Ji-soo Returns
While Pelmas was doing that, Ji-soo came back.
“I’m back!”
“Oh, right. But...?”
The returned Ji-soo had changed dramatically.
Glossy silver leather armor, a bow and quiver radiating purple light, and even gauntlets and boots set with red gemstones...
Just how much did she get as quest rewards?!
It was astonishing enough that gear that flashy had even existed in a place like Tyrum City.
Judging by appearances alone, Ji-soo looked every bit like a proper high-level player.
“So how much did you get?”
“Five skills, these equipment sets, and... they praised me a lot for doing all kinds of things they hadn’t even originally asked me to do!”
“Right. Good for you...”
Little by little, Tae-hyun was starting to get confused.
He had a Legendary Class, and Ji-soo had a Heroic Class, but looking at the rewards coming out right now, it honestly felt like the two of them had been switched.
No, if this was how it was going to be, then they shouldn’t have forced me to change classes in the first place!
If they’d simply refused to let him class-change, at least he wouldn’t feel cheated.
But forcing the class change on him and then giving him nothing but weird junk afterward? That was what made it so aggravating.
“But who is this?”
“An NPC who came to give me a quest.”
“Huh?”
Ji-soo tilted her head.
Because Pelmas looked exactly like...
A beggar.
Ah. Is that appearance just a disguise?
It was a common trope not just in games, but in movies and novels too.
A sage in shabby clothes, deliberately disguising himself in some place no one visited.
Ji-soo wondered if Pelmas was that sort of sage.
“He’s dressed like that on purpose, right?”
“What?”
“Him. His clothes. His clothes. He’s wearing them on purpose to deceive people’s eyes...”
Tae-hyun grabbed Ji-soo by the shoulders.
“...?”
“You’ve watched way too many movies.”
Reality was reality.
Fantasy Online had a surprisingly nasty habit of blindsiding people like this.
A person dressed like a beggar?
Most of the time, they were just an actual beggar.
Tae-hyun had already learned that lesson several times back in Fantasy Online 1.
“Lord Archisus.”
“Not Archisus. Kim Tae-hyun.”
“Lord Kim Tae-hyun. Then I shall guide the way.”
“Uh... but where exactly are you people staying?”
“In the Atali Kingdom!”
The Atali Kingdom.
A kingdom far to the south, a long way down from the Salz Kingdom.
Even farther south than the Auston Kingdom.
Since production classes were treated well there, crafters sometimes started in that kingdom on purpose.
“What? The Atali Kingdom?”
“Ah. Then your quest location’s probably a bit different.”
“N-no, it’s okay. I can go to the Atali Kingdom too. You helped me with my quest, so this time I...”
“You got your next quest, didn’t you?”
It was hard to fool Tae-hyun when it came to games.
He immediately guessed that Ji-soo had already received another quest.
“Yes...”
“Where is it?”
“I think it’s in a dungeon somewhere around the Salz Kingdom.”
“Then you can’t follow me all the way to the Atali Kingdom. You need to clear your class quest too, don’t you?”
“B-but you helped me, so this time I...”
“I only helped because I didn’t have anything better to do. You’ve got your own quest now. It’d be a waste to get a Heroic Class and then just half-ass it, wouldn’t it?”
In Fantasy Online, quests could disappear or change as time passed.
That depended on what was happening across the continent.
And besides, every other player was throwing everything they had into clearing their quests.
“If you were taking it lightly, that’d be one thing. But you play pretty seriously too, don’t you? So just go clear your class quest. I’ll be fine even if you don’t help me.”
Ji-soo hesitated, then nodded.
Tae-hyun was right.
“We’ll be able to see each other later, right?”
“This is a game, you know? We can meet whenever we want, so quit saying weird stuff. If anything happens, ask for help. Sang-yun’s around too.”
When they attacked the Red Zone Guild, Ji-soo hadn’t stood out all that much.
Most likely, only Tae-hyun and Choi Sang-yun would be the ones pursued.
Still, just in case, Tae-hyun warned her in advance.
Ji-soo nodded.
Ugh. Those eyes are seriously...
Those sparkling eyes.
Combined with her looks, they were enough to make his heart skip a beat.
“Then see you later!”
“Ah, Hyung, um, O-oppa...”
The rest trailed off, growing quieter and quieter until Tae-hyun didn’t hear it.
Mocking comments.
The guild member trying to dig up Tae-hyun’s personal information was instantly turned into a laughingstock when it was revealed he belonged to the Red Zone Guild.
After the Orc tribe quest ended, the Fantasy Online 2 message boards exploded.
For a quest that wasn’t a Legendary Class change quest or some ranker-exclusive mission, the reaction was enormous.
There were several reasons for that.
First, it was connected to a continental quest.
The Great Chieftain of the Orcs leading his subordinates in an invasion was both a crisis and an opportunity.
Quite a few people had already heard the news and were thinking about what to do.
Second, there was Tae-hyun himself.
Normally, rankers in Fantasy Online were big on self-promotion.
Personal streams, sure, but also appearances on TV programs run by broadcasting stations.
Unless they had an odd personality like Tae-hyun, if they got invited onto a show, most of them went.
It was both publicity and bragging rights.
But Tae-hyun had suddenly burst onto the scene.
No one knew yet that he was Kim Tae-hyun from Fantasy Online 1, but even so, showing up out of nowhere and taking down the Red Zone Guild master was more than impressive enough.
And Choi Sang-yun was fairly famous in his own right, so naturally a lot of attention was pouring toward Tae-hyun.
“The weather’s nice today~”
Choi Sang-yun ignored the comments pouring into his personal stream.
By now, he was already established as a streamer.
Looks? He had them. (Even if he was cross-dressed.)
Skill? He had that too.
The comments were full of things like Why won’t you answer our questions?! and Don’t ignore us!, but it didn’t really matter if he ignored them.
Because...
The people who were going to watch him were going to watch him anyway.
Even if a few left because he didn’t answer, there were still plenty of viewers, so it made no difference.
Sang-yun ignored the comments in moderation and explained the quest instead.
As for Tae-hyun, he planned to talk about him later.
But what kind of weapon is he planning to bring me?
Tae-hyun had asked him for a favor.
Later, once he started making and enhancing weapons, he wanted Sang-yun to advertise them and help sell them.
Not yet, but someday Tae-hyun would bring him something he had made.
Of course Sang-yun was excited.
Tae-hyun was amazing in every respect, but as a blacksmith he was especially incredible.
Since Sang-yun knew Tae-hyun from Fantasy Online 1, he couldn’t help but look forward to it.
I hope it’s a weapon I can use!
The best thing about Tae-hyun making weapons was that Sang-yun could buy them before anyone else even saw them.
If they hit the auction house, then half the time he wouldn’t be able to buy them even if he wanted to.
Still, since they were friends, Tae-hyun would probably give him a discount, right?
That was what Sang-yun told himself.
“Noona, did you see this?”
“Hm?”
At her little brother’s words, Choi Ha-yeong, a Demer Priest, turned her head.
“See what?”
“The Red Zone Guild! They got completely smashed this time!”
“What? Seriously? How? By who?”
“Isn’t that that guy from before?”
“?!”
When the three of them said they were going to hit the Red Zone Guild, she hadn’t believed it.
It had seemed impossible from the start, and even if they tried, she thought they would fail.
The siblings watched the video with widened eyes.
Inside it, Tae-hyun and Choi Sang-yun were running absolutely wild in spectacular fashion.
They brought in the fortress soldiers to capture Red Zone guild members, snatched away the quests they were doing, took care of the Orc chieftain, and then went on to beat the Red Zone Guild master in a fight.
It was genuinely incredible.
So much so that they even felt a little regret, wondering if they should have gone along.
“Maybe we should’ve gone with them?”
“No. We would’ve just gotten in the way.”
Ha-yeong said it flatly.
Watching the fight with the Red Zone Guild master, it was obvious that both Choi Sang-yun and Tae-hyun were no ordinary players.
They had to be high-level players.
“Still... it would’ve been nice if we’d gone together.”
“And done what? Gotten ourselves marked by the Red Zone Guild?”
Ha-yeong said with a laugh, and Choi Ha-jun scratched his head awkwardly.
She had a point.
If they’d gone together, they’d have appeared on the broadcast too.
Then they would’ve become known to people, and they’d have ended up as sworn enemies of the Red Zone Guild.
Being hunted by the Red Zone Guild sounded like a bit much, no matter how you looked at it.
“Hope we can see them again sometime.”
“Hey. Are you seriously going to do this?”
“Of course I am! Then what are you gonna do?!”
“We’ve already died twice because of this...”
“I only died once.”
“And we still never stood a chance. We got totally stomped.”
“Who got stomped?!”
“You and me. These guys too. We all got stomped.”
“Yeah. I saw you getting wrecked with my own eyes.”
“You said he was some weak scrub, so I came to help you out, but one of them was a ranker, you asshole.”
Kim Byeong-guk glared furiously at his friends.
He was the one who had tried to PK Tae-hyun and gotten PKed in return.
Twice, no less.
The first time he died, he had only been dumbfounded. But after dying a second time, all he felt now was resentment and rage.
He was absolutely going to hunt them down.
But it didn’t look like his friends felt the same way.
In fact, they were glaring back at him.
When Kim Byeong-guk had brought them along, he had definitely told them it was just to rough up some easy target.
An easy target meant someone lower level than them, or at least around the same level. It definitely did not mean a ranker.
But the people they had actually met were monsters beyond imagination.
One was a ranker who even appeared on broadcasts, and the other wasn’t on TV but was obviously a ranker too.
There was no way someone who fought like that wasn’t high-level.
And after it was all over, they had watched the broadcast too.
Seeing Tae-hyun kill the Red Zone Guild master only convinced them further.
Since he was running around with Choi Sang-yun, Tae-hyun had to be a ranker too.
“If you’d just told us properly from the start, we wouldn’t have died, you bastard!”
“Yeah. So how are you gonna compensate us?”
“What? You’re saying this is my fault now?”
“Yeah. We are!”
They knew each other in real life too, but they were still the kind of flimsy friends whose relationship could crack just because of a single death in a game.
As the atmosphere turned ugly, Kim Byeong-guk grew flustered.
“I-I’ll give you gold.”
“How much?”
“Don’t think you can just toss us a little and call it even. We’re seriously pissed right now.”
“......”
And these bastards call themselves my friends...
Grinding his teeth, Kim Byeong-guk handed over the gold.
He had been wiped clean, but his resolve hadn’t changed.
He would definitely chase them down and get his revenge.
But where did they go?
One of the biggest features of Fantasy Online:
The world was so vast that if someone truly decided to hide, they were ridiculously hard to find.
Gu Sung-wook was in a place other than Tyrum.
That was because the rabbits had disappeared for a while.
If he were being honest, he wanted to attack the Tyrum Hunters, but he hadn’t lost that much of his reason yet.
Just thinking about it made his teeth grind.
The Tyrum Hunters’ pettiness was beyond imagination.
No, seriously—no matter how bad it got, asking him to bring back rabbits when there were no rabbits around was way too much, wasn’t it?
It was hard to believe a city like that was one of the starting cities beginners could spawn in.