The Big Fish

"Did you get in touch with him?"

"The phone won't connect, and his stream is offline. He probably went to sleep."

"Seriously? He finally got selected, and on the first day, instead of grinding, he went to bed."

"They're all in their thirties. They have families to take care of, so it's understandable that they can't spend all their time gaming."

"Give me a break. I know that guy. He's an iron-blooded old virgin. What family could he possibly have?"

"..."

Aperria walked in the middle of the group, silently listening to the Chosen Ones talk.

Having grown up in a small village, she did not understand terms like "stream," but she could roughly infer their meaning. She knew these Otherworlders had their own unique ways of communicating.

If even they could not contact their abducted companions, had something truly happened to them?

Aperria could not help worrying.

The Lord had told her that whether they had been abducted or had left of their own accord, it was best not to waste time searching for Chosen Ones who had fallen behind.

Because she possessed the power of "leveling up," the Chosen Ones would naturally gather around her.

But these Chosen Ones were the village's hope of salvation. So long as she did not go against the Lord's wishes, Aperria still wanted to bring as many Chosen Ones back to the village as possible.

Aside from the Shadow Race guide walking at the front, there had been thirty-two Chosen Ones traveling back to the village with her. Now, three were unconscious, two had been abducted, and only twenty-seven remained active.

And it had only been a little over thirty hours since they left Iron Wall City.

The fog around them grew thicker and thicker. After entering the Misty Forest, those unpredictable Chosen Ones seemed to understand just how dangerous this place was, and all of them became much more obedient.

The group wandered through the forest, where visibility was less than twenty meters, and finally found a campsite where they could rest before night fully fell.

According to the Shadow Race guide, because their group was so large, even if this was not a monster spawn point, they would still draw in the surrounding monsters after nightfall.

So they needed strong people to stand watch.

Fortunately, the other two knights were handling the night watch tonight, so Aperria could get a good night's sleep.

That Silver Rank Shadow Race Chosen One was at least more reliable than the others.

Nothing about him seemed especially remarkable, but among this chaotic group of Chosen Ones, he appeared to possess a certain degree of prestige.

The group lit a bonfire and built a simple temporary camp around it.

The dangers of the wilderness were impossible to predict. Even with trusted companions keeping watch, Aperria, exhausted beyond measure, still did not remove her armor. She simply leaned against the roots of a large tree and prepared to rest.

The Chosen Ones who intended to sleep also found suitable concealed spots for themselves, lest they be caught up in danger after logging out.

Yet some Chosen Ones still came before the nearly asleep Aperria. After offering a few superficial compliments, they asked her to help them level up.

It was not that these players could not see how sleepy the Holy Maiden was. But after dying in this game, all Experience Points stored on their bodies would be cleared. Saved experience was nothing but a burden, and using it all before logging out was the normal way to think.

Li Li had instructed Aperria that if she encountered a Chosen One she particularly detested, she should make him scrub toilets for two or three days before considering whether to level him up.

However, when other Chosen Ones requested to level up, she was to accommodate them as much as possible.

With the help of that Beast-Ear Race woman, the two of them quickly helped these Chosen Ones finish leveling up.

Just as Aperria thought she could finally rest, a bird's head with terror still in its eyes was thrown before her.

What kind of bird was this?

Aperria's brain was so exhausted that it had become too sluggish to think.

Beside her, Aer instinctively lunged forward and threw a punch ahead.

"BOOM!!!"

The full-force strike of a Legendary Rank transcendent instantly triggered a sonic boom, sweeping away a vast fan-shaped stretch of forest ahead and turning it into bare mud.

The next instant, the place blasted into a huge crater returned to normal without warning.

It had restored itself?

When had that happened?

Aperria's brain completely crashed.

"Don't move around, little girl. If you do that, I'll have to count all over again." An unfamiliar old man's voice came from all directions.

Only then did Aperria realize that Aer had somehow become entangled as though in a spiderweb, suspended in midair.

"Thirty-one Otherworlders, six Gold Knights, one Legendary woman."

"Why are two Otherworlders missing?"

"Oh, right. Here they are."

As the old man's voice faded, the two Chosen Ones who had been abducted earlier were thrown into the camp from some unknown direction.

Aperria wanted to draw her sword, but after reaching several times, she could not touch its hilt.

She seemed to have completely lost her sense of direction, unable even to distinguish up from down or left from right. She clearly meant to draw the Holy Sword at her waist, yet her hand reached upward instead. To an observer, her helpless movements might even have looked somewhat comical.

But Aperria knew that today, she would give her life for the Lord's cause.

As the Lord's Holy Maiden, not only had she failed to injure the Lord's enemy in the end, she did not even know what the enemy looked like.

This was her own dereliction of duty. She deserved such an end.

She felt no fear toward the death about to come. What filled Aperria's heart more was guilt toward the Lord.

The players who had not yet logged out also discovered the abnormality in the surrounding space.

For these veteran players who had long since reached level 200, this feeling of completely losing their sense of direction was way too damn familiar!

Wasn't this that profession in the arena specifically designed to disgust people?

"Damn! An Illusion Domain Walker! It was bad enough when people used this thing to disgust me in the arena. Why is an NPC playing a Wheelchair Profession too?!"

"Huh? A fifth-turn profession?"

"Fuck, those two idiots who logged out got sent back!"

The players' uninhibited complaints made the old man hiding in the shadows sigh.

"As expected of Otherworlders from the future. If they are allowed to grow, they may become an unpredictable calamity. They must be strangled here."

"Indeed."

While the old man was muttering to himself, a young thug with a mohawk placed a hand on his shoulder.

Not far away, a middle-aged man in military uniform snapped his fingers.

In an instant, everything in the camp seemed to freeze, locked in that very moment.

"Fuck, an Hourglass Guard! The prerequisite profession for a Time Palace Knight—another wheelchair!"

"I know why the Alliance got destroyed now. NPCs played too many wheelchair professions. Even the Boss couldn't stand it anymore."

Those were the complaints the players wanted to make after being frozen.

But because time itself had stopped around them, every word was trapped in their mouths.

Without saying a word, the old man looked at the hand resting on his shoulder, then at the middle-aged man in military uniform who had frozen time.

"General, today is your daughter's birthday. At this very moment, you should be at your residence in New Hope City, giving a speech to the guests, myself included."

As he spoke, the old man looked again at the mohawk-wearing thug with his arm around him.

"And you. The police arrested so many members of the Mad Tyrant Dominate Shoot Shoot Gang. As the gang leader, why aren't you holding down the fort? What are you doing out in the wilderness?"

"You might not believe this." The mohawk-wearing thug picked his nose with the hand hooked around the old man's neck and said lazily, "A little bear doll that looked re~al~ly perverted kept shouting in my dreams, telling me to follow that brain-dead idiot. It said I could hook a big fish."

He wiped the booger onto the old man's collar and looked around in confusion.

"Buddy, help me take a look. Where's the big fish?"

The previous level 120–150 setting was "Mythical Rank," which was ambiguous, so it has now been changed to "Hero Rank."