Surviving The Game As A Barbarian Novel - Chapter 721
Chapter 721: Audience (4)
Although our conversation wasn’t a long one, I kept getting the feeling that I knew him somehow. I wondered why that might be the case, and the answer came to me soon after.
The way he speaks is similar to Baekho Lee’s.
It was hard to put into words, but they were similar. It wasn’t just the fact that both of them were rude and facetious either. They both had those eyes, ones that didn’t see people as people.
Maybe everyone who had clear goals for themselves had eyes like them. They were probably the same eyes I had as I looked at the King of the New World.
“Those arrogant eyes, can I take that as your answer?”
At that, I forced my head down and lowered my eyes.
To not have things taken from me, I needed to face my opponents head-on and fight them. I still truly believed in that conviction, but unfortunately, I couldn’t act as strongly as I did against Baekho, not when I didn’t know what the king’s goal was.
A battle of wits could only occur if both sides knew what the other side wanted.
Carefully, I asked, “Just what do you want?”
Let’s hear it from his lips.
I needed to listen to figure out what tricks he had up his sleeve and to know what his goals were.
“Boring.”
However, it seemed that he wanted a more antagonistic reaction from me.
When I lowered my head more and made of show of physically retreating, he tapped his throne from behind the silk veil.
“Well, fine. I don’t hate smart people.”
I still couldn’t get used to the way he spoke. He sounded more like a neighborhood thug than the king of a nation. But that wasn’t what was important right now.
“So what do I need to do?” I repeated, this time deciding to probe for answers. “Do you not want me to open the Gate of the Abyss?”
I had a guess as to what the king’s goal could be. All I needed was to get his reaction.
“What? Pfft! Hahahahaha!”
But what was this? I never expected him to just laugh in my face.
As I looked through the silk in disgust, the King of the New World gave an empty apology.
“Ah, sorry, sorry. It’s just too funny to see you act like you know everything when you know nothing. But thinking about it now, you were probably always like this.”
I didn’t respond.
“Because you don’t know anything, you would’ve taken certain steps forward while keeping a watchful eye on everything you could just to survive. You would’ve had moments where you lost something because you made mistakes. At some point without you yourself realizing it, you must’ve started obsessing about things you don’t know.”
I conceded a few points here. But it still annoyed me how he acted like he knew everything.
Was this how the King of the New World felt too, though? Hmm…
However, the laughter suggested it wasn’t the annoyance that he felt.
Whatever, get to the point.
I wanted to say that more desperately than ever before, but I managed to hold myself back.
From what I could tell, the king liked to hear himself talk. That, or he could have been more energetic for today for whatever reason. Either way, I didn’t need to cut him off and anger him.
“Bjorn Yandel. You don’t know anything yet. You don’t know how this world is managing to survive, nor do you know how much I am sacrificing for this world.”
I just continued to listen to him while making a character sheet for the King of the New World in my mind.
Okay, desires recognition +7.
I was going to give him +6 at first, but since he was saying all that to someone he had only just met, I decided to bump it up to +7.
“What do you mean by sacrifice?” I inquired, assuring him I was listening to what he was saying by asking a relevant question. To be honest, I also asked because I was dying to find out what he was actually talking about, but he unfortunately cut it short.
“No matter how delicious a meal is, there are some parts that can not be eaten.”
Okay. So he was also superstitious?
I didn’t ask further and added one more stat to his sheet.
[King of the New World Desires Recognition +7, Middle-School Syndrome +4]
Hmm, for some reason, I got the feeling that he was a trash mob, but I assured myself that I must be wrong. I mean, there was no way the essence dropped by the final boss would be trash, right?
“You have an unpleasant look in your eyes…”
Lowering your voice now isn’t going to do anything.
In any case, it seemed that I would need to give him +3 to Awareness as well.
“I wasn’t thinking anything!”
I quickly dismissed the king’s suspicions about me and continued to think.
If that guy could see the character sheet I was writing up for him, what would he do?
I’d get executed…
Yeah, there was no doubt about it. Narcissists like him usually got mad about things like this.
[King of the New World Desires Recognition +7, Middle-school syndrome +4, Narcissism +4]
Alright, then that was already the third stat filled in.
“Well, whatever…” the king huffed. “I can sympathize with what you’re thinking. From your perspective, I must look like the one behind everything.”
“Are you saying you’re not?”
“A meaningless question. Would you believe me if I said I am not?” he mocked, sounding just a hint self-absorbed.
At that, I referenced the character sheet I had been creating and asked an appropriate question. “Of course, I won’t be able to trust you immediately, but… If you really are sacrificing yourself for this world, then…”
“Then…?”
“I… I think that is amazing. Before we even get into whether it’s right or wrong, that’s not something just anyone can do.”
A word of praise to touch his Desires Recognition +7. I got my reaction after a short pause.
“Tsk… I’m not doing it for anyone’s approval.”
It was pretty obvious he was pleased by that.
Do I need to raise the +7 up to a +8…?
While I was lost in my thoughts, the King of the New World continued, “We’ve gone on a bit of a tangent.”
So he had already realized that he was being led off track.
“There is a saying that even if you can bring a horse to water, you cannot make it drink… Bjorn, son of Yandel. I will make you an offer.”
Okay, but why was he taking a pause after every sentence? Couldn’t he just say it all in one go?
“I’ll hear you out.”
The figure behind the silk veil moved and opened his palm. “Five times… If you listen to my requests just five times, I will not interfere no matter what you do.”
Hoh, five times…
Well, that was definitely more enticing than being enslaved to him forever.
Ba-dump!
But this was an obviously poisoned chalice.
***
Carefully thrown dice rolled across the board.
Not metaphorically, but literally.
The two dice stopped, totaling up to twelve.
Seeing this, the King of the New World didn’t get excited, almost like he had expected the number on the dice. Instead, he just slowly spoke from behind the silk.
“It’s a double.”
I stared at the dice. “Again?” Was he messing with it somehow?
“Move the piece.”
“As you command.” The knight who had been sitting opposite me carefully moved the piece, then took the dice in his hand.
“With that, I have arrived back on my territory. I will build a hotel. Then since it is a double, it is once again my turn.” The King of the New World then threw the dice the knight picked up for him back on the ground, and with a result of 7, he arrived at Seoul.
The place I was born and grew up in my hometown, and now, a city filled with hotels.
“Let’s see, the toll is…”
“I’ll use the special ticket.”
“Ah…”
Freaking bastard, he was good at the game.
He had a special ticket?
Despite the indignation of feeling like I got cheated, a brief moment of clarity shined through when I practiced a bit of self-reflection.
What the hell am I doing right now…?
I wasn’t asking myself because I didn’t know.
I was currently playing a board game with the King of the New World. I didn’t really have a choice other than to drink from the poisoned chalice.
“If you listen to my requests just five times, I will not interfere no matter what you do.”
When the King of the New World made me an offer, I accepted it. I concluded that he probably wouldn’t make five requests at the same time, so I could act like I was taking him up on the request before betraying him later down the line.
Unfortunately for me, however, he made his first so-called request immediately.
“Then stay here for a week and keep me company.”
On the first day, we really just talked.
The King of the New World was quite interested in my otherworld travel journal, and I talked to him about it while extracting as much information as I could from him as well. But his interest cooled pretty quickly, and at some point, he proclaimed he got bored of talking and procured a board game from somewhere.
When I looked at it, I could tell they were games from the modern world he created after interrogating the evil spirits he captured.
“I am bored of this. Bring that here.”
“Which one do you desire?”
“We don’t know what our guest wants, so bring them all.”
On the third day, the King of the New World packed away the board games and brought out comic books. These were also modern goods created through probing the modern people. He seemed to have also put a lot of effort into it, as he had at least a few hundred books on hand.
But the contents are all a little off.
There were some comics that I had never seen before, but I did recognize some others. For the latter cases, the art was all off and the stories themselves seemed to have been crafted after the fact from the premise alone. They looked to be a mishmash of famous comics had been created by an aspiring comic artist dragged here.
My heart ached for them, but I continued on.
The problem was that among the hundreds of comic books here, I discovered that.
“This art…”
The art style was very familiar. In fact, it was so similar that it was hard to argue it was a replica, and that was why I found the truth of it even harder to believe. The title and the plot were all also the same as the comic I knew.
“Oh? Do you know about this? The other evil spirits have also told me that this was quite a famous comic.”
“This is ridiculous…!”
Just that once, I couldn’t hold back.
“The person who drew this! What happened to that person?!” I demanded, putting no effort into masking the rage that was bubbling up from deep within me. However, the King of the New World just picked his nose from behind the silk and answered calmly.
“When I saw the man the protagonist loved like a brother assault the woman the protagonist loved, I ripped him apart on the spot.”
Ah… That part…
Honestly, I understood his anger.
Why did that artist have to play this game…? I probably won’t be able to see the ending even if I do return to Earth.
In any case, we spent the entirety of the third day reading comics, and when we got hungry, he got the knight to get us food.
“I’m starting to get hungry.”
“I shall bring out the table.”
“Two bowls of somen noodles, one plate of Yuxiang shredded pork, and Zhu Ye Qing to drink.”
“Yes, my liege.”
I didn’t know how to explain it properly, but this was like if King Arthur talked about double jumping or asking a medieval innkeeper for a pumpkin spice latte.
Zhu Ye Qing green tea in a fantasy world…
Man. The Dungeon and Stone I knew was nothing like this.
Well, whatever. I came here on an elevator and even played board games with the king, so I really didn’t feel like getting more worked up over it. It wasn’t something I needed to care about at the moment, anyway.
“I had a good time today, and now I’m tired. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The King of the New World went to sleep at the end of the third day, and I was left alone in that room.
The first day, we talked. The second day was board games. And the third day was comic books.
While at a glance, it might seem like the King of the New World seemed to just be doing whatever caught his attention, it wasn’t hard to sound out his true intentions.
Time is the important thing here…
Keeping him company was just the pretext.
The true goal of the king was to keep me here and stall for time.
Then, there was one more question that needed to be asked: Why was the King of the New World trying to stall for time?
I was able to get my answer on the next day.
“Well, it’s already the fourth day.”
The King of the New World spoke as we ate a muffin made of bacon, eggs, and tomato.
“I’m bored, so let’s watch TV for today.”
No sooner had he said than a group of knights rushed in with a huge screen and then spread it out on one of the walls.
Beep!
When the King of the New World pressed a button on his remote, a video began to play.
Boom!
A collapsed city, where blood ran like rivers.
Countless people swung their swords on the battlefield as they were barraged with arrows and magic.
“Ahhhhh!”
“S-save me…!”
“Focus, Gowland! Keep this up, and we’ll all die!”
And amidst the chaos and swells of screams, I could see my allies.
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