Rock vs. Flight 3
Han Se-ah was an internet streamer.
She had been one long before Heroes Chronicle launched and catapulted her into global stardom. She snagged male fans with her hardcore gaming energy, and female fans with her workout streams… well, mostly the male fans, if she was being honest.
Her greatest strength as a streamer was how satisfyingly reactive she was. She never coasted on a pretty face, sitting quietly and looking demure. Poke her and she would leap up sputtering with a dozen different reactions, and viewers flocked to watch. Teasing missions, horror games she was forced into, viewer-participation content where skilled players mercilessly wrecked her…
And of all those things, nothing made streamer Han Se-ah thrash harder than a mission with real cash on the line.
"Ah, so it was slowly zooming in on me, huh. Hmm? How did I know? Because every time the camera shot, the magnification ratio shifted a little. I can see the camera drone settings, you guys."
"Right now? There's a suspiciously rich viewer getting way too invested in harpies and honestly that scares me. But thinking about it, isn't that kind of thing even worse overseas? Wait, is this going to get exported again?"
It wasn't just one. Multiple suspicious viewers pooled their money because they wanted a single look at the beautiful harpy's face, and in the end Han Se-ah moved.
The same woman who had plugged her ears and ignored talk of troll bombs went back to town, double-checked her alchemy, ground out alchemy proficiency with cheap materials, and finally tracked down the recipe at the alchemy workshop to craft explosive sticky arrowheads—
"Kiiiiiik—!"
"Looks like harpies can't communicate with humans."
"A monster with no chance of conversion or repentance… a little disappointing."
—and produced the result now sitting in front of us.
Ignoring the elderly harpies circling overhead in confusion after receiving no orders, we found the one that had been slammed into the mountainside. Its wings were glued to its flanks and legs with green adhesive, thrashing around like a bug stuck to flypaper.
Of course, for a bug, it was a little too beautiful… and a little too dangerous.
"…But is it okay to show this? This is basically naked."
Enormous wings in place of arms, elongated eagle legs from the knees down. Put another way, everything from the pale, plump thighs above the knees all the way up to the face was pure human beauty.
Red hair that called a parrot to mind, a cold beauty's face with sharply upturned eyes, breasts that rose beautifully—if not quite matching our party's—a slim waist, a sleek lower belly, and between her legs, thrashing with zero attempt at concealment, everything fully on display.
If the green sticky fluid hadn't covered a little of it, Han Se-ah's stream probably would have been suspended within ten seconds. She was thrashing so hard she had her legs spread wide with zero sense of shame.
"No, seriously. The harpy's not wearing clothes, she's covered in sticky goo and flapping around, and ugh… look at those breasts bouncing. And down below too."
If an ordinary person had been doing this, it would have been a sight nobody wanted to look at—but the subject was a star-rated beauty, monster or not. A sharp-featured beauty thrashing around naked had even our party members flushing a little with embarrassment.
…Han Se-ah deliberately teasing the viewers was one thing, but Grace and Katie had casually drifted in front of me, trying to block my view. Of course, given the height difference, they couldn't cover much even if they wanted to.
"So what now?"
"We caught her thinking we could talk, but at this rate we might have to hand her over to the Magic Tower."
"We should at least grab one of the feathers Miss Lulu asked for."
This capture operation had been launched partly because suspicious viewers had pooled money one by one to set a mission—but to the party, Han Se-ah had framed it as an attempt at dialogue or negotiation.
Hadn't Manash, blackened and corrupted, still stood on humanity's side and followed the Goddess's will? So maybe the harpies weren't hostile to mankind on the Demon King's orders—maybe they were just a barbaric race. Or so cash-crazed Han Se-ah had earnestly argued to the rest of us.
If conversation became possible, that was ideal. If we could at least negotiate, great. And if even that failed, we could just hand her over to the Magic Tower. There was nothing particularly bad about the plan, so we'd gone back to the city and prepared the sticky arrows.
But reality was a cold mistress.
"Fine, I'll show you, okay…?"
The harpy couldn't speak the human tongue. She thrashed like a wild beast locked in a cage, baring her aggression, and beyond handing her over to the Magic Tower, there didn't seem to be anything we could do right now.
And Han Se-ah's stream got a twenty-four-hour ban.
"Ah, for fuck's sake, ah…. Anyway, I'm back, yeah."
"Look, I didn't expect her to pull an overhead kick, okay? Maybe it's because she's a monster, but her core and wing strength are insane. Was it an overhead or a somersault kick? Anyway, that's what happened. While I was banned I just took the harpy down and sent her to the Magic Tower."
Getting too close with the camera to film only the safe angles had been Han Se-ah's fatal mistake. The harpy, aggression still fully intact, had stretched out her legs to go for Han Se-ah's throat with those razor-sharp raptor talons.
Even bound in sticky goo, she planted her bent wings against the ground and arched her body like a handstand, core engaged, sharp raptor talons extended straight at Han Se-ah's neck.
The problem was that she was completely naked when she stretched her legs toward Han Se-ah, so she couldn't cover anything between them—and shoved it straight into the camera. The camera that had been angled down at a slant to catch only face and shoulders, carefully avoiding the chest, filmed the harpy's crotch in full, unobstructed glory.
"I'm in a bad mood right now so Snippy's blade is a little sharper than usual—just so you know. While I was banned I sent the harpy to the Magic Tower, went to the city, handed over the feathers and the stones we'd mined, collected the rewards, and now we're heading back to the Magic Tower, yep yep."
"………There is no next one! Money won't work for this, either!"
And so, while Han Se-ah was getting financially battered by a suspicious viewer, the Magic Tower diligently set about its work.
They tried various methods of communication with the captured harpy, and began researching whether the metals, crystals, and gems refined by the Stone Dwarf race could be used magically. One fact emerged from that research.
"Anyway!!! …Clearing the 41st floor unlocked enhancement content. Not the K-style +9 +12 gambling kind—just enhancement stones that slap a few extra stats onto your gear."
The metals and gems the Stone Dwarf race gave as quest rewards were enhancement stones.
It had been somewhat buried under the buzz of the beautiful harpy's sticky spread-eagle show, but a piece of content that could fairly be called the flower of any RPG had been added. Well, it wasn't the kind of enhancement where you went for +15 and clang-clang-CRACK—your weapon exploding into dust. Just a modest bump to secondary stats.
Then again, in a pretty-girl collection gacha game, if your equipment could explode, that would be a mini Lineage, not an otaku game—so of course it worked that way.
"Heeh, so this gem enhances my bow through alchemy?"
"Then does that mean my sword becomes a magic sword…?!"
Gems for melee weapons, crystals for ranged weapons, metal ingots for armor.
Having wrapped up their research in a single day, the Magic Tower announced that equipment could be enhanced with these materials—and the one who reacted most dramatically was, of course, Katie. She gazed at the one-handed sword she'd grown so familiar with like it was a beloved stuffed animal, then at the word "enhancement" her eyes sparkled and she practically lunged at the explaining mage with a barrage of questions.
"You can enhance leather armor and cloth robes with metal too? Alchemy really is amazing…."
"Yes, yes. It's possible. And on that note, several people at the Magic Tower would like to commission Miss Hanna. Naturally, they want you to gather as many of the gems and crystals those Stone Dwarves provide as possible. As compensation, they say they'll enhance your equipment free of charge through their research."
Capture a harpy, collect the rewards, unlock enhancement content, and pick up the enhancement tutorial quest on top. Now that enhancement was open, upgrading the whole party's gear was a gamer's sacred duty.
Han Se-ah, who had been holed up in the alchemy workshop for the entire twenty-four-hour ban, stuffed an armful of sticky arrowheads into her inventory with a sinister smile. She was in a foul mood now, but even with a full-day suspension, bird enthusiasts from every country on earth had flooded her with every kind of donation imaginable.
"I, I'd like my sword enhanced first…."
"Sure, whatever—let's experiment with Katie's sword first. There's no way the Magic Tower's mages would wreck an adventurer's gear, right?"
Financially healed Han Se-ah and Katie, body burning with the desire to turn her beloved blade into a magic sword, raced each other to urge the party toward the path to the 41st floor.
A party truly honest about its desires.