Arcana Online
The contractor’s daily life was monotonous.
He woke up in the morning, ate breakfast, then took me with him to an old human for sword training.
No, I had no idea why my contractor was swinging a sword around in the first place.
For a moment, I even wondered if the staff he carried everywhere was actually a sword after all.
After training, he would have a snack, then spend the rest of the day idly reading books in the place called the library, where books were kept.
A week passed like that.
“You must be bored staying in the village all the time, right? Let’s go out today!”
At last, was it time for me to shine?
Up until now, I’d been living like a useless worm, just stuffing my face and doing nothing else.
I’d been thinking I should finally earn my keep, and this was what I got?
The contractor was surrounded by rabbits.
They weren’t attacking her. They were doting on her.
“Hey now, stop licking me like that—it tickles!”
The rabbits were acting cute around my contractor, while all the while avoiding my gaze as if my eyes were terrifying.
What on earth was this...?
After basking in their affection for a while, she even received a carrot as a gift and moved along the road. In the distance, a slime came into view.
This time, I thought I might finally get to do something, but the contractor only waved.
“Hello!”
“......”
But the slime glanced at the contractor once and went on its way.
Before I could even process what was happening, we ran into a pack of goblins.
This time for sure...
“Long time no see!”
“Kruk! It has been a while, human.”
She chatted with the goblins as if they were old friends, and I was left speechless.
Humans shunned anyone even slightly different from themselves, so why did she get along so well with other races?
My brain couldn’t keep up with any of this, and I was still blankly nestled in my contractor’s arms when we moved on down the road.
Then we met an orc.
He looked filthy, so naturally he was the creature I hated most.
She greeted him too, but then said something I never expected.
“Um, if it’s not too rude, can I ask you one thing?”
“What is it, little human?”
“Do you have parents?”
“I’ll kill you!”
For a second, it looked like we might finally get a real fight, but another orc appeared out of nowhere and brought everything to a pointless end.
The orc with the giant sword—no, the orc warrior—slashed down the charging orc in a single stroke.
“Little human. Didn’t I tell you not to come around here because it’s dangerous?”
“I’m strong enough to take care of myself now!”
She struck a pose with one arm lifted high.
She said she’d built up muscle through sword training, but she still looked soft and squishy to me.
The orc warrior stared at her, looking utterly dumbfounded.
“Little human. Keep acting cocky like that and you might be paying a visit to your ancestors before you know it.”
“Are you worried about me!? Thank you!”
After the contractor cheerfully thanked him, the orc warrior passed by and went on his way.
As he brushed past us, he muttered something about how “the shame of the tribe has been getting worse lately...” What was that supposed to mean?
Judging by the mana he gave off, he wasn’t just an ordinary orc warrior. Was he a named one?
I’d thought this would be my chance to finally show what I could do, but the spotlight had been stolen from me again.
Maybe she sensed how utterly dejected I felt.
The contractor looked down at me.
“What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Is it tiring being outside for so long? Should we go back?”
I shook my head to say no, but it was useless.
My contractor went wild over how cute I was, and before I knew it, another exhausting day had slipped by.
If you asked whether it was bad, though, I couldn’t quite say that it was.
For a life that had been nothing but monotonous routine, this kind of experience wasn’t so terrible.
At least, not if it only happened once in a while.
*
*
*
After finishing my walk with Yongyong, I returned to the village.
Yongyong was asleep in my arms, probably worn out from the day.
He was so cute I could barely stand it.
So cute, in fact, that I wanted to tell the whole world about him.
Wait a second. There was a way to do that, wasn’t there?
What if I streamed and showed everyone how adorable our Yongyong was?
No, better yet—couldn’t I even record video? Then I’d be able to preserve our Yongyong’s cuteness forever on camera!
I didn’t have to think about it for long.
No one came in, but that didn’t matter.
I filmed from all sorts of angles so that our Yongyong would be captured perfectly on screen.
If I’d done this sooner, I wouldn’t have needed a camera at all!
The saying that if your head is dumb, your body pays for it wasn’t wrong.
Just as I was concentrating hard, a chat message popped up.
“Huh? What do you mean? No, wait—why were you searching through channels?”
Suddenly, a chill ran down my spine.
A-a stalker!?
I hurriedly ended the broadcast.
I never imagined there’d be stalkers even in a game.
Shuddering, I took Yongyong and returned to the inn.
Once inside the room, I locked the door and set Yongyong on the bed.
I looked out through the window, but there was no suspicious person in sight.
Well, I hadn’t exactly met many players up until now.
Hmm... maybe it was actually just an unpopular game?
Still, it didn’t matter much anymore.
Because I had our Yongyong with me.
*
*
*
“Agh! She turned off the stream again! At least tell me what channel you’re on!”
I shook my head so hard it practically rattled loose.
My brown hair spilled over my shoulders in glossy strands.
I wanted to cut it short, but I’d lost a bet against a guild member, so I had no choice but to keep growing it out.
The ears on top of my head—proof that I belonged to the beastkin—twitched, and someone nearby stared at me with fascinated eyes.
The moment I turned a sharp glare on them, they vanished in a flurry of footsteps.
No, where on earth are they hiding!?
I’d been living in the beginner village, Cradle, for over a week now.
A high-ranking fighter player who couldn’t even hunt for more than a week—this was ridiculous.
I’d already moved through hundreds of channels and searched the village over and over, but I still hadn’t seen even a single strand of that hair.
I’d thought about giving up halfway through. I’d even worried she might have quit the game. But then she streamed today.
And thanks to that, I learned one thing.
She hadn’t quit the game.
And apparently she was traveling around with some kind of snake. A summoner?
There weren’t many summoners to begin with, and summoners who actually had summons were even rarer.
There was a reason people said not to become a summoner.
The method for obtaining a summon was different for every player, and because the difficulty was so absurdly high, summoners held the undisputed number-one spot for scarcity in a game played by tens of millions.
Behind me.
I knew it. My instincts were right.
No, what was the point of being right if she was still impossible to find? What channel was she on!?
If I hadn’t rushed in so clumsily, I could have recruited her already!
I should have approached more carefully, but I’d been under so much stress lately that I’d completely lost my head and lunged straight in.
I needed to go back to the guild and report to the leader.
I took a scroll from my inventory and tore it in half.
[Return Scroll]
Can be used once to travel to the guild hideout.
In an instant, light wrapped around my body, and when I opened my eyes again, I had arrived at the guild hideout.
The very moment I got there, I shoved open the office door and went in.
“Leader!”
I’d come to see the leader, who was buried in paperwork inside the office, but she was covering her face with one hand.
“What’s wrong, Leader?”
“......”
She pointed behind me with one finger. What?
I looked back and saw that the door had been smashed to pieces.
Ah. My mistake.
“Sorry. Sorry. I messed up again.”
“So, what is it you wanted?”
“Right! I didn’t find her, but I did get some information!”
After I told the leader everything that had happened, she seemed to think about it for a long while.
Then, unexpectedly, she said, “I can handle finding her. I met her in real life. And I’ll recruit the girl.”
“Really!? Why so suddenly!? Well, I guess if she’s already in the beginner village and has a summon this early, that proves her ability.”
But hadn’t there been something strange mixed into that statement?
“How are you going to meet that kid in real life, Leader?”
“We just happened to run into each other.”
I couldn’t read the leader’s true thoughts as she smiled.
Then again, she was always smiling anyway.
Wasn’t I probably the only one who had ever seen a different expression on her face?
Which meant...
“I made the Leader’s expression change!”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I can control the Leader’s emotions!”
“Get out.”
I was thrown out of the office.
Waaah. So mean.
*
*
*
After kicking Shasha out, the office fell quiet.
She took a sip of warm black tea and replayed the events of that day in her mind.
A young girl she’d happened to bump into.
At first, she’d been startled when they collided in an alley while the girl was wearing a hoodie and a cap in the middle of midsummer.
Why would someone wrap themselves up that tightly in weather this hot?
Then she’d seen her face and understood.
A young girl with the same blond hair as hers, and blue eyes that were both beautiful and strangely mysterious.
More precisely, it was the girl from the video Shasha had shown her.
At first, she’d thought it was just because the girl was pretty, but when she happened to notice the scars of self-harm on her wrist, she’d felt uneasy.
She’d wondered what kind of story lay behind it, so she’d looked into her background.
And then she’d learned something shocking.
As a child, the girl had nearly been in a serious incident because of stalking, and she’d lost her entire family in a plane crash, leaving her to live alone.
And then she found out the girl—no, the woman—was an adult.
Just what in the world had she gone through...?
The more she investigated, the more the girl’s past was filled with nothing but misery.
And recently, she’d apparently had her house cleaned out by a cleaning company, as if she were someone preparing to leave this world behind.
She had to act before it was too late.
She had to show her that the world was still worth living in.
It wasn’t because she thought of her as a child and wanted to help her because of that.
Extending a hand to someone who was hurting—that was what an adult did.
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