As soon as the update finished, I logged straight into Aurora.
I got kicked.
Emergency maintenance ended.
I couldn’t connect.
Only on the third try did the login finally stabilize. This trash game, could they manage the servers properly for once. It was obvious the user count would explode……
Even when I went into one of the usually quiet channels, it was packed. If you can’t log in, go outside or something; instead the place was full of clowns who’d been camping the queue.
There was already an announcement up saying you could get to the new continent from here, Bilal Harbor, so characters were popping in one after another.
And the lunatic showed up right next to me.
We’d logged out together after he trailed me around yesterday, so of course he’d be right beside me.
I let out a sigh all over again. He used to react the moment he saw me, but today he didn’t move right away. Guess the loading took a while and he went off somewhere for a bit after turning the game on. Too bad he doesn’t AFK like this more often.
In that brief gap, a party invite popped up fast.
<‘Rete’ has invited you to the ‘gg’ party.>
With this update, Rete had cashed in again and swapped weapons, so he was a pretty decent party member. We played together often anyway, so sending a party invite was only natural.
But this time… I had no choice but to hold back tears and hit decline.
[Guild]Rete: ?
[Guild]Rete: Why you acting expensive
[Guild]kk1234: I’m going to level with the lunatic
[Guild]Changcheon: ?
[Guild]Rete: ??
[Guild]kk1234: 『rainfall』 says he’s gonna keep harassing me even after the max level unlock so we just decided to party up
[Guild]Changcheon: 😂😂😂😂
[Guild]Rete: LMAO 😂😂😂😂
[Guild]BoomerLatte: K,,,,you cannot come,,,,?
[Guild]BoomerLatte: There are not,,many,,fine young men,,,like you,,,!!
[Guild]Changcheon: Ascalah is Holy-attribute anyway
[Guild]Changcheon: We don’t need K
[Guild]BoomerLatte: ok
[Guild]Changcheon: Please look for Changcheon, a 26-year-old devastatingly handsome mechanical engineer, instead of K
[Guild]Kim Mooni: Can we kick the pervert
[Guild]Rete: ok
[Guild]Changcheon: I was wrong
[Guild]shine..: We need to grab dungeons fast, let’s just go
[Guild]Rete: ok
[Guild]Rete: Let’s leave 『rainfall』’s man and go by ourselves
[Guild]kk1234: fuck
[Guild]kk1234: I’ve got a degenerate-meta Archmage with freakshow customization stalking me, 『rainfall』
[Guild]BoomerLatte: Oh,,,,,
[Guild]Rete: Wow~so jealous~
[Guild]Changcheon: Wishing you happiness ^^
[Guild]BoomerLatte: Are you,,,genuinely enjoying this?
[Guild]kk1234: — — no
[Guild]kk1234: I’m gonna leave a good impression this time and break up safely;;
[Guild]BoomerLatte: 😂😂😂😂
[Guild]Rete: You really not coming?
[Guild]Rete: We’re not sharing then?
[Guild]kk1234: Yeah yeah, I’m not sharing either
[Guild]Rete: lol
[Guild]Changcheon: 😂😂😂😂😂😂
[Guild]shine..: Let’s go already
I thought we’d at least shoot the breeze a bit, but they ditched me cleanly. Fine, I’ve got a party member who’s tenacious like a persistent stalker and has cracked specs anyway……
<You invite ‘『rainfall』’ to the party.>
<‘『rainfall』’ has joined the party.>
『rainfall』 must have come back to his desk right then, because he accepted the party invite immediately.
[Party]『rainfall』: Let’s go
[Party]kk1234: You’re going like that?
[Party]『rainfall』: Why?
[Party]kk1234: Your look is garbage
If it were a normal look I’d leave it alone, but his skin was fluorescent pink so my eyes already hurt, and on top of that he was wearing fluorescent sky-blue clothes so they hurt even more.
[Party]『rainfall』: People have the freedom to dress how they want
[Party]kk1234: Yeah and it’s fucking eye cancer
[Party]kk1234: How about respecting my right to protect my eyesight too?
I was sure he’d say one more thing, but 『rainfall』 quietly changed clothes. When he took off the eyesore cosmetic, his actual gear underneath showed.
A Levi 9-set, are you kidding me.
The [King’s Mage Levi] Set is a trade-locked gear set you only get by gathering quest items to craft entry tickets, grinding your ass off to get into the dungeon with those tickets, then grinding your ass off again inside the dungeon to pierce a disgusting drop rate and farm the pieces…
But that wasn’t the part that shocked me.
The Levi Set was certainly strong against Holy-attribute, but if you already had existing gear, it wasn’t strong enough to justify collecting the whole set. The fact that he’d bothered to collect a full 9-set of that gear told me just how much of a stagnant-water freak 『rainfall』 was. And the creepiest part was… he probably put that set together because of me.
Soon 『rainfall』 put his look items back on. This time it was a dingy-colored robe. As long as it didn’t hurt my eyes, I didn’t care what he wore, but his fashion sense was truly unfathomable.
Does this bastard actually dress like that in real life too?
I’d never once wondered how a real person dressed just because of how their in-game avatar looked. But since 『rainfall』 was so rigidly the same down to his core, for the first time I was curious.
[Party]『rainfall』: Satisfied?
[Party]kk1234: Yeah, ok
Good thing 『rainfall』 cut it off before I had a brain fart and asked. No matter how much he’s the kind of bastard that makes my skin crawl enough to want to peek inside his skull, I didn’t actually want to know about his real-life domain. I mean, I was curious, but.
I clicked on the new NPC standing between the crowd of players, and a cutscene popped up right away. It looked like they’d spent some money on it; in the video, deep-blue waves and a massive sailing ship slid by in sequence.
When the cutscene and loading ended together, 『rainfall』 and I were standing in Ascalah’s first map, Nersha Port Town.
I turned my camera a bit and saw a golden pillar of light shining in the sky. It was the marker for a new main quest, something I hadn’t seen in a while since finishing the last main quest before the update.
[Party]kk1234: You did all the previous main quests, right?
[Party]『rainfall』: You think I chased you around without even doing those?
[Party]kk1234: What?
[Party]kk1234: That’s weirdly pissing me off
[Party]『rainfall』: 😂
So he can laugh too. Of course he can. But what the hell is so funny, asshole.
Anyway, following the main quest was the fastest way to level up. Main quests gave a lot of EXP.
When I moved my character and went to the marker, there was an NPC standing there who looked exactly like the type who’d hand out a main quest: a knight commander.
[Knight Commander Ricardo] So you’re an adventurer from across the sea. Welcome. However, this continent has its own laws and customs. I ask that you be mindful of them.
I skipped through the dialogue window with ESC and accepted the quest. But even after I finished taking all the quests, 『rainfall』 stayed silent for quite a while.
[Party]kk1234: What are you doing?
[Party]kk1234: Take a shit?
[Party]『rainfall』: Gross
[Party]『rainfall』: Do you want to die?
[Party]kk1234: I apologize
Whether he meant it or not, 『rainfall』 immediately swapped his gear to his PvP set. I guess the level of jokes that worked on my guildmates didn’t land with him. I started groveling right away.
[Party]『rainfall』: Hold on
[Party]kk1234: Why
[Party]『rainfall』: I think I found a hidden quest
[Party]『rainfall』: It’s related to the princess of Riphart..
[Party]kk1234: Riphart??
Riphart was a kingdom near the level-80 hunting grounds. Even people like me who skipped text had no choice but to memorize it, because there were a lot of dungeons and items with the Riphart name on them…
I didn’t know the details because I skipped, but I’d heard that in terms of the main quest story, it was also a major turning point. Only then did 『rainfall』’s words start to grab my interest a little.
[Party]kk1234: What is it
[Party]『rainfall』: The princess of Riphart is missing
[Party]『rainfall』: I did a quest before where they said they’d reward you if you found her
[Party]『rainfall』: And the NPC they just mentioned in this quest matches the description of that princess from before
[Party]kk1234: Oh...
Wait, so it isn’t that the game flagged it as a hidden quest outright, you just deduced it?
Who the hell remembers the description of an NPC they saw ages ago? Normally, when you go after this kind of hidden quest, you strip-mine the official site and the wiki.
A dumb lunatic is scary, but a smart lunatic is even scarier, and 『rainfall』 was the latter. It was too chilling to just be impressed. That obsession he used to camp for half a year and ambush me probably came from that same memory, didn’t it.
[Party]kk1234: That’s impressive...
[Party]『rainfall』: It’s nothing
Even that humility made him seem insane. Anyone could see it was insane. I was just glad that madness wasn’t currently pointed directly at me.
[Party]kk1234: Got any idea how to trigger it?
[Party]『rainfall』: There aren’t enough hints yet
[Party]『rainfall』: Let’s clear the nearby dungeons first
[Party]kk1234: ok
Main quests pop up with their own notification window, but hidden quests are different. When you don’t have any clues to tackle a hidden quest, the first thing to do is kill the surrounding monsters or run the nearby dungeons.
We headed to Lapir Great Forest, the nearby dungeon, to clear it while doing the main quest. When we got to the entrance of the Great Forest, it was overflowing with people looking for parties.
[General]Eogust: The difficulty is fucking nutsㅡㅡ
[General]Simdan: Minimum 4-man party, yeah yeah;
Judging from their noisy griping, they’d already gone in and died. Did we need to recruit more party members too?
[Party]kk1234: Looks like it’s hard to clear with just two
[Party]『rainfall』: Are you scared of going in with just the two of us?
[Party]kk1234: ?
[Party]『rainfall』: I’ll find people
[Party]kk1234: Excuse me???
If I heard that line and still insisted on recruiting people, I’d really be chickening out.
[Party]『rainfall』: Good, if you’re not scared then
The fact that I could tell that bastard’s oh-so-considerate words were sincere just pissed me off more. If this bastard so much as dies, I’m going to resurrect him and subject him to every humiliation I can think of…
And the chance to clown 『rainfall』 never came.