Light of Arad: The First to Walk - Chapter 77



Only Noblemtl

077

Not all icebergs are created equal.

Jinseong himself is, after all, a ‘tongs’ with the ‘mission of a tongs’.

Its role is to ‘hold the blade from the side’ so that the blade can be forged and made sharper and stronger.

In other words, it is Jinseong’s role to find and correct the ‘contamination’ that is weakening the blade.

So what about these?

‘Those who must become the blade. The blade that must be forged.’

In other words, those who were recognized for their excellence as and were possessed by Plain: Arad.

In a sense, it means those who have been selected and are in the process of becoming .

Jinseong put away his weapon and moved slowly.

“First of all, calm down. If you suddenly ask me so many questions, I won’t know where to start answering. ”

One thing that is certain is that the woman who is trembling with anxiety now has overwhelmingly more information than Jinseong himself.

Just from the questions Jinseong asked himself a little while ago, how many things can he already infer?

‘There are more than one or two possessed adventurers. I don’t know when this person came here, but since he asked ‘how many years it is outside’, it must have been quite some time since he came here… … In the meantime, he must have met ‘how many’ possessed adventurers. And it must mean that they have all already passed through here, the heavenly realm.’

Also, the question about how long it took her to get to this place in the celestial realm can be understood as a question about the time it took to clear the ‘main scenario quest in the early part of Arad’, and the fact that she even asked that question is proof that it took her quite a long time.

“Huh? That, that’s why! First of all, your identity-.”

“Yes, that’s right. I’m a possessed person. If you’re talking about outside time, then you’re talking about the time right before I was possessed, so that was two thousand and twenty-.”

Jinseong understood all of her questions, but did not answer them all.

What kind of person is the person in front of me? I was planning to look into the situation by briefly mentioning only the parts that I didn’t mind talking about in order to figure that out first.

“Huh? Really?! It’s already like that outside?”

As soon as he heard the year, Jinseong had to be taken aback for a moment as he saw her face brimming with tears.

“That’s…right.”

“Lies! Really? Are you sure? Are you sure about the year!?”

“There’s no reason to lie about something like that-.”

“Then it’s actually been three years, not two… Hee-ing…”

Tears began to fall from her blue eyes.

It didn’t take long for the tears that had been flowing one or two drops to start flowing continuously.

“Excuse me, over there?”

“Already, already possessed, sob, already possessed…….”

She swallowed her words, sobbing.

There is one thing that can be vaguely understood from her words.

‘… … So it took almost 3 years for it to be resolved? If so-.’

Did you spend all that time ‘just’ coming to heaven?

Jinseong himself arrived here less than two months after being possessed?!

‘-Of course… … Those glasses that are similar to the Jinjin Awakening illustration… … ‘

Are you saying that these are just glasses that you picked up somewhere and put on?

Jinseong scratched his head in front of the female mechanic who was still sobbing and shedding tears.

If it’s a feeling you feel instinctively, it’s unlikely that the person in front of you, who was selected and possessed as ‘one who must become a true adventurer’ or ‘one of the candidates for the forged blade’, is a harmful person.

Jinseong’s mind hardened as he watched her attitude, which seemed harmless.

“Hey, first… … Shall we go? I don’t think we should stay here like this-.”

“Yes, hmm, let’s talk, hmm, let’s talk. It’s dangerous here.”

Even in the midst of all this, if there is a side of him that is worthy of being called a Bing-uija, it would be the fact that he moves to ensure safety even while shedding tears.

Jinseong silently followed her as she walked towards a street that was inaccessible to even regular users and, of course, had no NPCs placed there for them.

* * *

In an alley in the celestial capital of Ghent, Jinseong waited for a long time for her to collect her emotions, even after sitting across from her on a broken chair, before he could hear her story.

The name is Vivi. Level 57.

At the time of the incident, Bing was twenty-one years old.

‘I would say it’s been almost three years now. So I guess I should consider him to be close to twenty-four.’

However, even if you are 24 years old in reality, you are still a college student or a freshman in society, so you can say that you have just shed some of the high school vibe.

‘But the fact that you cried so much in front of me, who was just meeting me… … and seeing you say all these things to me when you don’t even know what kind of person I am-.’

He said that he became possessed shortly after he turned 21.

Maybe she’s been holding on here with the same mindset she had when she was a high school student.

There is a tendency to develop independence or self-reliance when left alone, but isn’t there also an opposite tendency?

‘I’m not the type of person who shrinks inward out of fear. I used to be like that too… …Before I started playing DnF, I barely had any friends in real life.’

How I have lived.

What kind of hardships have you had since being possessed by the game Dungeon & Fighter?

Jinseong, looking at Vivi sighing, thought of something and offered a few words of comfort.

“It must have been hard.”

“……Right. And female mecha! Even though I had theoretically calculated the data values! When I actually used the skills, it was hard to get the maximum damage value. I didn’t even know that I had to control those mechas one by one…… When I just analyzed the coefficients and compared them with perk cooldowns, I thought that mecha seemed the best among the female jobs, so I decided to do mecha, but if I had known it would turn out like this, I would have done something else.”

She told me in detail what had been building up, as if those words alone gave her strength.

At the same time, it was an embarrassing confession for Jinseong.

“Huh? ‘I said I would’? So you’re saying that Vivi chose her job herself? From Nemer?”

Jinseong himself simply became a dark knight.

I was suddenly called in without any notice.

But Vivi chose her own profession?

You gave me the opportunity to choose a career that was beneficial to me?!

“Huh? Nemer? I don’t know. There was a woman with wings and a spear. I saw her for the first time.”

To someone who doesn’t even know who Nemer is!?

Jinseong was momentarily confused, but soon he was able to recall his memories and put it together.

“You said it’s been about 3 years since you became a shaman, right? Less than 3 years?”

“yes.”

“So what was the last update? The last update in DnF before Ice Age?”

It was a question based on reasonable inference that only the past Dungeon & Fighter players who didn’t have a proper sense of what kind of being Nemer was could know, but Jinseong had to be even more flustered.

“It must have been a little after the Season 8 update. I saw that the max level was expanded to 110 and epic items were unlocked, and there were a few minor updates, and I was analyzing the balance changes to items and skills when I was suddenly caught up in it…….”

It wasn’t that long ago when Jinseong fell into Arad.

Compared to the Ranger user who was the reason he was brought here, it is rather very recent.

“Hmm? Then, in terms of the story, when you completed the epic quest, you went up to the Archmage’s Dimensional Corridor, right?”

“That, that… … I’m actually not really interested in stories and stuff… … I just skipped it all.”

“No, but even if that were true, I guess you could have heard about it anyway since it appeared in Legion?”

Unlike regular dungeons, Legion is a dungeon where the only focus is on fighting the ‘boss monster’.

This is a system in the game Dungeon & Fighter that focuses on the narrative through 1:1 battles with the ‘boss monsters’ that appear, especially since they occupy an important part in the main scenario quest, excluding all other regular monsters.

That means that the Transcendent Nemer is a major part of Plain: Arad, to the point that he appears in the , which has become a Legion dungeon!

‘I won’t reveal the name Nemer, but… …they look exactly the same.’

It was something that was absolutely incomprehensible to common sense.

“I just find it fun to analyze new item combinations and things like that… I don’t really care about monster names or anything like that…”

“ah.”

But Jinseong immediately changed his mind.

What may be ‘common sense’ to Jinseong himself may not be so to this person.

The duration is not the issue.

This person could be said to be another irregular, different from pure.

‘If that pure human being were doing everything at the same time… … it would feel a bit distracting and absent-minded-.’

Vivi, on the other hand, is the type that only focuses on one thing.

Are you so absorbed in your own interests that you can’t even recognize who summoned you, even though you’ve dealt with Nemer yourself?

When Jinseong thought about it that way, he felt like sighing.

‘… … Is it right to summon someone like this? A true adventurer and a candidate for the forged blade! Is that right?’

It was a genuine truth that even made Nemer’s forerunners slightly suspicious.

Of course, not all users of the game Dungeon & Fighter will immediately recognize Nemer or recall his name.

But in Dungeon & Fighter, a game that recommends multiple characters, isn’t it something that almost all experts who have reached a certain level or users who have enjoyed the game for a certain amount of time have experienced, such as leveling up characters from different occupations at least once?

‘If you’ve raised a knight class, it will appear in the prologue cutscene that appears as soon as you create a character!’

Vivi felt embarrassed and changed the subject, perhaps sensing that Jinseong was flustered.

“It was really hard to catch Bentinck… sigh.”

And those words were able to awaken the spirit of truth once again.

“Did you do the quest to catch Bentinck?”

“Yes. After finishing that, I was thinking about what the next quest would be, and then I saw you dragging Bentinck away yourself… That’s why I chased after you.”

Vivi said shyly.

As expected, it was an embarrassing remark to admit that he didn’t even know the order or flow of the quest, but that wasn’t what was on Jinseong’s mind at the time.

‘… … It was definitely contamination that started the rampage while Bentinck was being transported. That’s why I took care of it.’

I simply thought that the female gunner user’s quest had been corrupted.

But what if that wasn’t the case?

Jinseong looked into Vivi’s blue eyes.

“Why, why are you doing that?”

“No. If you’ve reached Bentinck, the next quest is the one we met. Deal with the TMH signalman.”

“Is that so?”

Vivi, who was under Jinseong’s intense gaze, quickly pushed up her gold-rimmed glasses and turned her head.

‘Not just users who enjoy the game… … . Can the quests of true adventurers and possessed people also be contaminated?’

『Plain: You must overcome the interference of the beings that have infiltrated Arad and are trying to break the blade. You must help the character adventurers complete their training to become true adventurers, and help those who have become true adventurers become sharper blades. This is the responsibility of the one who broke the blade while it was being forged.』

Since I could recite Nemer’s words almost word for word without a single mistake, I could tell the truth.

Above all, if the entity called were to try to interfere with the blade’s refining, wouldn’t it be natural, even if you only look at it from the perspective of priority?

‘Rather than hindering the character adventurers, it’s better to first hinder the already possessed, true adventurers… … from becoming sharper blades. It’s important to prevent the candidates for blades from growing, but it’s also important to break those who have already become blades before they become sharper.’

But no matter how reasonable a guess may be, it cannot be known just by thinking.

You should check it at least once.

If the quests of those possessed, not regular users, are contaminated, then it is up to Jinseong himself to deal with it.

‘Before things get any bigger. Even before dealing with Apostle Anton… … In order to figure out how to deal with the that we will enter in earnest after rescuing the Celestial Princess.’

At least here in the early part of Heaven, we should be able to find some clues.

Because they are different from the general users who see each other once and then leave, the mission given to them is different from the mission given to Jinseong himself, but in a sense, they are no different from ‘the same people’.

Jinseong leaned in towards Vivi.

“The next quest… Would you like to try it with me, Vivi? Let’s party up.”

Then he made a suggestion.

You’ll probably need to party up with a possessed person at least once just to check for contamination.