Free Web NovelIan raised his glass.
"...That's why I... Are you even listening to me? Jung Iwon. Jung Iwon?"
"I am."
Ian answered and blinked.
His friend's face blurred into two, then three overlapping images before merging back into one.
Was he drunk?
Ian could not remember his friend's name.
In any case, he was an old friend.
His developer friend.
The man kept talking.
"Just help me this once. I'm seriously dying over here."
"I don't have any money."
"Not money! You weren't listening at all, were you?"
The accusation was sharp.
Ian chuckled.
"What is it?"
"Play the game once."
Ian leaned back against the wall.
"What do you mean, once? I did it last time. And the time before that too."
"This is really the last time. I won't ask you for anything like this again!"
"What do you get out of me playing a game?"
"We get data!"
"Ask someone else."
"I can't. It has to be you."
His friend rested his head on Ian's shoulder.
An embarrassingly sentimental thing for him to do.
Ian was about to comment when leaves sprouted from the man's face.
His skin turned transparent.
The veins beneath it sharpened and swelled.
They became branches.
Then a trunk.
The man's body twisted and transformed into a tree.
The trunk wrapped around Ian's neck.
"Only you can do it. Help me. Help me. Help me..."
Ian opened his eyes, drenched in cold sweat.
What was that?
What a ridiculous dream.
Just in case, he immediately looked around.
The last time he'd dreamed about a game and woken up, a dragon had been attacking.
For all he knew, his senses had detected an emergency and interfered with his brainwaves while he slept.
Maybe the signal had taken the form of a game because of Ian's personal hatred for that damned game.
In any case—
The surroundings were quiet.
Which was strange.
For one thing, Keith wasn't here.
Ian had no idea when the man slept.
Whenever Ian woke up, Keith was usually already there, polishing his sword beside him.
Lately, seeing Keith first thing in the morning and hearing his greeting had become routine.
Yet he was nowhere to be found.
More importantly, Ian had no idea where he was.
His first impression of the room was simple.
A prison?
Yet it lacked the gloomy atmosphere of an underground dungeon.
There was a window, and light streamed in through it.
The window was absurdly high and barred, but still.
More importantly, there was a bed.
A bed and a desk.
There was even a bookshelf packed full of books.
At a glance, it looked more like the room of a poor scholar than a prison cell.
As far as Ian knew, no place like this existed inside the dungeon.
That wasn't to say he had personally explored every room that had ever been built.
But he knew there was no prison like this.
A hidden event?
Ding!
Ian immediately opened his status window.
There was no NEW button beside the list of ongoing events.
Not that.
Ding!
A map appeared before him.
The map was blank.
The red dot indicating Ian's position was gone.
The black dots showing nearby individuals and their names were gone as well.
Only the continent map remained.
A bug?
Ian's heart began to race.
He turned the function off and on again.
The same thing people did whenever a computer malfunctioned.
"Map."
Ding!
Blank map.
"System."
Ding!
"Error recovery."
Ding!
"Map."
Ding!
Blank again.
Cold sweat slid down his back.
The droplets had already cooled, and the sensation running down his waist felt unpleasantly chilly.
"What the hell is this now?"
Ian got out of bed.
He pulled out a sword from his inventory and swung it toward the prison door.
Something felt wrong.
The sword was too heavy.
How did I swing this thing again?
The blade he had learned to wield through Swordsmanship: Keith Style suddenly felt unfamiliar.
Like a foreign object.
What the hell? What's happening?
Ian nocked an arrow.
The draw weight was monstrous.
The unexpected resistance shocked the muscles in his arms.
The bowstring snapped forward and struck his hand.
"...!"
It hurt enough to make him cry out.
Ian gritted his teeth.
The correction is gone.
The real Ian, naturally, could not shoot a bow.
He couldn't wield a sword.
He couldn't ride a horse.
Those were things Ian could do.
The game character.
In reality, he was powerless.
Far too powerless to survive in a world like the dungeon.
No.
Wasn't Jung Iwon powerless in the real world too?
Ian smacked himself on the head.
Don't waste time thinking stupid things.
This wasn't the time.
Where was he?
Who had brought him here?
Why had the skill corrections disappeared?
Those were the three questions he needed answered first.
Ian gripped the bars.
He could not sense any demonic energy nearby.
This was not demon territory.
Wait.
What if the ability to detect demonic energy was gone too?
The thought sent a chill through him.
For the moment, however, he set it aside.
Whoever had moved him here was an intelligent being.
At the very least, not a mamool.
Those creatures would have tried to eat him the moment they found him weakened.
Why would beings driven by pure greed leave him alive?
Reasonably speaking, the only people capable of moving him here were the dungeon's inhabitants.
Faces flashed through his mind.
Louise's sharp eyes.
Sema's empty-headed expression.
No way.
He discarded that possibility as well.
There was no reason for the dungeon residents to lock him in prison.
Even if he had passed out drunk.
Keith would have been guarding him.
Who could have touched him?
Keith.
Ian froze.
Come to think of it—
Where was Keith?
Had he simply stood by while someone dragged Ian into a prison?
Impossible.
Where was Keith?
Suddenly, the previous night resurfaced in his memory.
He had been with Keith.
At some point he had fallen asleep without realizing it.
And then—
"Go to sleep. When you wake up, everything will be over."
A voice he had heard through his drowsiness.
The arms that had lifted his limp body.
The hand that had stroked his hair.
Goosebumps crawled up from his feet.
What the hell did that bastard do?
As far as Ian could remember, Keith had rarely done anything Ian actually liked.
It sounded very much as though he'd gone off to cause trouble.
Everything would be over?
Before losing consciousness, Ian had given Keith a clear order.
They were going to kill the Demon King.
As for what Keith considered something he could finish by himself—
Only one possibility came to mind.
Is he insane?
"Keith! Keith, where the hell did that bastard go?!"
Ian shook the bars with his hands, then kicked them in frustration.
His foot, no longer benefiting from skill corrections, screamed in pain.
This insane status window—
The thought cut off abruptly.
Ian summoned the equipment screen.
Wait.
Ding!
Equipment slots appeared.
Head.
Body.
Left hand.
Right hand.
Legs.
Feet.
Ian opened the detailed section for his head slot.
Ears.
Eyes.
Mouth.
And—
Neck.
[Equipment]
⁝
Neck: Fairy Queen's Necklace (S)
"You lunatic!"
Ian clawed at his neck.
A sharp sting ran across his skin.
A pearl necklace slipped into his hand.
[Fairy Queen's Necklace (S)]
⁝
Cooldown: 29 Days 21 Hours 8 Minutes 13 Seconds
"...!"
He was too furious to speak.
He'd given it to Keith for life-or-death situations.
And this idiot had wasted it.
The cooldown—
No, he'd used it on Ian?
Unable to contain the rage surging through him, Ian slammed his forehead against the bars.
Clang!
The sound rang out.
Ian continued smashing his head against them like a hammer.
Clang! Clang! Bang!
"Calm down, calm down!"
"Does this look like a situation where I can calm down?! That stupid bastard doesn't even understand the importance of cooldowns in this shitty game—!"
"Whew. You seem calmer now. That's a relief. I thought my first regular customer had finally gone insane. Heroes tend to fall into terrible Despair when they're betrayed."
Calm down, my ass.
Ian was already preparing to kick the speaker.
Wait.
Where had he heard that infuriating nonsense before?
Ian looked up.
A hooded elf merchant was waving at him.
"Can you see this? How many are there?"
Not a hand.
Fingers.
Pressing his face against the bars, Ian snarled.
"How did you get in here?!"
"Me? Well, I searched very, very hard."
Is he deliberately trying to piss me off?
Ian ground his teeth.
"Where is this?"
"The temple, obviously. The one inside the dungeon."
The elf merchant looked at him strangely.
His expression practically said, You don't even recognize the building you constructed?
Ian felt his blood pressure rise again.
What did he care whether the temple contained facilities like this?
The game developers had never released a healer class.
They had released Holy Knight Keith, though.
...That place?
Something finally clicked.
The Vatican possessed sacred tower facilities used to imprison high-ranking offenders.
Once confined there, a character became subject to the Repentance system, allowing them to be reused later.
He locked me up there?
Apparently there was a point at which a person became so angry that they turned completely calm.
Ian spoke evenly.
"Open the door."
"Ah. So this wasn't roleplay after all? It really was betrayal?"
The elf babbled nonsense as he unlocked the door.
Creeeak.
Hoo.
Ian wanted nothing more than to hunt Keith down immediately and grab him by the scruff of the neck.
But he had business with this bastard first.
He seized Dorian by the collar.
"I save your life, and your way of repaying me is to run off after stabbing me in the back?"
