Strangely Realistic
The villagers reacted to the news that Yanne had decided to follow the magician with more relief than regret.
“Yanne’s going with the magician?”
“So I heard.”
“In a way, it’s fortunate. She lost the honey mushroom patch she was assigned. If she’d stayed in the village, she would’ve either starved to death or been taken by goblins.”
“True. Serving a kind-hearted magician, at least she’ll have food.”
They even sounded a little envious that things had worked out well for her.
“I hear the magician is buying honey too. Pays better than the traveling merchants, apparently.”
“Really? Then I’d better bring out the honey I’ve been saving.”
Yanne had brought one hundred and twenty bottles of honey stored in earthenware jars fired from rough clay. One silver per bottle came to one hundred and twenty silver. Since I only had gold, that meant six gold. The exchange rate seemed to be twenty silver to one gold.
Using honey as a benchmark, one silver appeared to be worth roughly twenty thousand won in Korean money. There were also half-silver coins cut from full silver coins, and quarter-silver coins cut from those. One quarter-silver was worth five copper coins.
Running the numbers, one copper came to about a thousand won, one silver twenty thousand, and one gold four hundred thousand. It lined up nicely.
According to Yanne, once you crossed Durendal territory where the honey mushrooms grew, honey prices rose. In other regions it apparently traded for four silvers or more.
“Master, when do you shoop the honey bottles into storage? Can I use it too?”
Whether from her fascination with magic, Yanne found the inventory endlessly wondrous. As I stored the honey jars I sounded her out. She knew magicians used magic, but she had never heard of anything like putting objects in and taking them out again.
It seemed best to keep the existence of the inventory hidden from others for now.
“Yanne. This space magic is a secret among us magicians. It wouldn’t be good if other mages learned of it. So you must only use this space magic when no one else is around. Understand?”
“Ah, it was a secret. I won’t speak of it anymore.”
Yanne made a show of clamping her hand over her mouth. How well she could actually keep secrets remained to be seen.
It would take four days to reach Hilter Village, which was large enough to host a proper market, so I bought a generous supply of bread and jerky made from some unidentifiable meat from the village chief. I also purchased oil-treated cloth to use as a tent, along with rope and wooden poles.
When we set out to leave the village, the people I had healed, along with those who had known Yanne’s late parents, came out to see us off.
As we walked, Yanne taught me about the non-poisonous plants we could eat, and we gathered a few varieties along the way.
Prostrate Ragweed Grass has been registered!
Holding several plants directly triggered an alert that they had been added to the status window. Once registered through first contact, it seemed the map and status window could then distinguish them.
After we had traveled far enough from the village that it was no longer visible, I cast Activation Buff and Luck Buff on myself. Then I called Yanne over.
“Yanne, I’ll cast a spell on you so you won’t tire even after walking a long distance.”
“Eh? There’s magic like that?”
“Yes. You won’t get tired.”
I placed my hand on her head to apply the same buff I had. An alert sounded that Yanne had been registered to the status window as well.
Yanne’s total stats only added up to ten. I was curious how much they would rise once I applied the Growth Buff. So I cast three buffs on her: Activation, Growth, and Luck.
After we had walked for roughly three hours I checked on her again. Her Charm had risen to 1.2. And the number didn’t drop over time. It seemed the Growth Buff didn’t raise stats temporarily but permanently.
But why did only Charm go up by 0.2?
Her Strength was also a 1, yet it hadn’t increased. I couldn’t figure out the exact criteria.
“Did you notice anything different after walking? Um… we walked for a really long time, but I don’t feel tired at all.”
“That’s good to hear. Then let’s walk a little farther before we rest.”
I refreshed the Activation, Growth, and Luck buffs. It was nearly lunchtime, so I took out the jerky we had bought. The gamey stench was overwhelming. The smell filled my entire mouth so strongly I could barely swallow it. They must have simply dried the meat without seasoning it with salt or pepper. Or perhaps they hadn’t bled the carcass properly during butchering.
It was both fascinating and irritating that the game reproduced even this realistic gamey odor. What surprised me more was watching Yanne happily munch away on the strongly scented jerky as if it were delicious.
But I had no intention of forcing myself to eat something that smelled this bad.
“Let’s rest here for a while.”
When I spotted the shade of a tree, I pulled a table and chairs from my inventory, then took out the gas burner and began roasting the jerky. I wanted to mask the beastly gaminess with smoky flavor.
Once the meat had softened from the heat, I sprinkled it with salt, pepper, and sugar from my seasoning kit. I returned it to the pan, letting the seasonings caramelize and fuse with the smoke. Using tongs, I held the jerky steady and snipped it into thumb-sized pieces with my ultimate weapon—the kitchen shears. Snip. Snip.
The small, hot, softened pieces no longer carried the heavy gamey taste that had filled my mouth earlier. The salty flavor was genuinely satisfying.
If only I had an ice-cold beer to go with this. That would be heaven.
“I didn’t understand why you suddenly pulled out magic fire, but after tasting it roasted like this, the difference is night and day!”
Yanne chewed the smoke-infused jerky with an expression of pure bliss.
“I don’t think I can go back to eating plain jerky anymore.”
“Ah, we can’t have you developing such a refined palate already.”
After finishing our roasted-jerky lunch, we continued walking. Three hours later I checked Yanne’s stats again. There was no change. Her Charm remained at 1.2 and nothing else had moved. I wondered if the Growth Buff could only be applied once, but that didn’t make sense given the 0.2 increase I had already seen.
Maybe the Growth Buff only activates once per day.
Since it granted permanent stat changes, it might raise stats by 0.2 every day. I decided to test it again tomorrow.
I refreshed Yanne’s Activation and Luck buffs and we kept walking. After a while, though, I felt an itchy, uneasy sensation on my back.
“Yanne, are you good at climbing trees?”
“Of course. I’ve climbed them countless times to reach fruit that was out of reach.”
“Then let’s climb that tree and rest a while.”
The uneasy feeling that something was following us made me choose an easy tree and boost Yanne up with my hands. She scaled it like a nimble squirrel, then lowered a rope from above. Thanks to her, I was able to climb up easily.
While we rested in the branches, three wolf-like creatures with reddish-brown pelts approached, noses twitching as they sniffed the air.
“Huk! Those are Red Mane Wolves!”
Yanne was startled, yet also impressed that we had climbed the tree in preparation. I was impressed too. I had only climbed because of that uneasy feeling, but it seemed the Luck Buff had warned me. Without it, we might have been ambushed while camping. The thought sent a chill down my spine.
The wolves stared up at us with gleaming eyes, as if confirming they had followed our scent. Wild ferocity and hunger burned in their gazes. They didn’t look like they would leave anytime soon.
“Master, what do we do now?”
“First, let’s tie ourselves to the branch with rope so we don’t fall, then rest. I’ll close my eyes for a bit too.”
That was what I said, but I was troubled. I had no attack magic at all. Of course I could fight by sacrificing an arm like I had against the goblins, but wolves the size of humans were far stronger. Even sacrificing a limb gave no guarantee of victory. And unlike goblins, I wasn’t sure whether severed arms or legs would regenerate.
If I had a ranged weapon I might have been able to handle them somehow, but I only possessed a dagger and a wooden pole. There was nothing I could do.
I logged out.
You have played for 7 hours and 10 minutes. Physical response is normal. All systems are stable.
The moment I stepped out of the capsule I wrote a report. If starting zones were forests or isolated areas, support sorcerers needed basic ranged weapons to survive. Without them, no one would choose the support sorcerer class and the game would suffer severe job imbalance.
Curious about something else, I called the secretary.
“Secretary. I’ve sent the tester play report. But I had a question, so I called.”
“Yes. What would you like to know?”
“What happens if you die in the game?”
“You resurrect. However, you don’t revive at the spot where you died. You appear as a different person on another continent.”
In other words, death meant losing everything and starting over.
“Mr. Park Jinwoo. Are you currently in danger of dying?”
“Yes, so…”
I explained in detail how wolves had chased me up a tree. I emphasized that priests and sorcerers without attack magic would have higher survival rates in remote areas if they started with ranged weapons.
“Hmm. For non-warrior classes like sorcerers playing alone, there really is no good answer. I’ll forward the feedback to the development team to provide basic ranged projectile weapons when the starting point is a remote area.”
“Thank you.”
After finishing the report and feedback I ate and took a nap. Even though I had slept inside the game, the fatigue in the real world refused to fade. Afterward I exercised to keep my body in shape. Staying inside the capsule for eight hours at a time would reduce muscle activity and risk atrophy, so I made sure to work out beforehand.
“He climbed a tree after being chased by wolves? And he called to ask what happens when you die?”
Elon Busker turned to look at his secretary after hearing that the topic of death had come from Park Jinwoo.
“Yes. Since he isn’t a warrior class, he doesn’t rush into fights. He seems to be the meticulous type who checks the consequences first.”
“That kind of caution is better for survival. So, how did he handle the pain settings?”
“He asked us to create an option value, so we set it the same as the others. But when he saw the message suggesting there would be related rewards, he didn’t touch the option at all.”
“Hahaha. Yes. That’s what a true gamer looks like. We can stop worrying that the pain might give it away.”
“Indeed. It seems Asian gamers have a certain obsession. Unlike North American and European players, the Asian testers didn’t adjust their pain values at all.”
“They live in competitive societies where ‘No Pain, No Gain’ is taken for granted. They practice it better than anyone. Still, we’ll need to manage their access times strictly. Asians tend to pour in extra hours trying to produce better results.”
“Understood. Once anyone exceeds eight hours we’ll issue a strong warning. And regarding the ranged projectile weapon?”
“How much transmission energy does Park Jinwoo have left?”
“We already sent cooking tools, so we only have enough energy left to transmit something roughly thirty centimeters in size.”
“Then send him the ranged weapon that consumes the least energy. Anything else?”
“Berrien is in mortal danger.”
“That French friend? Then he must be logging in and out repeatedly to buy time while he thinks. How many days has Berrien been in?”
“Day seventy-six.”
“A life-or-death crisis on day seventy-six. Hmm. Keep a close eye on him.”
“Yes. It shouldn’t happen, but if the worst occurs we will follow the manual and select the next player from South America.”