So I'm the 'Unnie', Then?
Ending the stream, I logged out as well.
Stepping out of the access pod, I was greeted by the pitch-black night sky outside the window.
"Eleven o'clock?"
Even with everything that had happened because I'd started streaming in the middle of the day, it was only eleven at night.
I headed to the closet, threw on a hoodie and some sweatpants, then pulled something I'd made earlier out of the fridge, tucked it into a plastic bag, and stepped out of the apartment.
Yena's place was in the same building, on the twelfth floor — a few floors below mine — so I took the elevator down. The moment I arrived, her door number was staring right at me.
Ding-dong~
—......
"Yena, it's me."
—......
"Open the door. I know you're in there."
—.....
"Oh, you're not home. What a shame."
Rustle.
I shook the plastic bag I'd brought right in front of the doorbell camera, making sure it caught every angle.
The thing Yena had loved so much...
"I brought some skewers I made, but I guess I'll just have to eat them all by myself. Well then, I'll be—"
BANG!
"...Yeah. Mm-hm."
"Pardon the intrusion."
"Lily— wait, hold on!"
THUD!
"Jamoju-haeshweoyo..."
"Keep your hands up, please."
"Uuuuu..."
Hands raised, Yena knelt on the floor with her eyes swollen into puffy slits.
For the record, the puffy eyes and slurred speech were not because I had done anything to her.
"Why me...?"
"Because I made them."
My labor-of-love, 'Popular Heavenly Skewer No. 77', was a dish created by distilling a minuscule fraction of mana — something nearly impossible to produce in the real world — into its sauce.
I could have made it far more delicious back in Deoen, but here, this was my limit.
"Hrk. Sniff. Shtill..."
"Is it really that good?"
No. 77 was a massive leap forward compared to No. 76, but it wasn't crying-worthy. I'd handed out the mass-produced skewers to plenty of people inside Deoen, and not a single one of them cried.
"Mm-hm. Mm-hm."
Nod, nod.
Yena's head bobbed with vigorous enthusiasm.
Come to think of it, everyone in the real world was an ordinary human with no resistance to mana. That was probably the reason.
Though the sample size was tiny, and I could only use a sliver of my power in reality, so I couldn't say for certain. Here, I was essentially an ordinary person myself, after all.
'And this was a pain in the ass to make, too.'
It had taken me over two weeks to produce the three skewers Yena had eaten — and the five that remained.
Still, with a few more iterations, I figured I could produce something that, even if it didn't move people to tears, would linger in their memory for a long, long time.
"Wahhk."
Yena stuffed skewer after skewer into her mouth while still crying, chewing for an age before finally swallowing.
Gulp.
"Whew!"
"Feeling better now?"
"...Weirdly, yeah, once I finished eating it."
"That's how you'll want more next time."
I chuckled and tipped back a can of beer. I'd eaten a skewer too, but since I'd taste-tested it so many times while making it, it didn't hit me quite the way it hit Yena.
Yena, still looking wistful, smacked her lips and chugged her beer in one go.
Haah~
"Phew... My weapon. No, wait, not my weapon — but my weapon..."
"I told you. If I don't end up using them, I'll lend it back."
"Normally things like that all get used up as combination materials, you know..."
This was a world quest to gather all eight Masterpieces, after all.
If the quest was to collect the eight Masterpieces that originated from Drak, there was a very good chance that bringing them all together would earn us something ridiculously overpowered.
But giving both that ridiculous item and the eight Masterpieces would be a balance nightmare — which meant fusing them into one was the more likely outcome.
"Hmm... So what you're saying, Yena, is that this overpowered item will be the combination of the eight?"
"Exactly! The Green Hermit will vanish from this world! It'll become one with the almighty item and live on to save the world!"
Hic hic hic hic hic.
Yena covered her eyes with both hands.
Tears streamed down through her fingers.
She had spent a good long time with the Green Hermit. Drak's Masterpieces were each ego weapons with wills of their own. To her, the Green Hermit was a friend, a steadfast companion — and despite the Hermit's timid recluse of a personality, the one and only thing that had ever had her back...
"Your fake crying is showing, by the way."
"Tch."
It was a weapon. To Yena, the Green Hermit was worth no more — and no less — than that.
"...Still, it's true I got attached. If you hadn't managed to collect the Masterpieces, Lily, I was seriously considering buying it back from you at full price."
"Mythic-grade stuff is insanely expensive."
"Should I throw in my car, then?"
"Ha. It wouldn't sell for 1.7 billion won."
This was a world where a Mythic-grade dagger cost more than a 1.7-billion-won sports car.
Yena, the very person living at the peak of that world, still shook her head as if the whole thing were absurd.
"No wonder I can't get one... damn this cursed world."
"And there's another reason I'm rushing to collect them early."
"Which is?"
"The Great Cataclysm is coming. And the Cataclysm is an extinction-level crisis."
The day of the great disaster — when the Kraken, the demon race, and the scorpion monster would all come attacking at once.
Every kingdom on the continent, the Empire included, would face the threat of annihilation — and 'Talikal' would be no exception.
And Drak's Masterpieces were only ever forged when 'Talikal's destruction' drew near.
Which meant, if I didn't hurry and gather them now...
"...A ninth masterpiece would end up getting made?"
"Correct."
A new Talikal masterpiece would be forged, and we'd be stuck having to collect that one too.
Because the quest didn't require a few Masterpieces — it required all of them.
Otherwise I'd have to go running all over the place gathering again. Not my idea of a good time.
Yena's face had gone a little flushed, and she shook her head rapidly back and forth.
"...Can't we just... not make it? Tell him the Masterpieces are enough? Something tells me if you make him craft once, he'll never make another Masterpiece again. Isn't that a loss?"
"Hmm. Poorly worded, but you have a point."
If a craftsman of that caliber kept making numbered weapons, the players would keep getting stronger to match.
But I had no intention of changing my decision.
"I'm curious. I'm going to have him make it. You won't refuse, will you?"
"Of course not. If I got hit here, I couldn't even run."
"Fair point."
Deoen had a logout function. Reality did not.
Not that Deoen wasn't real in its own way, but still.
Gulp. Gulp.
Ahh~
"...Watching you like this, it reminds me of the first time I met you in real life, Lily."
"Stalking, you mean?"
"Hey! I wasn't stalking! I was just curious. Anyone who saw you would've done the same!"
"That's usually what we call stalking."
If curiosity were a legitimate excuse to follow someone around, the word 'stalker' wouldn't exist.
Yena pouted, then gave a grudging nod.
"Okay! Fine. Acknowledged. But I helped you out a lot too. Admit it?"
"Are we tallying up favors against sins now?"
"Hey! You're being heartless again."
"......"
"...Sorry. Was that too harsh?"
"Yes. Quite a bit."
"Oh, uh... Right."
Silence settled over the room.
Yena fidgeted with her beer can and hung her head for no particular reason.
"Um... You've probably been through this a lot, Lily. Especially out here in the real world — it must have been uncomfortable. I'll return your weapon right away. I'm really sorr—"
"It was a joke. I can't believe you fell for that."
"...! Lily...!"
For real!
"Ugh! You scared the hell out of me! I thought I'd actually crossed the line!"
"Your face just now was absolutely priceless, Yena."
"......Ugh. Fine, that's it! Your weapons are confiscated for a week!"
"You really think you can pull that off?"
"I can just use my trump card, can't I? What can you possibly do against my escape technique?"
"Hmm."
It was true — I had no way to block a logout, her trump card of choice.
Even at my fourth-advancement state, logging out was the one thing I couldn't stop.
But.
"And how exactly would you escape here?"
"...Fair point."
With Yena's physical capabilities, there was no getting away from me.
She'd already been flipped over by me once before, after all.
Tssk. Yena cracked open another beer.
And then she started drinking it in earnest, gulp after gulp.
"Pace yourself."
"Heh heh... I'll get drunk and run away."
"Then I'll come back the next day."
"What if I drink again the next day?"
"Then... I'll have to sober you up by force."
Wiping away intoxication from nothing was beyond me, but using something that existed in the real world, I could whip up a souped-up hangover cure easily enough.
It would taste absolutely vile, but one sip and she'd be awake whether she liked it or not.
"......"
Gulp, gulp.
Haang!
"...How does someone spin a person around like a doll with those skinny little arms?"
"Alien?"
"Aha."
...SPRING!
"You illegal-alien squatter! Get off our planet!"
"I have an ID."
I pulled out my ID card and showed it to her.
Yena, who had leapt to her feet, snatched the ID and stared at it once — then stared at me twice, eyes wide.
"Lily Elbrit... twenty-one years old...! Huh? Wait. What? You're twenty-one?"
"More or less?"
My body had been fixed at twenty, so it was close enough to call it.
Even though I was effectively an ordinary human here, several months in I still hadn't noticed any particular change.
"We agreed to set the age at twenty-three, didn't we?"
"We did. But the ID says twenty-one."
"...Huh? It does? Did the alien headquarters or whatever make it for you?"
"Yep."
"Then what's your actual age?"
"Twenty?"
Twenty felt like the more accurate number.
Yena wore a blank expression for a moment, then snickered to herself and settled back into her seat.
"Well, then, I guess that makes me the unnie."
"Unnie?"
"I mean, I was the unnie back when you were twenty-three too, but that was never confirmed. This time it's official!"
Now!
"Call me unnie! Come on, Lily!"
"......."
"Yena-unnie~ Just like that. Yeah?"
"Unnie."
"Yeah! WHAAAAAT?!"
Yena got flipped over.
"The world is upside down!"
"An upside-down world has its own charm, you know."
"Helppp..."
"Helppp?"
As I dangled her by the ankle, Yena's whole body swayed back and forth with it.
She'd been dressed lightly to begin with, but with the apartment kept so warm, she was in short sleeves and shorts.
Her hair tumbled down, half-hidden by her inside-out T-shirt.
"Please... blood's not reaching my brain..."
"Unnie. The world doesn't always turn the way it should. Every now and then, you need a little 'paradigm shift' like this."
"That's not a paradigm shift, it's just my field of view being upside down. Ughk."
"?"
Slump.
Slither.
The moment I set my hand down, Yena went completely limp and collapsed face-first onto the floor.
Just like that, she'd fallen asleep, as if she'd blacked out.
What on earth was this now?
Like with the painkillers, had the mana steeped into the skewer sauce triggered some kind of chemical reaction again?
Hard to say — she'd been perfectly fine while eating.
'Because I flipped her over? Some kind of backflow causing an abnormal reaction?'
Whatever the case...
"Interesting."
No. 77 was going to need a few more experiments.