True Identity
In stark contrast to the brutal melee that had opened the fight, bringing down the Kobold King proved almost laughably anticlimactic. The moment the Kobold Mage fell, every buff cloaking the king's body evaporated, leaving behind nothing more than an ordinary Kobold King. Perhaps that outcome had been inevitable.
The boss of Gezina's Forest, the Kobold King, has been slain.
Additional rewards granted for the Sudden Event.
Additional rewards granted for the Level Restriction.
Calculating contributions to the clear...
We actually cleared it.
Ho-jin watched the Kobold King's corpse crumble to ash, its severed head already gone, as system windows sprouted one after another across his vision. Honestly, he wanted to forget every shred of dignity he possessed and whoop at the top of his lungs. If the party members who had fought beside him hadn't been women, he would have thrown his arms around them and thanked them for their hard work.
That was how deeply this raid had mattered to him. Was there anyone else who had cleared a level-restricted Sudden Event at this level range? No. Today, it ended with these four.
Se-jin watched with a look of utter secondhand embarrassment as Ho-jin spread his arms toward the sky, savoring the afterglow as though he were standing in a scene from a film.
Leaving the two of them behind, Yeon bolted for Choco the instant the Kobold King went down.
"Has Choco still not woken up?"
"It isn't fatigue in the body — it's her soul that's exhausted. She won't be waking anytime soon. Unless she suddenly attained enlightenment and grew a new tail, I suppose..."
Even as she said it, Tara snorted at the sheer impossibility. They hadn't been in the middle of training. She had wrung her soul's power past its limits. There was no world in which that produced a breakthrough.
Spiritual energy gathered through killing was one thing, but if that were enough, every mongrel off the street would become a Gumiho.
Enlightenment, by its nature, was something earned through proper, lawful training... or so she was thinking, when—
"Hm?"
A sudden surge of spiritual power bloomed against her chest. Tara's face tightened with confusion. She looked down. The sleeping Choco in her arms was glowing, faintly but unmistakably.
"What in the— this is impossible...!"
"What? What's happening?"
Tara was the last person who would fail to recognize that omen. She spat the words through a clenched scowl, and Yeon — who had been watching with growing unease — pressed her in a rush. There was no time to answer.
An absurd spectacle was unfolding right in front of them. A creature who, despite possessing a Fox Bead, had never awakened to spiritual power and had been no different from an ordinary fox — and now, so soon after that awakening, she was growing a new tail.
If a tail can be gained by a method this crude, then what were all those years of training even for?
She couldn't say training was meaningless. But if you could grow this fast simply by absorbing the raw, unrefined spiritual energy of things you killed, then what possible reason was there to shut yourself in a cave and grind through ascetic practice?
Tara's common sense was coming apart at the seams, and still the change rolled on. By the time the light had fully faded from Choco's body, she was no longer what she had been.
The small frame that had looked like a kit's had filled out into the body of a fully grown fox, and the single plush tail had multiplied. There were three of them now.
She had awakened completely as a Three-Tailed Fox.
"Her tails... multiplied?"
"Absurd as it is, yes."
The sigh Tara let out was steeped in a hollowness she made no effort to hide.
"Lady Yeon, is Lady Choco all ri— who is that?"
"Doesn't look... human."
"Ah..."
Right. These two. Yeon broke into a cold sweat as she registered Ho-jin and Se-jin, who had somehow already drawn close. If it had only been Se-jin, it wouldn't have been that hard to talk her way through it — Se-jin already knew Choco's true form. The problem was Ho-jin.
He genuinely knew nothing. And sure enough, his eyes had gone round, and he was already jabbing a finger straight at Tara.
"A-a beastkin?"
"Put that finger away before I snap it off."
He lowered it at the growl, but his gaze stayed locked in place. And well it might. A beastkin. Pointed ears standing alert atop her head, a lush tail sweeping behind her back. Beastkin were rare in these parts — no, not rare. They weren't supposed to exist here at all.
How?
Ho-jin's mind spun. The thought it landed on was Choco. The fox who ought to have been at Yeon's side was nowhere to be seen. What he could see was a snow-white beastkin who looked as though she had been sculpted from snow itself — and the three-tailed fox she held in her arms.
Though if one were to call it a coincidence that the fox's fur was the same color as Choco's hair... well.
He cut that line of thought short, shook his head, and looked to Yeon. There was someone here who knew the circumstances better than anyone. There was no need to stand around guessing.
"Lady Yeon, forgive me, but would you mind explaining who this is? And where Lady Choco has gone, as well."
"Uh... about that..."
Should she tell him or not? Yeon rolled her eyes, wrestling with it. If she said nothing, Ho-jin would probably let it go with a single question. Whether the question itself would disappear was another matter.
No — the mere fact that Tara was standing here meant he had likely already pieced together a fair amount. Choco had said Ho-jin was a ranker with a main account of his own. If Choco knew as much as she did, Ho-jin would not be far behind. Connecting Tara's presence, Choco's absence, and the sudden appearance of a fox would not be difficult.
Yeon was shifting from foot to foot, no idea what to do, when—
"What are you agonizing over? I don't see any particular reason to hide it."
"Wait — there's a reason we—"
"Human. Listen well. The one you call Lady Choco is the rightful successor of the Fox God — Gumiho."
"The Fox God's successor...?"
She had actually said it. Yeon squeezed her eyes shut and hung her head. Even Choco — no, especially Choco — would fly into a rage the moment she came to and realized what had happened.
Whether Tara knew that or not, she went on in the same unshakable tone.
"Yes. This is that very person."
"Hah..."
She lifted Choco, who slept on without a care in the world, and held her up for Ho-jin to see.
So she really wasn't a player?
He had more or less expected as much from the scene in front of him, but hearing it said aloud, right before his eyes, left Ho-jin unable to hide his disbelief. And how could he not be? Everything Choco had shown them until now had been indistinguishable from a player. She had even taken concepts NPCs never spoke of — levels, alt accounts — and accepted them without so much as a flicker of confusion, as if they were second nature.
And that same Choco was, in truth, a beastkin. One who bore the title of successor to the Fox God.
Ho-jin looked at Yeon as if he could not quite believe it, the glance plainly asking her to explain further. Yeon ducked his eyes and mumbled.
"Well, the truth is..."
"The truth is?"
"Choco is a monster I tamed..."
A tamed monster. The words left his head ringing, hollow and stunned. So that was why they had kept insisting two people were enough. He had taken it as a sign of how close they were. In reality, they were bound by a taming contract — and they had been sticking together to keep that from coming to light.
Wait. Then that meant—
A thought surfaced, and Ho-jin turned back to Yeon.
"Then the name Choco, too...?"
"I came up with that as well..."
No wonder her face had soured every time someone called her Choco. He had never understood why she looked so unhappy about a name she supposedly chose herself. Now the mystery was solved. Of course she would resent it — she wasn't some ordinary monster. She was a beastkin who could speak like a person, and they had gone and named her after a snack.
That still doesn't explain how she could act like a player, though.
He was about to press further when a voice slid into his head.
"...Why is everyone standing around?"
No one had spoken. The voice simply rang inside his skull, and Ho-jin's face went slack with shock. Choco paid him no mind. She turned her head this way and that, taking in the situation, then let out a long, weary sigh and addressed Tara.
"Put me down."
"Before that, allow me to congratulate you on becoming a Three-Tailed Fox."
"A Three-Tailed Fox? What even is— wait. It's real."
Tara delivered the congratulations in a perfectly deadpan tone. Choco swept a look over her own body and muttered in disbelief. She really did have three tails. And with them, her spiritual energy had swollen to a monstrous degree — enough that she could now wield Five Elements Daoism far beyond anything she had managed before.
Was this what Banya had meant when she said it would help? The memory of a finger sliding into her mind made Choco shudder and shake her head. No. It had to be a coincidence. She refused to believe that was what had done this.
The moment her paws touched the ground, she invoked her transformation and took human form.
"Huh?"
Her field of vision sat strangely higher than it should have. Choco frowned. Wondering if she was standing on something, she looked down — and found only flat earth.
"You appear to have grown a little."
"Grown?"
Now that he mentioned it, yes. She turned toward Yeon. Yeon, who had something pricking at her conscience, flinched and twitched her face away — but Choco had no intention of scolding her.
"Yeon. Come here."
"W-why?"
"Tsk. I said come here."
Yeon trudged over with a hangdog look. Choco set a hand on her own head, then reached toward Yeon. The outstretched fingers landed cleanly at the point of Yeon's chin.
"I have indeed grown."
A height that had only reached Yeon's chest now came to her chin. Anyone could see it. She no longer looked like a stunted child so much as a slightly short high schooler. The realization filled Choco's chest with a strange, swelling satisfaction.
They won't mistake me for a little kid anymore.
She was still smiling to herself over that when a pointed cough cut in. She turned. Ho-jin had lifted a hand, a little awkwardly.
"So. Would you mind explaining what's going on now?"
"What's going on... How much did you tell him?"
"I told him pretty much the same things I told Se-jin..."
What she had told Se-jin was, for all practical purposes, everything — except the part about being a player. Choco glanced at Se-jin, who was staring holes through Tara's ears, then slowly opened her mouth.
"Well. That is more or less the case."
"You do realize there are things that can't just be waved off with 'more or less,' don't you?"
Ho-jin's tone was flat with disbelief. Choco scratched her head. From where he stood, that reaction was fair. She had, after all, done a great many things that would make anyone take her for a player. Se-jin hadn't been playing long enough to notice the seams, so she had never thought to question it. Ho-jin was another matter. Choco had never planned to tell him, which was precisely why she had acted like a player so openly.
But now that she had been caught, she couldn't simply let it lie. At least, that was almost certainly how Ho-jin saw it. No — that was how he saw it. She would have felt the same in his place. His questions were entirely reasonable.
The trouble was that, right now, reasonable did not matter.
"Huh?"
A slender arm coiled around Ho-jin's neck, and before he could even think to resist, he was being dragged. In a blink he was tucked against the side of a girl smaller than himself, and rather than anger, what flooded his face was a violent blush — because that face was pressed against a woman's body.
He had been doing his best to act unbothered, but at his core he was hopeless with women, the sort who could barely hold a conversation with one. In the game he had managed to talk with something like composure, telling himself none of it was real. Physical contact made that excuse worthless. And Choco, who until now had been little more than a child, had grown enough that certain parts of her were making contact. She herself did not seem to notice.
"W-wait, what are you—"
"Cheon Ho-jin."
He had been stammering. The girl spoke his real name without warning, and his expression went taut as he lifted his head. Shadowed golden eyes shone brightly as they looked at him.