| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 3330 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 1974 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
Arriving at the London city residence, I sent a whisper to a user named Jasmine.
[Warning! You currently have whispers blocked.]“Ah, right!”
Thankfully if it wasn’t for the warning that came out just in time, I would have been labeled as a senseless user who sends whispers even though I had set the whispers to be blocked on my end. With a simple setting change, I unblocked whispers.
[Are you there?]I sent a whisper with a cautious tone of voice.
[Currently I am busy with my work and am unable to connect to the game, so if you have business with me please leave a message or call me on my phone.]Rather than an answer, I received a user-set auto-reply instead.
“Ugh.”
My mountain of anticipation that had built until now had completely collapsed. Of course there was no rule that the person must be connected to the game 24 hours a day, and it was my mistake to assume that was the case, but it was not enough to comfort my feelings of collapsed anticipation.
I’ve requested whispers two more times afterwards but their status was still set to offline. If they simply blocked all whispers, I would have sent a premium message that gets to them no matter what or commission a ‘location trace’ to find where they are, but since they are offline, what else could I do?
“No other choice then.”
In the end, I decided to give up for now. Then I thought about teleporting again back to the Sky Castle. I was thinking that if there was nothing I can do, then I’ll just spend time looking over my items.
[Ellie!]But I couldn’t even begin doing just that because of the whisper that came into my ear.
The number of people who would whisper to me was only two in the whole game. On top of that, there was only one who would call me by a nickname.
Yes, it was Katalina.
[Is it over already? That was much faster than I thought.]It hadn’t been that long since Katalina had left for the guild meeting. Considering how long most guild meetings last, it wasn’t an exaggeration to say that she finished in record time.
[Fufu, nope. I’m still in the meeting but I’m just sneaking a whisper to you right now. It seems like the meeting will take longer than I thought.]As opposed to my assumption, she said it will take longer than usual. I imagined that the agendas of the meeting were very aligned with each of the member’s interests, so it will take a long time to solve everyone’s wishes.
[How is it progressing? I hope it’s not just spinning your tires in place as the talks keep going round and round in the same place.][Wow! You’re really on the money. That’s right!]
Tsk, I couldn’t help but click my tongue. This is why I’m always annoyed at the thought of politics. When they have an enemy in front of them that needs to be taken out, it would be fine to argue about things after taking them down, but instead they just keep talking on and on about all the other things even before fighting them…
[So you’re saying it’s going to take a long time… Is that why you whispered me?][No, I was just bored. Hehe.]
So she used me as a way to relieve boredom?
[I think you honestly just want me to be there with you. Am I right?][Fufufufu.]
She definitely does want that, doesn’t she? Katalina only kept laughing in return, but I didn’t feel annoyed at her for doing that.
[Should I go?][Yeah yeah!]
[Or not?]
[Aw…]
This is fun. I wanted to continue a bit more but it looked like she’s going to get angry, so I barely stopped myself from continuing.
[Where is the guild meeting location?][Woo! You’re really coming, right? We’re in Birmingham city!]
Birmingham was the same size as Busan in Korea, as the 2nd largest city and located 160 km to the northwest of London. In real life, it was an industrial city that thrived on the production of high-quality coal and iron-based metalworks. Interestingly, the game also reflected on this geographical factor by having the in-game city earning most of its profits through the production and sales of iron and coal.
The likeness of big famous cities was reflected in the world of Blue Sky, and Birmingham was one of these cities that had its geographical location reflected in the game.
Currently, the guild that controls Birmingham was the ‘Empire’ guild. Appropriate to their name as they are the top 4 of the 8 great guilds in the game (Volcano, Shining, Chaos, Empire), with ‘Terror’ as their guild leader, who was 4th highest-ranking users in the whole server.
[But only the invited can get inside of the castle, isn’t it?]I was sure that the ones most likely to be invited were generally guild leaders, vice-guild leaders, or users of that caliber. On top of that, they would be guilds with at least a small amount of land in their ownership. As a rare top-ranked user who had yet to join any guilds, I had a good enough reason to be invited, but it would be awkward for me to whisper Terror directly right now and ask for an invitation to the castle.
[Of course.]But Katalina answered as if it wasn’t a big deal. Before I could even reply, she continued.
[But we have the Rings of Promise after all. A useful function should be used if it exists, right?][Ahh…]
It seemed like Katalina had planned to bring me to the meeting location through this method the whole time. I was reminded that aside from the good stat improvements in the ring, there was a great function on top of that.
I’m sure I can only use it once a day or something.
There were no limitations on who could summon who. What that meant was that I could be transferred to where Katalina was and vice versa.
In other words, if there was any place where one of the two people was restricted from entering, using the ring could bypass that restriction, which made me understand just how useful the legendary rings were.
[First of all, it’s a little awkward to summon you right here, so I’ll summon you once I’m outside in the balcony when it’s break time later. Be on standby and when the summoning message comes up, please press yes. You do know what happens if you accidentally press no, do you?]She’s threatening me with those last words, right?
[Do I?]I dug into her words as a jest.
[Hehehe…]Katalina covered up her threat with a laugh. I knew it, that was her intention.
Though it wasn’t like I didn’t want to join the guild meeting. In any case, I had accumulated a lot of debt towards the Shining and Chaos guild, so I had to pay it back. The only thing left was to choose whether I join in as a mercenary or in an official capacity.
First I needed to see how the meeting was going.
[Katalina has summoned you. Would you like to accept?]“Yep.”
Not long after, I heard the system message and accepted it without any thought right away. Soon, a blue magic circle spread out on the ground around my feet and covered my whole body in white light.
It was similar to teleport magic, but there was a subtle difference.
“You here now?”
As the pool of light dissipated, Lina greeted me with a smile. Even though we only parted with each other for a little bit, she seemed extremely happy to see me. Was the meeting really that boring and painful to her?
“Yeah. That’s strange, there’s not a single person in the balcony.”
Looking around the huge balcony, I saw that not a single soul was standing around here.
“Hmm, well it’s because they’re all inside arguing about their profit and whatnot, so they probably don’t even have time to get some fresh air.”
Katalina’s expression looked uninterested, but her tone of voice had thorns in it.
‘Looks like the situation isn’t going that well.’
I realized that coming to her without making a fuss was the best decision. It seemed like the situation was much worse than I thought.
“Now, let’s go inside. Colin and many other officers were all excited once they knew that you were coming after all.”
“Huh?”
I mean, they were not even related to me as a friend or anything, so why would they be happy I was coming?
“You, you didn’t make contact with any of those guys after the meeting that day, right?”
“You know better than me, don’t you?”
Honestly, considering that she was stuck right next to me every moment we played the game together, it was unbelievable that she would even ask that, which was why I snapped back at her and she responded by sticking her tongue out.
“Hehe, I guess so. In any case, they’re just desperate to meet you since they want to have the chance to talk to you but could never find any. Well, even so, I will get in anyone’s way if they try to be close to you.”
For some reason, it was me who got scared instead.
“So why are you saying you’ll introduce me to them?”
“They’ll try to bother you anyway so I have to make sure I am next to you at all time so they don’t do anything weird.”
Hearing Katalina spoke as if it was completely obvious, I was completely flabbergasted and couldn’t think of anything to say.
And so we opened the glass door on the balcony, headed inside the hall and I was surprised by how each table was completely occupied.
Even guilds with almost no reputation were here. Although the number of people was relative to the size of each guild, there were still dozens of guilds altogether so the hall was completely filled with people.
I guess the only difference was that perhaps due to the fact that they were all in the upper echelon of Blue Sky users, it wasn’t noisy like the flea markets.
“Now, come over here.”
As I stood there completely lost in mind, Katalina pulled my hand and headed towards the table where it had the sign ‘Volcano’ on it.
“Who is that, and why is she coming together with the guild master of Volcano?”
“I’ve never seen her before.”
“Yeah, I can’t tell who she is because her ID is private.”
As I was currently wearing ordinary clothes instead of a hunting outfit, there was no one that could recognize me even though my face was revealed. I guess I should be thankful, but I couldn’t do anything about how everyone’s gaze was fixed on us due to how famous Katalina was.
Finally, as we arrived at the table where officers of Volcano guild was seated, a number of members that had met me before came to greet me.
“Ah! You’re really here. It’s nice to meet you, I’ll introduce myself again. I’m Colin.”
The young girl with impressionable cute eyes gave a fresh smile towards me, and I also greeted her back with a smile as well.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you as well.”
Using that as leverage, the user named Anubis and Joker who I had met before also came to greet me as I walked towards the one seat that was left empty either coincidentally or intentionally next to Katalina.
