Let's Find the Hidden Piece! (2)

I was in the middle of a very dedicated tour of the second-floor forest.

"All right, everyone—let's try this way."

I jabbed a finger at the dense trees off to the right and launched myself that way at once.

I stole a glance at the chat as I moved. The viewers, it seemed, were deeply invested in why the goblin scouts refused to appear. Fair enough—a party that ought to show up after about ten minutes of wandering still hadn't, and we were closing in on a full hour.

The truth was, I knew exactly why.

I'd already walked right past them. Hehehehe!

It must have been about ten minutes after I started through the forest. I'd felt something a short distance from where I stood. This was the Heavenly Demon's body, so even a scrub like—no. Even an ordinary modern person like me seemed to catch a faint whiff of something like qi sense. I didn't go check that presence. Every sign said it was the goblin scouts, and the moment I found them and a fight started, the exploration would end right there. I hadn't so much as glimpsed a single hair of the hidden piece. I couldn't quit exploring now.

"Right? Why aren't the goblin scouts coming out? Oh! Don't tell me—is this because a hidden piece is about to show up?"

Ack! Was I that obvious?

The viewers saw straight through me—that I'd slipped past the goblin scouts on the sly. But it was fine. Who was I? A streamer once known as the Emperor of Cheezz. I had a solid twenty secret arts, more than enough to skate past a snag like this.

I deployed the first of them: Changing the Subject.

"Oh, over there! What's that? Everyone, there's something over there!"

As expected, the viewers were not about to let it slide. But I was no amateur ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠whose only trick was fishing for aggro.

"Everyone, look at this little guy. Pretty amazing, right?"

A stag beetle clung to the tree I was pointing at. Not an ordinary stag beetle, either. Its whole body shone gold, and more than that, it was enormous—the pincers on its head were as thick as my forearm.

The viewers locked onto the stag beetle at once. Inevitable. Back in my Cheezz days, the gender ratio in my room usually sat around seven to three—seven, of course, being men. T-Streaming's split was probably about the same, which meant seventy percent or more of the people gathered here were guys. And if you're a guy, you can't help staring at a bug that looks stupidly strong. Stag beetles, rhinoceros beetles, that whole family. Every last scrap of viewer attention snapped onto the enormous golden stag beetle.

Was all of this buildup, you ask? No. I'd only been fishing for aggro, and a stag beetle just happened to be sitting there.

Anyway, I was basking in how cleanly my First Form had landed when a variable struck.

They wanted me to touch that gigantic bug. This was bad. A variable. They wanted me to touch that thing? And who was the lunatic telling me to eat it? In what world was that a hidden piece? You eat it!

They kept nagging me to touch the stag beetle. I looked at it again. Those enormous pincers opened and shut, opened and shut. Getting bitten by that would hurt like hell. And more than anything, it was disgusting. Ugh.... Maybe if I were a guy—but I'm a frail little girl. I used to be a guy, sure, but right now I'm a girl!

"Everyone.... a slender, delicate little girl like me can't touch something like that...."

This was seriously bad. They were not in any mood to let it go. And that lunatic who kept telling me to eat it—what was his problem?! Just you wait. The second I catch you, I'm force-feeding you bugs.

No choice, then.

Go, Dansomon!

....

Dansomon.... no, Lady Danso.

Big sis Danso....

....

I called for Dansomon to get me out of this, but she showed absolutely no sign of coming out.

"Ugh...."

In the end I whimpered my way over to a fallen twig and picked it up.

Tap.

I gave the stag beetle the lightest poke with the twig.

CRUNCH!

Angry or not, the beetle clamped its pincers onto the very tree it was hanging from.

THOOM!

Ack. I was screwed. One snap of those pincers, and the tree sheared clean in half and came down.

"AAAAAH! Somebody save me!"

I covered my head with both hands and dropped low.

Bzzzzzzzz!

Thankfully the stag beetle didn't come after me. It simply buzzed off into the distance.

"I almost died just now!"

The viewers hadn't expected the beetle to react like that either, and they apologized first. If it actually came to a fight I'd win, of course, but for the moment the mood was all about soothing me. Well. If they were going this far, good little me ought to let it slide.

"I'll make a special exception and let it go, just this once. Shall we get moving again?"

Kang Mujin sat in his office, watching Dandanso's stream.

She was Korea's Rank 1, and a dangerous figure whose identity no one had managed to pin down at all. That was why he was watching the broadcast himself, trying to get a read on her.

"What? That outfit?"

Out of nowhere she had announced she was going exploring and started wandering all over the second-floor forest. What was she doing? Don't tell me she was actually looking for something like a hidden piece. Kang Mujin couldn't make sense of it. Years had passed since the Tower appeared, and not a single person had ever claimed to obtain a hidden piece. The established theory was that no such thing existed inside the Tower.

Puzzled by Danso's behavior, he kept watching. A few times in the middle her antics made his blood boil, but he endured.

"Everyone, look at this little guy. Pretty amazing, right?"

Where she pointed, a golden stag beetle clung to the bark. That was... actually rather incredible. Climbing as far as the twenty-fourth floor, he had met every kind of monster—wyverns, trolls, death knights—but he had never seen a bug like that.

Wait. Could that be a hidden piece? It was entirely possible.

The moment the beetle appeared, chat flooded in telling her to touch it right now. If that thing really was a hidden piece, merely touching it would not be enough. The Tower he had climbed with his own body, all the way to the twenty-fourth floor, was not a place that handed anything over for free. At the very least, she would have to eat it.

Kang Mujin sent Danso a chat telling her to try eating the stag beetle. If it really was a hidden piece, then from Korea's perspective it was better that Danso be the one to obtain it. They still didn't know whether she was friendly to Korea or hostile. In that case, Danso growing stronger was the better outcome. Even now, she already possessed power the Management Bureau could not handle. If she was hostile to Korea, the country was finished whether she grew any stronger here or not. But if she was favorable to Korea, then Danso growing stronger would be Korea's own strength.

And it wasn't as if Zhou Huang of China was the only one with his eye on them. The people gunning for Korea were not few. Dandanso eating a hidden piece and growing stronger was the path that served Korea.

For the sake of Korea, Kang Mujin typed with grim determination.

Six hours since the broadcast had begun. I was starting to feel like something had gone wrong.

At the start, the viewers had been enjoying themselves. A golden stag beetle. A silver frog. An adorable squirrel with three tails. A bird the color of a rainbow. Every time we wandered, something marvelous like that turned up. But the fun was brief. After an hour or two, boredom set in. I'd held the line for a while by milking brainless shitpost chat, but even that had reached its limit.

Hmm. Ending it like this would be a shame. I still hadn't so much as laid eyes on a hidden piece. Sure, the established theory until now was that the Tower of Doom contained no hidden pieces at all—but my gut insisted one was somewhere in the Tower. The highest known conquest grade had always been SSS, and yet I had cleared the first floor at SSS+. That single fact was already enough to make a hidden piece plausible. More than anything, my instincts ran good. Back when I used to stream, those instincts had pulled me back from the abyss more than once or twice. And right now they kept whispering that a hidden piece was somewhere around here.

The longer I refused to go after the scouts, the worse the mood in chat became. No. At this rate the stream was going to bomb. Granted, I was a streamer who had reached the exalted realm of turning even a bombed broadcast into content—but that sort of content was polarizing, and this soon after my return, it was better left alone.

Which meant there was only one option.

Come forth, Dansomon!

Forgive me. A moment ago, This Venerable One happened to drift off to sleep.

Unlike before, Dansomon answered the instant I called. Wait. If she'd been asleep, how did she know I'd called her earlier? Something about that stank, but it wasn't the urgent matter, so I decided to let it pass.

Danso. In the murim novels, they spread their qi sense out wide and just find whatever's hiding. You can do that too, right?