1. Return - (2)
1. Return - (2)
***
'Defeat the Desert Drake'
(4995/5000)
(Time remaining: 0 days 0 hours 07 minutes)
"Hah... hah..."
Ragged breaths kept escaping her, as if her body itself were announcing that it had reached its limit.
Her mouth had gone bone-dry long ago, but the water in her canteens had been gone just as long.
"Ugh..."
When she deliberately inhaled through her nose, she only felt the dryness inside her mouth more keenly, and a more agonized groan escaped.
'...I want to go back.'
If she used the consumable item “Traveler's Return” from her inventory right now, she could return to a nearby city.
But if she did that, nearly a year of effort would go to waste again.
The scroll that returned her to a city was enormously valuable, but there was no equivalent scroll that could take her back to a monster habitat.
Even from the nearest city, simply traveling back to the desert region inhabited by the drakes would take at least another week.
......
It was a thought she had already entertained dozens—no, hundreds of times.
A burning thirst. The thought that giving up would make things easier kept tempting me, and I kept desperately pushing it away.
"..."
Then, suddenly, a soundless laugh slipped out.
She had thought she was hunting diligently, working hard, and yet this was the state she was in.
After all the monsters she'd killed to get this far, was she really going to give up with only five left?
Moreover, unlike in a game, failing a quest in this world wasn't the end of it. Failure imposed a penalty—a burden proportionate to the quest's level.
The pain she had experienced the first time she abandoned a quest was still vivid even now.
So if she abandoned a quest she could only receive once a year, what kind of burden would follow?
She thought she would probably suffer pain akin to death for at least several months.
At that point, even the thought that she'd be better off dead crossed her mind.
If she had to endure pain that could not be treated by any means for months... surely a normal life afterward would no longer be possible.
No, she had no confidence she could endure such pain again.
Step.
Even while thinking such thoughts, she was still slowly moving her feet.
"..."
It was at least fortunate that she did not have to traverse every inch of terrain to hunt thousands of monsters.
And that was one of the things that made it painfully clear this world really was a game world.
As time passed, a new monster took its place where a monster had died.
A bizarre system that seemed to deny one of the most basic principles of life: being born from another living being.
If she looked away from a spot where nothing existed, before long a monster would be there again.
A space could be completely empty, but blink once and a monster that hadn't been there would suddenly exist in that spot.
"..."
Trudge. Trudge.
This body carrying her forward was clearly the character she had played in the game, yet it was screaming with exhaustion.
As if it were a real body.
When her skin was cut, the sharp pain felt brutally real; when she ate food she had never seen before, she tasted flavors she had never experienced.
Even the beings I'd known as NPCs had personalities completely different from what I remembered.
Some NPCs slyly tried to shortchange me on quest rewards, while others admired my appearance and added extra rewards.
And in between, there were even cases where the quest content itself changed, which was confusing.
So at times, this world itself felt like a reality in another dimension.
Another reality where monsters respawned, inventories existed, and things like holograms existed.
Before she knew it, she might have been accepting this world as reality.
"Kyuek!"
"Kyuek!"
Had she already made it back to the monster respawn point? The desert drakes' distinctive, grating cries rang in her ears.
Thud!
Thud!
The sound of massive bodies waddling closer.
When she raised her blurry gaze toward the source of the sound, even the drakes' outlines overlapped with the desert terrain and were hard to distinguish.
Both the monsters and the desert terrain looked like a strange picture a child had smeared together on a single canvas.
What made it even more grotesque was that the scenery shifted and moved in tiny increments.
'Maybe... I could die here.'
Aware that her vision had dissolved into nothing but mottled colors, the thought came to her unbidden.
Her right hand holding the Crescent-Moon Weight hung limp and refused to rise; even each step felt impossibly heavy, as though weights were hanging from both legs.
Even the smallest motion needed to activate a skill—even lifting an arm—was a struggle.
"Kyueeek!!"
At a drake's cry from far too close, her body moved on its own before she could consciously react.
Her right arm lashed out with the Crescent-Moon Weight, ignoring the agony of a body already at its limit.
Her foot moved too, stepping forward as she activated a skill.
Thwack!
As if Rin's body had regained its energy.
Her leg, wreathed in red energy, struck the drake's massive body hard, and at the same time, the weight that had been tracing a crescent arc began to surge with red energy as if dropping vertically from above.
"Kyuek!"
At the same time, Rin's body began to spin toward the drakes charging from the other side.
Drawing crescent after crescent, she sent the red-tinged weight streaking through the space toward drakes charging from every direction, including her blind spots.
Swish.
Swish-swish.
Blood-red lines slashed through the air one after another, accompanied by fierce cracks of displaced air. The drakes charging from all directions began splitting apart as though being pulverized.
"Kyuek..."
"Kyueeek!"
"Heh heh..."
The drakes' scream-like shrieks and the woman's eerie laughter filled the space together.
Even while feeling extreme pain as if her whole body would burst apart, she kept moving.
Even knowing that pushing her body any farther would kill her, she kept using the skills the situation demanded almost unconsciously.
— Ghost Dance.
— Red Flower.
— Jeolyeon.
— Explosive Spike.
— Bloodstained Step.
She continued flowing from one skill to another without a hitch.
The familiar sensation of tearing through flesh and hide.
The bizarre impact of punching through monster hide—blunt resistance followed by the sensation of penetration.
Every single one of those sensations came through more vividly than ever before.
—Ding!
The sound ringing in her ears announced the quest's completion, but as if possessed by something, she just kept swinging the Crescent-Moon Weight and slaughtering drakes.
......
How much time passed after that?
In an instant, no sound. No sign of monsters. Not even the extreme pain she had kept feeling.
I simply existed in a pure white space.
Then I felt the familiar weight in my hand disappear.
Even in my dazed consciousness, my hand kept groping the empty air as if searching for the Crescent-Moon Weight.
Then, one by one, things attached to my body seemed to vanish, each disappearance accompanied by another strange wave of strength draining away.
"You can go back now."
Then, suddenly, an eerie voice spoke.
I couldn't tell whether it was male or female. It sounded so alien I wasn't even sure it was human.
But its meaning was injected into my head so clearly that I knew someone was speaking to me.
"Where... is this?"
With my thoughts refusing to connect, I could barely force out those few words.
It felt as if someone had deliberately rummaged through my head.
"To think you could hunt a million demonic beasts in that world. Even I did not expect it."
“What... are you talking about?”
“You've been through a lot. You don't have to suffer anymore.”
At the end of those words from the unknown being, I abruptly lost consciousness.
......
——!!
Rin woke to an intense pain in her head.
The moment she regained consciousness, she reflexively tried to grab the Crescent-Moon Weight.
Swish.
Swish.
But her hand only stirred the empty air.
No, more than that, she could not even feel the sensation of the cord that should have been bound around her right arm.
Opening her eyes through the haze, she found herself in a strange space.
Blinking blankly, she slowly raised her body.
The softness enveloping her entire body seemed to hold her down, but she managed to sit up without a moment's hesitation.
"Ah..."
And at the same time, an endless helplessness seized me.
The immense energy that should have been settled inside me was gone. I couldn't feel a thing.
The hologram that should have occupied a corner of my vision.
The inventory.
The countless pieces of equipment I'd treasured and collected until they felt like extensions of my own body.
I thought of all of them and tried to take them out.
There was truly nothing.
None of it was visible, as if it had all disappeared.
As if all of it had been a momentary dream.
"Why... why...?"
I kept spouting stupid words, unable to accept the reality in front of me, while repeatedly checking my body.
A soft body that seemed to have undergone no training at all.
Clad in light cloth, my appearance was completely at odds with my memories.
The memories of all that time, still vivid even now.
This body was so strange that all of it felt like a momentary dream.
This body now was as if...
Wasn't this body at the same level as when I first fell into that world?
Only then did I finally look around the space I was in.
It was an unfamiliar place I had no memory of.
The assorted furniture had sleek designs, and even at a glance it looked expensive.
And the items placed on one side of the fairly spacious interior also looked far from ordinary.
Table. Chair. Cabinet. Shelf. Door. Wardrobe. Air conditioner. Computer... A few objects I'd never seen before sat among all those familiar things.
A huge object shaped like a round sphere. Inside it was a space large enough for one person to enter.
But looking at those things, I could tell.
This was, in the truest sense, 'reality.'
Not that world inside the game...
Literally.
"...Reality?"
Muttering blankly, I looked around again.
The room was filled with modern devices I remembered, making it hard to think of the game world at all.
I blankly pinched and pulled my cheek, then frowned at the pain.
“...This is real.”
No.
Then what was this unknown house, and what was this body?
A full-length mirror stood inside the room. The reflection in it was all too familiar.
It was unmistakably Rin—the appearance I'd customized myself.
The character I'd created.
The me who had roamed the world inside the game for years.
That was why, the moment I saw the reflection, I knew it was me.
The sensation of touching my body was proof enough. More than that, every movement in the mirror followed exactly what I intended—movements only I could make.
"...How am I supposed to accept this."
I muttered blankly and sank down against the bed.
An unfamiliar space, and a body that was so familiar yet unfamiliar.
That was the reality I now had to accept.