4-3. The Dragon Count
"?"
The dark-haired middle-aged man turned his head.
His hair had an unusual sheen to it—and the same was true of everyone following behind him.
"What's wrong?"
"Just now...... someone used my power."
"Huh?"
The young man trailing behind wore a baffled expression. The middle-aged man gazed toward the distant kingdom, then turned back.
"Never mind. Let's go."
He'd definitely felt something peculiar, but chalked it up to oversensitivity.
Perhaps because they were nearing the sacred ground. The middle-aged man quickened his pace.
An open, sweeping sky.
The Sky Mountains.
Six figures climbed along a dizzyingly high ridgeline. The middle-aged man stopped occasionally to wait for the young men following behind.
In truth, he could have flown there in no time by himself. But his sons couldn't do the same, so he showed them consideration.
"Huff. Huff. Father. I'm dying."
"Stop whining."
They stopped midway for a packed lunch and only then reached their destination. The most mystical place within the mystical Sky Mountains. The middle-aged man waved his hand, and clouds gathered over the gorge.
"Watch your tongues from here on."
They parted through the mist-like clouds and descended the slope. Before long, they arrived at a place with five boulders the size of small hills. The boulders were gradually 'awakening' in step with their approach.
= You have come.
Their forms grew distinct, hollows opened to become eyes, and the boulders rolled their massive heads to regard the newcomers.
"I pay my respects, Father."
Ancient beings. Five dragons. The one in the center rumbled.
= Your king—does he still stand?
"Yes. He is in good health."
= You said it was certain this time because he sired a daughter. When is it going to happen? I'll die of old age waiting.
Another dragon cut in. The one on the left, rolling its body over.
The one on the right retorted, asking whether they even could die of old age, but the dragon in the center was unfazed and spoke.
= The time of prophecy will come. The time when the king is slain, and opportunity is given to all creation. It draws near; there is no need for impatience.
The dragon on the opposite side challenged this again. The dragons began bickering amongst themselves, and after a long wait, the middle-aged man could no longer hold back and cut in once the chatter subsided.
"Father."
= You were still here? We are finished, so go. Come back next year with good news. Ah. Your children have grown well. They will serve.
"......"
The dragon closed its eyes as if it had nothing more to say.
When those orange reptilian eyes shut, it transformed back into a massive boulder, returning to being part of the Sky Mountains. The other dragons did likewise.
"Whew. Father, thank you for your trouble. Now that we've paid our respects, that's it for this year."
That was the second son's remark. Damlir, the Dragon Count, worked his lips silently while staring at the boulder masses for a long time.
He was thinking about how, moments ago, someone had stolen his power.
'Senile old fools. Things will not go the way you want.'
The Dragon Count's eyes smoldered with fury.
***
"Goodness."
"Whoa......! Viscount! That was incredible!"
Viscount Alang looked back and forth between the scroll in his hand and the carnage behind him.
It was as if a meteor had carved a path through.
The heavy-armored knight at the head of the charge had been ripped apart and scattered, and the mounted soldiers behind him had all collapsed as mangled heaps.
He'd never heard of a scroll like this. He'd shouted at them to die, sure, but at best he'd expected the pursuit to slow down a bit...... The Viscount was gazing at the smoldering scroll as it slowly burned away when,
"Thank goodness it worked."
He spun around in surprise.
The scribe he'd hastily hired that morning was climbing out of the carriage. The Viscount adjusted his bearing considerably.
"Forgive me. I failed to recognize a man of your caliber. Thank you for your assistance."
"I'm glad it helped."
He said it calmly, but Suhyeok was exhaling his own sigh of relief.
In case it didn't work.
A single misspelling was all it took to throw an error in coding. To write dozens of lines by hand and still have it execute—that deserved to be called divine luck.
It had only been possible because the life-or-death pressure forced him into extreme focus. Suhyeok felt the exhaustion hit him all at once.
'Now what?'
He'd survived, for now. It was time to think about the fundamental problem.
How to escape this world.
The 'Shitty-Game Emergency Exit Button' he'd been counting on was ruled out, thanks to the storm giant. There was no interface like a quit button, and death wasn't a way out of the game either...... Suhyeok thought this might turn into quite the long haul.
'Don't tell me I actually have to become king.'
An ominous premonition flickered past.
If this world was modeled after KingRPG, then maybe. But it was an unwelcome premonition.
King? What is this, running for apartment building president?
The sheer absurdity of the prospect left a bitter taste in his mouth. Still, knowing that coding worked to some degree was at least reassuring.
"......Master Devrang?"
"......"
"Master Devrang!"
Suhyeok turned his head. Did he just call me? he thought, and the Viscount continued.
"Apologies if I interrupted. I was about to set off, but do you need more time?"
Oh. So that's my name.
Suhyeok realized there were things he needed to find out before tackling the vague, distant goal of 'escape.'
He asked in a roundabout way.
"Viscount, there's something I'd like to clarify before we depart. Regarding the...... the job you entrusted to me."
"Of course. I'd intended to bring it up gradually once we were on the move."
The Viscount replied as though he'd expected the question.
"I owe you an apology. I didn't anticipate the pursuit squad catching up so quickly either. I'll pay you more generously than the rate we agreed upon."
Just as I thought.
Something about the Viscount's attitude toward him had felt half-hearted.
At first Suhyeok had wondered, Am I his secretary? But for someone he employed, there was too much distance in how he treated him. His guess that it was a short-term contract seemed to be correct.
He'd probably picked up someone convenient while fleeing and put them to work. He might not have even told the scribe he was on the run.
Suhyeok frowned and asked.
"Could you be specific? How much are you raising it from, and to what?"
"I'll give you ten crowns."
The Viscount declared grandly.
But Suhyeok's expression remained flat. The Viscount was caught off guard, but Suhyeok was busy recalling item prices from KingRPG.
- "Let's use potions as the baseline?"
- "Yeah. It's easier to use consumables as the currency standard. Ten crowns buys one health potion. From there, you set other item prices—like ten loaves of barley bread for half a crown, that sort of thing."
- "Potions are that expensive?"
- "It's a spare life—of course it is!"
In the end, he couldn't be sure how many barley loaves one crown actually bought.
That was the job of the game designers who balanced the economy, not a developer like him, and figuring out the exchange value in this world-turned-real was another task for the future.
But if ten crowns were worth even half the value Juha had used as her example, and judging by the Viscount's confident expression alone, it had to be a substantial sum.
"So that includes the hazard pay."
"Yes. As I mentioned this morning, payment will be rendered as soon as the job is complete. For a hundred letters, a rate like this is one you won't hear anyone call insufficient."
"Hmm...... Agreed. But if that includes the cost of the scroll, I'd feel a little shortchanged."
At Suhyeok's grumbling, the Viscount cracked a sly smile. He brushed the scroll's ashes from his hand and let them scatter.
"Because that scroll didn't just save my life. Besides, you used my mana stone."
"......"
"No need to feel shortchanged. I have another proposal for you, beyond the scribing work. If you're amenable—shall we board, Master Mage?"
The Viscount gestured toward the carriage. Apparently the repairs were done; the coachman and escort knights were waiting for them to board.
What should I do?
Following the Viscount wasn't a bad option.
Fugitive or not, a small number of knights were guarding him. That was a benefit not to be ignored.
Because the game Juha and I had made was a dark fantasy. A world where inhuman creatures roamed freely, where might was law, and where a human life was worth no more than a fruit fly's.
So traveling with the Viscount and his escort would be the best immediate option for staying alive.
"Master Devrang?"
The Viscount pressed. Suhyeok deliberated briefly, then answered.
Even as the words left his mouth, the rather lavish carriage and the ten crowns lingered in his mind.
"I appreciate the offer, but I'll take my leave here."
"......Why?"
The Viscount asked, visibly surprised. Suhyeok offered a light excuse.
"Between the soldiers chasing us and everything else, this is more than I bargained for. I'd rather preserve my own life. I won't breathe a word of today's events to anyone, so please, just let me go."
For an instant, a flash of anger crossed the Viscount's eyes.
'How dare a commoner'—perhaps that was what he thought. But the Viscount wiped even that trace of emotion clean and spoke, still wearing his smile.
"You realize I could take you by force? I could have you tied to the back of the carriage."
A chilling threat. Suhyeok thought he might well be kidnapped if he stepped wrong, but he answered calmly.
"You could. But I don't think you will."
"Why not?"
Because your character setting says you're a righteous man.
Given a rare temperament in a dark fantasy world, which was precisely why he'd opposed the princess, and which was why he appeared in the intro as the narrator, lamenting the onset of a chaotic age.
And a man like that being murdered.
That was a deliberate device to set the tone for a cruel game. The Viscount had been put to good use as both narrator and object lesson.
"......"
Not that he could explain any of this. Rather than offer some clumsy justification, Suhyeok chose silence.
They held each other's gaze for a moment. Perhaps deciding Suhyeok was simply brazen, the Viscount snorted and let it go.
"You've got nerves. And a decent eye for people, too."
"Thank you."
"But live like that, and you'll die a terrible death. Consider yourself lucky this time. Let's go."
The Viscount drove his escort knights onward. Despite having had every ability to use those knights to coerce him.
Suhyeok breathed a sigh of relief.
In a situation where dying just meant restarting, there was technically no risk. Even so, the nerve he'd just shown Viscount Alang had been something of a gamble.
Because this wasn't purely a game world.
In a world like this, inflicting suffering worse than death on a person wasn't particularly difficult.
'And that's exactly why I turned down Viscount's offer.'
Despite its many advantages, this was the reason Suhyeok had refused.
The terrifying realism.
The fist he'd been clenching under his sleeve, tense the entire time, throbbed. Flies were already swarming the pile of dung left by an exhausted horse, and the midday heat bickered with the crisp forest breeze.
The carriage tilted under the Viscount's weight as he climbed aboard, and with a bark of "Move out!" The coachman whipped the horses forward, SNRRK—! PTOO—! hawking a wad of phlegm.
......This is supposed to be a game?
It seemed impossible—and yet the evidence that this was inside a game was equally undeniable. Code written on paper had actually worked. That was the clearest proof of all.
Between this insane realism and that irrefutable evidence, only one conclusion was possible.
A world where the program I built has been made real!
As a programmer and a gamer, it would've been a lie to say he wasn't excited by this truth.
Which was why he'd made the impractical choice. If this were pure reality, following the Viscount would've been the right call, but—If his game had been made real in this world, then for how long?
If things were different from the game, then how, and by how much?
He wanted to find that out first. Rather than follow the Viscount—who should've died today—and stumble into some derailed scenario.
And one more thing.
'I need to farm before I go.'
Off in the distance, where Dragon Count Damlir's ultimate had struck, things were glinting with an 'artificial' light.
A glow that was probably visible only to him, the player.