Agent
Agent
There was no particular reason she had come to Yor's cave.
She had simply found herself with time to spare for the first time in a while.
After all, personal time was a rare luxury for her, busy as she was with editing and moderating Chae-rin's chat room.
So she'd just stopped by while she had the chance... never expecting to hear news this big.
She felt troubled.
Reporting it to the guild was well within her power, but there was hardly any plausible story to cover it.
If she went and reported it, did she seriously think the receptionist would just go, "Oh, I see," and take her at her word?
They would obviously ask for the circumstances. And that was where her words would run dry.
By all accounts, the villains who'd stolen a demon's arm were said to be as strong as an A-Rank mercenary company.
And it was an area that only A-Rank Mercenaries of at least level 110 could enter.
That was how much of a nest of monsters they were.
Given that, if she—who'd barely scraped level 70—claimed to have taken them down, suspicion was practically guaranteed.
"Then what do we do? I don't have a way out of this either."
Of course, it wasn't that Yor hadn't considered the problem.
But he had no one else to ask either. There simply weren't many people he could pass a request to when he couldn't show his face recklessly.
He knew it was awkward, yet in the end the list of people he could ask came down to two, including her.
"Or what, should I say Chae-rin joined in and we took them down together? Hm... would that be hard to sell too?"
At those words from Yor, Ha-neul turned her head aside for a moment.
Something about it pricked at her. Yor caught her awkwardness and immediately asked.
"You don't mean to say you still haven't told her?"
What he meant was: had Im Ha-neul still not told Chae-rin that she'd become friends with Yor?
Even at his question, apparently Ha-neul remained silent.
Yor drew his own conclusion.
"Right. You still haven't told her."
He had no idea why she was hesitating. He found himself worrying, for no good reason, that things between the two of them might end up strained if this kept up.
'Ah well, she'll handle it.'
He let it go for now, thinking that.
Perhaps the topic made her uncomfortable, because after fidgeting a moment, Ha-neul shifted gears by asking Yor.
"So how did you end up killing them?"
"They started making a suspicious call right in front of me, so I killed them."
"Right in front of you?"
"Yeah."
"What sort of idiot..."
Ha-neul's expression said she found it utterly absurd.
But Yor could understand the other party's actions, in a way.
Because if that guy had tried to run, he would have tried to catch him. A Manifestor like himself was sensitive about any information on his own identity.
And the guy had known that too—which was exactly why he'd gambled on making that call right in front of him.
Either that, or he really was just a thick-headed friend.
Thinking that, Yor made his request to her once more.
This time with a measure of earnest emotion behind it.
"Anyway, please. I'll pay you back handsomely. And if possible, I'd also like you to look into a few pieces of information..."
It was in the middle of saying so.
All at once, a quest window surfaced before Im Ha-neul's eyes.
+
[QUEST - Evidence Tampering]
Report the villains Yor captured to the guild!
And don't forget to pass along the information you've obtained to the guild!
Success Reward - Goblin Shaman's Bead, increased probability of preventing a Future Calamity
Failure Penalty - ???
+
"?"
"?"
Yor and Ha-neul tilted their heads in unison at the sight.
A quest, at this timing?
It was curiously suggestive timing, but in any event, its meaning was unmistakable.
'This means I have to accept, doesn't it...'
It meant that Im Ha-neul herself was now in a position where she absolutely had to take on this commission.
+
After accepting the quest, Ha-neul departed the cave not long after.
Because the sun was gradually setting.
No matter how much flying around as Ha-neul she did, the nights were still dangerous.
Besides, she also had to walk near the Surface Layer anyway if she wanted to conserve Magical Power.
'I should've done it this way from the start.'
She must have run low on Magical Power last time from having flown all the way from the Surface Layer.
Changing her approach a little had indeed cut her Magical Power expenditure a fair bit.
And monsters on the Surface Layer were manageable even for her, a mage focused on Support Magic.
After exiting the Forbidden Forest like that, she let out a light sigh.
While receiving the quest was a good thing, a strange pressure weighed on her.
"Huuu..."
Especially the phrase "increased probability of preventing a Future Calamity" among the success rewards had shaken her. A future, all of a sudden. The meaning of that phrase was fairly clear.
'Isn't this saying it's related to the Main Storyline?'
A clue about the long-awaited Main Storyline had surfaced.
For someone like her—a mere player—to have something like this come her way... It was both fascinating and burdensome.
Ha-neul thought about Yor for a moment.
'What exactly is he?'
To begin with, the fact that he possessed Demon's Blood was suggestive enough.
Ruminating on that question, Ha-neul decided to deal with the quest first.
Bring the villains and report them to the guild. And while she was at it, leak information about the villains' identity.
Looking just at the quest contents, it was exceedingly simple.
The problem was that this wasn't a matter a low-level nobody like her was in any position to report.
So Im Ha-neul, though it was a bit cumbersome, decided to pass the information along by a more roundabout route.
"Welcome. How may I help you?"
"I'm looking to post a commission."
Namely, finding a proxy to deliver her message on her behalf.
So, a proxy for the proxy, in other words.
The Adventurer's Guild's commission system operated in a rather curious fashion.
First, if a problem arose, an individual could commission the guild to secure an adventurer.
As long as it didn't greatly violate the law, practically any commission could be posted.
Finding a lost puppy, clearing out rats in the sewers—even such trivial requests could be submitted to the guild.
So requesting to be put in touch with a somewhat capable adventurer was nothing.
Even without explaining the full circumstances in detail, slipping the receptionist a few coins would settle the matter quickly.
In this way, Ha-neul was able to meet a seasoned three-person A-Rank party.
Since none among the players had yet reached the rank of A-Rank Adventurer, all her counterparts were NPCs.
This level of credibility should be enough to make the claim of subduing a fugitive villain believable.
She handed the villain's corpse over to them and commissioned them to report to the guild on her behalf.
The commission reward was eighty percent of the bounty on the villain's head. She hadn't even been the one to catch him in the first place, and all she needed was to clear the quest, so it was a reward she could afford to offer.
The adventurer party showed a moment of dubiousness, but since there was no downside for them, they readily accepted.
And so the A-Rank adventurer party took the villain's corpse and made their report
Back to the guild—claiming they had caught a fleeing wanted criminal themselves.
"Good heavens, is it really true that you caught him? Where did you catch him?"
"Ah, it's true, I tell you! On the way to the Empire, we spotted some suspicious fellow. So we asked what sort of wench he was, and he came charging at us, so we brought him in."
"Hm... did he convey anything?"
"He did."
Fortunately, the adventurer party hadn't forgotten to pass the information on to the receptionist.
The organization called Lemegeton, and a cult that worshipped demons.
That information would now climb up through the ranks, and up further still, until it eventually reached the Empire's ears.
Watching as the adventurers received their bounty, Ha-neul let out a small sigh of relief.
"Huuu..."
It was done. The quest would probably be marked complete with this.
Gazing at the darkened night, she thought about the events that would unfold in the future.
*
Another three weeks or so passed.
"Seriously, thanks, man. I'm alive thanks to you."
"Ah, it's nothing..."
I gave Ha-neul the Goblin Shaman's Bead as a quest reward.
I had no real use for it, but as a wizard, she'd socket it into a wand and make good use of it.
You couldn't dismiss it as just some goblin. The goblin shaman was a fairly high-level one.
Maybe because she'd completed the quest capably, fortunately no pursuers had come to this forest.
The body had already been found, so there was no need to keep pursuing an investigation.
Outside the forest, though, I heard all hell had broken loose.
Every nation was said to be in a frenzy, searching for that Lemegeton cult or whatever it was.
A cult that served demons—there was no way they could leave something like that be.
Worse, several of its adherents were said to possess strength exceeding that of A-Rank adventurers, so they had no choice but to be on high alert.
Listening to such reports, I felt something strange.
Because a request I had made had stirred up the entire world.
Of course, the root of all that commotion was ultimately the villains and that Lemegeton group...
But ultimately, the entity that had issued the quest was me.
I'd already heard from Yoo Chae-rin what it meant to issue a quest.
When the quest itself was important to the world. Or when the entity issuing the quest was itself an important figure in the world.
'What does that make me?'
Thanks to that, I found myself unavoidably pondering a philosophical question for the first time in a long while.
What was I? What was this world?
The Otherworlders called this place a game, but to me, this world was now real.
I had never once thought my life was fabricated.
But then the Otherworlders had suddenly appeared, and one uproarious thing after another had begun to happen. Because of that, I couldn't help my thoughts deepening a little.
'...I don't know.'
After thinking for a moment, I simply shook my head and resolved to focus on what I had to do.
Survival, that is.
Questions about the self were always heavy.
And I was someone rather distant from heavy things. To be precise, I didn't have the luxury to entertain such subjects.
So, I'd just do what I had to.
Reaffirming that, I moved to secure food.
One thing was for certain: the world was still a chaotic place.