Team Leader Han Yeoreum, Admin ‘Summer’, didn’t leave the dungeon until taking down the last Named boss of this bus.
Glancing at her from the corner of my eye, I finished the bus and greeted the remaining customers. The two customers soon disappeared through the exit portal leading outside the dungeon.
Fidget fidget.
And looking at Summer who was still fidgeting around near me with a bright smile, I shook my head.
“…Aren’t admins busy? Shouldn’t you be going?”
“Hmm. It’s fine for a bit. It’s fun watching Rain-nim too. There could be other bad customers, right?”
I’m not some ornamental plant.
Then, a slightly chilling hypothesis occurred to me.
I took a slight step back and assumed a vigilant stance.
“You’re not monitoring me or anything, are you?”
“Nah~ Unless it’s a user detected with abnormal records, admins don’t directly monitor.”
Abnormal records? Does that include my synchronization rate?
Suddenly she sighed deeply.
“Haah, because of ‘someone’, company people have been up for two nights straight? The development team is dying, malicious customer service inquiries are flooding in, and in-game admins are busy with increased calls for some reason. We need to continuously watch the trends due to the emergency patch, and we have to keep doing QA on the hastily finished balancing. Thanks to that, even I was called out to do this kind of work.”
I smiled slightly.
‘Someone’, that word must be referring to me.
I heard the entire community burned after my solo play video stream. The main point was relative deprivation regarding an individual user’s overwhelming ability that ordinary users can’t follow.
Of course, there are outstanding users in any game. But the gap is too big.
There probably was a need to provide a system-based foundation that could be imitated to some extent.
It’s not like I did anything wrong though.
I just showed the play I could do.
If I had used the finishing moves obtained from the Training Tower and Ice Spire Tower, it would have really caused an uproar. Is there a way for other users to obtain skills like these too?
I snorted.
“Hmph, you said I could do as I please, didn’t you?”
“Huhu, of course. Rain-nim can enjoy freely as you like.”
She just kept smiling brightly.
Suddenly, curiosities started raising their heads one by one.
Admin Summer.
She must know deeply about this world.
Maybe even the background of how this world became a game.
Actually, this is something I should find out by directly exploring this world.
But curiosity is curiosity.
How should I ask to get an answer?
“Well then, be careful! If anything like this happens again, call anytime!”
Whoosh.
Summer, fluttering her colorful robe and blonde hair, started being enveloped in light.
I hurriedly stopped her.
“Um, excuse me!”
“Yes~?”
She stopped moving and looked at me with a puzzled expression.
A baseless sense of inferiority arose, and my voice lowered a bit.
“Don’t you think it’s unfair to not tell me even though you know?”
The form of this world is very similar to the world I loved.
Though I left with only painful memories, I worked hard, didn’t I?
I should have some right to know too.
Suppressing the turmoil inside, I looked at Summer with calm, sunken eyes.
Summer made a troubled expression.
“U-um. W-well, no matter how much of an admin I am, I can’t tell users about the deep parts of the game, right? There are things like company regulations, confidentiality agreements, stuff like that.”
“Company regulations? Confidentiality agreements?”
“Well, strictly speaking it’s not exactly that. Even if you’re an absolute being, you’re not free from rules. It’s hard to exert direct influence on the game too… The higher you go, the more rules bind you. Well, anyway, there are various complicated circumstances. But… um, how should I put this.”
After agonizing for a while, Summer clapped her hands and began speaking.
“There’s a kingdom. But an internal rebellion occurred and that country was ruined. The king who tried to save the country until the end eventually ran out of strength and died. Well, there was a disease like cancer too, and he spent a lot of mental energy until he was internally exhausted. Then, what would happen to a country that lost its king?”
I tilted my head.
Why is a kingdom story suddenly coming up here?
Is it the setting story of the ‘Astria continent’?
“…Isn’t there an heir to succeed the king?”
“Hmm… This is a complicated story too. All legitimate successors died during the rebellion. You can consider that no one to inherit the king’s bloodline remained in the kingdom at all. The king’s bloodline has great power, and unless you have the aptitude to inherit this power, you can’t become king. It’s a kingdom that relied a lot on the king’s great abilities, so nothing works without a king.”
Didn’t usurpation of the throne occur? Did they perish together?
It seems the side that started the rebellion didn’t achieve final victory?
There were many points I could nitpick, but I decided to swallow them.
Because the kingdom seemed to be just a metaphor, and she appeared to have something else she wanted to say.
“…If the king is lost and there’s no one to rule, it would become a chaotic country.”
“Right~? It walks the path of destruction. The time axis also arbitrarily… Ah, this is a different story. Anyway, it’s a very serious matter for other kingdoms too. Mobs and thieves arising from there could harm other countries too.”
Suddenly other kingdoms?
“So, at this point, an empire with overwhelming power needs to step in. First freeze the kingdom. Bring in mercenaries and in simulation form, try various ways to suppress the rebellion and rule this place. They’re creating history.”
“And then?”
She raised both hands and made a gesture of covering her left hand with her right hand.
“They overwrite history. It can be seen as a process of normalizing a dying kingdom that has lost its threads and can no longer be called a kingdom.”
The empire is extremely powerful.
Rather than inter-country relations, is it like a completely superior being?
I ended up nitpicking after all.
“…If the empire is that strong, can’t they just go and defeat all the mobs and incorporate it into the empire?”
Summer stomped her feet. How cute.
“Even if it’s an empire, it’s entangled in complicated circumstances between countries! Argh…! Forget it! I knew it would be hard to explain anyway! But this is the limit of what I can say.”
In the end, Summer gave up explaining and threw up both hands and feet.
“I’m really going now. Haah, even this much is precariously walking a tightrope…”
Whoosh!
Admin Summer disappeared enveloped in light.
I stood still for a while, staring at the spot where she disappeared.
“Overwrite history, huh…”
* * *
“An offline meeting?”
“Yes. We usually set a date and gather once after dungeon farming is over, right? When I brought it up in the chat room, they asked if we’re thinking of doing something like a full guild offline meeting.”
“Hmm…”
Hearing Cherni’s words, Chris stroked her chin lost in thought.
The members of the ‘Red-White’ guild had built up some bond after doing the Green Dragon raid together.
Though there’s not much to do together in 4-person elite dungeons where each has their own party, they’re people who could run buses with Rain when Chris is not around.
“Common sense-wise there’s no problem. It’s good to have an opportunity for guild members to build friendships. But…”
Reading Chris’s trailing sentiment, Bae Merong chimed in to help her.
“It’s because of Rain, right?”
Chris nodded.
Bae Merong grinned and poked Chris’s side.
“You can just ask, can’t you?”
“Among Red-White guild members, there will be people who want to meet Rain too. What kind of user does such play, whether she looks similar to her character in reality too.”
“What’s with the latter… Rain is mine, you know?”
Chris glared at Deathly Death who was smirking with his arms crossed.
Soon she raised both hands.
“Alright, I’ll ask. But everyone knows the situation, right? If Rain says no, this conversation never happened.”
“Of course.”
“Mm.”
Chris’s party finished farming and disbanded.
Cherni went to meet a friend. Deathly Death became an arena addict.
Bae Merong came out to the front of the Ice Palace with Chris and looked around.
“I wonder what our white kid is doing~ Chris unnie, are you going to sleep?”
“Rain seemed to want to run buses together after our farming is done.”
“Really? I’m fine staying up late too.”
Chris nodded and was about to send a message to Rain, but paused.
Crunch crunch.
Going around behind the Ice Palace clearing the snow field, a snow-white girl blankly staring at the lake came into view.
“Ra…”
Chris swallowed her words.
Her heart sank.
A beautiful girl as if her ideal type was shaped exactly.
The obsidian-colored eyes she has.
Now those eyes were deep, as if looking at some far-off place.
The look she had hardly shown since living together with her.
It’s hard to easily talk to Rain with that atmosphere.
But Chris couldn’t just leave her be either.
She only wanted to see the appearance smiling at her, rather than that kind of appearance.
Chris approached quietly and stood silently nearby.
Rain’s body moved slightly, and she turned her head.
Eventually, Chris’s figure entered those obsidian eyes gazing far away.
Smile.
“Unnie, is farming over? Aren’t you tired?”
“It’s okay. I’m planning to play the game a bit late today. Want to run buses together?”
“Yes. I want to earn gold.”
Chris held Rain’s hand and walked to the front of the Ice Palace.
Maybe I’ll bring up the offline meeting story a bit later.