Lucky or Unlucky 2
Sometimes I find myself wondering about things like that.
When you attempt a high-risk, low-odds play specifically to fail—and somehow succeed instead. If, no matter the probability, you never get what you want and somehow always land the exact opposite result… is that good luck or bad luck?
Always drawing blanks when you want to win, yet miraculously hitting the jackpot the moment a blank is what you need. In a way, you're guaranteed to lose either way—but purely by the numbers, isn't that the hand of a miracle that punches through single-digit odds every single time?
Grace and Han Se-ah, already hatching their next plan, slipped off toward the inn at a brisk pace, while Irene took one more worried look at my wallet as I paid the guild in gold coins before heading for the Temple. Kayden, still deep in her act, had vanished without a word, leaving me free to open the internet window with no one to interrupt.
Reading through the viewers' chat, I suddenly got curious and started digging through Han Se-ah's old game videos—from back before VR games existed, when her channel was all fitness content and general gaming.
Her channel had already pulled in over three hundred thousand subscribers even before she started playing Heroes Chronicle. Judging by how the view counts swung by a factor of ten depending on her outfit rather than the content itself, you could tell her audience was nothing if not stubbornly consistent—bordering on obsessive.
"Does this make any sense to you? No, seriously—they said the drop rate was fifteen percent? But I roll twenty times and don't get it once, so what? What, um, what kind of probability is that!!"
Videos of her stretching on a mat, collab streams with other female streamers, rage-quitting mid-game, balancing on a stability ball or foam roller, competing in tournaments with her teammates…
But the one that really caught my eye wasn't any of the fitness videos showing off her figure—it was a thumbnail of Han Se-ah face-planted on a keyboard with keys scattered in every direction, looking like she was wailing. Those black keys with her hair splayed across them almost looked like tree branches and fruit. Or maybe that was just me.
Without a second's hesitation I hit play, and there was past Han Se-ah, so furious she slammed both hands down on the desk with a bang—and accidentally crushed her keyboard.
"Does—this—make—any—sense AARGH! Ow! H-hey, the headset cord didn't just snap, did it?!"
She clearly hadn't meant to smash the keyboard; on screen, past Han Se-ah clutched her left hand and shrieked. She'd accidentally slammed the keyboard, shot to her feet clutching her aching hand, then her headset cord snagged on the chair flying backward and ripped clean off—total chaos.
Smashed keyboard. Chair rocketing backward as she jumped up. Headset cord snagged on the chair. Han Se-ah curled up in pain. The whole mess was too chaotic to put into words—and on top of it all, her game character had died, unable to survive her streak of misfortune.
I was starting to understand why viewers teased her with nicknames that included "cursed hands." When a pretty girl in skimpy workout clothes doing exercise videos gets fewer views than the same pretty girl smashing a desk while mashing her keyboard… that says everything.
So there I was, leisurely hunting down Han Se-ah's black-history videos in the inn, when a knock came at the door—tap-tap.
"Um, Roland?"
"Roland, are you in there?"
Apparently determined to make up for last time's mistake, Grace and Han Se-ah had come together this time. Since I'd just sat there drinking with them after getting dragged into the whole affair without saying a word, they must have figured I'd already caught on and decided to push things out in the open.
I couldn't help a snort of laughter at Han Se-ah's streamer-grade shamelessness. If I opened the door right now, just seeing her face would make me laugh—remembering that shamelessness and her slapstick face-plants. Ahem—I shoved the laugh climbing up my throat back down with a snort of breath, then opened the inn door.
"Drinking again today, huh?"
"Yeah, we wanted to drink together. …Well, 'together'—except Kayden's not here."
Standing at the door were three women, as expected, gear set aside and dressed light. I'd thought it was two, but Irene was there too, her face faintly flushed.
Given how warmly they treated me, the bond between these women—who'd gone from strangers to calling each other unnie and dongsaeng—was tighter than I'd realized. Even if the Goddess's faith valued frugality and integrity, it didn't demand complete abstinence, so she must have given in to the other two's temptation and come along.
Irene, shy and timid as she was, still had her eyes sparkling with anticipation for a drink with her companions. Three different beauties in light clothes inviting me for a round—who could possibly refuse?
"Why not Kayden?"
"Well, we don't know where her room is…"
Han Se-ah ducked her head, looking embarrassed at my question. They'd gotten closer since first meeting, and she even knew the princess's secret—you'd think there'd be some real camaraderie—but she didn't even know where Kayden was staying? At this rate, the cool adventurer Kayden that Princess Katie imagined herself as wasn't a stoic swordsman so much as a loner swordsman.
Thinking that, I left the inn with the party—one member short, but clearly with no intention of canceling the drinking plans.
Han Se-ah hadn't turned on her stream, probably because this was an extremely personal hobby of trying to set Grace and me up. Instead of the Lucky Bastard tavern where last time's chaos had gone down, she naturally guided us somewhere else. Fair enough—you couldn't exactly drag a nun to a place where the waitresses openly sold themselves.
"Still, this is a relief."
"A relief? What is?"
"No guys picking fights today trying to hit on you."
Maybe it was because I'd just been watching Han Se-ah's streams, but I was in a mood to tease. Weaving through the growing crowds of adventurers, I tossed out that line and got a full spectrum of reactions from the party.
Han Se-ah glared at me like she was asking why I'd even bring that up, Grace tapped my side with a barely suppressed smile, and Irene tugged on my sleeve with curious eyes, wanting to know what story that was.
Even though we'd gotten closer, maybe dealing with men was still hard for a nun—or maybe tugging a sleeve just felt more natural than tapping someone—she casually took hold of my left sleeve.
"Last time, Grace and I went out for drinks, and…"
"Ah! Roland! Are you seriously going to tell that?"
"The rumor already spread all over the Adventurer's Guild. What's the big deal?"
"Wh-what? It spread through the whole guild?"
"You treated a bunch of adventurers with a money pouch in hand. Of course word got around."
Watching Han Se-ah's face turn bright red—embarrassed even in a game—Irene seemed to piece things together and smiled gently. Whatever the process had been, she could tell Han Se-ah had gained some unwanted fame at a tavern.
Grace, apparently wanting to tease her cute little sister too, sidled up to Irene and started explaining the incident in my place.
"Hanna walked into the tavern alone, and then this mercenary from outside the city sat down right in front of her and just…!"
"Ah, unnieee!"
"My, what kind of gentleman was he?"
"Well, the mercenary type? Bushy beard, rough-looking, and kind of sleazy…"
Watching Han Se-ah's back as she bolted ahead, unable to stand hearing her own story, the two women giggled. Her stream viewers, me rewatching the broadcast, and Grace and Irene adventuring alongside her—everyone got that satisfying hit of schadenfreude.
As if proving I wasn't the only one who wanted to tease Han Se-ah, Grace and Irene linked arms and cheerfully followed after her.
The one silver lining was that while some adventurers recognized our party or took interest because they were beauties, they quietly looked away the moment they spotted Irene's nun's habit. Hitting on an adventurer and hitting on a nun were completely different stories.
And then a man suddenly stopped our party dead—the group that had been drawing stares like so many unattainable prizes.
"Huh, Kayden?"
"Everyone—huff—was here."
She'd come running as if something urgent was going on, gasping for breath as she spoke. For a swordsman at Intermediate-grade adventurer level to be this winded, she must have been sprinting all over the place. What was going on?
A man boldly blocking a group of beauties on the street—including a nun. That was the vibe, and every eye in the area locked onto us, but once the party all acknowledged her, the stares quickly scattered.
We'd nearly had some random adventurer jump in yelling something like, "Hey, the ladies said no!"
"You look really urgent. What's going on?"
"Golems—huff… Elise asked me to pass along a tip related to golems."
With no real way to contact us, she must have run herself ragged around Han Se-ah and Grace's inn, the restaurants we frequented, the area around the lodgings. I waited for Kayden to catch her breath, and she started explaining in more detail.
"I went back to the guild training grounds to practice swordsmanship, and Elise said she had something to pass along. An adventurer party came back injured, carrying a mana stone from a golem that looked a little different."
As she spoke, Kayden pulled a fist-sized mana stone from a pouch on her adventurer's belt. Being part of the social circle connecting Rebecca and Roland, they'd apparently trusted her enough to hand over the mana stone.
A normal golem mana stone was round, just a pale reddish color—but the one Kayden held out was clearly angular. The hexagonal crystal shape, so different from a smooth pebble-like mana stone, looked almost as if someone had deliberately cut and polished it.
"The color's deeper too, and the shape looks like someone carved the mana stone."
"Did you hear how they got this mana stone?"
"The adventurer who handed it over apparently collapsed right there at the guild. They gave first aid, but to wake him up they'll need to get him to the Temple quickly."
At the word "Temple," everyone's eyes converged. I could see why Elise had rushed the news to us.
The Temple might be upright and pure, treating adventurers according to the Goddess's will—but this was still a medieval fantasy world, tangled up in politics. Knocking on the Temple doors late in the evening for an adventurer who was merely unconscious, not critically wounded, wasn't easy.
But if a nun brought those adventurers in, that changed everything. Especially if it was Irene—a Candidate Saint who'd been born and raised in this city's Temple. Of course, the ideal would be Irene healing them herself, but…
"At this hour, Father Jang should still be there. I'll head to the Temple, so please bring the guild's patients over."
"Yes, unnie. We should go right away."
Unfortunately, Irene had a trait that reduced her healing because she specialized in barriers. If I remembered right—protection and purification specialization, reduced healing, and enhancement was impossible.
After watching Irene's back as she ran off with light steps, both hands clutching the hem of her nun's habit, we headed for the guild—Han Se-ah already pulling out her camera for recording, of course.