Popular NPC in a Gender-Reversed Game – Chapter 30

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: FusionX
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She had no particular reason for visiting Yor’s cave.

She had just come by because she had some free time.

As Yoo Chae-rin’s editor and chat moderator, she didn’t have much personal time.

So she decided to visit him on a whim… but she didn’t expect to hear about such a serious matter.

She felt troubled.

She could report it to the Guild, but she didn’t have a good excuse.

The receptionist wouldn’t just believe her if she went there and said,

“Oh, this happened.”

They would definitely ask for details. And she would be speechless.

According to rumors, the assailants who stole the Demon’s arm were as strong as an A-rank mercenary squad.

And to become an A-rank mercenary, you had to be at least level 110.

That meant they were a force to be reckoned with.

So, if she, who had barely reached level 70, claimed to have captured one, they would be suspicious.

“Then what should I do? I don’t have a solution either.”

Of course, Yor had also considered this problem.

But he had no one else to ask. He couldn’t expose himself, so there were few people he could entrust with this task.

He knew it was a difficult situation, but there were only two people he could ask, including her.

“Or we could say that Chae-rin and I took them down together. Hmm… would that work?”

Ha-neul looked away at his suggestion.

She felt a bit guilty. Yor noticed her awkwardness and asked,

“Don’t tell me you haven’t told her yet?”

He was asking if she had told Chae-rin that they were friends.

Ha-neul remained silent.

Yor reached his own conclusion.

“You haven’t told her, have you?”

He didn’t know why she was hesitating, but he was worried it might cause a rift between them.

‘Well, it’s their business.’

Yor decided to let it go for now.

Perhaps because the topic was uncomfortable, Ha-neul, after a moment of hesitation, changed the subject.

“But how did you end up killing them?”

“They tried to contact someone right in front of me, so I killed them.”

“Right in front of you?”

“Yeah.”

“What the…”

Ha-neul looked at him in disbelief.

But Yor understood the assailant’s actions.

She knew he would have tried to stop her if she tried to escape. Carriers like him were sensitive about their identity being revealed.

That’s why she took the gamble of contacting her order right in front of him.

Or maybe they were just stupid.

Thinking about it, Yor pleaded with her again.

This time, his voice was filled with desperation.

“Please, I’m begging you. I’ll reward you generously. And if possible, could you gather some information for me…?”

And then it happened.

A quest window popped up in front of Im Ha-neul.

“?”

“?”

Yor and Ha-neul tilted their heads in unison.

A quest at this timing?

It was a strange coincidence, but the message was clear.

‘This means I have no choice but to accept…’

She had to accept this quest.

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After accepting the quest, Ha-neul left the cave soon after.

The sun was setting.

Even though she could fly, it was still dangerous at night.

And she had to walk near the outer layer to conserve mana.

‘I should have done this from the start.’

Last time, she flew from the outer layer, which depleted her mana too quickly.

Changing her strategy did save her a lot of mana.

She could handle the monsters in the outer layer, even with her focus on support magic.

After leaving the Forbidden Forest, she sighed.

She was glad she got the quest, but a strange pressure weighed on her.

“Haa…”

The phrase “Increased Chance of Preventing Future Disaster” in the reward description particularly bothered her. The future? It was a clear hint.

‘Doesn’t this mean it’s related to the main storyline?’

A clue about the main storyline, which everyone had been waiting for, had finally appeared.

For an ordinary player like her to encounter something like this… it was exciting and burdensome at the same time.

Ha-neul thought about Yor.

‘Who is he?’

The fact that he had Demon’s Blood was already significant.

She pushed the question aside and decided to focus on the quest first.

To report the assailant to the Guild. And to subtly leak information about their identity.

The quest itself was simple.

The problem was that it wasn’t something a low-level player like her could handle.

So, Im Ha-neul decided to take a roundabout approach.

“Welcome. How may I help you?”

“I’d like to request a quest.”

She would find an agent to do it for her.

An agent for an agent.

The quest system in the Adventurers’ Guild was a bit strange.

If you had a problem, you could request a quest from the Guild and find an adventurer to solve it.

As long as it wasn’t illegal, you could request anything.

Finding a lost puppy, getting rid of rats in the sewers… even trivial requests like those could be submitted to the Guild.

So a request to be connected with a skilled adventurer…

You didn’t even have to explain the situation in detail. Just slip the receptionist a few coins, and it would be taken care of.

That’s how Ha-neul met a skilled A-rank party consisting of three members.

There were no A-rank adventurers among the Players yet, so they were all NPCs.

They would believe her story about capturing the escaped assailant.

Ha-neul handed them the assailant’s body and requested that they report it to the Guild on her behalf.

The reward was 80% of the bounty on the assailant. She didn’t capture them herself, and all she needed to do was complete the quest, so that was the best reward she could offer.

The adventurer party looked skeptical, but they readily accepted, knowing they had nothing to lose.

The A-rank adventurer party returned to the Guild with the assailant’s body.

They reported that they had captured the escaped fugitive.

“Oh my, did you really capture them? Where did you find them?”

“Yes, it’s true! We encountered a suspicious person on our way back to the Empire. So we asked who they were, and they attacked us, so we captured them.”

“Hmm… did they say anything?”

“Yes, they did.”

Thankfully, the adventurer party didn’t forget to share the information with the receptionist.

About the organization called Lemegeton, a Demon-worshipping order.

That information would be relayed to their superiors and eventually reach the Empire.

Ha-neul sighed in relief as she watched the adventurers receive their reward.

“Haa…”

It was done. The quest was probably complete.

Looking at the darkened night sky, Ha-neul thought about what might happen in the future.

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Three weeks later,

“Thank you so much. You saved me.”

“Oh, it’s nothing…”

I gave Ha-neul the Goblin Shaman’s Orb as a quest reward.

It wasn’t very useful for me, but she, as a Mage, could embed it in her wand.

Don’t underestimate Goblins. Goblin Shamans were quite high-level.

Thanks to her successfully completing the quest, no pursuers came looking for me in the forest.

They had found the body, so there was no need to continue the investigation.

But there was chaos outside the forest.

The nations were desperately searching for the cult called Lemegeton.

A Demon-worshipping order… they couldn’t ignore it.

And some of their members were said to be stronger than A-rank adventurers, so they had to be wary.

Hearing that, I felt a strange mix of emotions.

The favor I asked of her had caused a commotion throughout the world.

Of course, the root cause of the chaos was the assailant and Lemegeton…

But I was the one who triggered the quest.

I knew what triggering a quest meant, from Yoo Chae-rin.

It meant either the quest itself was important to the world, or the one who issued the quest was an important person.

‘What am I?’

It led me to ask a philosophical question for the first time in a long time.

Who am I, and what is this world?

To the otherworlders, this was a game, but to me, it was reality.

I had never thought of my life as fake.

But then the otherworlders appeared, and strange things started happening one after another. It made me think.

‘…I don’t know.’

After pondering for a while, I shook my head and decided to focus on what I had to do.

To survive.

Questions about self-identity were heavy.

And I wasn’t a person who dealt with heavy topics. To be precise, I didn’t have the luxury to ponder such things.

So, I would just focus on what I had to do.

I made up my mind and set out to gather food.

One thing was certain, the world was still in chaos.

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