Chapter 27: The Guitarist in the Alley
Chapter 27: The Guitarist in the Alley
Here, Ras drew inspiration from the various races and applied it to Land of Adventure 2 to make the world feel more realistic.
And he was also able to add several new classes.
At first, he had simply introduced the Bard class because it intuitively came to mind.
It was a class that often appeared even on Earth, so it had been easy to imagine. But once he tried adding a profession unrelated to direct combat, all sorts of additional ideas began emerging.
Initially, they had only been vague thoughts, but when he recalled systems used on Earth, the concept became clearer.
Life content.
Land of Adventure 1 already contained simple crafting systems, but that alone felt far too lacking.
“Fishing?”
Garazt, who had been hunched over the monitor coding for quite some time, stopped typing at the unexpected word and turned toward Ras.
“Yes. If you think about it, it’s strange that adventurers always eat at restaurants while traveling around. They’d camp outdoors and cook for themselves too, right? So shouldn’t there be systems where they gather ingredients themselves?”
“Ah...”
Garazt, who had always dreamed of virtual reality, imagined wilderness survival scenes from Ras’s explanation and nodded.
“I think that sounds great. Quietly casting a fishing rod into a calm lake and pulling up a huge fish... That has a really nice feeling to it.”
Pana, who was drawing the newly added terrain illustrations for Land of Adventure 2, raised one hand in agreement.
Since her hometown was in the countryside, she had much more vivid imagery for things like this.
Although she claimed to prefer city life, she still unconsciously missed her hometown a little, which made her naturally drawn toward pastoral content.
“Right? And instead of just gathering food, we could also add gimmicks where hidden items can be obtained in specific areas.”
“Ah... Like finding a legendary sword in some lake or something?”
“Exactly!”
Ras pointed toward Garazt as though telling him he got the correct answer after mentioning the sword in the lake.
“And beyond fishing, we’re also adding skills like hunting, butchering, herb gathering, and ore mining. Naturally, there’ll also be processing skills for those materials too, like cooking, tanning, woodworking, sculpting, smelting, and weapon crafting.”
“Oooh...”
The idea of implementing not just combat but everyday life itself fit perfectly with Garazt’s tastes, causing admiration to spill out unconsciously.
Still, that excitement did not last long.
Because he quickly realized none of this would be easy.
Simply adding skills would not be enough to make them meaningful.
Even cooking alone required a hunger or food consumption system to truly matter.
Of course, they could simply make food restore HP like potions, but even Garazt felt that would fail to create much realism.
Ras could easily guess what Garazt was thinking just by watching his expression change.
Still, it could not be helped.
Implementing ideals always required effort and suffering.
And since Ras himself was no exception, all he could do was smile bitterly.
Fortunately, he now had somewhere to relieve the stress and fatigue accumulated from coding all day.
After work, Ras went to Dayalla whenever Nebrania was performing, and on other days he either rested at home or visited Sky Castle for entertainment.
About two weeks had passed since he first started visiting Sky Castle.
It had become a hobby by now, but he had not forgotten his original purpose of searching for sound staff, so he was beginning to consider approaching some of the singers directly.
Labradone... Those guys were pretty good. And the Doolittle Band wasn’t bad either.
Business hours had not started yet, so he wandered around while thinking about which singers and bands he had liked most so far.
At first, he thought this neighborhood felt cold and lifeless, but after visiting repeatedly, he realized it was not bad at all.
For one thing, there were many music-related people around, which meant there were plenty of instrument shops.
There were also record stores, and compared to the ones downtown, they sold a much wider variety of music.
Simply browsing those stores was entertaining enough on its own.
Sometimes singers who performed on stage could also be seen casually walking through the streets, and there were even people openly performing music and singing outdoors.
Recruiting members.
Among the street performers, some had signs like that set up while searching for missing band members.
Though normally, most people simply posted recruitment notices on bulletin boards instead.
Listening to street performances was enjoyable in its own way.
And because Ras also hoped he might discover talented people among them, he paid closer attention than most passersby would.
As he wandered around like that, the sound of a guitar reached his ears.
Of course, guitars were extremely common in this district.
But what drew Ras’s attention was the unique melody.
Where have I heard something like this before...?
Unlike the music common here, it sounded far more familiar to Hyeoncheol from Earth—closer to rock music.
Not exactly the same, but if he had to compare it to a genre from his memories, it resembled rock and roll.
Once he became interested in the performance itself, naturally he grew curious about the performer too.
Ras followed the sound of the guitar.
“Hmm.”
When he eventually discovered an alley branching inward, he hesitated briefly.
Still, he had visited this area often enough by now.
It was not an especially dangerous neighborhood, and judging by the sound of the guitar, the destination was not very deep inside anyway, so he continued forward.
Besides, if someone’s casually playing guitar here, it can’t be that dangerous.
A guitarist mugger or murderous Bard was not impossible, but it hardly sounded realistic.
Still, because empty alleys made him uncomfortable, Ras cautiously followed the music while glancing around.
Soon, he discovered the source inside a small overgrown clearing between abandoned buildings.
That’s cool.
The first thing that caught his eye was the outfit.
The black leather pants and jacket covered in silver studs stood out dramatically even in this already free-spirited neighborhood.
Just as Ras grew even more interested and took another step forward, the people beside the guitarist suddenly shouted.
“Help us!”
For a moment, Ras thought he had misheard.
But then he realized that the two people he assumed were band members were actually tied tightly to brown and green vines and unable to move at all, causing his heart to sink.
Then his eyes instinctively shifted toward the person still passionately playing the guitar, and Ras was shocked all over again.
The guitarist was a slender woman wearing large silver earrings and several piercings in her ears.
She even had small silver piercings attached to both her nose and lips, which only made her seem more intimidating.
Still, after properly seeing her long messy hair and face, likely disheveled from the performance, Ras eventually realized she was someone familiar.
“...Miss Nebrania?”
It was the Dryad singer from Dayalla.
Hearing her name, Nebrania finally turned her eyes away from the performance trance she had been immersed in and looked at Ras.
“Huh? It’s that customer. What the hell? Don’t tell me you followed me all the way here?! Damn it! First muggers, now a stalker?”
Her voice remained beautiful, but unlike the smiling image she showed at Dayalla, she frowned deeply while alternating her gaze between Ras and the two men she had tied up.
Ras quickly judged that the situation itself did not seem dangerous, but he panicked at the strange misunderstanding forming and frantically waved both hands.
“N-No! I just came because the guitar sounded good!”
Only afterward did he finally process the shock of seeing a side of her he never could have imagined.
“...Really?”
Apparently, the compliment about the guitar worked.
Nebrania glared at him for a little longer before snorting softly and lowering the sharply raised corners of her eyes.
Just as Ras was about to relax his stiff shoulders in relief, he noticed the grass and vines around them, which had been writhing moments earlier, suddenly calming down.
The sight startled him.
After carefully observing the situation for a moment, Ras swallowed nervously before speaking.
“Um... You said those people were muggers, right?”
“Yep. And I’m the one who caught them.”
As expected, Nebrania explained that controlling the vines was her own ability.
Ras had read in books that Dryads often possessed innate magic of this type, but actually seeing it in person felt both fascinating and intimidating.
Still, after hearing that the bound men were criminals who attacked her first, and seeing that she herself was no longer acting threateningly toward him, Ras managed to relax slightly.
Of course, if she had been a complete stranger, his reaction probably would have been different.
But the fact that Ras already harbored strong feelings toward her heavily influenced his response.
The image he previously had of her was now completely shattered, but strangely enough, his affection had not disappeared.
In fact, he even found this side of her somewhat appealing too.
His heart still pounded wildly, but at the same time, Ras felt this might actually be an opportunity.
“Um...”
“What?”
Ignoring the two tied-up men wriggling nearby as best he could, Ras addressed Nebrania.
She responded casually.
Forget the informal speech itself—her personality felt so completely different from her image at Dayalla that Ras still struggled to adjust.
“By any chance... are you interested in computers?”
He had agonized over how to start a conversation, but with the person herself suddenly standing directly in front of him, those rushed words came out before he could think things through properly.
“What? Computers?”
“Yes...”
“Well... They’re too expensive for me.”
At first, when Nebrania frowned as though he were saying something ridiculous, Ras internally panicked, thinking he had made a mistake.
But hearing her next words reassured him.
At the very least, the fact that she understood how expensive computers were meant she was not completely uninterested.
After calming himself, Ras explained that he developed games and was currently searching for someone who could create sound using computers.
“There probably aren’t many people who are both good with computers and deeply knowledgeable about music. So I’m thinking of finding someone with musical talent, teaching them how to use computers, and then asking them to handle the work. Would you be interested, Miss Nebrania?”
“Music for games?”
“Yes.”
Fortunately, Nebrania showed interest.
Though in truth, she was not particularly interested in computers themselves.
What attracted her was the existence of paid work.
Nebrania had come to the city solely because she sincerely wanted to pioneer her own style of music.
But things had not gone as planned, and she struggled even to form a band.
As a result, she survived by taking whatever jobs she could find just to keep herself fed.
So when a wealthy customer who constantly visited expensive restaurants offered her work, she instinctively calculated that it would at least earn money.
It was not greed so much as the realism forced upon her by prolonged hardship.
“Let’s move somewhere else and talk.”
She gathered her guitar, then snapped her fingers to release the two men she had tied up.
Then she glared at them and barked coldly.
“Get lost!”
“...Eek!”
The two men must have been restrained for quite a while already, because they could barely stand properly and instead scrambled away in terror.
Nebrania stared after them briefly before turning back toward Ras and smiling brightly just as she did at Dayalla.
“Then let’s go.”
“Yes.”
Now that Ras knew her true personality, he could no longer react to that smile with the same pure joy as before.
Instead, he answered with an awkward bitter smile.
Together with Nebrania, Ras left the alley and entered a nearby restaurant.
It was the sort of place frequented by young people with light wallets—not somewhere serving extraordinary meals, but a crowded establishment selling simple dishes alongside snacks, drinks, and tea.