VIP Chapter 327: The Fate of an Insignificant Character’s Death
【Quest -1: Accept Death (Try to avoid it if possible).】
【Important Information: The Dungeon where one dies by being crushed by a Slime is named: Dust Bone Corridor.】
Compared to all other quests, this one was simpler and easier to understand, but for the three of them, it was more shocking than any before.
“De… Death?! What’s going on? Wh-Why would Young Master… why would he write ‘accept death’ on this page?”
The word that Iaar seized upon was undoubtedly “death.” The ears on her head shot up, as if sensing a grave threat.
—Death? What death? Is Young Master facing death?
—Death… means never, ever seeing Young Master again? Never hearing him speak again?
This word had always been distant for her. But now, as it lay before her eyes, the jokes Will had “taught” her about death seemed to surge towards “fulfillment.”
“Getting… crushed to death by a Slime… This description, Iaar is familiar with this description, very familiar!”
Her eyes widened as she stared at the lines. These few lines reminded her of Will, in the mornings, with a Slime perched on his head, when she entered his room from some point in time.
Iaar had always assumed it was another one of Will’s peculiar habits. But she seemed to have forgotten something: Will was always about efficiency and results, a person who didn’t do anything useless.
“Accept… avoid… try…”
Meanwhile, Liya murmured these keywords intermittently.
“Damn it, why didn’t I realize this before this page—”
A bit anxiously, she punched the desk with her fist, then brushed her hair back from her forehead with her other hand, a gesture to calm herself.
Will didn’t possess the maturity of a “student.” Will seemed to have a foresight like that of a prophet, as well as the series of “subsequent stories” he had arranged in this “Quest System.”
Liya, who had once regarded him as a “precocious student,” saw flashes of his actions at school.
Everything had been a precursor to one thing, something she should have discovered much earlier…
Death.
For a person, truly disappearing from this world.
For her, it was a distant and terrifying word. A “witch” with such a long life was still very far from that death…
“No, why… why didn’t I realize when he kept muttering about it, he must have meant…”
“Fate?”
Treya finished Liya’s unspoken sentence.
She didn’t seem as outwardly shaken as the other two, but she clenched her fists.
Treya’s eyes scanned the page of the “Quest System.” Besides the light Iaar was holding, it seemed to be illuminated by a faint moonlight entering from the window.
To her, this book was “colorful”—perhaps because it was so closely connected to Will.
But…
If… If Will died…
Wouldn’t that mean she would lose even that color?
“If it’s fate… Iaar, when did he first mention this word?”
More anxious than usual, she posed a new question to Iaar.
“When I was very, very young. I don’t even know the earliest time myself… but this book, it should be… he wrote it when he was ten.”
“Earlier than I expected…”
“Why are you asking this? Could it be…”
As she answered the question, Iaar, whose thoughts had been in disarray, suddenly straightened them out.
“You mean… the so-called ‘fate’ that Young Master mentioned… Could it be… could it be…”
Iaar paused. Her voice, which was naturally higher due to being a Half-Beastman, gradually lowered.
“…He knew long ago, that years later, he would die in the Dust Bone Corridor?”
“That’s right. After reading the Quest System he wrote like a diary, even the slowest person would understand!”
Liya raised her head, biting her lip, tears welling in the corner of her eyes.
“Will—your Young Master, your ‘Fiancé,’ and my good student… he knew from the very beginning when, where, and how he would die!”
“This book… it’s his declaration of resistance. No, it should be ‘acceptance’ of fate.”
Treya, unfazed by Liya’s outburst, flipped her finger past that page.
After this page was content she had never seen before, but Iaar and Liya had already encountered.
The page was densely filled with “Heroine.”
Seeing this for the first time, Treya’s pupils dilated slightly. The purple hue left by the demon in her eyes, brushed by the moonlight, appeared slightly dim.
The one who taught her about “desire,” indeed, also had a “desire” they couldn’t let go of?
But, instead (five) for the six. In the neighboring. VIP. Ling. Meng read this “chapter” he wrote for herself, the three of them still hadn’t found the “answer”—
Where was Will now?
The mysteries surrounding him only deepened, and the fog of suspicion grew thicker.
It was harder than ever to decipher his thoughts.
They had once believed that with their “love,” with Will’s “interactions” that surpassed friendship, even if they weren’t the people who understood him best in the world, they must be the ones who could control him the most.
But now…
If his “being alive” was built upon a known, impending “death.”
Everything he had done seemed to be overturned.
“If… If Young Master wrote these quests accepting his death, what was his purpose…”
“The Heroine? It must be the Heroine! So, is it Shuna who took him away?”
“I don’t think so. At least not when he wrote this book…” Treya denied Liya. “Because, as Iaar once told us, his correspondence with that woman also came much later than the writing of this book.”
“Right… right. When Young Master wrote this book, he hadn’t received the first letter from Mr. S yet.”
“So, that idiot… he… he knew his own death, but what… what was he doing all this for…”
“The answer, perhaps in…”
Treya casually flipped through the “Quest System,” turning to the very beginning, the first page of the “Quest System,” which read “Maid Iaar Chapter,” a place Iaar had strongly protested against opening.
“In the chapter belonging to us.”
“…”
The three fell silent for a moment.
But this “silence” this time was not one of complete inactivity.
Liya, the most direct, unhidden, and ostentatious, wiped away the tears from the corner of her eyes and rushed to the “Quest System.”
She frantically flipped through the Quest System, finding the beginning and end of the “Witch Liya Chapter.”
“Liya—what are you doing?! Don’t just flip through… through Young Master’s writings.”
“I’m taking away the part he wrote for me. Of course, I don’t want anyone else to read my chapter, but… it’s okay for me to take a part of myself, right?”
Liya tore out the loose-leaf pages of that section, folded the thick stack of about fifty pages, and placed them into her ring.
Then, she turned and walked towards the entrance.
“…Where are you going?”
Treya asked coldly.
“…I don’t care anymore, I’m going to the Dust Bone Corridor— I don’t know where this place is now, and I don’t know where Will is, but as long as… as long as I get rid of the Dust Bone Corridor, he won’t die there— right?!”
“Right!” Iaar stepped forward, her ears standing particularly firm on her head, her lamp shaking in her hand. “As long as… as long as it doesn’t exist, Young Master won’t die there.”
Then, Iaar lowered her head, and her gloved hands flipped through her own chapter, collecting every single page.
“Are you planning to leave tonight?”
“What? Do you have any brilliant ideas?”
“Do you know where the Dust Bone Corridor is?”
“…”
Iaar and Liya fell silent.
“Even if we don’t know where it is, we’ll know if we look at the Adventurer’s Guild map.”
“The Adventurer’s Guild is closed now.”
“Then we’ll break in and look!”
“Liya… that sounds like… you do this often…”
A peculiar smile flickered across Treya’s face. She walked past the two and casually took her own portion.
“Were you mocking me just now?!”
“I know where it is. It’s also a coincidence… Let’s rest a bit, tidy up, and meet at five in the morning.”
“Why didn’t you tell us you knew where it was earlier…”
Before Liya could finish speaking, Treya again held a finger to her lips, signaling Liya to be quieter.
“If we take my carriage. And use the Royal route instead of the post road…”
Treya glanced out the window. Judging by the moonlight, it was already past midnight.
“We’ll definitely arrive by tomorrow afternoon.”
For some reason.
Even though it had only been five minutes since they learned that Will had been carrying a countdown to death above his head.
Yet, the three of them felt an unusual urgency.
Even Treya, who appeared calm, could feel an unexpected restlessness in her heart.
A strange sense of crisis washed over them.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dust Bone Corridor, 5 AM—
【Quest -1: Accept Death (Try to avoid it if possible).】
For some reason…
At five in the morning, before the sun had even risen, Will looked up at the colossal entrance of the Dungeon, standing within its shadow, and the quest inexplicably came to his mind.
He clenched the Tai Chi Staff in his hand, then felt over the three crucial items that enhanced his abilities from the “outside,” confirming their condition was intact.
“Accept death? Perhaps because I currently look like I’ve accepted death?”
It wasn’t the first quest he had written.
But before writing every quest, this quest was etched in his mind.
The entire “Quest System: Make the Losers Blacken” was devised with this quest as its premise.
Devised with the future in which he would surely die.
Before he even wrote this quest, there were still many years until this death, and even the appearance of the Dust Bone Corridor.
But now, all choices lay before him.
“But with my current state of mind, I absolutely refuse.”
“Because I truly want to live here now.”
“To live here as the Will whom everyone loves.”
He took a deep breath.
He glanced back.
The sun, which had left its afterglow yesterday, now painted the distant sea with the colors of dawn. Everything was as usual, but it had not yet risen.
Caressing his chest, feeling his heartbeat, he pushed open the door to the “Dust Bone Corridor.”
“Come on. This is what I should face and can change…”
“The fate of an insignificant character’s death.”
