Esther de Baronia - Chapter 2.2

He closes his eyes then opens them but the digital numbers on the screen remain unchanged. It’s still 22:14P.M..

He takes a deep breath and exhales strongly. Then, suddenly, he punches the table.

It didn’t make any sense. He didn’t know why, but his heart whispered to him that he should do it.

He’s forgetting something important.

With a dull thud, his fist makes contact with the table. It is impossible for a weak body to scratch the table. The impact ran from his fist through his arm and transmitted to his shoulder, and at the same time another sensation ran through him.

“Pain…..!!!”

Intense pain shots through his right arm, Andy held his fists, which were bleeding and skin peeling a little from a bad punch.

The question then swells up.

“Why does it hurt so much, why can I feel pain?”

There is no feature in Apocalypse thatallows the player to feel pain. There is no need for such a feature, as this is not a game where you go to war yourself.

What’s more, VRMMORPGs are designed to reduce the pain to some extent. This is because there is a risk of death if the player feels the same amount of pain as being hurt by an enemy.

It is common knowledge that the system is designed to prevent agonizing pain damage from ever occurring.

But here he is, with pain running through his hand, a pain that is beyond the realm of comprehensible damage and the sensation of it.

“Oh, wait.. wait…Wait a minute.”

It’s not directed at anyone. With no time to wait, he repeatedly pleaded with someone who wasn’t there, opened his inventory, thought of the name of an item from the vast array of items, and pulled it out into the air.

It was an ordinary hand mirror. It’s a cheap silver hand mirror with no special effects or skills attached; it glows as it floats in front of him. When he grabs the handle with his trembling hands, the light dissipates and the mass of the mirror settles in his hand.

Looking directly at the mirror that appeared in front of him. In it, he saw a face he hasn’t seen in a while – his avatar.

It’s a game that works wonderfully. Yet it gives a painfully real sensation. There is far too little information about what that sentence meant.

The one thing he does know was that this wasn’t a dream, but a virtually immersive game.

“Wait..isn’t this ridiculous?! this is a strategy game, it doesn’t work like that, it’s a game where you don’t feel any pain when you fall. Why does it hurt so much? Something doesn’t feel right.”

As tears of fear flowed through his eyes, his head trembled violently from the inside vibrating through his skull and to his skin, hoping somehow this was all a misunderstanding.

Now he just wants to wake up from this scarily realistic dream. He would rather go back to reality than go through this horrible experience. He wants his body back.

But as if to ignore his wish, the room remains silent and the dull sound of the punch reverberates in his ears. This only adds to his fear, as he rushes to open the system window.

He doesn’t have to say it openly, but because he was so upset that he shouted instead.

“System!”

On the window that opened, he selected an option. All he has to do is to look at the first letter from the bottom, select it, choose logout and accept the confirmation that the game is over.

If you’re really in the game, that’s all you need to do to get out of it.

If it’s a system malfunction…

And yet.

The button he wanted is not there.

At the bottom of the list wasn’t an option, but a local information section. It should have been second from the bottom, but it is definitely at the bottom in front of him.

There is no way out.

“Ha..ha…ha.”

A dry laugh came. Then he recalls the strange things that has happened since he woke up. First, there’s no way he won’t wake up feeling this severe pain. Second, he’s sure he’s in the game, but he can’t get out of it. Lastly, Rushka has feelings and complex facial expressions.

He understood..

—He’s in the midst of a mysterious phenomenon.

“Ah, this is crazy…

He gets up and kicks the table vigorously, but it didn’t budge. The pain is irresistible, but nothing changes.

“I’m not going to let that stop me,” he said.

Although he was irritated, he learned how to suppress his anger as he grew older. He takes a few deep breaths to calm himself down, folds his arms slowly and lowers his eyes.

And sorted out the current situation and events.

Karon played the game until 9 p.m just before the maintenance time.

“So far, so good,” he says as he makes his way around the castle to meet Rushka.

There is no mistake so far and he remembered everything he did.

Even if the system had failed to force him to log out, he would still have no problem. He’ll accept that the lack of options is also a result of problems that’s stacked.

Here’s the problem.

He doesn’t know why, but before he knew it, he was asleep. He woke up in a room in the royal castle of Esther de Baronia. A room that he made for himself. It’s strange at this point.

Next, when he woke up, he saw Rushka. She has facial expressions and her words feel as if they had emotions. He remembered that she was moving as if she was alive, and he knew this was wrong too.

The NPCs don’t move on their own. They don’t move without the player’s will.

NPCs do not have personalities. Even if they have a personality, it is only reflected in the combat system, and they only speak in fixed phrases.

Conclusion. In the blank space of time when he was unconscious, something happened.

It’s possible that dreams are exciting. They get stronger and make your body uneasy. If he is in the game, he can wait silently until the system is restored, even if he can’t log out.

But what if, in that reality, there is a scene that doesn’t exist? Rushka is a good example of this.

A mechanical doll, which was never programmed to express emotions, shows a wide range of expressive movements, as if it were natural. If this is not horror, what is?

The management’s solution? Strengthen the only character with AI when they threw away the update? Why would they bother with a pointless pain patch?

Even if they did, it would only take effect after restarting and downloading the update file, which – assuming you haven’t logged out – this doesn’t apply to Karon.

In other words, he is now in a dreamlike reality, with familiar landscapes and characters.

Who can understand this? How can this happen?

“I’m scared.someone please help me… I’m scared. What the hell is this? I don’t understand. Let me go home. To the world where I am. To Japan.”

“Let me go home!”

He stands up and howls at the ceiling with such force that the sofa shifted. Of course it doesn’t work. There is no such thing.

There is no such thing as a dog policeman to guide a lost kitten in this world.

His mind is confused. He can’t make any distinction between dream and reality. He doesn’t know if he’s dreaming or waking up, like the story of the Butterfly Dream.

Fighting the urge to go mad, Karon decided to think some more. Then, a life-threatening thought springs up.

What if this really is another world, just like the game? What if this is a world that is not like the game?

Are his subordinates really his?

What are the chances that he won’t be killed if he meets the strongest of them, the ones he had raised using even charged items to fix their loyalty?

Can he really call them his servants in the first place? Does he have the strength to fight them?

“…..”

The way Rushka looked at him, he would say she wasn’t lying about her devotion. If she wanted to kill him, she could have easily done so by attacking him in his sleep.

She is in charge of all the internal affairs of the country, and his only job is to stamp the seal. He’s not sure if he’d be able to do that if he was her. From the point of view of value, Karon is unnecessary.

There is no benefit in letting such a person live, so he thinks about the reasons why they are keeping him alive.

His best guess is that it is because of her loyalty. He concludes that Rushka is a trustworthy person. He doesn’t know how much help she will give him, but he doesn’t think he has to worry about being treated unfairly at the moment. So it’s best for him to stay close to her and check on the situation.

No, it’s not good.

What’s wrong is that what he just said is very bad.

He told her to gather the leaders in the throne room, but they have the same ability as Rushka alone.

If they meet in the same place and all of them are hostile, can he escape? It’s impossible. Probably, half of the 17 groups will be the worst.

One army commander is deployed in each direction of the country and one in the sky.There is no doubt that the five bodies will not appear.

There are 12 left, but he thinks one of them will not show up for some reason. There are 11 left. To be honest, he feels like he’s stuck with all of them.

Karon has 17 armies in the country, with 1-10 armies engaged in combat, and 11-17 armies basically doing security and other miscellaneous tasks.

If they get together, he calculates that up to 7 out of 10 heads of combat groups will come.

“What should I do? What should I to do?”

As he clenches his fist and covers his mouth. And then ponder again.

The first thing that comes to his mind is his own stupidity. Then his personality, and finally, his very own existence.

If they don’t like these things, he can be killed.

This is a big omission, because it didn’t include dissatisfaction with the internal affairs or the treatment of the army.

So what can he do to get rid of all these things?

It’s easy to say, so he just says it: “Don’t be a nutter”.

It’s impossible to be a jerk to literal monsters. If he goes too far, they might even find it offensive. But there is no other way to live. If he doesn’t know how they think of him, he can’t afford to fail at the first attempt.

The stress and tension gradually accumulated. His palms were sweaty and sweat ran down his forehead.

He would like to punch himself in the face for achieving the feat of building an open death flag in an incomprehensible world a few minutes ago. Karon slides off the sofa and held his head.

“What the hell …… did I do to deserve this?”

However, there is no help for lamenting or regretting.

When he tries to remember the blank time that he has forgotten beyond oblivion, the man who suddenly burst into tears, sobs his way through a world in which he is suddenly thrown into, a world in which he is the only otherworlder, as his sorrows vibrate quiet yet smooth echoes throughout the entire room.

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