The Great Northern Bear 4
I'd uncovered the hidden circumstances of the cross-dressing girl Caden, but none of it had anything to do with the sub-quest.
"No, so that guy really just dropped by to see his daughter? There's zero change in the quest window. So if we hit a hundred percent walking the forest again tomorrow, we just head back to the city like nothing happened? For real?"
Arthur Wellesley heaved sigh after heavy sigh and left, and still the quest window showed not a single change.
The viewers, already fired up by the Northern Grand Duke's outrageous family drama, launched into a noisy free-for-all of wild speculation — this theory's right, that one's wrong. Fair enough. For the first sub-quest to appear only after conquering the twentieth floor of the Tower, it was painfully dull.
After clearing the tenth floor, Grace's character quest had put us through a vicious trial over whether we'd lose a companion or not. And after clearing the twentieth? Just wander a forest for two days and call it done?
Convinced nothing that hollow could possibly be the case, chat spat out every theory imaginable. There had to be a boss sleeping in the forest. There was a fortuitous encounter hidden away like something out of a martial arts novel. It was a quest where you were supposed to eat a blessed fruit or something, and walking past it would be a huge loss.
When you've got this many people, every kind of nonsense comes pouring out.
The only opinions with any real credibility were that something like a fortuitous encounter was hidden in the woods, or that a hidden boss monster existed and hunting it down would yield extra rewards.
It was a blessed forest, so the possibility that a fruit steeped in Holy Power — something like a spiritual elixir — had been prepared for the player was perfectly reasonable. And with the exploration gauge steadily filling, an event monster or a one-time dungeon could still pop up midway through.
Suggestions like finding a cliff and jumping off it, or locating a lake and tossing a weapon in, were casually ignored by both Han Sea and the rest of the viewers.
"Um, Roland? I was going to make stew for dinner… should I cook enough for those people as well?"
I'd come back down to the first-floor table and was pretending to think while digging through Han Sea's stream and the internet when Irene slipped quietly down from upstairs.
Meeting his runaway daughter had left Arthur in a complicated mood; he'd started pacing outside again, making a nuisance of himself among the soldiers. The eldest daughter, Anne Wellesley, had stepped out earlier and still hadn't returned. That left only the two northern knights naturally remaining in the lodging.
The second-floor rooms were separate enough, but there was only one dining hall. Eating separately would have been fine, yet our kind-hearted nun — for whom generosity was second nature — was apparently thinking of serving them a meal.
"There's no need to prepare portions for us. His Grace will most likely dine with the soldiers in their mess hall."
"Ah, is that so?"
While Irene, who'd come pattering down from the second floor, fretted over how much of the ingredients to prep, the two knights descended with a clatter of armor. The Northern Grand Duke, eating in the soldiers' mess.
Up north that might be ordinary for him, but it certainly wasn't here. The more I watched, the sorrier I felt for those soldiers. Their rest tents had been commandeered, he was circling the barracks muttering about having things to think over, and now he was even barging into the same mess hall so they couldn't eat in peace…
"Oh, Roland's here?"
Once the knights left, Han Sea and Grace came down. Caden, it seemed, planned to stay locked tight in her room so she wouldn't run into the Northern Grand Duke's party.
The old me would have read that as cold, blade-sharp composure. After listening to every last one of Arthur's complaints, though, it felt different. Wasn't she basically just a teenage girl who'd run into trouble and shut herself in her room to avoid it?
"So. You had a man-to-man talk with the Northern Grand Duke, huh? What'd you talk about?"
"You could hear that all the way up here?"
"With a set of lungs like that? Of course we heard everything."
As if she hadn't been filming the whole thing on camera from inside her room and was now pretending she'd just happened to overhear. At least this time she didn't stammer or let her eyes dart around. At Han Sea's shameless question, Grace's eyes lit up and she latched on too.
Well, meeting a grand duke — one step below royalty — would make anyone curious. Especially when a person of that stature latched onto the party with such bizarre intensity.
"It's family business tied to a ducal house. I don't think I can just go telling you myself."
"Yeah? That's a little disappointing."
"Ah… is that so…"
Han Sea, who had recorded the entire conversation from start to finish, said she was disappointed without a single scrap of actual disappointment showing. As a gamer and streamer she was excellent; as an actress, she was scoring somewhere near zero.
Of course Grace, whose already thin eyes drooped even further as she wilted, completely failed to catch the awkwardness in Han Sea's answer beside her.
"Right. Honestly, you can't just go blabbing a ducal house's secrets all over the place. Come on, let's get ready to eat. Irene's already prepping stew in the kitchen."
"True, it is noble business… but why was it a men-only conversation?"
I sent the disappointed Grace off toward the kitchen, and Han Sea headed back upstairs to fetch Caden.
Irene's stew was as delicious as always. The party clearly wondered what the Northern Grand Duke's secret story had been, but nobody pressed. A noble's secrets might spark curiosity, yet they all knew that learning them rarely did anyone any good.
On top of that, the Northern Grand Duke's entourage had quietly vanished somewhere after dinner and never returned to the lodging.
"Um, Sir Roland?"
"What is it?"
"…No. It's nothing."
Only Caden kept fretting like a kid who'd done something wrong and was squirming with a guilty conscience in front of her parents.
Aside from that minor detail, the quest proceeded smoothly. The percentage gauge in the quest window climbed steadily every time we walked through the Holy Power–saturated forest, and the wide clearings held nothing that could be called a hidden piece, a fortuitous encounter, or a boss monster.
"No way. This is actually just going to end with nothing happening? That's kind of unsettling… Is this really just a clearing, or is there some secret place hidden here?"
While the rest of the party strolled through the warm forest, enjoying the scent of wild grass and the chatter of birds, Han Sea grew steadily more restless. As a gamer, this was the kind of place that might hide story content or bonus rewards inside a quest — and the thought of finding none of it had her fretting in place.
She was supposed to be channeling mana beside Grace with her staff, yet her face kept scrunching and she chewed her lip so hard that even Grace, who couldn't hear the chat, started to notice.
"Hanna, is something bothering you? Or did you spot something suspicious…?"
"Ah— no, unnie. It's the opposite. Nothing's registering at all, and that's what's making me anxious."
"That's all it was? Well, some days are just like that. Even without orcs the commission still succeeds, so don't worry too much."
Grace gave a soft little laugh at Han Sea's self-serving excuse, finding it adorable. She'd assume the eagerness for something — anything — to turn up came from diligence, since they'd already been paid. In reality it was pure gamer instinct refusing to take a loss.
We passed one clearing after another, and the quest gauge had climbed close to eighty percent. Chat had sworn something would appear around fifty, and the only thing that had shown up was a bear-adjacent Northern Grand Duke. Even he had nothing whatsoever to do with the quest.
With chat spinning theories about hidden rewards and secret quests nonstop, of course her nerves were fraying.
But is there really nothing here?
Han Sea's impatience aside, the forest was peaceful to a fault. Honestly — a 4-star scout combing the woods with passive-enhanced search abilities and turning up absolutely nothing?
If a twentieth-floor quest was impossible to clear with 4-star search skills, that would mean it had been designed exclusively for 5-stars. An early quest that required a 5-star archer or thief from the scouting line just to finish? Surely they wouldn't build something that ridiculous.
"I guess there really is nothing in this forest. It is a forest blessed by the Goddess, after all."
"True. All we've got are rabbits and squirrels."
Oblivious to Han Sea's mounting anxiety, the party chatted among themselves. To companions who knew nothing about the quest window, this commission was basically free money.
A precious forest permitted only to royalty and high nobles, and the job was just to stroll through it for a couple of days soaking up Holy Power. We were bathing in a baptism of divine energy that put ordinary forest air to shame — if anything, we ought to be paying for the privilege rather than collecting a fee.
And so, without a single incident, the percentage gauge in the quest window kept climbing. From eighty to eighty-five. From ninety to ninety-five—
"…This looks like the last one."
"Does it? We covered ground faster than I expected."
The moment the gauge hit ninety-five percent, a clearing appeared before us. On the surface it was a peaceful place where nameless wildflowers bloomed and a few butterflies drifted past. Not an orc in sight — not even a horned rabbit. A clearing that looked safe beyond all doubt.
"So there really aren't any orcs, huh?"
"Ah…"
Despite Han Sea's desperate hopes, the gauge climbed on, mercilessly.
96%
97%
98%
"Hm? There's something strange in the middle of the clearing."
"That's not a rock. It's a Mana Stone, it look—"