Chapter 299: Holy Sword and Duty 4
TL/Editor: raei
Schedule: 5/Week Mon-Fri
Illustrations: Posted in discord.
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Han Se-ah was naturally wagging her tongue in front of hundreds of thousands.
She seemed more like a bewitching witch from the South than a hero.
After all, she was the woman who had captivated her chat with just her witty banter, even when there were merely dozens of viewers.
Did her voice ever falter, even as her chat grew fiercely from tens to hundreds to thousands and now to hundreds of thousands?
Han Se-ah's voice seeped into Irene, whispering as if she were the devil or the serpent that was seducing Eve in the Bible.
“You know too, right? …Grace and Katie, with Roland too.”
“R-right?”
Irene's head tilted forward stealthily, as if she were an old man mesmerized by the lively dance music at a pop-up bar.
She was enchanting a saint candidate with just her silver tongue—was she a hero or a ghost?
It hadn’t been a month since she started playing the game, and she had already become like sisters with Ellis.
Han Se-ah, the devilish woman, had charmed not only Ellis, Grace, Katie, and Irene, but also countless NPCs she had met while playing the game.
With her verbal agility and pleasant voice, she opened up Irene's heart as if strategizing a dating sim, leading to such results.
“There’s nothing doctrinally wrong with it, and you wouldn’t push them away in the name of the temple, would you?”
“Yeah… right.”
“Instead―”
-What bullsh*t, but it’s convincing, so f*cking annoying
-Turn the party into a harem, f*ck LOL
-We should search Han Se-ah’s phone history, 100%
-So are you going to show us this time? I trust you, please
-F*cking hell, just create a subscription site LOL I’d subscribe right away
Grace and Katie already liked Roland.
But she felt it might not be good for her to barge in late.
However, if it were Irene, the two would understand―
At first, it sounded like an old woman chiding in women’s language.
But it was Irene, born and raised in the temple.
The other two were a country girl who ran in the mountains and the other a young girl who ran away to adventure because she hated the social circle.
Without any sly and sticky intentions coming to light, Han Se-ah’s persuasion began to take effect.
“I think the stew is sticking to the pot”
“…Ah, right. Thanks, Roland!”
If they kept talking like that, she might raid my sleeping bag tonight.
As Irene innocently nodded and blushed, it seemed she got so carried away that I found the right opportunity to cut her off.
Fortunately, the meat sizzling in butter was about to turn from deliciously cooked to overcooked, prompting Irene to dash over.
The stew, simmering on low heat, was just about to thicken too much, which gave an idea of how long they had been talking.
Irene, still with rosy cheeks, took the spatula and stirred the stew vigorously.
She seemed to be hurrying to salvage it before it was ruined, and Han Se-ah, approaching leisurely, threw a question at me.
“You knew how to cook?”
“About good enough for dog food.”
“So, you just know when it’s done?”
She naturally turned the camera towards me, and I nodded in response.
My cooking skills are… more like boiling jerky into a stew than making soup.
Would you still call it cooking if you just throw ingredients in water and boil it until everything’s done, as long as it's not burnt to a crisp?
While Han Se-ah kept diverting from the topic of Irene and pregnancy rumors in her chat, she finally grabbed both Grace and Katie to start a conversation about cooking and food.
Beautiful women, who could rival idols, made food themselves and ate happily in front of the camera.
If a woman's heart is like a reed, then the viewers' public opinion is like a tumbleweed rolling in a Western movie, swiftly changing at the sight of a provocative scene.
“When the supply situation was bad, I wasn’t cooking; I just chewed on old jerky for an hour straight.”
“Was it that bad? What about Grace?”
“Me? I just know how to grill meat. I’ve only ever cooked rabbits and squirrels that I caught in the mountains.”
“...Squirrels?”
-Eating squirrels, huh... Is that even a thing?
-Not the cute squirrels you see in Korea but like a Dynamax squirrel?
-There are squirrels at the butcher’s in my neighborhood. But not much :)
-It’s amazing that she even knows how to handle animal guts.
-Lol, if you’re a hunter and you can’t do that, it’s like a fisherman who can’t gut a fish.
In Korea, are squirrels something to be shooed away, while in the West, they’re grilled and eaten?
As such discussions draw the aggro, many foreign viewers begin to share their experiences, and once again, the direction of the chat's public opinion easily shifted.
…Hmm, did Han Se-ah anticipate even this?
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Raei Translations
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Even though the controversy over Han Se-ah's pregnancy attack had settled down, the awakening quest and the missing harpies had not been resolved.
'What even is the awakening… Is there something hidden like when I visited the temple?'
After ten years of giving up on blunt weapon techniques and barely mastering the handling of armor and shields, there’s no way I could suddenly gain enlightenment and perform flashy techniques.
So, the only scenario that comes to mind is similar to encountering something Goddess-like in the temple and getting special treatment, obtaining a divine artifact following the holy sword, and using the embedded skills.
The divine artifact pulled out from Raphael Mk.1, and even the gold-plated skull head, seemed to heavily utilize such artifacts, right?
So, if Roland's storyline involving the holy sword was intertwined with artifacts, that would make sense.
“Harpies haven’t shown up today either.”
“There’s a saying that the forest is quiet before the storm, and it really feels like that. It’s a bit unsettling.”
Whether they should eat squirrels or sparrows, Han Se-ah’s chat suddenly became a global butcher shop discussion corner.
Foreign viewers also participated in the conversation…, or rather, there was even more to talk about, such as crocodiles, ostriches, camels, horses, and all sorts of meat stories came up, naturally burying the discussion about Irene.
Regardless of what the viewers did, the Tower remained eerily quiet.
Neither black nor red harpies were visible in the sky anymore, making it hard to tell whether this was the Tower or an unexplored territory of the kingdom.
Perhaps because the harpies had decreased, the shadow leopards and single-horned goats appeared a bit more frequently, but that's just a slight increase.
The important things in the story were the underground stone dwarves and the above-ground harpies, and neither appearing made me feel strangely uncomfortable.
“Was it something on the 45th floor that made the harpy appear, or has it never appeared here?”
“The black harpy was originally here. The newly appeared one is the intelligent commanding type, the red harpy. So, it's strange that even the wild black harpies are gone.”
“Now that you mention it, it is weird that there’s nobody on the 47th floor.”
When you think about it, isn’t this the first time our party has come up completely empty?
In the original story, something would always happen, whether it was orc warriors appearing, golems, or even doppelgangers popping out to confuse us about where to go.
But this time, like throwing a curveball, nothing appears, and it’s just baffling.
The sensation of helplessness when you forget where you placed your phone and can't recall the last time you used it, is oddly overwhelming and stifling.
It wasn't exactly despair, but it was undeniably as subtly uncomfortable as trying to breathe with a stuffy nose.
"…We've almost finished exploring the 48th floor. Should we check every corner of the 48th, or should we go up to the 49th?"
As the calm yet stifling exploration continued, the minimap was fully illuminated.
Despite covering not just the shortest paths but the surrounding areas too, no clues had been found, since the frequency of battles was significantly lower.
At this point, the viewers, who had moved on from discussing Han Se-ah's alleged pregnancy to squirrel meat, were gossiping imaginatively.
It was a natural phenomenon to become more talkative when no engaging battles were occurring visually.
Wasn't it like when the quest line got tangled during the worm encounter in the cave?
With the Harpy Kingdom appearing, we should ride harpies to explore over the mountains.
No, we should cooperate with the stone dwarves to find something underground, since the mid-boss emerged from there—―
'Most are suggesting we go back.'
Perhaps due to what had happened below, most viewers seemed to think Han Se-ah had missed something.
From a gaming perspective, it was a valid argument.
A mid-boss appeared on the 45th floor, and a boss monster on the 50th.
Then, the clues must be somewhere between the 46th and 49th floors, right?
If anomalies started on the 47th floor, they would at least be somewhere on the 47th or 48th floors.
It seemed our party members were thinking the same.
"Maybe it would be best to go back and check again?"
"Originally, doing things step by step is best, like knights training their lower bodies."
"Yes. Being in a hurry won't solve anything."
Grace, Katie, and Irene might not know about the game's quests, but each seemed to think we might have missed something on the way up.
Maybe because, like at the orc temple, someone else had discovered what we hadn't.
We decided to go back, gather information, and re-explore.
If necessary, we would even ask for cooperation from the Harpy Queen and Old Bobo.
Everyone nodded in agreement with Han Se-ah's decision as the party leader, settling down inside the cave.
At least we’ve bought some time to learn about the awakening.
So, without much thought, we headed back down…
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