Adventurer's Equipment 5
Whether or not you had internet access — that single difference alone completely transformed life as the adventurer Roland.
Sure, this was a game world, and modern conveniences had been implemented for the players' sake, but they were far from perfect. There was fried chicken, there were macarons, there was running water and plumbing and hygiene products — but no internet. That was like an oasis without water.
"Come on, shouldn't they be back by now? Is the North that far, or is the commission they took just ridiculously annoying? It's already been a week."
"Hey! If you get it, then show some sympathy! You try having a 6★ walk out the door and tell me you wouldn't be nervous. Do you even have a human heart?"
When Han Se-ah wasn't streaming, I watched other streamers' broadcasts or every kind of video uploaded to video sites. Thanks to that, I could confirm with certainty that this world was endlessly similar to the one I'd lived in — and yet different.
Similar movies. Similar webtoons and comics. Similar games and similar celebrities.
But everything was only similar — never identical. There was the author of HxH, still called the factory manager for producing one volume a month, and a rubber man who didn't stick wooden chopsticks up his nostrils. Whether the changes leaned good or bad, something was always just a little different.
Hunting down those little differences one by one, a whole week flew by like an arrow. Even now, sitting in a carriage bound for the Adventurer's City, I felt a twinge of regret about leaving.
"The carriage you requested is ready. It's a shame you're already heading out…"
"I spent money like water, so I've got to go earn it back."
"True, you did spend quite a lot. An adventurer hiring this many other adventurers in this town — you're the first, and you'll probably be the last."
I gathered up the ores and crystals Kayden had asked for and headed to the Adventurer's Guild. Waiting for me there was the warm-faced receptionist who'd recommended an inn on my first day. Softly curved eyes brimmed with equal parts regret and naked desire.
An Upper-grade adventurer who'd thrown gold around so freely you could call him a mark, vanishing in less than a week — of course she was disappointed. Treating her the same way I treated Elise, I'd pressed a gold coin into her hand every time I asked for anything, and by the end she looked ready to show up at my inn room the moment I called.
Not that I ever called for a woman. After ten years, I finally had chicken and beer and internet — I wasn't about to fall into womanizing. I'd already cut my sleep down to under two hours chasing algorithm-recommended videos.
"Kayden kidnapped Roland? Friend, your imagination really does run in the weirdest directions."
"The commission details? Our princess is pretty tight-lipped — not sure she'd share anything personal. Still, might as well try. Honestly, I've been stuck grinding the Tower myself, so I'm curious too."
Leaving behind the receptionist waving me off like a lover seeing someone off to war, I climbed into the carriage and pulled up the stream again. Until now I'd been traveling without the broadcast, so I hadn't been able to see what Han Se-ah was up to — but she couldn't take a full week off, so apparently she'd fired up a chat-and-grind stream.
Judging by the way she was fussily packing up the tent, they were on the road back from a campsite, her mouth running nonstop. Rolling up a sleeping bag and stuffing it into inventory wasn't exactly riveting, so she was filling the audio however she could.
Still, it was a long-awaited return to streaming, and the viewers' reactions didn't look bad. Probably because the majority lit up the moment Grace and Irene appeared on screen. Chatter about magic-assisted camping and grumbling about the missing Roland bounced back and forth, with the occasional small mission tossed in.
"Um, Kayden?"
"What is it?"
Grace and Irene up front, Kayden and Han Se-ah in the rear — a formation that put the people who could use shields and barriers at both ends. In the middle of that march, Han Se-ah leaned in and spoke quietly to Kayden. Clearly she was about to work the mission and satisfy some curiosity.
After enough repeated camping nights, the emotional distance between her and Kayden had closed enough that conversation came fairly naturally.
Naturally on Kayden's side, that is. Whether it was the cross-dressing or not, she normally went past stoic straight into almost zero social skills. If it wasn't adventure-related, she barely said a word.
…Before I'd taken that armor commission from her, not a single private conversation had ever passed between us. Nothing but adventure talk, mercenary talk, or stories about Rebecca.
"That commission you asked Roland to handle — if it's not too forward, could I ask what it is?"
"Ah. That much is fine."
The two of them fell into step side by side along the forest path and started talking. Outwardly they looked like a handsome couple — except one of them was a woman in disguise. Magic really was something else.
Up ahead, Grace and Irene seemed to be chatting softly about cooking, but the mission must have taken priority, because the camera drone swung right back around to lock onto Kayden and Han Se-ah.
"I inherited a set of magic armor. It was originally meant to be a matched pair with this sword. Compared to my skill, it's more than I deserve… but for certain reasons, it broke."
"And Roland can fix it?"
"He can gather the materials needed for the repair. It requires magic crystals and raw ore from the northern regions — the kind that come from places Intermediate-grade adventurers wouldn't dare set foot in, let alone beginners. Even among Intermediate-grades, only veterans would try."
At the words magic armor, Han Se-ah's eyes lit up like stars. Of course they did. From a gamer's perspective, a 4★ character was about to show up with exclusive gear — how could she not be thrilled?
Most of the Heroes Chronicle talk floating around the internet boiled down to people grumbling that equipment cost more than expected and the grind took forever. In the middle of that, being able to repair not just regular gear but magic armor was a massive windfall.
Maybe Han Se-ah's twitching, climbing smirk had been too much to bear. Viewers who'd been squinting at Kayden's male disguise hunting for anything off suddenly flipped into a full-blown mob and started rioting.
Han Se-ah and Kim Seok-hyun were racing toward the twentieth floor, and the hardcore veterans who could actually be called game experts were past the tenth, trailing after Kim Seok-hyun. Put another way: most players had only just set foot on the tenth floor, or were still getting used to combat.
They'd watched Han Se-ah's stream and rented cheap secondhand armor from the Adventurer's Guild. Someone out there was wearing beginner gear — used rag armor, no less — farming goblins, while this streamer had a 6★ broken character stroll up off the street and even fetch a 4★ character's magic armor for her. Of course their guts were boiling.
"Ahem. Do you have any idea how hard I'm working, and you're calling it freeloading, calling the sashimi fresh… Sorry, even I think that one crossed a line. Fine — if I'm getting flamed anyway, I'll just own it. My house has a Golden Roland. Your house doesn't have a Roland, does it?"
A sandbag with excellent hit feedback, firing back with perfect crispness — and the viewers, unable to accept reality, howled. I'd scoured the internet and still no 6★ other than me had appeared, so of course they reacted like that. My own estimate was that two more 6★s would show up besides me.
Because in that brilliantly shining six-star event, there had been three silhouettes cast in shadow.
Normally, when a new character dropped in Heroes Chronicle, the patch brought one 5★ and one 4★. But the Brilliant Stars event — whether because of the first natural-born 6★s, or because they planned to suck the marrow out of every gamer with a non-existent pity ceiling — was scheduled to drop three characters at once.
Whether all three were male, or Roland was the only male among them and I'd just been unlucky enough to pull him, I didn't know. At the time my eyes had literally flipped over; I hadn't even thought to look up the info. I'd poured my entire soul into a rage macro 5,700 characters long.
Honestly, I also just hadn't wanted to see some other guy bragging about pulling a female character while I was stuck with a male one.
"Wow…. First time I've ever seen the chat lag out and explode. Looks like I'm going to eat every insult a person can receive in a lifetime right here. And globally, too — if I freeze the chat and scrape the foreign languages, is it all just pure parental insults and worse?"
The carriage left the North without a word, entered the main road, and set its hooves clopping along. Han Se-ah, having seized the moment, started verbally thrashing her viewers. Regardless of how many stars her party members had, the fact was she was good at matching wits — if she put her mind to it, she could make the chat cry.
A sandbag with great hit feedback suddenly standing up and beating people instead — a bizarre phenomenon that left the viewers wailing like livestock being dragged to the slaughterhouse.
Every so often a few friends overflowing with unusual tastes would moan for her to hit them harder, but most just shed tears over their miserable reality. And so it continued, right up until Grace, leading the way, spotted a goblin settlement and cut Han Se-ah's stream banter short.