The New Moon Is Scary
The New Moon Is Scary
Did Yoo Chae-rin, who spent a night(?) in Yor's cave, make it back alive and well?
Unfortunately, no.
As soon as Chae-rin woke up, she immediately turned on her stream and resumed exploring the Forbidden Forest.
And within minutes of entering the Deep Layer, she died.
Monsters that dwell in the Deep Layer can spot that level of stealth with their eyes closed.
Well, just because your body's invisible doesn't mean every trace a person makes vanishes too. Sound, footprints, scent, and so on. There were far too many gaps.
And so, her [Forbidden Forest Exploration Day 2] was terminated within a few hours.
Considering her ambition to explore it to the end, it was a somewhat disappointing conclusion... but she'd still pulled in a lot of viewers, so she decided to just be satisfied with that.
She'd also managed to capture several fun scenes in their own right. Especially the final scene of her screaming after getting caught by a mutant wolf—that drew a lot of laughs from viewers.
Having wrapped up the stream, Chae-rin immediately sent the footage to her editor. It was for editing it properly and uploading it to YouTube.
The live stream itself is tasty enough, but it becomes easier to consume after passing through the hands of a skilled chef. And YouTube had an overwhelmingly larger viewer base to begin with.
[Black Kitty: Looks like about 3 episodes will come out]
[Chaerin: Oh really?]
[Black Kitty: Yeah, there's a lot of fun source material so I think I can stretch the runtime]
Three YouTube episodes from a single day's stream. It seemed the editor also thought yesterday's broadcast was quite entertaining.
It was truly worth going into a high-level zone, even to the point of learning the stealth skill.
The editor casually explained to Chae-rin how the videos would go up. Apparently, Part 1 would cover entering the forest, Part 2 would focus on meeting that man, and Part 3 would cover the process from leaving the cave to getting killed by the monster.
She also relayed her plan to upload one episode every two days, saying speed was key with this kind of thing.
One episode every two days. Chae-rin knew how long video editing could take.
With sincere concern, Chae-rin asked her.
[Chaerin: Are you okay? Aren't you pushing yourself too hard?]
[Black Kitty: It's fine. The footage for one video is all coming from one stream anyway, so I can churn them out fast]
Chae-rin considered herself lucky to have such a capable editor.
And like that, time flew by.
Six days passed, and she'd uploaded all three videos.
Yoo Chae-rin couldn't help but be shocked when she saw the view counts on the uploaded videos.
"Holy shit..."
The view counts of all the uploaded videos had surpassed 200,000. Considering her subscriber count was a mere 70,000 and the videos had only been up for a short time, it was tremendous growth.
Even accounting for duplicate views, just how many people had watched?
At this rate, they might even surpass 1,000,000 views.
What was even more curious was that Part 2 had higher views than Part 1. Plastering Yor's silhouette onto the thumbnail seemed to have boasted quite a significant effect. The law of instinct applied just as well on YouTube, it seemed.
It was the law that sticking a fit or good-looking man on the thumbnail or cover led to high view counts.
Part 2 contained everything from the moment she witnessed Yor sharpening his knife, to Chae-rin getting threatened with the knife, to the moment she was kicked out of the cave.
Yoo Chae-rin immediately went into the video and checked the comments.
[His face is seriously handsome tho]
[↳ Shame about the personality]
[↳ Would you have nice things to say if someone broke into your house and spied on you??]
[↳ The killer part is him letting her in without a word after all that once night came lol]
[↳ A man who prioritizes life even after getting spied on...]
[Wait why isn't Chae-rin fighting back?]
[↳ I'm saying this for the 524631st time, the streamer took all her gear off]
[↳ Even so, she can't subdue one little prick?]
[↳ Why don't you go try beating him yourself then lolol]
[Please visit again in summer, Chae-rin, the fur clothes are such a shame]
[↳ Fr, his body's probably hot as fuck but the clothes are so thick you can't even tell lololol]
[↳ You sick fucking potential criminal]
[↳ What'd you expect lol he's clearly all bundled up because he's not confident in his body lol]
[↳ Ugh, the spam fuckers are at it again]
[↳ He's bundled up because it's winter, for god's sake bundle up your inferiority complexes too]
[↳ No lol he's huge, you slobbering idiots lmao think about yourselves for once]
[↳ You're huge too lol]
[But why's that dude living there?]
[↳ Idk]
[↳ Can people even live there in the first place...?]
[↳ It is kinda random, a male NPC popping up in a weird place lol]
The comments were extremely numerous. There were plenty of negative opinions and positive opinions, but the vast majority were solely about the man. Although he was an NPC, the man possessed a magnetism that drew people's attention.
Well, the NPCs in this game were remarkably human-like, after all.
Anyway, it had been a long time since she'd made a high-view video, so she felt really good. Maybe she'd splurge a little for the first time in a while.
Yes, today she would order chicken. From a really expensive place, at that.
She was thinking just that when it happened.
Bring-bang-bang~ Bring-bang-bang~ Bong
Suddenly, a ringtone came from Chae-rin's phone. She took out her phone and checked; a call had come from her editor. Chae-rin answered the phone.
"Hello?"
"You need to catch that NPC, no matter what."
Her editor, diving straight into the main topic without so much as a light greeting.
Hearing that, Chae-rin's expression turned troubled.
"Uh, look, that's..."
And so, she brought up what happened after the stream ended that night.
The fact that she kept talking with the man named Yor through the night, the fact that when she fell asleep he woke her up by prodding her with his foot in the morning, and even the words he'd left her with when they parted after eating...
-Get lost and don't ever come back.
When she heard those words, Chae-rin had been a little wounded inside. As someone with no particular immunity to 'men', that reaction inevitably hit her even harder.
The only thing she could do for her own mental health was to think, 'Maybe he has some kind of circumstances...'
In any case, having heard something like that, she couldn't help but feel a certain reluctance to go back to him.
"You went through something that interesting and didn't turn the stream on...?"
Though the editor didn't seem to give a single shit about her feelings either way.
"Hehe... well, I turned it off and forgot."
"Great job. Anyway, let's go find him again later and at least have a conversation."
"You did hear me properly, right?"
"Am I supposed to just leave that view-count photocopier alone?"
She said that while comparing the view counts on her own YouTube.
Those three recent uploads hadn't recorded her highest views, but they were already ranking. It was a monstrous growth rate.
"Honestly, who cares if an NPC talks a little shit? We need to copy those views."
"Ugh..."
She had a point. You just let your mental get chewed on a little, and you gained view counts.
For her, who had made streaming her profession, view counts were an issue directly tied to money.
Thanks to that, her worries only deepened.
'What's he doing right now?'
She even had pointless thoughts like that in the middle of it all.
*
The waxing crescent is reassuring, and the waning crescent is terrifying.
If someone doesn't know much about the moon, they might ask this.
What's the actual difference between the two?
When you see the two phases in photos, the difference is nothing more than a difference in direction.
Both are the same thumbnail shape, and the brightness of the setting moon is also similar.
But to me, they are nothing short of an omen that let me detect the worst day that comes once a month.
Because when the waxing crescent appears, it means the full moon is waxing; the waning crescent means the new moon is approaching.
And the new moon is a foul day that reaffirms my existence.
When darkness grows strong, demons run rampant.
Hence, the new moon, the day with the least light, is no different from the day demons grow strongest.
And for me, who possesses the trait of Demon's Blood, a very troublesome thing occurs. Namely, a bullshit thing called 'Berserk'.
'Which is it this time?'
The deepest part of the cave.
I thought as I chewed the flesh on my thumb. It would regenerate right away anyway, so it didn't much matter.
Depending on the type, I'd divided the berserk into A and B for my own convenience.
A was a berserk that came to the body, the blood to be precise. B was a berserk that came to the mind rather than the body.
Both were equally shitty, but personally, B was a bit more tolerable.
Although I got really depressed and angry for a while when it hit, at least it didn't hurt.
But this time...
Wriggle, wriggle.
"...Fuck."
Unfortunately, it seemed to be A.
When night fell and darkness arrived, my blood suddenly began to squirm.
As if it were a living creature, it ran wild uncontrollably, completely beyond my command. The more it did, the tighter I gripped the dagger in my right hand.
No matter how strong my regeneration was or how sturdy I was, all sorts of problems arose when the blood rampaged inside the body.
At times, the blood would lift my skin, separating it from the flesh; at other times, blood vessels would burst.
Once, the blood rampaged inside my body so badly my ribs were shattered.
"Hrk... hrrgh..."
Fortunately, there was a method for times like this.
Generally, blood tends to gather and rampage in one spot. Blood that's already beyond my control is easy enough to deal with—just drain it out of the body.
Thinking that, I immediately lifted my dagger and tore my own flesh.
The location was my left shoulder. As I cut through the skin and flesh, the violent blood inside, unable to contain itself, burst outwards. The searing pain was a bonus.
Fortunately, the blood, having lost its host, couldn't rampage for long and died right there. What remained was a handful of red blood splattered across the cave.
Drenched in cold sweat, I muttered to console myself.
"...It's fine. It's fine."
This was something I'd already repeated dozens of times over the years, I'd endured it well all that time. Out of a whole month, it was just one day... no, I just needed to hold out for one night.
Now all I had to do was repeat this shit over and over all through the night.
Wriggle, wriggle...
Soon enough, the next reaction came. Unfortunately, the spot wasn't a great one this time.
My right side. A pain of something rampaging deep inside it was approaching.
If it were up to me, I'd leave it alone, but if I did, that thing would surely ruin my bones and organs.
"Hah... fuck..."
And so, I had no choice but to hurl curses and stab my own side.
The one fortunate thing was that I could still control that rampaging blood ever so slightly.
So even if blood rampaged somewhere like my heart, I could shift the rampaging spot itself a little. Meaning I could avoid the vital areas.
Of course, I still had to drain it out of my body in the end, regardless.
As I cut through my flesh once more, the red liquid with a will of its own gushed out of my body.
This made me feel like a self-harm-crazed maniac.
No, could forced self-harm even be called self-harm?
I didn't know. My mind was hazy from the pain. Yet even amid that pain, unpleasant thoughts kept surfacing.
This is your true nature.
You are a sinner born with demon's blood; do not forget your essence.
So rather than suffer periodically like this, dying, or handing your body over to a demon, would be a better method.
"Go, fuck yourself..."
Every time these thoughts arose, I hurled curses to drive out the inner demon in my head.
The cycle repeated several times over—the blood squirming, me cutting my flesh, breaking out in a cold sweat.
Without bothering to check the time, I did nothing but endure... and then, suddenly, I felt my blood go quiet.
The reason was simple. The long night had passed.
"Haa... haa..."
With a thoroughly exhausted face, I looked around. The entire area was covered in blood.
The floor was lined with blood that was slowly turning black, and nearby, the surroundings were filled with blood that had already dried into stains.
I'd endured the agony here dozens of times already. The traces left behind remained all over this space in the form of stains.
Looking at the grotesque scene, I let out a small sigh.
Was it because the scene before my eyes was disgusting?
No. It was because I had to clean up all that blood myself.
'I'll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow...'
Muttering that to myself, I lightly washed my face and went outside the cave.
"...Heh heh."
The world was bright, as if nothing had happened. The sun always rose in the east, and the trees stretched themselves out earnestly as if to receive that sun.
Looking at that scene, I quietly muttered a single phrase.
"What a dogshit world."
It truly was a hard place to live.