Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 575
Chapter 575: Return (1)
A featureless white mask. Below it was a dull-colored robe that covered his entire body, and the only part that revealed skin—his hands—was covered with wrinkles.
“Heh…who’s this old man?”
“Hm…”
Butterfly and Black looked curiously at this unknown individual.
However, Queen, who was probably seeing this person for the first time as well, had a different reaction. Although she had also never seen him, she seemed to have noticed who this old man was. “Wait… Master!”
Wolf also realized the identity of this uninvited guest and immediately ran up to greet him.
“It’s been a while, Wolf. Have you been well?”
“I’m always good thanks to you. But, Master, what are you doing here? If you notified me beforehand…”
The words were informing us that the two of them had a connection.
“This is the final one. I came here to see everyone before leaving,” the guest explained. “And there is something that needs to be done here as well.”
“Something…that needs to be done?” Wolf seemed curious about what he meant, but the Master didn’t give a detailed explanation.
Keeping us on our toes, were we?
“More importantly…” Master stared Wolf directly in the eyes. “Could you move for a moment? I wish to greet the others as well.”
“Ah…! Sorry!” Wolf immediately apologized and returned to his seat. He looked more like a dog than a wolf at the moment.
While I eyed the man as he sat down, Master’s gaze turned to me. “Cause and effect is such an interesting thing. How does it feel to see its end?” Unlike when we first met at the Round Table, this guy no longer had any intention of hiding the fact that he was Auril Gavis.
It wasn’t a particularly odd thing.
“The Master of the Round Table is Auril Gavis.”
Wolf had already declared that information here, and this old man must have permitted him to spread that information in the first place.
Tap, tap.
Then what was the reason he showed himself here again? Given how familiar they seemed to be, if Gavis wanted to relay some message to me, he could’ve done that through Wolf.
I calculated my moves in my mind, then responded smoothly, “Well, doesn’t feel all that special.”
“Hmm, is that so? I thought you would be disappointed. After all, in truth, this place was practically made by you, no?”
Well, that was true. Not the Round Table specifically, but I was the one who made the truth-game system.
“P-pshe?!”
“The Round Table…was made by him…?”
The problem was the unfettered reactions of the other people who could hear this information.
One word, two words, three words.
“Ah, of course, that is a tale of twenty years ago…and back then, it was just the evil spirits of the other world.”
As the Master continued to talk at me, the reactions became more and more extreme.
“So the Round Table existed twenty years ago…?”
“No, but more importantly, by evil spirits of the other world…?”
Hah, this was getting annoying. If you were going to do this, couldn’t we just have had a quiet chat later?
Despite my frustration, I decided to ignore that factor first and foremost. Just facing this old man was making me use my brain to its limit.
“So, what are you doing here?” I pressed.
“I told you. There is something that needs to be done, and I came to see everyone’s faces in the meanwhile.” The old man turned his gaze from me to a different member. “Greetings, Ms. Fox. Have you been well?”
“Sorry? Ah, ha… Yes… It’s been a while.”
“To be honest, I was a little sad. You worked under me so well when you had nothing, but now you don’t even consider me a benefactor, haha.”
“H-how did you…?!” Fox’s eyes shot wide as her words were repeated back to her, and the eyes of the others flashed open as well. There was only one way he could possibly know that, and he didn’t even need to say it. This old man must have a method of hearing everything spoken here.
…Which means he was always listening in.
A shiver of fear ran up my spine. I knew that he was a nasty individual, but I didn’t expect him to be this foul on top of that. The most disgusting thing was that even while he knew everything, he’d walked through that door and spoken casually about masks he’d never seen before. Lying was as easy to him as breathing.
Fox was left blustering at the reveal. “Um…it’s not like that…”
“You don’t have to make excuses. I am truly fine, so do not worry about it.”
And it truly did seem that he was fine as he was. To this old man, Fox wasn’t an existence worth caring about. Even if she were bleeding out in front of him, if he didn’t have a reason to save her, he would just watch her die.
“Excuse me.”
Having watched all this play out, Queen joined the conversation to ask, “Are you really…? The Master of the Round Table, you say, so…are you Auril Gavis?”
“And if I am?”
She hesitated. “I have something to ask you. From what Mr. Wolf said, you have the power to stop the closing of the community… Is that true?”
“It’s true. I’m the one who weakened your authority in the first place.”
At that very casual declaration, Queen went deafeningly silent for a moment before croaking, “What did you say?”
Auril Gavis let out an annoying chuckle at her reaction. “You said that your mechanism had a problem with it, but the one I gave to that friend is fine. It just seems like there is something wrong with it because I have slowly begun to reduce the authority given to it.”
“Taking authority away from it… How is that possible?”
“Why, there is no way I would have given everything over to that friend, now would I?” His answer was short and to the point, leaving absolutely no room for misinterpretation.
“Don’t be too disappointed,” he consoled, noticing that Queen was left lost for words. “I am only taking back what was already mine. And wasn’t it used well until now? Alright, then we’ll end the talk there…”
With that, Auril Gavis walked up to the Round Table and put his hand on the gem.
Shine.
Just as when a monster’s corpse disintegrated into light in the labyrinth, the gem also disappeared into sparks of light and was absorbed into the tips of Auril Gavis’s fingers.
“With this, it is done.”
Unlike the other members, who were watching this while practically in a haze of disbelief, I understood what his actions meant. Twenty years ago, Auril Gavis created the gem of the Round Table and said that he lost most of his authority over this space.
“You’re here to take back your authority,” I guessed.
Auril Gavis had now regained the authority of his past.
“That’s right. Now, I can do anything within this space. Even something like this.”
His wrinkled hand circled the air, and then as if pulled by an invisible hand, everyone’s masks fell onto the table with a series of taps. The only mask left in place was mine.
“Kyak!”
“Mmph…!”
“Puh…Pshe?”
As the faces behind the masks were exposed, the Round Table fell into chaos.
Some covered their faces with both hands while others crouched down so people couldn’t see their features. Some just spaced out from the utter shock of it all.
Of course, not everyone responded so powerlessly. With the itchy trigger finger of a true gamer, some made the quick decision to log out immediately after realizing their mask had fallen. Two people, at that.
“Unlike your typical behavior here, everyone seems quite shy now. Honestly, what you look like shouldn’t matter, even if shown to the others.”
One of the people who disappeared without a farewell was Clown. I conjured up an image of him in my mind, trying to recall what he looked like in that brief moment of exposure. I remembered him being Caucasian, but because he’d disappeared so quickly, I couldn’t get a good look at him. He also looked a little chubbier than I expected.
And the other one who disappeared is…Black.
Black’s seat was empty. She had actually disappeared faster than Clown did, so I didn’t even get a glimpse of her.
I quickly scanned the room to look at the others before they could disappear too.
“Wha-What are you doing?!”
Queen was shouting with shock, her blue eyes and blonde hair on full display. A stereotypical Western person.
Well, she also looked pretty normal. She didn’t look like a supermodel and was somewhere around her early thirties. The other members also noticed this with open surprise, until the same sense of familiarity I felt tugged on the back of their minds.
“For some reason…she looks familiar…”
There was a good possibility that it wasn’t just a feeling. Queen was apparently one of the guides who oversaw whether a newbie who entered was really a player or not.
And so, the next one.
Goblin…
He was unexpectedly pretty good-looking. In fact, he looked so handsome, he could be an actor. His skin was on the darker side, so I’d assumed he was Southeast Asian, but Hispanic actually seemed like the closest bet.
Handsome Hispanic man?
The Handsome Hispanic. That was an alliteration, and it—
That’s not important right now.
My eyes moved over to the next person to take in the true faces of all the members here. I knew that the appearance one showed in the community didn’t mean anything, but I was honestly pretty curious about who these people really were.
Butterfly is Asian. Fox looks younger than I expected. And Wolf is just an old man like I thought…
The Round Table was an exclusive club, and the conversions shared here were reserved for the veterans. However, behind their mystical masks, the people looked all too ordinary. They didn’t look particularly powerful, and none of them looked cruel either.
But that’s no different for me either.
Who would think after seeing Hansu Lee’s face that he went around smashing people’s heads in with hammers? That he could laugh even as his limbs were being cut off and his body bathed in blood?
These people would be the same. No one here was free from bloodshed. They would be dead already if they were.
“So…why did you take our masks off…? l-it’s a little… No, it’s really uncomfortable… Ah! I, uh, not that I’m angry or anything…” Goblin tried to choose the right words as he spoke cautiously, and Auril Gavis immediately answered.
“Hmm, aren’t you curious as well? About the identities of the people who you always conversed with. Since it’s the last time, I thought it might be nice to talk with your masks off.”
“Uh…I-I guess?” Goblin nodded, looking dumbfounded as his eyes flickered to me.
It was obvious what he wanted to say. “But…why is Lion…?”
“Why didn’t I take his mask off as well?”
“Yes… That’s it.” Auril Gavis had taken the masks off of everyone without asking them, except me. What was the reason?
“Haha, I need to be a little careful when dealing with this one! If I act out of turn, I don’t know how things will pan out.”
“Ah…I-I guess?” Goblin gave another awkward nod at the answer.
It was funny, to be honest. If you were going to just accept any answer that was given to you, why did you ask the question in the first place? Well, it was in character for Goblin.
An awkward tension settled in the room. Auril Gavis seemed to be enjoying the scene in silence, and the other members continued to glance my way. They all seemed like they wanted me to do something about it, so I spoke to break the silence.
“So…is your business done here?”
In other words, if you have anything else to do, you should get to it. It was an uncharacteristically roundabout way of asking for me, but it seemed the message was relayed properly.
“No, I have one thing left to attend to.”
“And that is…?”
“I have a question I wish to ask you.”
“Really? Then go on,” I readily accepted. I could decide if I wanted to answer the question after listening to it first.
“There are too many ears here to ask it,” Auril Gavis said as he took a look around.
“However, it’s too impolite to send them away like this. I’ve forced them to reveal their faces, so I should at least compensate them for that.”
I tensed at that word. There was no way this old man truly felt sorry for them and was going to do something like compensate them. He must be scheming something.
And as expected, he continued, saying, “But I don’t think just giving it out for free will be fun, so let’s play a game.”
“A…A game?”
“Why, yes. Don’t you all like games? I should say, the compensation will be given to only one person, the one who wins the game.”
“…Could you tell us what the reward will be?” Goblin asked politely, checking the reward before he even knew what the game would entail.
Auril Gavis threw out his answer as if it didn’t matter much to him. “I will send you home.”
The look in everyone’s eyes changed.
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