Vol 6 Chapter 9

ACT 9 Legend of the Unicorn

“Is there really no way?”

“Of course not.”

The magician replied. For more than 10 minutes, the magician didn’t bother blinking. Ark looked at the bag lying on the table with pained eyes. It was the second material required for ‘Slime’s Immortality Pill.’ It was the ‘Corrupted Fairy Wings.’ After he had finished collecting all the teeth of the hook bat, he wandered around the Argus Mountains looking for the corrupted fairy wings. The Monster Book had written that they were very rarely found in the Argus Mountains. However, he couldn’t find it even after a few days. After going around hunting monsters for a few days, Ark accidentally discovered information about the corrupted fairy wings.

“The corrupted fairy wings? Let’s see? Well I don’t know what to say. Oh, you should go see the magician Madusein. He might know.”

“Madusein?”

“He is a magician that moved here before it became empty. He has a store that sells magic ingredients near the village entrance. The store is arranged in such a way that merchants have difficulty travelling there…..I can’t understand that friend at all.”

Galen had introduced him to the magic ingredients store. Madusein was a grey haired magician. He didn’t set up the store to make money, but as a quiet place to work when settlers came to Lancel Village. Anyway, he asked Madusein again who laughed and replied.

“It would just head towards the ground. It isn’t easy to obtain the corrupted fairy wings. Every few months, the fairies would have a ceremony where they shed their old bodies and changed into a new one. It is like a snake shedding its skin. Then wings that would fall out are known as the corrupted fairy wings.”

“Then it would just fall onto the ground?”

“That’s right. There are quite a few fairies alive in the Argus Mountains.”

“Thank you.”

Ark quickly gave a greeting as he was about to leave.

“Are you going to search the bare ground?”

“Yes?”

“Have you ever seen a fairy? You haven’t seen it? Don’t you find it strange that you’ve been living in the Argus Mountains and haven’t even caught a glimpse of one?”

“That’s right.”

Ark nodded with a confused expression. Come to think of it, there haven’t been many places in the Argus Mountains that he hadn’t explored. However, he never saw any corrupted fairy wings let alone a fairy. Madusein clicked his tongue and continued talking.

“The fairies are different. The fairy can travel between this dimension and other dimensions. It might not even exist in this world. Do you understand? Naturally if the skin falls, it would fall in the other dimension. You will require very special skills to obtain it. Just like me.”

Madusein rummaged through a shelf before putting one bag on the table. It was the ‘Corrupted Fairy Wings.’ His intention was to force Ark who had no ‘special skills’ to obtain it, to buy it from the store. Although he could wander around the mountains looking for it, it might be better to buy it off him. However, Ark became dizzy the moment he heard the price.

“3 gold each. You said you needed 100? Then that would be 300 gold.”

300 gold! The prize money from the Evil Silrion was only 100 gold and the amount of money he won betting was 100 gold. He had also obtained 100 gold from hunting in the Argus Mountains. It was as if Madusein intentionally named the price of his entire fortune, which made him angry. Then Ark spoke without considering.

“I’ll search for it using my own power.”

“Okay.”

Ark frantically wandered the Argus Mountains after that. But like Madusein said, ‘special skills’ were required. After a couple of days, Ark eventually found himself back in Madusein’s store. Even though he tried to decrease it by even 1 copper, Madusein didn’t budge.

“I heard that you didn’t run this business to make money?”

“It also isn’t good to suffer a loss in merchandise when running a business.”

As expected, it wasn’t easy talking to magicians. Besides, he wasn’t an original native like Galen and was an NPC that had only recently immigrated here. There was no intimacy with him. In the end, Ark had to purchase the ingredients while crying tears of blood.

‘Damn, it isn’t possible to give up after gathering all those fangs……’

After all the money he invested in the ‘Slime’s Immortality Pill,’ if the item wasn’t worth it then he would die. However, it also made him think again. The ingredients were worth 300 gold. Then of course the stuff would have value. With those expectations, he eventually decided to buy the item.

‘Yes, this is an investment. Anyway, once Sid organizes the items and returns I will have a lot of money again. It isn’t necessary to worry about 300 gold. In order to earn a lot of money, the investment amount has to be big too. It is common sense that a larger investment would mean more profit.’

Ark………if he didn’t think like that then he wouldn’t have been able to endure it.

‘Anyway, I have the corrupted fairy wings now…….there are only two ingredients left?’

“Information Window”

‘Slime’s Immortality Pill ‘ Recipe

Essence of Glowing Slime Jelly 1/1

Unicorn horns 0/1

Corrupted Fairy Wings 100/100

The roots of a Mandragora that has received moonlight 78/100

Tooth of a hook bat 1000/1000

It took him six days to obtain the tooth of a hook bat. He wasted three days on the corrupted fairy wings and eventually had to spend 300 gold to buy it. The amount of time and money he spent into making this wasn’t a joke. But now it is almost up to the completed stage.

‘I can find the Mandragora herb as I wander the mountain……..’

The Mandragora was a herb only found in the Argus Mountains. In fact, he had also seen the Mandragora when he came to the Argus Mountains in the past. But he didn’t dare to even touch it. Just like the corrupted fairy wings, sometimes special herbs or ingredients required special skills in ingredient foraging. The Red Bee Honey was a high class ingredient where if you didn’t sprinkle it with the mushroom poison antidote first, picking it would be dangerous. The Mandragora was one of those special herbs. The roots of the Mandragora were in the shape of a person, and when it was pulled out from the ground it would let out a horrifying scream. It was a sound that would instantly kill any user or NPC with a 100% probability. When Ark was a beginner, he could only check the texture of the cold ground.

However, Ark soon found a solution. The copy of the ingredient sent by the Magic Institute had details about the scent of the Mandragora. Ark was not a dog. However, he had a number of summons that was like a dog. Ark instructed Deimos to look for the Mandragora from a distance away. As an undead, Deimos was immune to the instant death magic of other monsters! He pulled out the Mandragora without any concerns about its cry. However, he needed the Mandragora that had received light from the moon. Because it could only be picked at night, he was missing a few but that was easily solved with time.

‘The problem is this guy…….’

Ark breathed out a sigh as he read the recipe. The only thing left was the horn of a unicorn. It was in fact the biggest problem. Ark had tried to find the unicorn’s horn first. Because it was different from the other ingredients and only required one, he had tried to put it away quickly. The exact location of the unicorn was even recorded in the Monster Book. It was located at the Moonlight Pond in the northern part of the Argus Mountains. But no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t even find a trace of the unicorn’s shadow. After a couple of days, he had given up to go hook bat hunting. However, he could no longer put it off.

‘There should be a way to catch it somehow……..’

Ark lived in the area around the Moonlight Pond. But a unicorn still didn’t appear. A whole day passed.

‘Perhaps the Monster Book was wrong?’

What other reason was there for it not appearing. In the end, Ark was attempting to move his seat when the moon rose on the Moonlight Pond.

“Hihihihing!”

Suddenly a cry was heard from the Moonlight Pond. When he flinched and turned around, wasn’t that a white horse running around the pond?

‘It’s a unicorn!’

Ark immediately jumped into the Moonlight Pond. However, when he arrived he only saw the unicorn’s shadow as it ran away. Its caution was enormous. Since then, the same situation was repeated. Ark would hang around the Moonlight Pond until it showed up. Once he was behind it, its form would be seen in the distance. When he attempted to ambush it with his summons, the situation was the same. It was so wary that if there were any signs of a monster, it wouldn’t appear. And its speed was so quick that Dedric couldn’t even catch up with it while flying.

“Unbelievable.”

There was a tight knot in Ark’s stomach. These ingredients were so difficult to collect that sometimes he thought he would die! Now only the last ingredient was left. But if this pattern continued then there would be no way to obtain it. Even if he chased after it for one thousand years, he wouldn’t be able to catch it. After Ark spent one day on it, he eventually wandered back to Lancel Village. He had been hunting while waiting for the unicorn and had a pile of japtem built up.

“Ark-hyungnim, you’re back?”

When he entered the village, the guard NPCs greeted him happily. He knew those people. They were the thieves that had come with Ark. Among them were the thieves who had graduated from the Samcheong College of Education and lost the chaotic alignment. And they had specially trained in a career to help the village.

“Ark-hyungnim. A few days ago we took over the position of village guards with Big Hyung-nim’s permission.”

“Hello? I started working part-time at the general store today. This is the help out the livelihood of the training centre and ease Roco-nuna’s concerns a little bit.”

“I’m employed as the assistant to the carpenter. I’ll extend Hyung-nim’s house later.”

Whenever he visited the village, the thieves were report to him. Thanks to that Ark’s depressed mood became better. These thieves weren’t seeking a new life. The number of thieves that have entered Lancel Village was now 130 people. The atmosphere of the village became lighter and they’re started to fix up the surrounding roads now that there are a lot of people to help. It was the development of a village. It would mean a direct profit for Ark.

‘Okay, okay. Work more diligently. Raise the real estate prices higher.’

Ark smiled warmly at the NPCs running around. The village should develop and become a larger scale. And gain more awareness. The rapid changes would affect the real estate market value. It was natural for prices of houses in liveable towns to rise. If Lancel Village was established as a place with good real estate then merchants would come running with money to buy the houses. Then Ark would sit down and earn money. That wasn’t the only advantage with houses. When the house had been empty for a while, sometimes he would come back to find items.

-Meow Elder Hassan has sent a gift (10 glowing molars)

-Galen the temporary chief of Lancel Village has sent a gift (Southern Speciality Fruit Basket)

Ark received overwhelming support from the NPCs in Lancel Village. When Ark left the house empty, they would often give him gifts like these. The Meow would give leather from the monsters they hunted in the vicinity, the raccoons would leave crafts to decorate the house while sometimes Hanson would provide a map with a new area discovered. A lot of it didn’t cost a lot of money but they were all free items. Ark wasn’t the type that would reject anything free.

‘Huhuhu, what gifts will there be this time?’

Ark excitedly went to his house.

“Oppa!”

Just as he entered the house, he heard Roco’s voice.

“Ara? Roco? How are you here?”

“I haven’t seen Oppa for a while so I stopped by for a moment. Oh, but what kind of house looks like this? The dust on the table…….ghosts would appear. So I decided to do a little bit of cleaning.

Roco held a broom while laughing. He remembered that every time he came home, it had been clean for some reason…….was she trying to take the role of a wife? It is definitely such a shape.

“But why do you look like that? The armour is shabby as well as your face, and did you wash at all?”

“Well it is in the game……..”

“Heung! It is obviously in reality as well. Haven’t you been playing the game for 20 hours every day? You’ve probably haven’t been washing and just eating noodles. Isn’t that right?”

She was completely correct. He played 20 hours a day. When he played for that long it was a pain to do anything else. When at home he would barely wash and he would often eat seaweed rolls in the game unit.

“I still go out for training.”

“That’s because the teacher is severe and you’ll receive hell for not going.”

“That’s it.”

“I don’t care whether it is a game or reality. It is a basic good etiquette to be clean. Other people manage to look good while in the game…….”

Roco continued muttering before closing her mouth. Then she looked around and quickly pulled Ark to the door.

“It is dangerous here for the moment so follow me.”

“What? Dangerous?”

“Shhh, Jana was sleeping on the neighbouring roof just now. And Sarah is helping her father map new areas but if she knows you’re back then it would be troublesome. So come with me quickly!”

Jana, Sarah and Roco were still having a war of nerves to try and maintain a grip on Ark. Anyway, Roco led Ark to a stream nearby.

“Take off your armour. I’ll wash it now. Whether it is a game or reality, a man should always be clean. Ah, and on the weekend I’ll bring a few dishes to the hospital. Unlike New World, you should take a break to eat properly.”

“…………..”

After receiving Roco’s embarrassing confession, they’re met a couple of times to eat and watch a movie. It was good up to there. Ark used playing the game as an excuse not to go out for too long. But the aftermath had led to a surprisingly serious situation. Roco had started acting like his wife. But compared to reality, it was much more serious in the game. Particularly in Lancel Village………maybe she became anxious because of Jana and Sarah actively expressing their affection. However, the bigger issue was that Ark didn’t hate her nagging. After his mother was hospitalized for a few years, there was no one around to nag him. He didn’t know it himself, but it was quite lonely. Therefore, Roco’s nagging sometimes felt quite lovely. And he gradually got used to it.

“Look. That’s a lot better.”

Roco was shaking off the moisture from the leather armour. Unlike reality, in New World there was no need to dry the leather armour. After the laundry was finished, the leather armour looked as good as new. Even if he repaired it using Magic Restoration, it wouldn’t get rid of the dirt. In addition, there was no need to reject the 5% increase in defense for 4 hours buff.

“Thank you.”

Ark wore the armour with an embarrassed expression.

“Oppa, how long will you stay in the village?”

“Why?”

“When you have time will you take a walk with me? I found a place that has a good view of this area. We haven’t been able to meet outside since Oppa has been busy hunting. So it would feel like a short date. Yes? When it comes to Oppa, we can just go to a nearby area and look around.”

Roco asked with eager and sparkling eyes. The landscape of New World was so beautiful that it couldn’t be compared to the real world. It was difficult to look at the mountains from a suburb in Seoul, but New World was different. There were jungles just like the Amazon and thick forests. There were places that haven’t been touched by human hands. The fact that there were monsters waiting also made it more fun for the users…….. If a suitable place was found, it wasn’t necessary to take an airplane and fly to a foreign country. Recently, there was the trend of lovers going on dates inside the game. New World was the best environment for lovers to date in. They didn’t need to go away. There were cities with theme parks and a medieval village in the background. There were strange food and no matter how much someone drank, they wouldn’t get a hangover. Dating in New World was so popular, that there were even websites on the Internet that specialized in it. If monsters showed up on the date, the lovers could show off in front of each other and gain a lot of attention. For Ark who lived in the game, Roco came up with this method of dating.

‘It’s not a bad idea to cool my head off a little bit.’

“Okay, I’ll have a quick look around.”

“Hohoho, then follow me. I’ll show you a wonderful place.”

Roco guided him to a place that Ark had visited already. However, it looked like an entirely different place once he saw it again.

Was this scenery always here?’

When he was hunting, he didn’t pay any attention to the scenery around him.

“How is it? Is it okay? All the rehabilitation brothers have come here before as well. Jjak-tung oppa even said that he would bring his girlfriend here again in the future. Ah, did you know that Jjak-tung oppa had a girlfriend? There is an 11 year age difference between them so I called him a cradle robber.”

Roco stood next to him and babbled in a pleasant voice. However, Ark was already trying to navigate the Andromeda. How could he catch a unicorn? Those were the only thoughts his head was full of.

‘………that damn horse, should I ask Roco to come and help me take care of it?’

That was the idea that Ark suddenly thought of. The beautiful scenery, woman and unicorn…….the combination reminded him of a fantasy movie he watched when he was a kid.

‘Wait? Unicorn? Wasn’t a unicorn a monster with one horn? And the unicorn I saw was a horse. Speaking of the unicorn…….?’

Ark quickly pulled out the Monster Book.

Unicorn Habitat: The Moonlight Pond in the Argus Mountains.

The unicorn is a mysterious animal that crosses dimensions freely. Using its power, it can sometimes cross the dimensions and show its form on our dimension.Although it has a lot of wariness, its nature is good and it likes a righteous person. If someone appears that is the opposite, it would know straight away and never appear. The unicorn’s favourite things are babies and an innocent maiden. In particular, it likes the form of an innocent maiden and is drawn instinctively to her.The unicorn horn has powerful magical effects and is a premium magic ingredient. Thanks to the indiscriminate magicians attempting to capture them, they rarely show their form on this earth. But there is a rumour that some travellers saw them at the Moonlight Pond in the Argus Mountains.

‘That’s right, as expected……..!’

Ark also remembered similar contents from the movie. The man in the movie sent his innocent daughter as bait to catch the unicorn. Then the unicorn went to sleep in the daughter’s lap and the man attacked it. Of course that was the reason the unicorn didn’t appear for Ark. The unicorn would be wary of an alert man who didn’t even wash when he was dirty.

‘But an innocent maiden…..?’

According to the legend, it would appear at her foot? And there was such a woman right in front of Ark! Ark grasped Roco’s hand and asked.

“Roco! Can you help me out?”

“Yes? What is it?”

“I need your assistance in catching a monster.”

Roco blushed under Ark’s attention and asked.

“Are you certain I can help?”

“Yes, your help is definitely necessary!”

“I understand.”

“However………”

Ark folded his arms and looked at Roco. When he thought about it, it probably wouldn’t be that simple to catch a unicorn. The woman who summoned the unicorn in the movie wasn’t simply a woman, but one with a lot of charms. Of course he didn’t mean Roco’s appearance. Objectively, Ark would score Roco 8 out of 10 points. Moreover, in New World people could slightly improve their beauty so a lot of them have good looks.

‘Plastic surgery in New World……..that is the problem…….’

The problem was that other female users possessed Roco’s beauty through this plastic surgery. In New World, performing artists were considered ordinary. He didn’t know what the monster was looking for but as the average appearance in New World was very high, there was no guarantee that it would be tempted. Roco was also lacking a fatal blow. Seduction! Unfortunately, Roco didn’t have that. However, Ark didn’t consider it impossible.

‘Then I guess I have to use that method.’

Ark checked a recipe and made a survival cooking dish.

Drink of Bewitchment.

It is a drink that has been created through the refinement of several herbs. Once drunk, a subtle scent of temptation would float from the body. If you have someone from the opposite sex in mind, confess using this chance!