20 River

"Nero? W-what's going on? How did we get here?" asked Silica, seemingly unaware of what had just happened.

"Can you not remember?" I asked her, pretending to look concerned.

If she can't remember the recent events, then it's genuinely a good outcome since she won't suspect anything. Certainly, she doesn't seem to remember the escape from the castle. That 'dwale' the king gave her worked quite well.

It's slightly unfair that I had to kill him while leaving Silica alive.

Well, if she actually does remember any of it, it shouldn't be that hard to give her a convincing story as to what happened, but her not remembering is less of a hassle.

"What am I supposed to be remembering?" she asked, looking around. "Why are we in a cave?"

"What's the last thing you remember?"

"The last thing I remember?" she said, putting her finger on her chin. "I remember you leaving to get a new sword with that one knight, but I'm not sure of anything after that."

Looks like I smacked her in the head too hard. At least I didn't give her brain damage.. actually, how could I tell? She's Japanese. Perhaps I could give her some issues with her senses, like touch, sight, smell, et cetera, but her IQ is too low for it to be further lowered.

She was still tired due to the dwale, and I would just need to figure out some way to get her to tire herself out until she falls back to sleep

"A lot of stuff happened that you don't remember if that's the case. Want me to fill you in?"

"Yes please," she said, getting up and attempting a bow, however, she fell while doing so.

I don't know why she tried to execute a bow when she's been asleep and not moving for the past few hours and just woke up, but it doesn't matter.

"Ooowww…"

"So basically, after I went to get weapons with Reginald, he tried attacking me," I said, blatantly ignoring her fall. "I fought back against him and ended up running away back to the throne room, and for some reason, only you and the king were there and the rest of the knights had disappeared."

"What? Why would the knights leave us alone?" asked Silica, having recovered from her fall.

"I don't know. It's not like I was there when they left to have overheard it. But the one thing that I do know is that you were unconscious while you were with the king, so I went in and knocked him out, and then a system prompt showed up, saying that I had defeated the enemy Hider and only needed to survive for another twenty-four hours to fully complete it."

While this story seems a bit far-fetched, that's exactly what I'm aiming for, since not knowing why some of this happens makes it more believable. Any plot holes on stuff like why the knights left can't be questioned by her if I just say that I don't know; at that point, she can't question anything properly at all.

She is gullible enough to trust my words as they are now, and not telling her that I killed the king, Reginald and other knights lets her know how virtuous I am.

"...All of this happened while I was unconscious? Why is there some blood on my legs? Do you know why the knight attacked you?" she asked, chewing on her fingernails in stress.

"No, and I'm not sure of anything else either, considering how quickly it all happened. There was a brawl in the throne room, blood was everywhere."

"Huh…" was her only response.

"Any other questions?"

"Yeah, how strong was the knight? How high of a level are you to be able to fight him?"

"He wasn't that strong, and I'm only level five. The only reason why I'm at this level is because I killed some boars while traveling here, and I also took out a few skeletons before falling into the trap door."

"Woah… so how strong does that make you?"

Why are you so nosy? A childlike curiosity? At least restrain it.

"I don't know, it's not like I've had time to test it out."

"True… So what are we doing here?" she asked, looking around the cave again.

"After I ran away with you, I came across this cave, and now we're waiting here until the twenty-four hours are up."

"Ohhh…"

Since I know she'll start bothering me from having nothing to do here, I'll have to give her something.

"By the way," I began, "if you need something to do during the wait, then just go and train with your dagger. Don't go far. At all. Do it right outside of the cave entrance, not any further."

I don't want her exposing our location, but I also don't want her ruining my mood.

"Alright!"

Continuing with my reading, there were plenty of interesting things touched upon and mentioned in the manual, but most of the big stuff was something I already knew from having to study swordsmanship for a unit in history class.

One particularly interesting technique it showed was the, I quote, "Way to end him rightly".

It involves unscrewing the pommel off of my handle and throwing it at the enemy. That's it.

(A/N: Removed part where author was as needlessly presumptuous as the MC, and decided to figure as an authority on medieval fighting. Ahem.)

I couldn't really figure out the motive, but the book mentioned something about the rules of judicial duels, though most of that part was in German. It was a strange manoeuvre, but faintly amusing.

After checking my sword, I saw that it didn't have a screwed-on pommel, so I can't use that tactic.

A pommel is the bit at the bottom of the handle, used to make sure that the wielder's hands don't slip off from the handle and also used as a counterbalance to the weight of the blade. The guard serves the purpose of protecting the user, making sure the wielder's hand doesn't slip up from the handle, as well as serving as a counterbalance to the blade, just like the pommel.

"Nero?"

"...Yes?"

I already told her to go and train if she started getting bored, so why is she starting this up?

"What are you reading?" she asked with a curious expression.

"A book I bought in the marketplace before leaving town," I responded, not looking up from the manual.

"Ohh…"

Another thing it mentions is not turtling or being overly defensive, stuff about how, "In battle, you must be willing to take risks and go forward. A parry is preferable to passively blocking."

It's something that I already know and in my opinion is obvious through use of critical thinking and common sense, but I still read through that part of it in case there was a new perspective on it or if there was information I didn't know. I wasn't paying that much attention to the details, since I was getting impatient for the end of this bonus challenge.

Continuing with my reading session of the manual, and keeping track of the light outside for when night begins throughout the rest of the day was irritating and boring, but it doesn't matter. Night did indeed come, and the Japanese menace went to sleep before it started getting too cold for her to do so.

She was apparently tired from practicing with her dagger, even though I was the one that had killed a king and a few of his knights, escaped from a castle and ran miles with her on my back, along with robbing a treasury and setting a throne room on fire, but no matter. I've always known that she was weak.

Staying awake is important in case a monster or someone else finds our hiding spot. Being caught with my pants down - sleeping, in other words - is how to get killed. I already slept last night so I should be fine, no need to whine about everything.

The night wasn't particularly eventful. I finished the manual during the day and was just reviewing key points from it, such as the importance of knowing your opponent so that you aren't caught off guard from unexpected techniques or unexpected items, along with other things, but, as I said, nothing happened.

There was no monster coming to eat us and it wasn't even that cold outside so we survived without much of a problem, plus, there was still plenty of fruit in my inventory to eat so hunger wasn't an issue.

Overall, everything is going along well.

By the time morning had come, still, nothing had happened. No knights from the castle finding the cave and no village people scouting out the area.

It shouldn't be too long until the bonus quest ends, since I can see the timer and the description for it in the "Quests" tab of my UI, and the countdown showed that I had about three hours left.

Silica has yet to wake up, and still, nothing out of the ordinary has occurred.

Except for one system prompt.

[NOTE FOR THE PLAYERS:

The Group Chat function has been released. Each player will be put into a Group Chat with other, random players from different regions.

The player with the highest level among the respective members of their Group Chat becomes a moderator of that said Group Chat, and the players that are ranked within the top ten in terms of their level within their Group Chat will be given special privileges. Any activity within these Group Chats is allowed; there is no restriction on what can be said, done and sent within these Group Chats.

Each Group Chat will have anywhere from 100-150 players within them, and, we repeat, all players added to a Group Chat are added randomly; there is no criterion.

Any more details are to be discovered by the players during use of these Group Chats.

Check the "Communications" tab of your User Interface to find your new Group Chat.

Have fun.]

…The hell? What imbecile came up with this? What is the point of this feature?

This is too random, why is there suddenly a group chat feature? Why would it be added?

When it says from all regions, does that mean that I'll be added to a group with gay Americans and drunk Russians?

But, perhaps I can gather information about other regions of the world with this, because I sure as hell don't plan to stay in Japan.

Going to the Communications section of my UI, I found a new feature in there, that being a group chat.

Clicking on it, my entire system display turned into the format of a typical messaging platform.

Though, no one has sent any messages yet.

Oh, wait, here come some clowns.

===

MagnuS: ALLAHU AKBAR!!

spinxino: ah hell nah.. this mf gonna bomb the gc.

===

Nevermind, but it's good to see what this feature is all about; gathering idiots to converse in one place.

===

XxTheGODxX: thats crazy, but who asked? and why you stealing first from the rest of us?

MagnuS: That's* And why are you*

Nightshades: bro the grammar police

MagnuS: Bro is* the grammar police*

Nightshades: bro needs to learn how to use an asterisk

GigaChad: …

===

I'm not going to bother watching the conversations that these imbeciles have for now and instead check out a more… interesting development, though it was expected.

[Dear Player Hegemaniac,

You have been designated as the moderator of your Group Chat.

Sincerely, the Cardinal System.]

What kind of perks do I get from being a moderator? Checking the group chat again, there was a separate development that had occurred during the ten seconds that I had looked away; the chat was locked.

The group chat display screen transformed into another customization one. My 'profile' came up in front of me, with my username being Hegemaniac, and the only real thing I could customize was my profile picture and name color.

I don't know why any of this matters to the creators of this game, but I'll play along.

Checking the small words near the profile picture choice, it read; "As you are one of the top ten highest leveled players in your respective group chat, you have special privileges."

It doesn't detail what those special privileges are, but the text that popped up in front of me afterwards did.

[Your special privileges in profile customization include:

Being allowed to select anything as your profile picture, being able to have a moving profile picture, and nothing else.]

…That's it? Though, I guess that there isn't much to customize in the first place.

So, I can imagine anything I want as my profile picture?

What is the point of that? What does this matter?

I'll just go with a simple one in that case, it's not like I care too much. I'll probably just be messing around with the people in my group chat when I'm bored; this feature doesn't have much importance to me so far with what I've seen of it so far.

Selecting a stock image of a mountain from the options offered, and picking the simple color of purple as my name color, considering it represents royalty, I clicked done and moved on.

Now… How many woke Americans are in here?

===

girluwu: what was that?

GigaChad: you a bitch, kys

spinxino: don't say kys bro it's discrimination

GigaChad: against who

spinxino: our trans allies

Hegemaniac: you all disgust me.

DaoOfEternity: you talking to me?

===

The posts with 'kys' were deleted after a few seconds, possibly by some automated moderation process.

Now… to be quite honest, I don't feel like bothering with this. I'd rather rest and wait for my rewards after closing this thing. There are more pressing matters at hand than conversing with these American idiots, and wasting my energy and attention on this would be worthless.

I know where my priorities lie, and with what I've seen, this feature is worthless. The only use it has so far from what I've seen is conversing with foreign degenerates. Why should I waste my time on this thing when there is still a possibility of being found out here?

They all seem to be idiots, and my brain power recently increased from studying the fighting manual, so I'd really rather not lower it by speaking to them.

Sending a message saying that I hate all of them, I waited for a while in the cave, seeing that Silica had yet to wake up, despite her getting the notification as well.

Typical Japanese. In their own little dreams, ignorant of everything around them.

Though, better to be allied with a Jap than with a gay or person of color. I don't associate with minorities.

While I was considering this matter, an unexpected alert showed up.

[Dear player Hegemaniac, you have been awarded some of the skills which, due to a bug, you were not able to access. Apologies for the issues.

Your rewards include: Iron Torch (Skill), Emperor's Domination (Skill), Crown of Courage (Item), and Experience Points.]