Taming the Fox

How long were they going to keep harping on a boss they’d made wrong?

It was just a character some Demonins employee had created to feed their own pet obsession, anyway.

I couldn’t understand what was so great about it that they kept worshipping it like this.

Even if the heat had cooled a great deal, mentions of it still kept surfacing here and there.

Was it because they were angry that someone disagreed with them, or because setting the world on fire was simply fun? Or was it because they believed they had a sacred duty to carry out justice?

The mob with a torch in the left hand and a pitchfork in the right wandered through the community, setting fire to any post that mentioned the Gravekeeper.

“Our next target ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠is over there!”

“Burn it all! Burn it to ash!”

You don’t avoid filth because you’re scared of shit; you avoid it because it’s filthy.

People who were sick of the arsonists poking their noses into everything started steering clear of them.

As the ones who had been fighting the flames grew tired and backed away, the rest of the crowd, drunk on victory, began shouting with glee.

“Let’s ride this momentum and tear out the roots completely!”

“Let’s do it!”

They staggered forward, intoxicated by the sweet taste of victory, determined to wipe out every ignorant fool who stood against them.

It was a headlong charge with no thought of retreat.

And no one stopped them, so it seemed as though their goal might actually be achieved.

That is, if a massive obstacle hadn’t suddenly appeared in front of them.

A new piece of information had been found — a clue that might lead to a strategy.

The arsonists, unable to rein in their own momentum, failed to avoid the obstacle that had suddenly appeared and slammed their heads straight into it.

Or maybe they hadn’t failed to avoid it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠at all. Maybe they’d simply thought their heads were harder than the obstacle.

But no matter how bright a lamp might be, it meant nothing before the sun.

People were so distracted by the giant new bait that they didn’t pay the arsonists’ voices any mind.

The special remedy for attention-seekers was never attention, but indifference.

Even if they wanted to set things on fire, there was no fuel left to burn, and the torches in their hands began to lose their strength and die out.

“We can’t let it end like this!”

In the end, they tried a last desperate struggle, as if they were willing to sacrifice even their own lives.

But the attempt was undone by the giant hand that controlled the world, leaving only an ownerless pitchfork behind as everything cooled to an icy stillness.

It was a hunting zone far to the west of the Empire, a place packed with high-level monsters, so it was quite popular.

Anyone who had actually seen it knew that, aside from the occasional ruins, it was basically nothing but wasteland, which was why people had tacked on the “Old Kingdom” label.

Unless an absurd amount of time had passed, there was no way a capital would turn into a wasteland, after all.

But this place was actually the capital of a kingdom called Grasis, which had been destroyed a year and a half earlier in the world of Silia.

I had no idea what happened there, but in less than two years it had become that way.

So what did that have to do with the Gravekeeper?

It had been revealed by some streamer that the Gravekeeper was originally from the Grasis Kingdom.

It wasn’t confirmed yet, but honestly, it was safe to treat it as confirmed.

The Grasis Kingdom used a language called Granic, unlike Arkish, the language used by us and the other NPCs. And when the streamer spoke to the Gravekeeper in Granic, the Gravekeeper stopped, just like in the video.

The mountain where the Gravekeeper lived had once belonged to Grasis, and the fact that she had concealed her identity and withdrawn from the world was suspicious enough that the streamer had guessed she must be from Grasis.

Anyway, after confirming that the streamer really did speak Granic, the Gravekeeper didn’t kill her and simply went back.

And then the shocking truth came out.

Apparently no one had ever managed to have a conversation with her before, so no one had known that the Gravekeeper was actually a girl. Whoa.

If anyone had tried speaking Granic from the start, they would’ve known immediately, but everyone kept addressing her in Arkish, so she never answered.

Grasis had been at war with the Empire until its fall, so even if she’d had a grudge, it wouldn’t have been strange at all.

We’d always called her a shitty boss, but maybe the real bad guys were us — the ones who came at her with swords, spoke in a language only we understood, and then tried to kill her when she didn’t answer us?

If you thought about it, the first one to die had also been the guy who openly tried to steal her sword.

So, in the end, the source of all the trouble had been us humans after all.

Ah... we’re sorry for slandering you, Demonins...!

We’re sorry for slandering you, Gravekeeper girl.

The spread of a community is terrifyingly fast.

They say words without legs can still travel a thousand li, but the viral words living in the internet went far beyond a thousand li and raced toward the horizon.

And the result of that became visible.

“T-the viewer count is...!”

One, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand... a hundred thousand?

Journey’s eyes spun at the viewer count, a number she had never seen in her life.

Her stream had always been what people in internet broadcasting would casually call a “big-time channel.”

She had a lot of regular viewers, and a lot of subscribers too.

Every time she went live, the donations that came in were quite substantial.

And yet even for Journey, today’s viewer count was a number she had never seen before.

FishFish was a platform aimed more at the domestic market than the overseas one, and unfortunately, the domestic market wasn’t very large.

That was simply because the population was smaller than in other countries.

So even if you were one of the top streamers on FishFish, breaking one hundred thousand viewers wasn’t easy...

“It’s still going up?!”

Even at this very moment, more and more people were still tuning in to Journey’s stream.

The awkward Korean and foreign languages mixed between the chat messages made it obvious that not only Koreans but overseas viewers were flooding in.

The translation module applied to the stream wasn’t particularly good, so communication would be difficult, but they were typing hard anyway, determined to get their opinions across.

Seeing the managers who had been given permission to handle her broadcast scream at the incoming wave, Journey’s mind cooled.

It’s a shame, but...

Don’t lose the forest for the trees. She knew better than anyone that if you went after the little things, you could end up losing the bigger ones.

After hesitating for a moment, her fingertip pressed down firmly on the Follow Chat for Over One Week button, and the tide receded as if by magic. Only then did the managers breathe out in relief.

Sure, the people who felt constrained and frustrated would leave, so viewer count would drop for now.

But the ones who liked her broadcast would stay anyway, so Journey judged that if she wanted to preserve the atmosphere of the stream, she had to impose a restriction.

A correct judgment.

But at the same time, it was a judgment that had forgotten the persistence of human obsession.

Small gains, big losses...

With chat blocked, the backlash came rushing in as a tidal wave of donations.

This time, unlike before, Journey couldn’t so easily stop them and fell into conflict.

She bit her lip hard, hesitating, when someone came to her rescue.

Thud.

“...Huh?”

Something was thrust into Journey’s face.

It was a lump of heated protein giving off steam — in other words, a roasted chunk of meat.

“Uh, so... damn it, how do I say ‘eat it’?”

Journey’s paper-thin Granic dictionary had words like “help me” or “wait a second,” but nothing as ordinary as “I’m giving this to you so you can eat it.”

She spent a long time wracking her brain, but Gravekeeper kept holding the meat out to her.

“Screw it!”

Wouldn’t it be a special Grasis dining custom to hold out a chunk of meat in front of someone?

...She wasn’t about to ruin everything by overthinking it, was she?

Gathering her courage, she took it, and thankfully Gravekeeper didn’t react at all, simply focusing on her own meal.

“...You were giving it to me to eat?”

“Wait, but isn’t this cocatrice meat...?”

I’d never eaten monster meat before...

But refusing it would make the viewers suspicious.

Honestly, it wasn’t even the viewers I was worried about...

Journey’s eyes shifted toward Gravekeeper.

What if she threw away the meat someone had personally grilled and handed to her right in front of her face?

Even a saint would struggle not to get angry at something that rude. It was the kind of thing that wouldn’t have been strange even if she got stabbed for it.

Journey trembled at the cruel, tooth-and-claw ecosystem in which the beast that had threatened her just moments ago was now the one being eaten.

As her hesitation dragged on, the mood in the chat grew uglier by the second.

“Ugh... haah!”

In the end, unable to withstand the pressure, Journey shut her eyes and bit into the meat.

Since Journey loved traveling, she had eaten all kinds of food across the world.

Of course she had eaten wild game before, and even for someone who had sampled nearly every kind of flavor out there, it had been a tough experience.

The nauseating stench distinctive to wild game stabbed into her nose, and the firm texture made it feel less like meat than chewing gum.

It was probably the cook’s skill that had been lacking, but the memory had been so vivid that she’d avoided wild game ever since.

Even if this was monster meat instead of wild game, it didn’t seem like it would be any different — if anything, it might be worse.

And on top of that, the way Gravekeeper had cooked it was nothing more than a very basic fire-roast with a sprinkle of seasoning.

Without even the process of removing the gamey smell, the power of destruction would be enormous.

Or so Journey had thought...

Nom, nom.

“...Huh?”

Journey’s eyes went wide.

Her teeth sank gently into the surface of the meat.

Then the juices trapped inside burst out all at once, savagely flooding her mouth.

“It’s... good...?”

There was no trace at all of the stench she had feared.

Far from being tough, the meat was so tender even a child with weak teeth could chew it.

A soft hint of fire from the direct flame clung to the meat, giving it a dazzling finish.

“What is this... it’s actually delicious.”

Journey, as if she’d never hesitated at all, began tearing into it ravenously.

It even looked like something straight out of a comic book, so it was pleasing just to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠look at, and the viewers watching Journey’s broadcast swallowed hard too.

Gravekeeper, who had started eating before Journey, was staring at her intently, but Journey, lost in the food, didn’t notice.

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