Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 720
Chapter 720: Audience (3)
At first, I doubted my ears.
Did I just hear that right?
I froze, unable to school my expression in time, as my thoughts raced.
How does the King of the New World know how to speak Korean?
I tried to think of an answer, but I was too stunned to think straight. I wouldn’t have been this caught off guard even if dozens of ninjas appeared from the walls and ceilings in an ambush.
Let’s focus.
I tried to focus as much as possible on the situation I found myself in.
The first possibility I could think of was that the King of the New World was Korean, to begin with, an evil spirit. That, however, was just a knee-jerk reaction that I quickly dismissed when the King of the New World continued.
“Cat got your tongue?”
The more I listened to him, the more I realized that his pronunciation was very stilted. It was the sort of accent you’d hear from a caucasian man abroad asking a Korean for a paper towel spot check in the restroom.
Thanks to that, my second theory came to light: The King of the New World wasn’t Korean or an evil spirit at all. He was just able to speak the language because he learned it, and did so from someone who had been dragged into this world while they were playing the game.
As the theory took form in my mind, it also resolved my question about the elevator.
“Hmm, I thought you would expect at least this much coming in,” the king mused.
Rather, I now understood how that thing came to be in this world.
The King of the New World switched from his awkward Korean and returned to his native tongue to say, “Apparently, you’re more naive than I thought. It’s obvious if you think about it. You people also have stories about attributing explosive developments in technology to help from aliens. We only did the same thing.”
Maybe I really was naive as he was suggesting. Just because this was a savage world, that didn’t mean its people were all unintelligent. Just because we were evil spirits who came over from a distant world, that didn’t mean they would jump to burning us at the stake like witches without trying to gauge us first. That would be foolish.
There were probably more than what I have seen…
The people who interacted with the community of evil spirits, Ghost Busters, weren’t the only evil spirits who existed here. I knew that from the first sentence of the letter I received back then.
This is a random letter sent to an adventurer thought to be a player.
The people of the community were the few who had managed to carve out an excellent life for themselves in this world and otherwise make a name for themselves in certain fields. That was why they were given an invitation to join in the first place.
That minority percentage was just the tip of the iceberg.
Countless more people than I could ever hope to fathom must have been dragged here from the modern world, some who surely possessed some level of professional knowledge. Among them, there were probably those who knew how to make mechanical devices using electricity or even steam. Of course, they wouldn’t create those things recklessly and expose them to the world lest their identities be discovered.
But it’s different.
With tools at their disposal like the Ministry of Security, how much knowledge would the palace have been able to accumulate by capturing evil spirits over multiple decades? And how much would they have been able to advance their technology?
I could see the results of such labor with my own two eyes.
Click.
The King of the New World clicked a button in his hand, and a familiar melody began to play. Although there was a slight difference in the instrumental, it wasn’t difficult for me to recognize the song.
It was the song of a famous British band about wanting everything to go well.
The moment I realized the song was being played on a makeshift speaker in the corner of the audience hall, I froze stiff.
“Why are you making that face?” the King of the New World asked quietly. “It’s as if you just saw magic.”
Damn it.
It felt like I just got hit on the back of the head.
I couldn’t even begin to explain what I was feeling at that moment. The closest I could equate it to was that it was as if I were looking for proof that my lover had been cheating on me. My absolute trust that something like this would never happen had been betrayed.
What the hell is science doing in a fantasy world?
To think that betrayal would come from the world of Dungeon and Stone, the game I had enjoyed playing for more than a decade.
“From your expression, it looks like you know what song this is. The one who sang and recorded this song was American, if you notice it’s a little different than the original… But so what? The people who heard it say it’s a faithful recreation of the original, so it must be.”
After keeping my silence for a moment, I spoke plainly, just as the King of the New World had suggested. “What happened to that American?”
There was no point in acting like a savage in front of this guy. He had already gone well beyond identifying that I was an evil spirit into revealing that I was Korean.
“You’ve become much ruder all of a sudden,” the king remarked.
“Weren’t you the one who said we should speak openly?”
“Hahaha! So did your brain become a barbarian’s as well?”
“Answer me…”
“Hmm, let’s see. What happened to him…”
When the king trailed off, the guard knight standing at his front answered for him. “The Department of Dimensional Research reported that no more useful information could be gained from the individual, and they were immediately terminated.”
“Ah, so he says,” the king mumbled, still relaxed.
It occurred to me then. In all mediums—from novels to comics and other such media—the modern people summoned to those worlds were the main characters, and the native people of that world only existed to make the modern person shine brighter.
But in reality, it was the opposite.
The people born into this world were its main characters. Compared to them, we evil spirits were just a small fraction of a very large world, just singular events in the grand scheme of things.
The truth of it sunk deep into my bones.
“Is that why you want to assassinate all the evil spirits?” I asked through gritted teeth. “To capture them and steal their skills?”
The answer came accompanied by a small, mocking chuckle from beyond the silk veil. “Not at all. It is an undeniable fact that evil spirits must be eliminated from this world. It’s just that we are gaining some peripheral benefits through the process… Ah, of course, the rage of the fox carrying the tiger on its back is also one of the reasons. The rage against the existence called evil spirits.”
The fox carrying the tiger?
I couldn’t help but furrow my brow. I had no idea who he could be talking about.
“Oh ho, so you haven’t heard about that yet? In that case, I won’t be able to tell you here and now. Traditionally, a story is most enjoyable when heard from the primary source.”
Alright, so he had no intention of telling me.
If I were to take a guess, the fox was probably the prime minister. However, that wasn’t important at the moment.
Rather than ask about the fox, I changed the topic to something else.
“Was that ‘her’ that you talked about before the ‘Witch?’”
“Correct.”
“What did you mean when you said I was chosen?”
“Beep.”
I shot him a questioning look.
“I have no reason to answer that, so you’ve asked the wrong question, barbarian.”
“I’m pretty sure you’re the one who said we should talk openly.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re talking pretty openly right now. Hey, you might’ve forgotten, but I’m the king of a nation, you know.”
The King of the New World was too different from what I imagined. I never expected a king to be so carefree. Hmm, but I guess it was better than talking with the full might of the royal inquisition on me.
No, he might be trying to get me to lower my guard, just like what Baekho does.
In any case, no matter how he spoke, he was still a king. He possessed enough power to return everything I had built up to naught with just a wave of his hand.
However, I also knew that adversity created opportunity.
Maybe…
Maybe today, I would be able to take a big step toward uncovering the secret of this world, something I’d been agonizing over all this time.
“You were chosen by her, no? She’s bound to get angry if I kill you, so what can I do?”
If what he said was true, then my safety was guaranteed at least.
I decided to take a more active stance.
“Why did you act ill and hide all this time?”
I was going to use this opportunity to keep asking questions. I had nothing to lose, and any answer I received was a bonus.
“Hmm? I wasn’t hiding, exactly. I just haven’t been able to go out much because I sleep a lot.”
“Sleep…?”
“Something like that,” he said flippantly. He answered that way not because it was a secret but because he couldn’t be bothered to give a detailed answer. I decided to not press the issue further.
I did have an idea, though. When he saw me earlier, he had said something to me.
“My servant, Baronet Bjorn Yandel.”
Not baron, but baronet.
If it wasn’t a simple slip of the tongue or a lapse in memory, then what could it mean? Was it too much of a jump to suppose that maybe he only had outdated information because he had been “sleeping” at the time?
Maybe there’s some restriction to staying awake.
It was just an assumption on my part, but considering the person I was dealing with, the information was priceless.
“Why did you call me here?” I questioned.
“That’s an odd question. Do thieves who break in through the backdoor usually ask that?”
“But you were the one who called us to the audience hall.”
“Ah? I guess you could say that. But honestly, I was curious how you were able to come all the way here.”
“Do you have any other intentions?”
“I wanted to confirm one thing, but that’s already done.”
That gave me pause, but I continued. “Then are you saying there’s nothing else you want from me?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Then tell me.”
“A little later. You know that it’s best to save the most delicious bit for last, right?”
Well, I found it hard to agree with his sentiment. I was the type to eat the tastiest things first before the rest. There was no guarantee that they would remain until the end.
But that was enough of that.
“Are you the one behind the war?” I asked next.
“No, I’m just a victim. I won’t say I was completely clueless, but I definitely wasn’t the one who caused it. Is that enough of an answer?”
“Then who is behind it?”
“It’s related to that delicious part, so later.” Having quickly and openly answered all of my questions, the King of the New World cut me off and spoke in turn. “By the way, don’t you have way too many questions? I’ll only answer one more question, so keep that in mind. Oh, and I’m not going to answer anything too private.”
Okay, so the last question.
From what I gathered from our previous exchanges, he probably would never give me an answer to anything truly important. Knowing that, what should I ask for the last question? Among the ones that didn’t cross that line, which one was the best?
Tap, tap…
After coming to a decision, I slowly parted my lips to ask, “Why are you answering all of my questions?”
The Witch, the war, and more.
This question might just be the most valuable one I had, even compared to the stories of old.
“Oh, that?” In an exceedingly calm and carefree voice, the King of the New World answered me from behind the silk. “Being nice to you is better than threatening you, right?”
Although I expected it, this king bastard really did have something wrong with his head.
“So I figured I’d give being nice a go…before I tell you that I’ll dispose of everyone you know if you don’t heed my words.”
Just because he was chuckling while saying it didn’t make it not a threat.
English
Abdooo
What The hellll