Author: Selkin
Translator: Estoriel
Proofreader: Namorax
New Poll (will be open until ch 10 starts):
Originally, I thought my weekend would be quite relaxing… but I was completely wrong!
My girlfriend suddenly returned faster than I expected to buy some stuff for her slightly injured mother. My whole Saturday was sacrificed for grocery shopping, followed by a long shopping tour to buy new clothes for my mother-in-law and also some for my girlfriend.
Until this day I have yet to figure out where my girlfriend hides that much energy!
I wasn’t only physically but even more so mentally exhausted.
I hoped my Sunday would at least turn out less stressful but I had to visit my girlfriend’s eldest brother’s family, just after we visited her mother and delivered the groceries and clothes. The worst part was that I had to play with my brother-in-law’s brat.
That spawn from hell sucked my last energy dry.
It’s not that I hate children…it’s just THAT one child which brings my patience to its limits!
I don’t want to know how he’ll turn out in the future and what kind of trouble he’ll cause, but knowing that he’s already a huge bully in kindergarten I’m sure my brother in law will have his hands full to tame that brat.
Sighing over my bad weekend, I looked forward to work and leaving the bad memories behind. I never thought I would say this, but even if my superiors would stick to me the whole day, I would happily choose this over another day with that spawn from hell! At least my superiors don’t mistreat me as a chew bone…
While I was reminiscing, I forgot the time and suddenly found myself at the entrance of the company’s building. The first thing I noticed were two huge liches, one on each side of the sliding door. My first reaction was to blink, followed by closely observing the two meter large liches. They looked as if they were truly alive and if one didn’t know that this is the cutting edge of holographic technology, one could really believe they’re standing in front of something straight out of a horror movie.
Needless to say, these were the twin liches from our next event, Shir’ka and Shei’ka. I went closer to take a better look at them, and even I had to admit that I felt overwhelmed standing standing in front of them. Their capes seemingly fluttered in the air and… their red glowing eye sockets followed my every movement, which even I find a bit scary. So they even went ahead and used motion tracking technology?
It’s really amazing what my coworkers came up with over the weekend. This sure is a nice way of advertisement.
Just a few minutes later, I finally managed to arrive at my desk and started writing my report about that bloodsucking bat Toriel. Despite my horrendous experience with said vampire, I managed to finish my report much faster than I assumed and sent it via email to my superiors.
Just when I was done sending the email, Maeda also finally arrived to work and went straight over to my desk.
“Morning Maeda.”
“Yo, Keruna. Did you already check out the Player Forum on our website?”
“Nope, my girlfriend dragged me around the whole weekend… why?”
“Oh. Well, your cactus guild member posted the information about Toriel on the forum.”
I see… but why are you pulling your chair over here to sit beside me instead of starting to work at your own desk?
Sure enough, when I looked at my clock I even discovered that he was an hour too late to work.
Not that my superiors will actually notice it, but secretary Kyle will do so without a doubt. Do you really have the time to sit here and chat?
“He even added some screenshots from Sion, showing the window that asked him if he wanted to change his race. That thread is the hottest topic right now on the Player Forum.”
“Doesn’t really surprise me. The last time a new race was released there was also a lot of discussion in the forum.”
“I bet our superiors planned everything from the very beginning to create more publicity for the event before it even starts.”
“Huh? Who, them? No way… I highly doubt that.”
I looked at Maeda as if he was a pink hippo. There’s no way those two could come up with a scheme like this. The holographic liches probably are the limit of their scheming. If we were talking about Kyle, I could understand such a notion, but not if it’s our superiors.
“Aren’t you underestimating our bosses, Keruna? They are quite smart, you know?”
“No, I think you’re overestimating them instead. And don’t you have to work?”
“Uhhhh… I’ll just work longer today to make up for it. I always do it this way, as long as I finish my working hours it’s okay.”
I wonder if it’s really okay this way…
“Uhm, let’s change the topic… Exelion will be back from his holidays today.”
“Are you talking about me? Yep, I’m already back.”
““Woah!””
Both Maeda and I were got startled. When we looked behind us, our fellow Hidden GM Exelion was standing there with a refreshed smile. Seemingly completely recuperated thanks to his days off.
“Good morning you two, I’ve already heard about the new event. I guess we’ll all be very busy in the coming days.”
While he was speaking, he rummaged through his backpack and presented both of us with a keychain as a holiday souvenir. Based on past experiences, Exelion probably bought a souvenir for every single one of his fellow Hidden GMs. I really feel sorry for his wallet.
“Yeah, you’re lucky that you were still on vacation when we had to playtest the mid-bosses. We got the worst one out of them all.”
Said Maeda while he took out his own keys and added yet another keychain to his collection.
I’m quite surprised that you can still find your keys between all those keychains…
“How was your holiday?”
Unlike Maeda, I have at least enough common sense to ask Exelion about his holiday before skipping right to the talk about work.
“Really great, I could even add a few extra days for research purposes!”
“Huh? Research purposes?”
“Yep, sometimes our superiors put up some requests to go to specific countries and make some photos of buildings and so on, to make work easier for our other coworkers. I applied for this and was lucky to get this chance. With this I was able to add another three days of holidays in China~”
This guy was really lucky to get extended holidays this way.
Moreover, he’s hugely interested in other cultures. Right now he is especially interested in chinese and japanese culture, so it wasn’t surprising that he’s in such an excellent mood.
“That reminds me, Keruna, I heard you now own a castle and are a demon lord?”
“How did you find this out so quickly?”
“The guildmaster of my guild told me about this. He’s Keradis’ cousin.”
“Eh? I didn’t know that Keradis’ Cousin is also leading a guild.”
“I also heard it for the first time on Sunday when our two guilds formed an alliance. Your guildmaster invited his cousin to take a look at the castle, so he’s coming over to your region today. I joined their conversation and asked if I can come along under the pretense of me liking to role-play so much. There are a few role-players in your guild after all, so it’s the perfect opportunity to visit you.”
I almost forgot…
Exelion is indeed a role-playing addict who keeps an eye out for the RP community and updates everyone about the needs and wishes of the roleplaying community of Mirage of Eternity. Obviously, he would jump at the first opportunity to visit a demon lord’s castle to have some fun.
But how does he know that there are role-players in my guild? Did he already met a few while role-playing in the past? After all, he does visit all kinds of RP events…
He even chose a Sylph as his in-game character because of the beautiful scenery and the asian flair. The Sylphs’ country, as one of the most beautiful ones, is one of the top 5 roleplaying places inside the game and has also a high visitor count of many other races.
One could call it a paradise for roleplayers, especially those who like the chinese and japanese culture and the scenery of these two countries, which also happened to have been a huge inspiration for the design of the Sylphs’ country.
Unlike Sion, who chose to wear western heavy armour with his character instead of the usual chinese themed robes and armours of the Sylph race, Exelion’s character wears a jade colored robe typical for the Sylph race.
Furthermore, Exelion chose the hidden class ‘Scrollmaster’ which uses talismans and scrolls similar to the ones used by onmyouji¹ to cast their spells. Like the Jewel Mage they can unleash powerful magic through the usage of talismans and scrolls, but they have to buy them from NPC’s, making it a rather expensive class compared to the others. Unlike Maeda’s Jewel Mage, which has to inlay the spells into the jewels before they can be used, Exelion doesn’t need to prepare them in advance. Instead he can cast the spell right away.
The scroll skills are by far stronger than the ones who use talismans, but are only available at higher levels and take some time to cast. With the Scrollmaster’s high damage output it’s an even more fearful class in my eyes than the Jewel Mage.
So in short: With the location, characters clothing and class, Exelion’s character was created from beginning to end to role-play.
“Guess that “excuse” works, but do you really intend to role-play at my castle?”
I looked puzzled over to him, just to see him happily nodding.
“Of course! I doubt I’ll get many chances to role-play in a demon lord’s castle. Moreover, our races are originally enemies so there are great opportunities for nice RP stories! For example…”
I stopped listening at this point and switched into an automatic nodding mode. Sadly, I have zero interest in participating in his role-playing plans. I just hope the guild members who like to role-play will keep him company.
Even Maeda sneakily excused himself and walked over to his desk to work, just to escape Exelion’s long RP talk.
After twenty minutes of Exelion’s ramblings, he finally came to an end after I gave him the names of some of my RP-addicted guild members so he can contact them more easily.
With the name list secured, he instantly left to log-in and get in touch with my guild members.
Finally I was free and could go back to work. I quickly replied to some emails and when I was done I also headed over to the game capsules in our company.
Just when I logged in, I was instantly spammed to death in the guild chat window which popped up.
I completely felt overwhelmed by the amount of messages and started by reading one message after another. I was really happy that I recently changed my guild-chat settings to “text messages” instead of the “voice messages”, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to deal with all of this at once.
Keradis: Morning Keruna! Where were you this weekend? We already finished paying for the repairs.
Emeralda: Yo, Keruna. It’s quite entertaining to watch how the castle is slowly getting repaired by the NPCs hired for the reconstruction of everything. I’ll make a video of this if you don’t mind~
Asterdon: Hi Keruna, do you know where Sion is? He didn’t log in ever since you two and Emeralda got the castle for us. We intend to introduce him to some of our guild members. We’re waiting in front of the castle gates.
Die Omi(2): This is really a beautiful castle. It reminds me of the old days back when I still played…
Emeralda: Omi, please stop, else you’ll scare Keruna and Sion away~
Keradis: Just wait for a bit before you start sharing your stories with everyone, otherwise you’ll have to repeat it for every single guild member because many of them aren’t online right now.
Emeralda: Keruna? Why aren’t you replying? Don’t tell me you logged in and went afk?
Sorry, but I can’t keep up with you guys spamming me so fast when I just logged in!! Moreover what is with Omi? Why is she so fast in typing at her age?! Now I feel like I’m older than her? Is it a lifetime’s worth of experience? And Keradis sure knows how to stop her from talking non-stop.
I instantly answered after I finished reading the messages to avoid getting spammed even more. Not even a second later, my own reply started to appear in the guild chat.
Keruna: Morning. You guys spam way too much! I think Sion had to work this weekend. He’s a cook and sometimes he has to work on the weekend as well. Just contact him when he comes online. I’m coming over to…. Oh! Sion just logged in.
Just when I replied I noticed that Sion had especially good timing today: He actually logged in not long after me and I was spared another round of “Find the runaway Astral Knight”. His Sylph appeared right infront of my Twilight Assassin with his back towards me, at the same location where he logged out last time. I hastily stopped the guild chats voice transfer and greeted him.
“Morning Sion.”
The Astral Knight instantly flinched when he heard my voice and turned around.
“Uh, you gave me a scare, why are you behind me?”
“Because I logged in a minute before you. Today your timing is great~!”
“Why that?”
He gave me a suspicious look and was also instantly spammed to death by my guild members who realised the new member was finally online again. But unlike me, the poor guy still had the voice messages on and thus faced a hubbub.
Seeing his overwhelmed expression on his face, I instantly gave him the tip to open the settings and change the guild chat settings to the ones I use.
Keradis: Sion, why don’t you come over together with Keruna? We’re outside the castle right now, let me introduce you to some of our members.
Emeralda: Hehe, you can also finally meet face to face with our big boss Keradis, our guildmaster! He’s a pro gamer by the way, but he’s really nice, so feel free to ask him for help any time~. No need to be scared.
Asterdon: Come on you two! Else Omi will start with her stories again~
Die Omi²: You youngsters sure are energetic.
Keruna: We’re coming, we’re coming!
Sion: Uhm… Hi everyone.
Emeralda: Sion turned shy.
Keruna: No, he’s just as overwhelmed by everyone’s spam talk as me. Just wait until we arrive before you continue with your spamming.
Emeralda: Hehe, okay~ But hurry up you two.
While we two walked over to our fellow guild members, and seeing that we’ll probably be stuck in the castle today, I asked Sion to return the mounts we borrowed from that money grubbing NPC later today. Because of the Twin Lich event, I’ll be busy with work in the coming days and I doubt I’ll have any spare time to randomly play, thus I explained to Sion that I only logged in for some few hours today.
Of course I never mentioned the true reason for my absence and just said that my superiors decided to send me off to a seminar.
Fortunately the Astral Knight agreed instantly when I reminded him of the expensive rent we had to pay for our borrowed mounts.
Just when I finished talking about the mounts, we finally reached the castle gate and the first thing I saw wasn’t a guild member, but a Tian who rushed over to my side with a “My lord you’re finally back!”. At first I feared he would jump me or crash into me, but he came to a halt just half a meter away to bow and then started his report.
“Welcome back my lord. The progress of rebuilding the castle is going smoothly under
Sir Emeraldas care. In regards to the army’s reconstruction, Sir Emeralda said that my lord will personally oversee it, so we left it alone for now and awaited your return.”
This is the second time today where I felt a bit overwhelmed.
I really wondered if Tian is learning from my guild members and will from now on spam me with things as soon as he spots me. I could only sigh and tell him that we’ll first meet with my guild members, and discuss the army matters afterwards.
Just when I finished my business with Tian, the next people instantly rushed over to our side, not giving Sion and me even the slightest chance of taking a break.
¹https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onmy%C5%8Dd%C5%8D
²“Die Omi” is german for “the granny”; Keruna mostly shortens her name to “Omi” though cuz he’s too lazy.
Namo-Note: Using just “Omi” is usually a sign of affection, since that is what (little) children call their grandmother here in Germany.
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