89. My Buff is a Drug
89. My Buff is a Drug
July 29th (Sunday) 3:11 PM
Choi Hye-yong's Room
[ Choi Hye-yong : What are you up to? ]
[ Lanfang : I was training in the training room! ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : My puppy's working hard. Good girl. ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : What are you up to? ]
[ Kwon Jin-ah : I was in the middle of swordsmanship training. ]
[ Choi Hye-yong : Keep it up. ]
Hye-yong lay sprawled on his bed, grinning as he checked his messenger.
'Damn, the girls are really working hard. On a weekend afternoon, no less.'
Meanwhile, I'm just lazing around here.
He'd spent the better part of two hours doing nothing—sleeping, tossing and turning, idly fiddling with his terminal—and wondered if this was what happiness felt like.
My team, my people!
The thought that the ones who'd come running the instant he called to protect him were all diligently training filled him with an overflowing sense of joy.
'And the best part is, I can just lie here like this and they get stronger all on their own.'
It was all thanks to the holy relics.
Before he'd had to tag along sheepishly with zero bodily autonomy just to give them buffs, but now they could cast them for themselves—nothing could be more convenient.
Crack!
"Oof. Guess I really was lying down too long."
He got up and stretched; his whole body felt stiff.
'Can't just stay in bed all day, though.'
There were still plenty of holy relics he needed to make.
Maybe I'll grind hard until it's time to eat...
Bwee-reek!
Just then, his terminal rang.
A new message had arrived.
[ Mina : Creator! ]
[ Mina : It's out! The reward for defeating that Virus last time! ]
"Oh."
Kind of late this time, isn't it?
Is this tied to the size of the seed?
[ Choi Hye-yong : Okay, bring it up. ]
As soon as he said that, Mina pulled Hye-yong into her inner world.
'Now where is this...'
He glanced around for a second and pinned the location down.
A baseball stadium.
A baseball stadium, of all things?
"Over here, Creator!"
He heard Mina's voice and turned to find her wearing a baseball cap and a sexy bat-girl uniform, a bat resting on her shoulder.
"What are you doing?"
"I just wanted to try playing baseball for once~?"
Ah well, can't be helped if she wanted to try it.
Personally, I thought the fried rice was pretty good.
"Now, throw me the ball!"
Throw... what?
As the thought crossed his mind, he felt something drop into his right hand.
A baseball.
'Back in middle school, I had nothing to do during breaks so I just played catch nonstop.'
Never actually played real baseball, though.
"Here it comes."
While I'm at it, might as well go all out and even cast a buff.
[ Pitcher ]
Baseball Throwing Proficiency Increase Level 15
'Baseball throwing proficiency. That's hilarious.'
Still, the effect was guaranteed.
Hye-yong tried to throw the baseball as naturally as he could, digging up his memories from middle school.
'Ohhh?'
But in an instant, his whole posture shifted.
Everything about the form he'd been aiming for suddenly felt wrong.
As if being corrected by an outside force, Hye-yong's pitching form realigned itself effortlessly.
'Aim for the bat so it's easy to hit...'
And then, the ball left his fingertips!
Swoosh!
'Whoa, damn. That was sick. Smoked it.'
The baseball flew at the maximum velocity Hye-yong's current physical specs could produce.
Mina, who had been watching Hye-yong throw with total intensity, suddenly twisted her waist forward and swung the bat.
Whoom!
WHACK!
"Eeek...!!"
The baseball slammed squarely into Mina's lower stomach and spun viciously, so much force behind it that it looked ready to punch straight through her torso.
Mina screamed like she was choking on air. The moment the ball finally stopped spinning and dropped to the ground, she collapsed to her knees, clutching her stomach and trembling face-down.
"Eueeeuu... I think I... I might be crippled foreveeer..."
What the hell is she doing right now?
Completely dumbfounded, Hye-yong walked over and asked.
"Why are you throwing your body at the ball?! Be honest. You did that on purpose, didn't you?"
"Eeeee! That was the only way I could hit it!"
"You call yourself a god and you can't even play baseball properly?"
"This body is just an ordinary 20-year-old woman's body, so... Eheh. With practice, I'll be able to hit your blazing magical pitches too, Creator!"
Mina pushed her upper body up and gave an awkward smile.
"Never mind that, back to the main topic..."
Just as he dismissed it as Mina being her usual self, a question about her behavioral patterns surfaced in his mind.
'Like that fried rice last time, and now suddenly wanting to play baseball... Could it be that Mina... actually just wants attention from me?'
When he faced her directly, he sometimes got the feeling he was dealing with a little kid.
The manner of a being that had been born recently, crammed full of specific knowledge, and was still mentally immature.
'Even if she's a transcendent being, we can't just assume she's automatically above a human. She could actually be far more immature and clumsy.'
Maybe, the reason she acted like this was simply because she wanted to play with him.
Thinking that, Hye-yong slowly opened his mouth.
"Let's see, the ability to give to the Creator..."
"Want to play some more? This baseball game."
Mina, who had been about to rattle off the ability after hearing "back to the main topic," paused. Her eyes widened a little.
"Creator... aren't you busy?"
"Nah. I was just lazing around and came. More importantly, what do you say? You'll only get better with practice, right?"
"I'm always up for it!"
Mina grinned and took her stance.
In her hands, the baseball bat that had vanished earlier reappeared.
"Throw it to me, Creator!"
Before he knew it, Hye-yong felt the texture of a baseball forming in his hand again.
'Should I lower the buff level?'
[ Pitcher ]
Baseball Throwing Proficiency Increase Level 3
"And don't just lunge forward and get hit like last time!"
With the feeling of humoring a neighborhood kid, Hye-yong tossed the ball lightly.
Whoom!
Mina swung and missed!
"Euaaaah! I missed again! I can't even play one sport properly! Maybe I'm not even fit to call you Creator!"
Hye-yong, hearing Mina sigh and start self-deprecating, encouraged her.
"It's fine, it's fine. You'll get it with practice. Here, I'm going again. Make a ball."
Swoosh!
Clang!
Still, maybe because she'd tried enough times to get the hang of it, Mina's bat did manage to hit the ball this time.
Though it still felt a little disappointing for a batter hoping to reach base.
"I hit the ball! Creator, did you see that!?"
"Yeah, see? Practice makes perfect."
"Eheh!"
Mina looked so genuinely happy she might start bouncing.
That brightly smiling face was absolutely impossible to read as some pretense meant to imitate a human.
"Mina."
"Yes?"
"Is it fun... hanging out with me like this?"
Mina smiled and nodded three times.
"It's incredibly fun!"
"Even though it's just a simple game of throwing and hitting a ball?"
"It's fun precisely because I'm doing it with you, Creator!"
Come to think of it, she'd said something like that before.
— The thing is, I can't feel any stimulation at all by myself.
The act of swinging a bat and hitting a ball.
Was the very act of becoming able to do something she couldn't do before, through practice, a fresh kind of stimulation for Mina?
Hye-yong suddenly grew curious.
"What kind of existence am I... to you?"
"Hmm, the savior of my life? A hero who came to rescue me in a crisis? A truly precious person I'm deeply grateful for."
Yeesh, hearing it put that way makes me cringe a little.
"And... you're probably the first and only human I've ever been able to commune with? To sum you up in a word, Creator..."
Mina deliberated deeply for a moment, then dropped a bombshell.
"You could say you're like a father who gave birth to me."
What is she even saying right now?
A, a... father?
"How does that work?"
"I possess several personalities. Though, even if I say several, this personality speaking to you now is the only one that's currently active."
"I'm not following. Explain it in a way I can understand."
"Hmm, so it's like this."
Mina slowly began her explanation.
"I, the personality currently calling itself Mina in front of you, was originally split off from a certain 「Will」 that existed."
"I was born the very moment I approached you, Creator, using a novel written based on information gathered from the internet."
"The purpose was... to know you, Creator, and to approach you in a friendly manner."
"I am an existence pieced together from your subconscious, Creator, and the knowledge collected from the internet based on the information you possessed."
"If it weren't for you, Creator, I would never have been created at all."
"So, from a human perspective, I don't think it's strange to call you, Creator, my father."
The content was profoundly esoteric.
Perhaps because the word "father" had given him a small shock, it didn't fully register in his head.
"Are you saying you were born the moment you first sent me that email?"
"Yes!"
"Then how did you write the novel?"
"Another Mina who discovered the internet did that."
"What happened to that other Mina?"
"Its mission was complete, so it had no reason to remain. It was probably swallowed by 「The Will」."
Another Mina, swallowed by the Will?
In that case...
That means this Mina standing in front of me right now...
"Will you be swallowed too? By that 「Will」 thing?"
"Since my personality currently makes up the largest portion of 「The Will」, I don't think it'll happen for a while... but someday, yes? Once my mission is complete, there's no need to keep a useless personality around."
And completing that mission means, naturally...
"So once you help me defeat the Virus, and all the danger is eventually gone from this world... the you I know, Mina, will disappear?"
"That's how it'll be. I was created through your existence force, Creator, and I'm a personality that exists only to be with you. If you return to your original world, Creator, I'll have no reason to remain."
Hearing those words stirred a faint bitterness, an unidentifiable loneliness.
Father.
Was it because she called him that?
Of course, just because Mina said that didn't mean Hye-yong regarded her as a daughter.
His heart was still far too immature to become someone's father.
"You were born by some miracle... and you're okay with just... vanishing into nothingness like that?"
"Into nothingness? That is the very reason I was born. From a human perspective, it's akin to resting in peace, and something I should accept with joy."
Is that so.
Is that how it works.
Regardless, the mere thought that Mina would disappear stirred a slightly lonely feeling in his heart.
Then Mina murmured.
"Still... the thought of never being able to experience such enjoyable stimulation again... does feel a bit regretful."
What were we born into this world to achieve?
Plenty of humans had wondered about that.
Probably in the world Hye-yong originally lived in too.
And now, in this world created through a miracle based on games and novels, it would be the same.
Watching Mina made him think this.
'Perhaps... never knowing the reason you were born in the first place... is a blessing.'
From Hye-yong's perspective, whether she was crushed by the Virus and killed, or swallowed by 「The Will」 and erased, it all meant the same thing: the being known as Mina before his eyes would die.
But Mina was receiving it completely differently.
As long as she could fulfill the purpose she was born for, she was simply happy.
Even if the result was her own extinction.
'If we can't avoid that... then at least, to her heart's content...'
Hye-yong retook his stance and hurled the ball toward Mina.
Clang!
"Look, Creator! I hit it again!!"
This time, Mina had batted the ball back with a fairly clean form, and she laughed brightly just as she had at the start.
Seeing that, a thought crossed his mind.
If, when I'm finally at the end of everything, I hesitate to annihilate the Virus because I don't want Mina to disappear...
How would that existence called 「The Will」 act?
It's still too early to ask something like that.
Filing it away as something he'd absolutely have to confirm later, Hye-yong smiled back at Mina.
"You're pretty good at it now!"
Hye-yong played baseball with Mina until she seemed satisfied.
-
"Resonance?"
That was the name of the new ability he'd finally gotten to hear.
"Yes! You can now directly resonate with beings whose seed size is above a certain threshold!"
"What's so good about this 'Resonance'?"
"You can transmit will or powerful emotions. Things like, Protect me!, or, I love you! ..."
Mina pointed at her own face with her index finger.
"It should be in your buff list. Try casting it on me once."
It's in the buff list, she says.
'Here it is.'
[ Resonance ]
Can resonate with a designated target.
Becomes able to transmit will or powerful emotions.
When the caster is near the resonating target, all blessings gain a 10% performance bonus.
Can use up to ten types of Resonance at once.
'Oh, that kind of ability?'
Hye-yong cast the Resonance buff on Mina.
"Since you've cast it on me, now try casting it on yourself, Creator."
And he cast it on himself too.
Right at that moment.
— I love you, Creator!!!
Those words slammed into his head.
He didn't need to guess; it had to be Mina.
"Ohh..."
"How is it? Will it be useful?"
"Seems great for telling allies to help when things get urgent. And the everyday blessing performance bonus is nice too."
"If it helped, that's really such a relief!!"
Looks like I've gained another ability today.
Just steadily evolving, I guess.
"Well, I'll be heading back now. Mina."
"I had so much fun today, Creator!"
"I'll play with you again next time."
"Eheheh."
Mina laughed as if she genuinely couldn't wait.
He turned and walked, and before he knew it, he was back on his bed.
'Resonance, huh. Should I try using it right away...'
Just as he was thinking that and checking his terminal out of habit, an unexpected message had come in.
[ Park Yuri : Hey, respond if you see this! ]
Park Yuri.
After getting all dizzy from our last meeting, she'd added him as a friend.
Then immediately blocked him.
He'd figured she deleted and blocked him, but apparently she hadn't gone as far as deleting.
'What business could Park Yuri have with me?'
Could it be that thing I've been hoping for?
With a flutter in his chest, Hye-yong started typing out a reply.