Arcana Online
After I’d looked up at Yuna floating in the sky, then turned to the woman standing beside her, my whole body had started shaking.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make it stop.
That one notification alone was enough to send a shock through all of us.
Just a demon of rank and title was supposed to be something you had to take down in a raid, and now there was a Demon Lord?
Then another message surfaced before my eyes.
Heaven is watching the mortal realm.
“How dare you spy on me.”
With a sweep of the Demon Lord’s hand, demonic energy surged outward in every direction.
Due to demonic energy, all stats have decreased by 50%.
My body went limp in an instant.
He’d only waved his hand once, and all of my stats dropped by fifty percent?
As if the situation weren’t absurd enough, someone shouted at the top of his lungs.
“You crazy bastards! How the hell are we supposed to kill that thing?!”
The moment the Demon Lord turned toward the voice, my whole body froze.
“Raise your voice.”
Due to demonic energy, all stats have decreased by 80%.
“Don’t speak so loudly, human.”
You have become incapacitated due to demonic energy.
So many players had been reduced to the point where they couldn’t even twitch a finger.
Looking around in disbelief, the Demon Lord leaned toward Yuna and whispered something to her.
When their conversation ended, the Demon Lord flicked a hand, tearing open space itself and stepping through to the other side.
The ripped space sealed shut as though nothing had happened, and the Demon Lord disappeared. Left alone in that place, Yuna pulled a scroll from her inventory, tore it in half, and vanished in a wash of brilliant light.
In the midst of our helplessness, a golden alarm window appeared.
We succeeded in protecting the World Tree.
Ranking by contribution is now being calculated.
Please wait a moment.
No. 1: Yuna
No. 2: Undetermined
No. 3: Undetermined
No. 4: Undetermined
No. 5: Undetermined
Rewards will be distributed according to contribution.
As the quest has ended, the channel will normalize in one minute.
For that one minute, no one could move, and once the channel returned to normal, every player vanished back to the channel where they had been.
It was only after about thirty minutes that the paralysis finally wore off.
Even with the hidden class Saint Aria’s abilities, there was nothing I could do about it.
I had no idea what was going on, but Yuna definitely knew something.
The moment I used the messenger pigeon item that could send a message over a certain distance, a notification popped up.
The message could not be delivered because of interference from ???.
My head throbbed as I grabbed at it.
The only thing capable of blocking a messenger pigeon that could send messages to anyone within a certain range—no, the only group that could—was limited to Arcana Continent.
And among them, the group Yuna was most likely to have encountered...
It meant the Information Guild was controlling the flow of information.
I’d have to contact them in the real world.
Shasha, who had been standing beside me, stared at me and blurted, “What the hell is going on?!”
“I’d like to know that too. More importantly, Yuna’s identity has been exposed.”
“Huh? Yuna?”
It had been a week since I started living in the Demon Realm.
I’d been living comfortably enough, but there was one thing the Demon Lord hadn’t told me.
To return to the mortal realm, I had to wait until a gate opened.
I could go back through the main quest, sure.
In the meantime, I helped rebuild the village and raised the children being born there.
A race born from the fruit of the World Tree.
Elves.
Maybe because of the Demon Realm’s influence.
Unlike the Forest Tribe with their fair skin, they were born with bronze-colored skin.
The World Tree called them dark elves.
The children born from the fruit grew into adult-sized bodies in just a week.
They had been around my size when they were born, but a week later they were taller than me, and that made me feel a little dejected.
I’m not growing at all...
But there was an even bigger problem.
“Mom!”
They kept calling me Mom.
“What do you mean, ugly? She’s our mom!”
“You look like dried radish strips, how dare you talk back!?”
Not only did they call me Mom, they even fought over me among themselves.
There were so many children—well, they all looked like adults, but since none of them had been born for more than a month, maybe the problem was that I’d spoiled them with too much affection while raising them.
The day I left the Demon Realm, it turned into a sea of tears.
The dark elves clung to me, begging me not to go and telling me to stay and live with them.
I wanted to, too, if my heart had its way, but I couldn’t.
I was a traveler. An outsider.
Only after the World Tree stepped in and explained things to the children did they finally let go of me. They even promised they’d come looking for me someday before seeing me off.
“If you don’t come back, we’ll come find you!”
“That’s right! We’ll bring the whole tribe with us, so you’d better remember that!”
“I know, kids.”
As if the time had come, a gate appeared before me.
Just as I was about to step forward, the Demon Lord appeared in front of me.
“I, too, wish to see the mortal realm.”
“Can you go there?”
“I can’t stay long because of restrictions, but a short visit is fine.”
He waved a hand at the gate, and space split apart.
The moment I took his hand and stepped through the fracture in space with him...
I found myself floating in the air, staring out at a massive World Tree.
Not the World Tree I had grown, but the one that existed in the mortal realm.
And there were countless players below me, while somewhere in the distance, I could hear someone shouting my name.
Turning toward the sound, I spotted Sister Lea far away, and I gave her a cheerful wave—but her expression was...?
The Demon Lord has descended into the mortal world!
Heaven is watching the mortal realm.
The messages kept popping up one after another.
One of the players started shouting, and with the Demon Lord’s calm warning that he should quiet down, he bid me farewell.
“That was an enjoyable outing. Until next time.”
“See you next time!”
The Demon Lord vanished beyond the rift in space, and since I was left standing there alone, feeling awkward, I used the scroll I’d received last time.
Teleports you anywhere you’ve visited before. Some areas excluded.
When I tore the scroll, my vision shifted, and I arrived in Cradle village.
The village I returned to after so long hadn’t changed at all.
I greeted the villagers, met Uncle Charles, went to Moonlight Inn to talk with Sister Bell, and then left the village again.
And then, on the road leading toward the City of Stars, I ran into the rabbits that had somehow turned muscular.
How did I feel when I saw them?
“You’ve grown a lot, haven’t you?”
“Kyuu, kyuu!”
They puffed out their muscles and acted cute in front of me, but their muscles...
“So cool! You’re amazing! How did you get muscles like that!?”
“Kyuu, kyuu!”
They pulled a giant carrot from the ground, saying they’d show me their training method.
Then, with a great shout, they began muscle training.
“Kyuu, kyuu!”
“You eat it after working out?”
Once they’d finished exercising, they explained that chewing and eating the carrot was part of the training too.
After saying goodbye to the rabbits and moving on along the road, I spotted a slime in the distance.
It wasn’t a round, jiggly slime—it had taken on a human shape.
“Hi!”
“......”
It waved at me while looking my way, and I could feel emotion in it.
There was no change in its face, but it was happy.
“You’ve been well? You look completely different now!”
“......”
The slime told me it had been doing well, and thanked me for giving it the power to protect its people.
I couldn’t very well leave empty-handed after hearing that from such a kind child.
“I’ll give you one more!”
I took one high-grade magic stone from the newly received pouch of magic stones and handed it over. The slime accepted it happily.
After parting with the slime, I went to visit the goblin village next, and the atmosphere there had changed quite a bit.
“For Valhalla!!!!!”
A goblin was shouting something bizarre while performing a suspicious ritual.
Whatever small, frail build they’d once had was gone; now they were huge and muscular.
For a moment I wondered if I’d accidentally wandered into an orc village, but then a goblin noticed me and came over.
“Kurk! Brother! You’ve come at last!”
“It’s been a while! You look really different!”
“Kurk! It’s all thanks to my brother!”
We exchanged greetings, thanked each other for showing them a new world, and then I followed the road toward the City of Stars. Far ahead, I could see an orc warrior.
He’d once had green skin, but now it had turned red.
“It’s been a while.”
“Long time no see! Have you been well? Your body’s gotten smaller than before.”
“Thanks to you, I was able to refine my body. Thank you, little girl.”
Hmm. Was that a good thing?
I wasn’t sure, but if he was satisfied, then I supposed that was enough.
After parting with the orc and walking along the road, a bear taxi came charging toward me from far away.
I hadn’t even called it—how did it know?
“Kraang!”
“You were worried because you hadn’t seen me lately?”
Well, look at that. It could say something touching, too.
“Kraang!”
“You can’t eat magic stones without me!? Give me back my touching moment!”
After haggling over the fare while grumbling all the while, I climbed onto its back, and it took off at breakneck speed.
It was convenient, sure, but bear taxi fares were way too expensive...