I Can Hear Your Voice
I Can Hear Your Voice
After Kim Mari died, was Yor able to kill Amdusias?
Unfortunately, he wasn't.
Because the moment he finished off Kim Mari, the bastard had ridden Ha-neul and vanished at his leisure.
"Hmph. Today nearly turned out to be a truly wonderful day. But the mood was spoiled at the end..."
He'd spouted that nonsense and taken off.
Yor and the group could only stare blankly after him.
For one thing, catching the guy who was flying on Ha-neul was a challenge in itself.
And for another, Yor's mental power had been wrecked by the One-Horned Lord's gift and mental attack.
He probably could have followed if ordered to, but he didn't want to, not really.
Right now, he just wanted to go home and rest...
"...I do have to return this later, right?"
And so the group had no choice but to head back with the coin pouch Mari had dropped when she died.
Of all things to drop, it had to be a coin pouch. Chae-rin said she'd meet up with her privately later to give it back.
The silver lining, at least, was that nobody here had come out at a loss.
No, in fact, they'd come out ahead.
They hadn't managed to take the One-Horned Lord's head as they'd originally intended, true—but each of them had received a gift.
As they rode the carriage back, Chae-rin and Ha-neul thought to themselves for a moment.
Ah... so he really hasn't done it yet...
Well, considering the man lived in a forest year-round, they'd expected it to some degree.
The 'Demon's Blood' penalty would've kept him from finding a remotely suitable partner, after all.
But that little 'what if' thought had still lingered.
His looks were on the rather striking side, so it made sense. Still, seeing him actually get the Certified Mark from the One-Horned Lord... well, it cheered her up a little.
Of course, the recipient of the mark seemed pretty mortified about it.
At any rate, that was how the encounter with the One-Horned Lord came to an end.
...But the topic in the community was only just getting started.
After all, the scene of Kim Mari dying had been caught entirely on stream.
Naturally, the fact that Amdusias could even discern real-life chastity status spread to the users too.
And thanks to that, the users were thrown into a crucible of shock and horror.
It was already spine-chilling enough that a game character could notice what you'd eaten for dinner yesterday.
But now it could even determine whether you'd had sex IRL or not?
What the hell kind of trick was this—did they just take a wild guess—was a game even allowed to dig into users' private lives—and on and on.
A flood of questions and complaints poured in.
Among them were even some absurd, outlandish takes—that the place was, in fact, an actual other world.
But aside from that, the reactions weren't great.
The technology might be fascinating, sure, but it was still an invasion of the users' privacy.
The flames were confined to the community, but they were burning pretty fiercely all the same.
Whether the blaze was making the game company uncomfortable, or maybe they just wanted to show off their tech, funnily enough, this time they put out an explanatory statement.
A game company famous for not communicating, putting out an explanatory statement? That was quite unusual.
According to the server team employee who posted the statement this time, GM Bathin—
it was apparently a side effect caused by a high-performance AI.
When users create a character in [Demon's Saga], their biometric information is automatically registered through the capsule.
That's necessary to create a character modeled after the user's appearance.
But the high-performance AI for the game NPCs they'd developed had, accidentally, read the users' biometric data as well.
And that was what had caused the whole kerfuffle.
GM Bathin wrapped up the statement by saying they would try to ensure such incidents occurred as infrequently as possible going forward.
The users' reactions to this were all over the place.
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[No but wtf kind of AI reads biometric data??]
Does that even make any goddamn sense?
You couldn't pull that off even if you ground up aliens, you game company bastards
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[fr lol]
[Anyway it's a tech error~]
[At this point just saying it's another world would make more sense lol]
Disbelief.
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[Wait now that I think about it this is creepy af]
So if these bastards felt like it they could figure out exactly how many times I jerked off yesterday?
And the day before that? And how many times today?
And how many times I'm planning to today?
They could just voyeur-watch me in real time?
Wow...
Nope I gotta go crank one out more right now
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[?]
[How the hell did you reach that conclusion wtf]
Shock.
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[Yeah sure you read a bit of my info]
So what
What're you gonna do about it lol
You gonna quit the game? Got a replacement for us? lol
Just shut up and play
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[Always grateful]
[No this game can't die I haven't made this month's rent yet]
[└ RMT farming RMT farming~ fun RMT farming~]
[Saying they'll make it happen 'less often' instead of making sure it doesn't happen again is what's so hilariously absurd like lol you guys kidding? lolol]
[└ Hey Miss Kim quit your yapping and get to work, you not working today?]
[└ No I gotta...]
Acceptance.
Just how advanced did an AI have to be to read something like that? And just how detailed did biometric data have to be to figure something like that out?
Honestly, it was a little creepy, but the general mood was one of acceptance.
Because there was nothing out there that could replace a game with this level of technology.
The so-called 'dark gamers' who were already earning a living inside the game were overflowing as it was. [Demon's Saga] had dug itself too deep into daily life for people to quit over something like this.
And as the game company had said, cases of real-life sex status being determined didn't arise all that often after that.
Because just a few days later, news of Amdusias's subjugation spread.
*
After having my mental state somewhat wrecked by that damn unicorn, I returned to my cave and recuperated for a while.
I needed time to adjust to the gift I'd received from him.
My original objective, the demon subjugation, had ended in failure... but well, in the end, the subjugation did happen.
Because the Imperial Second Knight Commander had cut off Amdusias's head.
He'd never been the kind of bastard who could live long in the first place.
His defining trait was too distinctive, so his location had been getting shared in real time,
and that information had naturally reached the ears of the military as well.
He'd killed a lot of people who'd lost their chastity, so it was only natural a subjugation squad would be formed.
But how on earth did they even catch a guy who flew around on Ha-neul?
The answer was simple. The bastard had charged at the Second Knight Commander himself first.
His face twisted in absolute fury...
-You filthy!! Non-virgin!!!!!!
...bellowing that battle cry at the top of his lungs.
It wasn't like there weren't other knights nearby at the time, so just how furious had he been...?
It seemed the Second Knight Commander was a woman who played around with her body rather freely.
But there was no way someone at the level of a knight commander would lack skill, so the bastard had perished just like that, spectacularly. Leaving behind only that sturdy horn of his.
...Well, an end fitting for the bastard, if anyone. Honestly, he'd been a friend I'd grown just a little fond of.
Even if he'd vanished like that, at least the gift he'd left me was still intact.
And with some time passed, I'd gotten fairly accustomed to it as well.
Just as he'd said back then, I could control it to some degree. If the hearing felt too overwhelming, I could dial it back on my own.
And that ability I'd gained? Yeah, it was pretty damn useful.
"..."
I focused my ears for a moment, concentrating on the sounds outside the cave.
Countless noises from the forest burrowed into my eardrums.
Of course, since they were happening far away, they weren't loud enough to sound like they were right in front of me.
Still, I could distinguish the multitude of noises contained within them.
The simple sound of wind brushing against leaves, the sound of a mutated boar digging up the earth to mark its territory, even the shrill cries of goblins far in the distance...
'...This is pretty good?'
Having listened that far, I nodded to myself.
He'd left behind a truly excellent ability before he went. Having my detection range expanded in this forest was an absolutely massive advantage.
This was already a place where ferocious predators lurked on all sides.
In a place like this, being able to sense danger even a single second sooner meant your odds of survival shot up dozens of times over.
That wasn't all.
If I played it well, I might even avoid losing a sensory battle against the bastards in the Deep Layer.
My original detection ability wasn't exactly lacking, but still, it wasn't enough to compete with beastly critters.
Their combat prowess was another issue, of course... but simply having something I could compete with even a little was a huge advantage.
At the very least, wouldn't my worries about getting ambushed by those monsters drop a bit?
'I should give it a try later, at least a little taste.'
Thanks to that, I found myself thinking like this for a moment.
The Deep Layer was undoubtedly an insanely dangerous neighborhood, but it was also a space full of equally precious herbs.
Since it was a place almost never touched by human footsteps, there were plenty of plants that had grown for a long, long time.
Among those plants, there were bound to be elixirs and the like that could increase mana.
Snooping around with the intention of just taking a look around seemed worth a try.
It was while I was sorting out my thoughts alone like that.
Step—Step—
Another sound reached my overly sensitized ears.
The sound of someone's footsteps. But they were pretty familiar footfalls.
There weren't many people who crept along so stealthily out of fear of bumping into a monster and getting killed, after all.
To greet the other party, this time I stepped outside first.
Sure enough, it was Yoo Chae-rin. The moment she spotted me, her face lit up with surprise and she spoke.
"Oh, what the. How'd you know I was coming?"
"I heard you."
"...You heard me? From this distance?"
She stared at me with a dumbfounded look. Yeah, I get it, I'm a little amazed myself.
First, I asked her.
"More importantly, what're you here for this time?"
It had only been a few days since she'd dropped by to tell me the news of Amdusias's subjugation.
She'd been dropping by pretty often lately, but still, the interval was way too short this time.
When I asked that, she gave me a meaningful smile.
"Hehe, I came because I've got something to brag about."
Then she shouted, brimming with confidence.
"I hit level 100!"
At those words, I tilted my head.
"Already...?"