Chapter 04
After sending the letter to GM Neria—
“A crisis has struck our village. We need a reliable adventurer like you. Will you help us?”
The moment I stepped out into the village, an old man leaning on a staff grabbed me and said that.
He wasn’t a stranger. I had seen him long, long ago when I was just a newbie.
The village chief who gets wiped out by low-level mobs.
There’s something every Uneria player says in unison:
[If we hadn’t helped that old man in the beginner village back then, adventurers wouldn’t have become such pushovers.]
That was exactly how I felt. This old man was the beginning of Uneria’s grand catastrophe of a storyline.
“I’d rather not.”
The beginner village is a landmine.
They said the main story had changed, but after glancing around the village, nothing seemed very different.
Take this village setting, for example.
I already knew what was going to happen.
Monsters would attack this village, whose weapon storage contained nothing but rusty, worn-out weapons.
The village youths would run away with the money meant for buying new weapons, and most of the villagers would die as a result. That’s how the game’s story begins.
And thanks to this old man, the player gets dragged right into the middle of it.
There was no way I was going to play the sucker twice.
I already knew where the important item in this place was.
I was planning to grab that and run.
“Hm?”
The old man looked flustered.
Of course he did. Just like the countless adventurers who had passed his house before me, he probably expected me to nod without hesitation.
But sir, that only happened because the system forced the character to nod regardless of the user’s true feelings.
“If you ignore this village, everyone here will be trampled to death by monsters.”
The old man’s face twisted as he spoke.
“The child next door is only seven years old, and I was just about to rediscover my life after my sons became independent—”
Wait. Was there always this much detailed backstory?
As I stared at him in disbelief, he must have thought I was wavering, because he asked again.
“Will you not help?”
Help with what? I spun around sharply.
“Not interested.”
“If you help, I’ll give you this!”
The old man raised his hand high, and a reward item window popped up in front of me.
The reward was an old sword, worn smooth as if someone had used it for five or six years straight.
I opened my inventory, glanced at it for one second, and refused.
“No thanks.”
“Listen carefully. If you don’t help, the children of this village who haven’t even seen the light of the world yet—”
“Ah, that’s because your grandson picked up some weird crystal in the forest and attracted the monsters!”
Don’t underestimate someone who cleared the entire story!
And don’t try to turn me into the villain like their deaths would be my fault!
“…Ahem.”
Looks like that rotten setting hadn’t changed either.
The old man, who had been trying to shove the consequences of his sticky-fingered grandson onto a random passerby, straightened the hunched back he had been pretending was injured.
Oh?
Right then—
Crash!
A loud noise echoed from somewhere in the distance.
Originally, this event was supposed to trigger only after the player accepted the quest.
I stared in disbelief as the old man reached out and pressed the [I will help the village] button in the quest window floating in front of me.
“Hey—!”
Don’t touch other people’s stuff!
I twisted around too late. The button had already been pressed.
As if nothing had happened, the old man returned to his frail, back-aching persona and spoke in a pitiful voice.
“I shall be waiting… Please, adventurer…”
“Don’t send me off with that sentimental tone, you scammer!”
In the end, I moved toward the outskirts of the village.
I absolutely refused to feel like I was helping this place. I planned to wipe out the monsters far away from the village instead.
“Wait! Over there! Monsters are approaching from that direction! It’s dangerous!”
Someone suddenly called out to me.
When I turned around, I saw a male NPC following me with a sword in hand.
“Oh?”
Right. He was here.
The only sensible guy in this village.
“My name is Ken.”
Even in an urgent situation, he couldn’t abandon the NPC habit of introducing himself first.
“That area is dangerous. I will take care of it. How could we let an outsider handle the most dangerous spot?”
[① Leave this place to Ken
② No, let’s deal with it together]
A choice window popped up.
Originally, the correct option was to leave it to him.
But I didn’t want to leave this one decent NPC alone.
Because if Ken handled this area by himself, he would successfully block the monsters—
—and lose his left arm in the process.
Uneria was brutally harsh right from the beginning.
When I first played the game, I cried so much over Ken losing his arm.
I couldn’t let that happen again.
I reached toward [No, let’s deal with it together] and said—
“No—”
“Please do not refuse.”
Ken gave a slight bow and, without hesitation, reached out and selected [Leave this place to Ken] himself.
“Huh?”
While I stood there dumbfounded, he sprinted forward. The monsters were already close.
Then why even ask me?!
Snapping out of it, I quickly opened my inventory.
There was no way I was letting Ken lose his left arm again.
Fortunately, Mr. Ned had a similar playstyle to mine.
In other words, the type who buys performance-enhancing weapons first and cosmetic items later.
The problem was, he hadn’t cared about level restrictions.
As a result, his inventory was filled with legendary-grade equipment meant for the max level—500.
And what I had written at the end of my letter to GM Neria was this:
[Please remove the level restrictions on equipment.]
Honestly, I didn’t think it would work. Letting a newbie run around with overpowered gear would break the game.
So I added a pitiful-sounding excuse afterward:
[Even food here has level restrictions.
You can’t even eat tasty meals unless you’re over level 100. That’s too harsh, dear GMs.]
Whether it was because of that or because the GMs simply didn’t think things through, the level restrictions on equipment had been removed.
I pulled out a level-500 laser cannon from my inventory and grabbed Ken by the shoulder.
“Step aside.”
How long would it take to defeat them one by one like that?
I winked at Ken as I released the safety pin on the laser cannon.
—Bzzzzzt! BOOOOOOM!
And in the next moment, a pinnacle of Unerian engineering—a laser cannon that should never, ever appear in a beginner village—unleashed its blazing fire.
