Is It Bad That the Main Character’s a Roleplayer?

Chapter 39: Better Next Time (4)

All the houses looked mostly the same, but the village chief’s was slightly bigger. The first thing I noticed upon entering was the dragon statues everywhere.

“Those statues…”

“This is the Lord Sea Dragon, the Ruler of the Western Sea.”

“I heard the Sea Dragon is revered in Porsen. It seems to be true.”

“The conditions of the sea change according to its mood, after all. Though… my faith in it is a bit shaky as of late, however….”

They worshiped the Sea Dragon. Was that why people wore carved dragon pendants around their necks and prayed to the Sea Dragon?

In that case, wouldn’t the Inquisitor, who is from the Temple, dislike this belief?

“What's the matter?"

The Inquisitor still looked disapproving but showed no extreme repulsion for the Sea Dragon. It seemed she didn't particularly care about it.

Well, if she were going to get angry about idol worship and the like, she would have been offended by the murals earlier. They boasted their object of worship, after all.

“My apologies, but I have nothing but water to offer you."

“That's fine. It’s not as though we came here to get treated to a lavish meal."

As the table was extremely narrow and there were only a few chairs, I opted to lean against the wall instead of sitting down. I didn't feel too bad about it, as it gave off the impression that I wasn't really part of the group and made me seem cooler. Wahaha.

“The sea started to become strange about a month ago. It looked calm on the surface, but waves thrashed about continuously, and the fish gradually started to disappear."

The village chief calmly explained that if they forced themselves to pull something from the water with their nets, all they would catch were black inedible things, and if they tried other methods, they would just come up with dead clams.

Just listening to her for a bit made it clear that their situation was extremely bad.

“At first, we thought this was happening because Lord Sea Dragon was angry, but rainstorms or tsunamis would usually occur if that were the case. This isn’t anything like that."

“I see. Is there any chance a red tide may have caused this? Your situation seems somewhat similar to the consequences of one."

“I have never heard of a red tide lasting longer than a month. Moreover, if that were the cause, the sea would have turned red, but we haven't witnessed such a phenomenon."

“Huh."

“Then what are those black things that emerge when you throw out your nets?"

“We don't know, either. I've lived by the sea my whole life, but this is my first time seeing anything like this…"

The village chief stood up, saying she wanted to show us something. What she brought back was a wooden bowl containing something.

“…!”

The first to react was the Inquisitor. Her face, which held an uncomfortable expression ever since we entered the village, immediately changed as she accepted the bowl.

“Miss Inquisitor?"

“It's subtle, but I can feel Negative Energy coming from it."

As I thought, my gamer's instinct hadn’t betrayed me. Whatever the cause, unless it were natural, it would lead to the creation of a Quest.

Thinking back… Considering the Sea Dragon’s existence had been highlighted so much in this region, it probably had something to do with this. They wouldn't have made that ruin for nothing, after all.

While only a guess, it was pretty much certain. 'Primordial beasts' like the Sea Dragon, meta-wise, were newly added Raid Bosses with settings such as being corrupted or rampaging.

Urgh. I could still vividly remember spending tons of money to create those endgame items. Corrupted beasts dropped expensive recipes, which were like bait for the players; they were exchanged for a ton of cash.

“You feel Negative Energy?"

“Yes."

However, no matter how I put it, it was just a mere opinion. Until I had proper physical evidence, I should just treat it as a hypothesis.

“Is it Demons?"

As such, I feigned ignorance and simply mentioned the Demons.

The Inquisitor's eyes widened. I knew it had been a while, but seeing her so shaken kind of surprised me.

“I… I don't know. It is certainly negative in nature, but it seems different from Demonic Energy."

“Tsk."

Since her experience as an Inquisitor was quite shallow, it was natural that there were things she didn't know about. She also acknowledged that matter, yet she still mistook me for a Demon back then.

I let go of the sword hilt I had been fiddling with, contempt for her incompetence filling my eyes. The kimchi dumpling became sullen and lowered her head at that sight.

“Hmmm."

The Archmage, on the other hand, carefully examined the contents of the bowl. He picked it up with his hand so I could see it, too. The thing's shape was far too strange. I couldn't even describe it.

Hmm. If I had to, I’d say it looked a bit like a piece of junk. If one burned a piece of meat until it looked like charcoal, it would probably look like that.

“Have you seen something like that before?"

“I don't know what it is, either."

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“Could there… Could there be a problem with the Sea Dragon?"

“Wh-what…?!"

“I'm not entirely sure about this, but isn't it the Ruler of the Western Sea? If something strange is happening in the sea and not getting resolved, wouldn't its ruler be the origin?"

The village chief looked almost broken at the Archmage’s cold remark. Anyone would make that kind of face if they heard there might be a problem with their object of faith.

“However, if there really is a problem with the Sea Dragon, wouldn’t the whole Porsen region have been thrown into chaos… There's no way the Temple wouldn't be aware of that. Uhm, have you heard of any other towns or villages having problems?"

Despite seeming to be on the verge of despair, the village chief still responded to our questions. She quietly shook her head, distress apparent on her face.

“As far as I know, no. I did hear their catches have decreased slightly… but not every year can be a good one, right?"

“Is this recent news?"

“It's from fifteen days ago when we collected everything we could sell and headed to the city, Grü Teltz, so we could at least buy some food. It takes about six days to get there, so this news shouldn't be that old."

It took about six days to reach Grü Teltz, so if they had left fifteen days ago, they would have actually arrived about seven days ago.

It was unlikely the city changed much over the past few days. However, someone might be performing a demonic ritual or something.

“Right. Thank you for telling us."

“How couldn't I tell you that much when you are our benefactors."

She spoke quietly, bending forward so that her face almost touched her knees.

“In any case… If this continues, the only thing awaiting us will be death…"

“…"

None of us could offer her any words of comfort.

“…Don't think too negatively. If the city isn't affected, the cause might not lie with the Sea Dragon."

“…Whatever the cause, it doesn’t matter anymore. Whether from starvation or something else, it still inevitably leads to death, right? I just hope that this situation will get resolved.”

I really disliked this heavy atmosphere.

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes. The desire to evade them and the shallow sympathy from facing those thrown into despair tickled my insides.

Anyway, this world was just too cruel.

“It seems necessary to conduct a thorough investigation to determine the cause first. Perhaps it has to do not with the Sea Dragon but with these coastal waters. Don’t you think so as well, Miss Inquisitor?”

“Yes, Sir Archmage, your words are correct.”

The Inquisitor was still looking at the pitch-black dredges before adding a few more words.

“As a servant of God, I can’t back down after detecting even a hint of Negative Energy.”

「❖ Corruption Washed Up from the Sea

∎ Investigate what is happening in the sea」

A new Quest besides the one telling me to go to Grü Teltz appeared. It was a Sidequest.

“It can’t be… Do you know how to resolve this problem…?”

“We can’t give you a definite answer to that.”

“Just you trying to help us is enough… Thank you, truly…”

However, something felt a little strange. Why were these guys just accepting this Sidequest on their own?

I mean, I was going to accept it anyway, but wasn’t this a little absurd? I clenched my hands a little at that. Around that time, the Archmage also asked his last question.

“We might have to stay here for a few days to investigate. Are you fine with that?”

“Of course. How could we treat our benefactors poorly… I will cooperate with everything you ask of me as long as you can resolve this matter.”

Suddenly, those people in dark clothes who’d looked at us with bloodshot eyes came to mind.

They didn’t seem very pleased with our arrival.

“It would be better if we divided up our roles for efficiency’s sake.”

Did he notice that I tapped my fingers and clicked my tongue? The Archmage quickly decided the roles to give us.

The Inquisitor and Archmage, who were excellent at detecting various types of energies, would head to the sea and search for the source of this anomaly.

Deb, who had very keen eyes for people, would ask the residents for more detailed information about this situation and check for any strange presences nearby.

Although no one explicitly told me what to do, my role would also fall into the latter category.

While they claimed not to feel any Demonic Energy, one could never know. If Demon Contractors were nearby, Deb’s abilities were a bit too circumstantial to reliably handle them alone.

“Well, now that everything is decided. I shall take my leave first.”

However, even if I did something similar, I would still do it on my terms, so it didn’t actually feel like I was listening to him! Haha!

“I’m leaving.”

I completely ignored them, kicked the front door open, and went out. Should I first investigate the village or the beach? Of course, I chose the latter.

My character wasn’t really the conversational type.

* * *

* * *

Whooosh!

As I walked along the sandy beach, the sound of ocean waves greeted me.

However, the foam washing up on the beach seemed somewhat grayish. The water looked very clean and clear, which was a strange contrast.

“Look. All the clams are dead.”

Following behind me, Deb picked up a conch or something and immediately clicked his tongue. Dead clams and conches were strewn about the beach.

“What do you think caused this, Mister?”

Both the Inquisitor and Deb seemed very tenacious. I was pretty sure I hadn’t responded to anything they’d asked for the past few days, but they never appeared to get frustrated and kept talking to me.

Ah, of course, I did like these kinds of people. Continuously waiting for an answer that would never come showed they had a very strong mentality.

“No matter what it is, as long as we get rid of it, this situation should get resolved.”

However, I only gave him a vague answer. How would I know?

“Couldn’t it be a problem resolvable without force? Well, most things in this world can get resolved in that way, though.”

Crunch.

While Deb was chattering away, I seemed to have stepped on something. As I gently lowered my head and removed my foot, I came across a slightly unusual clam.

Its insides were slightly exposed as it broke after I stepped on it.

“What is that?”

Wait a second. There was something other than the clam meat inside.

While thinking about it a bit more, I pushed the cracked shell away with the tip of my shoe. Deb came to my side and stuck his head out before immediately perking up his ears and screaming.

“A pearl!!”

Something like that? Appearing in this place? Just like that??

“It’s a real pearl!”

I blinked, then realized: gems and the like weren’t as valuable as one might think in the game.

No, they were still precious, but how should I put it? Since they were mostly used as materials for crafting items or strengthening weapons, they could be found occasionally. Depending on the game, there were many cases where one could find some just by rolling over a random rock on the side of the road.

“It’s even so big and shiny…”

While I was pondering, Deb made quite a fuss and picked up the pearl. As expected from someone of the Thief class, he knew how to handle jewels and the like really well. He didn’t forget to pick it up with a piece of cloth.

“At worst, we could sell this for about 1.5 million Gal.”

Deb carefully wrapped the pearl in a cloth and held it out to me. I thought he would take it for himself, but he seemed to lack the courage to pocket something right in front of me.

“Mister, you can make a fortune with this.”

I didn’t really have any desire for wealth. I simply disliked moving without proper compensation, so I wouldn’t have said anything even if Deb had taken it… However, if he offered it to me, I wouldn’t refuse.

I took the piece of cloth out of his hand.

“But aside from that, isn’t this kind of regrettable for the residents of this village? If they had found this pearl, they wouldn’t have needed to worry about food for those fifteen days. They couldn’t even recognize the treasure sitting right under their noses.”

…But was 1.5 million Gal that much money? There seemed to be about fifty people in the village, so it might not be enough for everyone.

I looked at the pearl peeking from the fabric and put it into my inventory. Since time was basically stopped inside of it, the gem wouldn’t get damaged like this.

I would have even less space in my inventory, but whatever.

It was unexpected, unearned income, after all.

…It could be that the game threw it at me because I obviously wouldn’t be getting anything out of this, even if I managed to complete this quest.

* * *

The pearl was the only unusual thing we could find.

We also searched the surrounding forests and beaches until sunset, but we couldn’t find anything out of the norm. At most, we managed to come across two deer.

“Ah, you’re here.”

“You’re finally here… Oh? Are those deer?”

Ah, I couldn’t just come back empty-handed, so I caught the two deer I found.

“If you got that, come and help me…”

By the way, it was Deb who carried the deer. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to help him, but he just took them both, apparently thinking I had no intention of bringing them with me.

It was Deb who misunderstood on his own, but I didn’t bother correcting him. Wahaha.

“Please put them over there.”

“Oh my goodness, two deer…”

The village chief and her son hurriedly took the deer, and Deb immediately sprawled over the floor. While rather small, they were still pretty heavy. It was obvious that he would be exhausted.

“I bet I’ll have muscle pain tomorrow. I definitely will….”

Deb sprawled out on a chair like wet laundry.

Since he’d used his cloak like a bag to drag the deer along, his face was visible in the room’s light. His face, hidden by his hood until now, was younger than I had thought. Really young.

“What are you looking at? Is this your first time seeing a person’s face or something?”

“No… I was just surprised that you seem younger than I expected.”

“Hmph. You’re exhausted from just carrying two deer? How weak.”

“Hey, so you think everyone’s a superhuman like you?”

Because of his facial hair, I thought he had to be in his late twenties, but looking at his soft, unblemished face, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the same age as the Inquisitor.

Of course, it also wasn’t impossible that Deb was just baby-faced… However, watching him fight with the Inquisitor, they were at the same age mentally.

“Your results.”

However, my character wouldn’t care how old Deb was! I was trying to get our conversation, which had gone slightly off course, back on track.

Only then did the Archmage and Inquisitor react.

“The sea was so rough that we couldn’t investigate properly. What about you guys?”

“Have you discovered anything?”

If we had found something, we would have already brought it up.

I simply frowned. I stopped myself from calling him incompetent as we also hadn’t found anything right away.

“It seems you got similar results.”

The Archmage interpreted our silence. He hit the nail on the head.

“Then what should we do now? Are we just going to waste our time like this?”

“That’s why we’ll go out again. We were told the waves are much calmer at dawn. That’s when we’ll go.”

“Hey.”

“However, if we still haven’t found anything by then, we should just go to the city.”

At that moment, she turned to me.

“You should save your stamina.”

Her eyes fell on the people butchering the deer outside of the building.

“The Inquisitor said she saw a sea dragon through the waves.”

“What?”

To these people, the Sea Dragon was an object of faith, so she made sure that none of them heard him. He was quite considerate.

So why didn’t he act that way toward me? Stimulating my chain PTSD just wasn’t cool, okay?

“I may have been mistaken because of the waves, but… it definitely looked like a dragon in my eyes. I could clearly see fins on a long, thin body even though it was already dark… It could only have been a dragon.”

At that moment, the Inquisitor, who made eye contact with the Archmage, calmly explained it to us.

“However… it somehow seemed to be fighting something or going on a rampage. It didn’t look normal at all.”

At her words, Deb jumped right up. It seemed he was so shocked that he even forgot his fatigue.

“It’s very rare for the Sea Dragon to come so close to the coast. Furthermore, if something really did happen to it, as the Inquisitor saw…”

“…No way.”

“We might have to take care of whatever is harming the Sea Dragon, or in the worst-case scenario, we might have to deal with the Sea Dragon itself.”

Deb held his head.

“There’s no way we can do that!”

His remarks were from the perspective of a normal person.

“So, we have to hunt a dragon?”

However, something like shock and surprise didn’t fit me.

“Why are you acting so calm, Mister Knight?!”

I couldn’t help but take note of Deb’s astonishment.

Unlike him, I even held some expectations in my heart.

If it’s a dragon, I could surely get some expensive material, equipment, or something else like that!