The Trouble Called Ed-an
Ed-an, who had been striking a pose as he spoke, jumped in shock.
“W-what are you talking about? Who do you mean?”
“Didn’t Pelmas tell you about me? He should have.”
“C-could you possibly be... Archisus’s...?”
“Yeah. The Avatar.”
“...”
The two stared at each other for a moment, then took off their masks at the same time.
Ed-an was a strikingly handsome middle-aged man—far too handsome to seem like a thief.
“Fufu. My apologies, Tae-hyun. I failed to recognize you...”
“It happens.”
Kim Tae-hyun stepped closer.
If it had been someone who knew him well, they would have backed away. Unfortunately, Ed-an was not that sort of person.
“Still, Tae-hyun, if I may be so bold, isn’t it a little beneath the dignity of Archisus’s Avatar to go around stealing like this—”
“It’s because of you, you bastard!”
Wham!
“Kgh!”
Tae-hyun drove his fist precisely into Ed-an’s solar plexus.
He had closed the distance for exactly this one blow!
“If you found the Authority, then you should’ve reported it before you acted!”
“Ghk! Ugh! Hrk! Hah!”
He beat him while shouting in a voice low enough not to carry to the soldiers—a masterpiece of controlled violence.
A bizarre scene was unfolding in the corner of the palace garden, hidden among the trees.
“Hoo...”
Tae-hyun dusted off his hands and stopped beating him.
Ed-an coughed violently as he pulled himself upright.
“W-why... did I get hit?”
“If you were going to sneak into a place like the royal palace, shouldn’t you have at least told me first? What were you going to do if you got caught? Are you seriously confident you wouldn’t talk? Huh?”
“I-if I didn’t get caught, then...”
Wham!
“Your friend Pelmas says the same kind of thing when he gambles. ‘I just have to win! If I win!’ So did he win? Huh? You people are seriously driving my blood pressure up as a group! Think about what happens if you fail!”
Tae-hyun was getting so worked up with Ed-an by the collar that, from far away, he heard the sound of soldiers moving.
Then came their voices.
“What was that?”
“Thought I heard something.”
“Probably some little animal, like a rat.”
“You think?”
Tae-hyun let go of Ed-an’s collar.
Then he flicked a hand.
Ed-an understood it immediately.
The signal meant one thing: run.
The two somehow managed to make it back to the building where the guests were staying.
That had only been possible because both of them possessed excellent stealth skills.
The moment they stepped into the room, Tae-hyun grabbed Ed-an by the collar again.
“Ghk, ngh... Tae-hyun. If you’d just calm down and let go for a moment...”
“Calm down? You think I’m in any position to calm down when you’ve just turned my whole situation into a mess? Huh? Try pulling something on your own again and I’ll personally cut off your breathing and shut that mouth forever!”
“No, Tae-hyun! Even if I’d been caught, I would never have talked!”
“What a load of crap. Like you people would actually manage that!”
Because of Pelmas, Tae-hyun had already completely lost faith in this whole group.
If he trusted them, he’d just be asking to get stabbed in the back.
That was the image he had of them now.
“Haa...”
Tae-hyun let Ed-an go and sighed.
At least they had avoided the worst-case scenario.
Now that he’d caught Ed-an here, the man wouldn’t be able to cause any major disaster.
For all this was bad luck, there was a silver lining in it.
Ed-an shifted anxiously, watching Tae-hyun’s expression.
Tae-hyun dropped into a chair and asked,
“So where’s the Authority?”
“I haven’t found it yet.”
“...”
When Tae-hyun glared at him, Ed-an hurriedly added an explanation.
“I couldn’t help it! The palace security was too tight! Do you have any idea how many days it took just to get this far in?”
“Right, good job. Lucky for you that you didn’t get caught.”
“Fufu. Thank you. But wait—how did you get in here, Tae-hyun?”
“I came as a guest.”
“...!”
Ed-an looked like he’d just taken another hit.
“Then doesn’t that mean I never had to go through all this trouble to get here in the first place?”
“Who told you to act on your own first? Huh?”
“Urgh...!”
“Tell me everything you know. I need to figure out whether we can get it out of here.”
“The information I found isn’t much, Tae-hyun. All I discovered while digging through old records was one line: ‘One of Archisus’s Authorities lies in the deepest part of the royal palace of the Atali Kingdom.’ That’s all.”
It really wasn’t much.
The deepest part of the royal palace? He didn’t even know where that was, let alone what exactly was there.
And yet, if they wanted to obtain it, they had to risk their lives going in.
Don’t tell me I’ll get there and find out it’s already gone...
Ed-an watched Tae-hyun’s face, then spoke again.
“Tae-hyun, if you would only trust me this once, I can search through the place without anyone noticing and—”
“Ah, shut up.”
He cut him off with not even a second’s hesitation.
Utterly cold.
Tae-hyun had no intention whatsoever of risking his life by trusting Ed-an.
If something went wrong, he’d immediately end up marked by the king and forced to flee.
“If you start acting on your own and get caught, I’ll tie you up myself and present you to the king.”
“H-how could you do something like that?!”
“That’s what I should be saying to you people. You claim to serve me, and yet you don’t listen to a single order I give? Huh?”
Tae-hyun kicked Ed-an as he said it.
Ed-an desperately tried to explain himself.
“You misunderstand. I only wanted to ease your burden...”
“Thanks. You managed to double it. More importantly, I heard your arms were cut off and you retired. So how exactly were you planning to steal anything?”
At Tae-hyun’s question, Ed-an raised both arms.
When he took off his gloves, steel hands were revealed.
“Fufu. Mechanical engineering arms made by Goblins.”
“Yeah, very impressive.”
You have observed an exceptional work of mechanical engineering.
Your Engineering skill has increased.
You cannot learn the crafting method for Goblin's Steel Thief Prosthetic.
Your Engineering skill level is too low.
Now he understood how Ed-an had come back to stealing.
Mechanical engineering arms made by Goblins.
I’ll have another chance to learn it later.
What mattered right now was staying alive in the royal palace.
“Anyway, Ed-an, you are forbidden from doing anything else. Don’t act on your own. Change your outfit immediately and behave as one of my attendants. Pelmas came with me too.”
“What? Pelmas came too?”
Ed-an asked with a look of disbelief.
“That friend of mine isn’t the sort who’d come.”
“Why not?”
“Because if I got caught, Pelmas is exactly the kind of man who wouldn’t want to get dragged down with me...”
A friendship so barren it held not even a trace of affection.
With a dumbfounded look, Tae-hyun said,
“Yeah, he didn’t want to come. So I dragged him here.”
“Fufu, well done.”
“Stop with the ‘fufu’ crap and stick with Pelmas. If you do anything stupid, I’ll turn you into a corpse and hand you over to the king.”
“Tae-hyun, your jokes are terrifying...”
“Does this look like a joke to you?”
When Tae-hyun said it in such a lethal tone, Ed-an shut his mouth.
Thank God I came out at night...
Tae-hyun let out a sigh as he thought that.
If he hadn’t run into Ed-an, the man would’ve searched the royal palace on his own and, with very high probability, gotten caught.
Of course, Ed-an had stubbornly insisted he wouldn’t have been caught, but Tae-hyun didn’t believe that for even a second.
And then things would’ve gotten twice as tangled!
Still, because he’d managed to grab Ed-an, they no longer had to worry about some absurd situation where he’d be in the middle of palace business and suddenly hear, “Seize that man!”
That much, at least, was a blessing.
The important thing was that he wouldn’t have to deal with that kind of nonsense while meeting the king.
“Tae-hyun, are you perhaps tired?”
One of Admiral Brangsong’s Royal Guard soldiers, who had accompanied him, tilted his head after seeing Tae-hyun’s expression.
Naturally, he had no idea what Tae-hyun had been up to in the middle of the night.
“Ah, no. I’m fine.”
Tae-hyun glanced behind him.
Ed-an was standing beside Pelmas.
The others didn’t seem to have noticed that their party had somehow gained an extra member.
“How long are we supposed to wait here?”
“How should I know? Why are you asking me? Are we close or something?”
Woo Jeong-sik snapped irritably at Kim Ji-san.
They were currently gathered in the courtyard in front of the royal palace.
There was only one reason they had come.
A palace quest.
All players who had fulfilled certain conditions in the kingdom had received a quest sent directly from the royal palace.
Come to the royal palace and display your superior craftsmanship.
📍 Condition: Satisfy the royal palace’s requirements
🎁 Reward: If His Majesty is pleased, you shall receive an immense reward.
It was a quest no one could afford to ignore.
The three of them had only recently cleared the Katerand Island quest, but they had decided to participate immediately.
And so, they had come together like this.
The lavish courtyard before the royal palace was swarming with other players.
When Woo Jeong-sik snapped at him, Park Seong-chan grinned easily and said,
“Aw, come on. Don’t be like that. I saw what got posted on the forums this time too.”
“...!”
Woo Jeong-sik flinched.
If it was what had gone up on the forums, then...!
Beside him, Kim Ji-san was snickering.
He knew too.
He knew that Woo Jeong-sik had insisted the dagger was a fake composite item and ended up making a complete fool of himself.
“Y-you bastards...!”
“So did the owner ever show up?”
“Shut up!”
Bad blood was still a kind of bond. The three of them kept bickering, yet still moved around together.
Part of it was the connection they had made while grinding together on Katerand Island.
But more important than that was this:
the Lucky Blacksmith’s Technique.
After receiving that bizarre, highly unusual skill, the three of them had put their heads together and agonized over it.
“So how are we supposed to make use of this skill?”
“We need to raise Luck somehow. Is there even a way to do that?”
“That guy didn’t just dump a garbage skill on us, did he?”
“No way. We saw what he made, didn’t we? No way that kind of quality comes easy!”
“Fine, fine. Why’re you yelling at me?”
And while worrying over it, the three of them had, unexpectedly, grown close.
As the blacksmiths murmured among themselves, one of the royal attendants emerged from the palace.
Even if he was “just” an attendant, to the players he looked exalted beyond measure.
He was the king’s attendant, after all.
As the saying went, even a stray dog’s status changes depending on who its master is.
Dressed impeccably in fine silk robes, the attendant cleared his throat and began to speak.
“Blacksmiths gathered here, welcome. Today is a joyous day. Why? Because...”
A speech that went on and on.
At first the blacksmiths listened with bright, eager eyes, but once it dragged past five minutes, they all started yawning.
Boring speeches were never welcome anywhere.
But the attendant paid them no mind and continued.
“And so! His Majesty has made a decision. He has decreed that an item be offered to celebrate this auspicious occasion!”
“?!”
The players who had been dozing instantly jerked their heads up.
What had he just said?
“What? An item?”
“What did he just say?”
The players began to murmur, but the attendant kept going.
“The blacksmith who creates the item that most satisfies the person being honored shall be the winner. I trust all of you will do your utmost. That is all!”
Then the quest window appeared.
A Celebration for the Atali Kingdom
The king of the Atali Kingdom is in an exceptionally good mood.
The Caterand Pirates, who tormented the kingdom’s navy for so long, have disappeared.
Create a glorious item to be offered to the person who contributed the most to the annihilation of the Caterand Pirates.
If it pleases the king, you will receive a vast reward.
🎁 Reward: ???, ???, ???, ???, ???
Everyone’s eyes changed.
“This is...”
“I absolutely can’t lose this!”
A quest with only one winner.
The blacksmiths gathered there immediately began looking at one another as rivals, their expressions full of caution.
Then someone asked,
“Wait. Who exactly is the one being honored?”