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“I couldn’t really see anything, but we won, right?”

“Yeah… I think we did.”

<…We took down the event boss. If you’ve respawned, you should come back out to the outer wall.>

“Ah, I got a message from Yoichi. We beat it!”

“Yup, I just got one from Sasuke too. Awesome!”

The two of them jumped out of their beds and rushed out to the outer wall. As they ran through the streets, Wayne felt himself overcome with emotion as he looked over the townscape that he was able to protect this time.

“Gil! Thank you!”

“Stop that! We’re friends!”

While they were able to protect the city, it wasn’t flawless. There was still damage from battle here and there, and some NPCs had died as well. There were mysterious lumps of metal scattered around on the ground, but he didn’t remember those being there before.

“…Hey, try not to think about it too much. There’s some things you just gotta let go.”

“You’re right…”

The damage discouraging, but he couldn’t save everyone. All he could do was convince himself of that. From the start, Wayne wouldn’t have been able to do anything by himself. He could only limit the losses this much by borrowing the help of many players. Being unable to accept this result would be a discourtesy to them.

The surviving players had gathered together outside the city wall. There weren’t that many. Of the original thirty people, there were only eight survivors, not including Wayne and Gil who just arrived. Checking his status screen, the XP from beating the boss should have been distributed to everyone by now, even if they had died.

“Thank you so much, everyone!”

“Don’t mention it. It was a good battle. I should be the one thanking you for inviting me.”

“Yeah, what he said. Been a long time since we had a real fight.”

Yoichi and Sasuke. Sasuke might be a bit rude, but he did his job properly, and he was more or less a friendly and nice guy. Wayne believed that becoming friends with these two might have been the best part of this whole ordeal.

“But man, it was close… We went into that assuming the front liners were going to die, so that went as we expected, but I can’t believe so many in the rearguard got killed too… It’s crazy that her AOE magic could instakill people.”

“I’m really thankful to you too, Nameless Elf. Speaking of the rearguard, it’s too bad about MentaiList…”

“He went and logged out at an inn before the battle, so he should be here soon, shouldn’t he? Ah, see?”

“Hey. You guys talking about me?”

Wayne turned around and MentaiList was standing right there. He had chosen to stay here at the capital, it seemed.

There was a reason that only Wayne, Gil, and MentaiList had come back after the battle. Since no one knew for sure if there was actually going to be an event boss battle at all, setting your spawn point to the capital was risky. In the end the boss did attack and they beat it, but even after winning, there weren’t many reasons to stay in the capital. The players who felt that way decided not to update their spawn points, even if that meant they couldn’t meet up again after everything was over. Those players had said that even if the boss dropped items, they would just take money for it. Since the same currency was used across the continent, wherever they operated, cash would be more flexible than items.

“Oh right, so were there any drops?”

“About that…”

“So, as soon as we beat the boss, the armor that was standing over there and all the swords it had crumbled away… They just turned into those lumps of metal.”

“Eh?”

“The boss herself just disappeared too.”

“Meaning… those lumps of metal are the drops?”

“That… seems to be case.”

“Plus, from what I can see, I think a bunch more of this metal dropped in the city too. When those undead died, I think it dropped from them.”

“That’s pretty unusual, getting drop items instead of a corpse to loot. Golems and stuff do that.”

“Maybe because they’re event enemies. To make it easier on players who don’t have a skill like [Disassemble].”

“But if the same metal is all over the city, then we might not be able to sell it for very much here…”

How could this happen? These players went out of their way to help him, but Wayne couldn’t even thank them properly…

“Ah, looks like you’re thinking of something weird so let me stop you, but you don’t need to worry about rewarding us or anything. For guys like us, being able to fight the event boss was already the best present you could give. I’m

the one who wants to thank you. We got a ton of XP for beating it, too.”

“Yeah, you ain’t kidding. Even though I died, I still got a good haul. If we got this much after splittin’ it thirty ways, I wanna know how much that thing was worth total.”

“Well, not to mention if we didn’t have the kingdom’s artifact we couldn’t have won, plus there’s still event rewards too. If they’re going to announce the MVPs like they did in the first event, I think our names will definitely be at the top of the list. Of course, that includes yours, Wayne.”

“Maybe… Thanks, MentaiList.”

“So, the undead in the city all disappeared?”

“Yep. Soon as we beat the boss. We already said, all that’s left are these chunks of metal.”

Sasuke said this while tapping one of them. Normally, he would have been in the front lines as well since he was an evasion tank, but that wouldn’t go so well against a boss no one had any information on. Therefore, he used his outstanding throwing skills to play a support role.

“The undead that attacked other cities just gave bones and stuff like normal; does that mean strong enemies that are directly under a boss are different somehow?”

“So what exactly was that event boss anyway? She looked like an angel, but she wasn’t actually an angel, right?”

“If you ask me, she was some kind of undead angel or something like that. My reasons are, first, the field debuff worked on her when it’s supposed to be ineffective against angels. Then, when I used [Mental Magic], it used up soul stones. The only time I need soul stones are when I’m fighting a monster that’s normally immune to [Mental Magic]. The only monsters races that are immune are undead, golems, and homunculi. Well, as far as I know, at least.”

Everything MentaiList said sounded reasonable. From the options he listed, golem was out; no matter how you spun it, the boss wasn’t golem-like at all.

“So I think she’s gotta be either an undead or a homunculus, but there’s no way to tell which.”

“It’s got undead minions, so doesn’t that make it obviously an undead?”

“Sasuke, you’re sure being a huge pain in the ass, you know.”

“Oh, come on, who cares already. We already beat it.”

He had a point. For a short period of time, there were seven catastrophes, but now the number had dropped back to six.

“Since we did take her down, I just kinda wanna know exactly what we killed is all.”

“The event isn’t over yet. If she’s an undead, maybe she’ll revive and we’ll have to fight her again during this event or somewhere else; if she’s a homunculus, then maybe a second or third different catastrophe will show up.”

“Hoo boy, I do not wanna fight another thing like that…”

“Right. There’s no more artifact, so if we have to fight it again then we’ll need the entire player population to get stronger.”

When the time came again, Wayne decided that he wanted to truly stand beside these players in the front lines, unlike what happened this time.

“All right, should we break up the party for now? For the drops, let’s just sell them somewhere. We’ll split the cash some other time. The other guys probably want to focus on the event anyway. We did get a stupid amount of XP, so the money is probably whatever.”

“Yeah, let’s call it here. If anything happens, feel free to gimme a ring. Whether I’m free to come is another story, though. Something tells me Wayne’s gonna get into more trouble.”

“You’re right about that. I will totally vouch for this guy’s bad luck.”

“All right, we’re gonna die and revive back in Aural then.”

“Later.”

Yoichi, Sasuke, and Nameless Elf all left. Nameless Elf was based in Portrie; it wouldn’t be easy to meet up with them. Yoichi and Sasuke both played in Aural, apparently. Wayne heard that the difficulty in Aural was a fair higher than Hiers, so it was impressive that the two of them could operate there.

“There they go. What are you up to next, Mister Leader?”

“What’s that for? I’m not the leader anymore.”

“Nah, you can keep being the leader, Wayne. You’ve got the right qualities for it, I think.”

“You’re coming too, MentaiList?”

“You don’t want me around? That’s why I wanted to set my spawn point here, after all.”

“No, you’re more than welcome. I look forward to working with you.”

Wayne had suddenly gone from being solo to having a three-person party. Not to mention both of his party members were top-tier players.

“You used yours for today right, MentaiList? How about you, Wayne?”

“My what? Oh, the event teleport? I haven’t used mine yet. I didn’t use it yesterday either, but I don’t get to save it, right?”

“Use it or lose it. Today’s event megathread said so.”

Meaning he could take the two of them somewhere with him.

“Well, we did just get a ton of XP, I can put some into STR and VIT, then use some for maybe INT and AGI too.”

“You building a jack-of-all-trades or what? Well, there’s only three of us, and if I’m the tank and MentaiList’s the support, maybe that’ll work out perfectly.”

“Great, so let’s head to the sellsword guild for a sec— Wait, what’s that?”

Looking up, the eastern skies were quickly getting darker.