I wish you the best of luck. Please succeed. Thank you.
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In another dimension…
‘You still can’t see them?!’ yelled the Dokkaebi, frightening all those in the vicinity as they had never seen this easy-going yet terrifying boss openly express his anger in the millennia they had worked under him.
A junior dragon said, trembling, ‘N-no sir. I apologize. There aren’t any signals there…’
‘Ha-ha! These five are still causing trouble even after dying! We let them be back then because they had enough value to bend the rules for, but why is it that those traitors’ homes are still intact!’ said the Dokkaebi with his palm to his forehead.
‘T-that, uh, w-we couldn’t enter no matter how hard we tried. They’d set up a system blocking anyone except those with permission, and even when we captured and forced some of them, they weren’t able to get in. It was only possible for the successor…’ explained the subordinate.
‘Hah, who knows what they’ll find inside and how much they’ll find out!’ lamented the Dokkaebi.
The kitsune put a hand on his shoulder, ‘Don’t worry…even if they wanted to leave behind information, they wouldn’t be able to reveal too much to unauthorized beings because of it. Even if they can escape our surveillance in the blind spots, it’s impossible to escape it. We all know that’, she assured.
‘Let’s hope for that, otherwise it’ll ruin all our plans and the King will have our heads’, sighed the Dokkaebi looking at the blank surveillance screen in front of him.
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Back in Trucehaven Village…
Alice had finished reading the story and noticed that she had tears in her eyes, which left her confused. Even if the story was somewhat upsetting, she had never reacted this way to even the most heartbreaking of movies.
She quickly turned her head to the side and secretly wiped her tears with her finger.
The others pretended not to notice since it seemed she didn’t want them to know.
And contrary to her reactions, she was bubbling with very different emotions. Anger, hate, disgust, embarrassment, disappointment, annoyance, shock…all sorts of negative emotions were threatening to burst out.
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‘How could she betray her friends?! How could she do this to us?! We have nothing to do with any of this! ‘ she yelled, ‘I can’t believe I’m the successor of someone like her!’
‘Hey…we don’t know what exactly they were going through at the time, nor what she was thinking or feeling. We can’t judge her so strongly’, said Jason, still thinking about the story he’d just heard.
‘I agree. It couldn’t have been easy, but maybe she had a deeper reason which she couldn’t explain. There must be more to it than this, especially considering how the people here practically worship her when she was another villager, a human like them, even if she was some all-powerful immortal’, stated Seo-Jun.
Alice seemed like she had a lot more to say but stopped as Zhiren placed a hand on her shoulder to calm her down and Daiki shook his head, signaling Alice to stop.
She took a deep breath to regulate her weirdly chaotic emotions, feeling complicated about the situation.
She decided to try to understand this predecessor in the future.
She nodded indicating she’s okay now, making the group sigh in relief as they were worried she’d somehow wreck place or make some huge mess if she stayed pissed.
‘Okay…so about this orb, who’s going to touch it first?’ asked Daiki, pointing at the glowing orb in the middle of the round table.
‘Let’s first try going to a place which is closer and easier’, suggested Zhiren.
‘Yeah, but where? We don’t know anything about this world’, pointed out Daiki.
‘How about this, you touch it first and we’ll see how the map goes…’ suggested Jason to Daiki.
He nodded and placed his hand on the orb, as one sentence floated up, causing the blood to drain from his face, ‘Die.’
‘Uh…isn’t there another way?’ asked Daiki.
‘Die, take over, gain access, give access’, showed up one by one.
‘Makes sense, considering its the underworld’, lamented Daiki, still upset over the realm he had to succeed.
‘So that means we’ll have to cross that off our list’, sighed Seo-Jun, I’ll try then.
He placed his hand on the orb, ‘Go above ground and towards the snowy mountains’, floated up.
‘It seems we’ll get step by step instructions, instead of the complete map…What do we do now?’ wondered Seo-Jun.
‘Well, for starters we’ll have to take this with us. But we won’t know how far each place is…’, said Jason.
‘Isn’t the closest the Forbidden Forest?’ wondered Alice.
The others immediately remembered. How could they forget something so obvious considering they’d unknowingly spent a decade there.
(Players: We had a long day, okay!)
But, Zhiren made them think otherwise, ‘I honestly think it was something Aylin made, but it wasn’t her whole realm. But I’ll try.’
She placed a hand on the orb, it repeated what had appeared for Seo-Jun, ‘Go above ground and towards the snowy mountains’.
Zhiren sighed, ‘The Forest is just up the hill and in the opposite direction to the snowy mountains…The village entrance faced the forest but the exit faced the mountains’, stated Zhiren.
‘Yeah, I remember seeing them too, yesterday. Hard not to’, agreed Seo-Jun.
The others also nodded in agreement to their claims.
‘So then, should we take the usual way to decide or ask someone first’, asked Alice.
‘I don’t think the latter would work considering these people haven’t had much contact with the outside world in over a thousand years’, reminded Seo-Jun.
‘Then, the usual way it is. Jas, you do it’, said Alice.
To be continued…
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Daiki: How could it just tell me to die!
Orb: ╮(╯▽╰)╭
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