had a power in his voice that could inflict status effects on people.
He was not some kind of succubus demon, so why did his voice have that kind of power?
Fortunately, I, IEN, and Mallang were mostly resistant to Corruption or Madness, so we could resist his power.
Still, whether he had intended it or not, he was an incredible person.
**“You should be careful.
If you accidentally open your mouth, something worse than Madness might come out.”**
“Hahaha!
Jeongyeon!
Even so, comparing me to Madness is a bit much…
You're going to make me snap!”
In this world, and especially among the Great Heroes, Madness must have been an extremely hated existence.
Yet this man simply laughed it off even after being compared to such a being.
What a man.
He had probably come all the way here specifically to discuss the fanatics who seemed to have a deep connection with Madness.
As expected of a Great Hero.
**“I'm sorry.
I was trying to be careful, but I think a little too much power came out without me realizing it.
It's been a very long time since I've talked to someone like this.”**
“Hm, I'll let it slide.
The old man beside you did the same thing when he first met me.
He also said it had been a long time since he had talked like that.”
“Haha!
Jeongyeon said that?
How interesting.”
