Monster Wave
Cause: Explosion
That scared the hell out of me…
Yeon let out a slow breath as she stared at the words hanging in the air. This, she realized, was the first time she had ever died in Al Fantasia. She just hadn't expected it to be by getting blown to pieces. The memory of that full-body shudder — the blast ringing through every bone — rose as she pushed herself up in the empty void. She had been logged out of Al Fantasia, but not from virtual reality itself, which was the only reason she could stand here at all.
I wonder what happened to the others.
Choco was the first one she worried about. Unlike the other two, nobody knew what would happen if Choco died — and she had been standing closest to Yeon besides. Of course she came first. But that light at the last second, the barrier Choco had woven from what she called spirit power, had unfurled in time. Her body was probably fine.
Her body will be all right. It's just…
It was her heart that worried Yeon. That last expression. The desperate face, the hand reaching out for her. Choco knew the world was a game. She would know that Yeon dying didn't mean Yeon was actually dead. But the heart was not something you could govern just because you understood a thing.
The gift she had given her had been a bomb, and it had driven the person she wanted to make happy straight into death. Game or not, the guilt would land all the same.
I hope Se-jin unni or Ho-jin can talk her down, but…
Were those two even alive? Choco had been the closest, yes — but the other two had only been sitting across a table that wasn't particularly wide. If the blast had been small enough to swallow Yeon alone, they would have made it. She was quite sure it had not been that small.
And before the explosion, there had been blasts and smoke rising from all over the city. Yeon was not the only one this had happened to. Holding that thought, she opened a browser.
The destination was obvious: the forum where every scrap of news about Al Fantasia gathered. And just as obviously, the forum was in an uproar over the bombing that had torn through Nateera. Posts about dying while out sightseeing. Posts about logging out in the nick of time and living to tell it. Yeon worked through them one by one — and then a particular thread caught her eye.
That sounds a lot like what happened to me.
The story of Mysernic suddenly swelling up and detonating was not limited to that one post. After it went up, witness accounts began appearing one after another. The kinds of jewelry they had been wearing varied, but two things were always the same: the Mysernic had ballooned and exploded, and they had bought it from an old woman.
Had the piece Choco brought back come from that same old woman too? Yeon kept hitting refresh with that thought lodged in her chest. And then, in one of the new threads, she abruptly found herself.
The sight of herself grinning with her mouth wide open made Yeon clap a hand over her face before she could stop it. She hadn't noticed while she was lost in the food, but from the side she looked thoroughly ridiculous. If she had known, she would have eaten somewhere with fewer people watching! She was still flushing at the mortifying spectacle when the comments below made her expression go tight.
Choco…
Yeon squeezed her eyes shut. Please, she thought, don't let her get swallowed by guilt she doesn't deserve. And why did the death penalty have to last a whole six hours? She hit refresh again, the hollowness sitting heavy in her chest — and that was when she saw it.
A sharp ringing stuffed her ears until the world went dull. There was not a single place on her body that did not hurt, as if she had been thoroughly beaten, and something hot was running down over her head.
Choco stared into empty air with unfocused eyes. Then a cough doubled her over.
"Kh— khehk—"
Blood-streaked spit ran from her mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand almost at once and lifted her head. Her vision was a little hazy, but it was not red. That meant her HP had not dropped into the red zone. Taking that much damage in a single hit had left her with some internal injuries, but the situation was not critical.
She owed that to the barrier she had thrown up on instinct, a heartbeat before the blast. The shrine maiden robes had helped too — more than a little. If she had been wearing ordinary armor, she would already have been in the red. She spat a few more mouthfuls of bloody coughs before she managed to get her feet under her and look out over the plaza.
The plaza was, in a word, hell. The explosion that had gone off without warning had been enormous, powerful enough to cave in the center of the square and the buildings around it. The shockwave that followed did not need describing.
Choco picked her way past people still sprawled where the stun had dropped them and walked toward the heart of the blast. A crater waited there — shallow, but wide. And of course, there was nothing in it.
The table that had been piled with food. Yeon's face, bright with delight at a gift. All of it. Gone. Choco sank down in a daze and brushed her fingers over the spot where Yeon had been sitting.
"Yeon…"
Her head knew Yeon was alive. It was only an avatar that had died. Once the death penalty ended, she would log back in looking perfectly fine. She might even laugh it off, saying what a disaster that had been. It was the sort of thing you could write off as a simple mishap and be done with.
So why was she this angry?
Choco clenched a fistful of dirt and lifted her head.
"The crone."
The explosion had started when the Mysernic swelled. Which meant explosion magic had been built into the stone. High-purity Mysernic — it would have been able to put out at least the force of a low-tier mana stone, sixth or seventh grade. A stone of that caliber could fire off a skill classed as high-tier magic once, with no restrictions at all. If she thought of the size of the blast as the work of high-tier magic, it was not hard to accept.
And there was no way the seller had not known.
Right. There's no chance she would have handed something like that over for nothing.
Mysernic that would have sailed well past a million gold. As if anyone would just give that away without a price. She should have been more suspicious. She had let herself go blind because it was a gift for Yeon, and she had paid for it.
If she had been more careful. If she had at least examined the thing after taking it…
Don't think such stupid things, you foolish successor.
Shut it. Even you should know this isn't the time to butt in.
The roughness in Choco's voice seemed to steal Tara's words for a moment. Then the familiar spoke again.
No. I still need to say this.
You little—!
That old woman wasn't human.
…What?
Another practitioner. And a fox who had gone through quite a long stretch of training, at that.
A practitioner, popping up here out of nowhere? The suddenness of it left Choco speechless. Tara pressed on.
I didn't realize at first, but the moment you made contact I could tell. That old woman was a practitioner in assumed form.
Contact. When she had caught the old woman's hand as it reached to take the necklace back. If Tara had told her then, none of this would have happened. Choco threw the thought at her.
Why are you only telling me this now? If you're trying to mess with me, I swear I won't let it go.
Do I look like I'd joke about something like this? And I told you I would be cooperative.
Really could not trust a fox. Tara grumbled as she went on.
And I am not only telling you now. I have been trying to tell you for some time. My voice simply could not reach you.
Couldn't reach me?
Didn't you feel something off in the middle of it? A sense of wrongness?
Something off. Choco murmured it blankly — and then she remembered the sensation like an electric current when she had taken the old woman's hand.
When I grabbed her hand I felt something like a current. Was that it?
I don't know what it was either. She may be a considerably higher-ranked fox than I thought…
Higher than me?
Are you an idiot? If she can pull something like this on the successor, you should assume she is at least a Three-Tailed Fox — and one standing on the threshold of becoming a Four-Tailed Fox.
Or she might already be a Four-Tailed Fox. Tara's words sent a cold slide down Choco's spine. So that thing was after her life right now.
Honestly, she had underestimated practitioners. She had figured they were more or less in the same family as mages, and that if things got ugly she could just close the distance and beat them down. She had never imagined they would come at her this cunningly. And it had actually worked. She had not noticed what was inside the necklace even as she fastened it around Yeon's throat. She had failed to see through the old woman's identity too.
Should she run? By any common sense, yes. The enemy was probably already coming for her, counting on her being half-dead. Fleeing to keep her one and only life was the most natural instinct a person had. And there was no one who would blame her for running. She could simply come back for Yeon when she logged in again and take her away.
Choco shook those thoughts off and snorted.
It would have been easy. But running now did not sit right with her. Even if she left eventually, landing a blow on the one who had screwed her over was better — turning her back in an ugly retreat did not suit Choco. It did not suit the Black Knight.
Find her, and kill her. That was the only choice she had.
"Lady Choco! Are you alive?!"
"Ho-jin?"
The voice came from above the crater just as the thought settled. She turned her head, and there he was — battered to pieces, but moving well enough.
"How art thou still standing?"
"Aren't you looking down on me a little too much? I am a tank, I'll have you know."
Even a tank had no business tanking that explosion, which was why she had asked. Choco looked at him with exactly that meaning, and Ho-jin shrugged.
"Well, I'm barely alive, honestly. I'm only standing because I chugged potions. When the stun wore off I was past the red zone and teetering on the dead zone."
"Se-jin?"
"Cute's dead, of course."
Well. That stood to reason. If even the tank had barely made it, a damage dealer was not going to walk away clean. Choco climbed out of the crater as she spoke.
"Yeo shall hunt down the culprit. What wilt thou do?"
"The culprit? You know who it is?"
"I know not. But I know what manner of wretch she is."
She would have to search out where the woman had gone — but she had a feeling she would find her soon enough. Choco muttered it with a savage look on her face.