Chapter 8. The Little Prince in The Ossuary (8)

# The Faction (1), Camp Roberts

While the boy was pondering which story branch to follow, he noticed a quest marker approaching him on its own. ‘It’s about time,’ the boy thought. Directly below the quest marker, a Korean man of short stature was walking towards him. Behind his pair of glasses, his eyes were rolling from side to side, looking pretty nervous.

“Hello, Umm… May I call you Gyeoul-ssi?”*

Although the man was clearly older than Gyeoul, he spoke using honorifics. Perhaps because of the scary rumors about the boy, or because of the intimidating air around him from having acquired new skills.

The boy was about to tell him not to bother with honorifics, but on second thought, he decided not to. He knew that if people became comfortable with him, they would likely start taking him lightly.

“What is it?”

“My name is Jang Yeonchul. Umm… I will just get straight to the point. Some people want to meet you. I’m afraid I can’t tell you the details now, but I swear they won’t do anything bad to you. They’re… just people who need help. So please, could you spare me a few minutes?”

The boy accepted the man’s request without much hesitation. And as soon as he nodded his head, a message notifying him of a mission log update appeared in front of him.

Interactions between the player and the environment were evaluated in real-time by the Control AI, and among them, interactions with a clear causality were registered as missions (quests). It was one of the methods that the game employed to prevent the story from developing in a formulaic path.

If the player lacked the adequate skills, the contents of quests would be often displayed with question marks. But the reason the boy was given a rough explanation of the contents was all thanks to the 「Insight」 and 「Detection」skills he had.

‘Organizations… It must be regarding the factions.’

This was just what he had been waiting for. The boy followed after the man.

Yeonchul kept his head low on their way to their destination. It seemed like he was trying to avoid the other factions’ eyes, but the boy thought it was a futile effort. They were in the refugee area. Despite not having a badge, Gyeoul must be sticking out like a sore thumb dressed in his military uniform. And as anticipated, they already had a bunch of people tailing them. ‘They must be the commissioners of the factions,’ Gyoeul thought.

“Could you just give me a minute, please?”

“Huh?”

Gyoeul called Yeonchul to a stop and pointed at the people spying on them.

“All of you, you can just come out.”

Some of them tried to feign ignorance, but Gyeoul’s skills, 「Survival Instinct」, 「Combat Sense」, and 「Crisis Detection」, were helping him capture even the slightest amount of hostility directed at him, making their charade useless.

The boy pointed them out one by one and a total of eleven people gathered in front of Gyeoul. With a snort, the stalkers tried to engage in a battle of nerves with the boy, turning the atmosphere more and more severe. Yeonchul’s face turned completely pale.

The Control AI’s advice interface hovered in front of the boy’s eyes displaying keywords for a dialogue, recommended behavior, a combat proficiency assessment, and so on.

As the men stood eyeball to eyeball with the boy, one of them spat out some words.

“Who do you think you are to order me around?”

And as if on cue, the others also started to voice out some remarks.

“You little brat, how dare you point your finger at your elders?”

“Alright, I’m here. But what are you gonna do, huh?”

But despite their unruly behavior, Gyeoul knew there was one emotion that they were trying to hide from him. It was fear.

He knew what kind of rumors were floating around the camp. They were mostly in regard to what transpired on the last procurement mission and what the boy had done there. And as all vicious rumors do, these also snowballed out of control. According to them, the boy was a serial killer, a heinous murderer, and an infamous psychopath.

Now it was time to use those rumors to his advantage.

The boy demanded in a brusque tone, “Stop following us around.”

As soon as Gyeoul said it, he felt a tingling sensation running through his spine.

He didn’t need to hold back in his anger. That was the thing he most liked about living in a virtual reality.

“Who do you think—”

“You’ve already said that.” The boy immediately cut off the hollow threat.

“Or, to make it even, maybe I should follow you around and see how you like it. I have a good memory, by the way. I can remember all eleven of you without a problem.”

More viewers’ messages came at a rapid pace. The people seemed to find the boy’s actions very amusing. But the boy tried to ignore the notifications, he wanted to focus on the moment, to immerse himself in the situation.

“…Is that a threat?”

“If you are doing something that deserves it, then it could be a threat.”

“You’ve seriously lost your mind, haven’t you? Hey kid, you think that uniform makes you special? Let me tell you—”

“Oh, this uniform is nothing.”

The boy once again cut them off mid-sentence, but they didn’t get angry. They probably couldn’t because they were scared of the boy. Though the situation would’ve been much different if the boy showed any sign of cowering or overreacting.

“This uniform is nothing, really,” Gyeoul repeated the same sentence as if emphasizing.

“…”

“Don’t try to judge me by my appearance. Instead, I’d recommend you to judge me by what I have done, what I can do and what I will do.”

It was a sentence that the boy completed on his own without the help of the system, but rather, from the knowledge acquired from past experiences. A clot of emotions that had been lumped near his heart began to boil until it erupted through his mouth.

“I’m sick of other people trying to trample on me and making unreasonable demands. Nothing is as important as myself… Well, this is a world with nothing else.”

The boy began to walk towards the men as he grabbed the handle of the knife hanging on his belt.

“You guys probably haven’t been following me for no reason, so I suppose you all know what I’ve done previously. But what you don’t know is what I’m capable of doing to all of you… Do you want to see it for yourselves?”

“Fucking hell, this kid is nuts…”

Gyeoul and the men moved like two magnets of the same pole; when the boy took one step closer, the men took one step back. But they still glared at the boy with their eyes strained as if not wanting to make their fear evident. One of them tried to resist with a shaky voice.

“You know that I belong to the Korean Patriotic Community?”

“You think I’d care about your faction when I don’t care about my uniform?”

“Urgh…”

“If I kill everyone here, do you think your factions will send other people to avenge you? And what do you think the U.S. military will think about a case involving 11 adults and a boy? You know, I’m very curious to know the answers to these questions. If you’re curious too, why don’t we find out right now?”

What a crazy thing he had just said. Even Gyeoul himself was surprised at what had come out from his mouth. But the boy couldn’t deny that it gave him an odd feeling of satisfaction.

Gyeoul realized that he had started smiling without noticing. But seeing his smile, the men grew even more terrified. Without uttering any more threats, they started backing away at a faster pace. And when they finally got far enough, they turned their backs and swiftly left the scene.

Although it had only been a conversation, he saw that the Control AI was evaluating his performance and converting it into experience points. The viewers’ message icon was also flickering, notifying him of a star donation.

Gyeoul paused the game and opened the log.

「chiliconcarne: just got chills watching him act lol how can he be so fluent without even using system keywords? I would’ve just killed myself if I had been in his shoes lul」

[chiliconcarne donated 20 stars.]

「NoMemesForUrNickname: How is he so pro tho? Is this really his first time broadcasting? I mean, he could be a famous BJ with a different name and face for all we know. Even his TOM level seems really high for a noob.」**

「FuckActiveX: Who cares if he’s pro or noob? He’s fun to watch and that’s all I care about.」

「Hardgay: Yeah, who cares if it’s a man or a woman? I don’t care as long as it feels good.」

「cashmere: BJ is the wrong expression. Use streamer instead.」

「BillyHarington: Fuck↗you↘」

[cashmere donated 5 stars.]

[SnowyFox donated 20 stars.]

「Pprplz: His gameplay isn’t like those money-blinded old farts’ cringy acting.”

[GalaxySS505 donated 1 star.]***

After a moment of reluctance, the boy sent a short thank-you message.

「Han Gyeoul: Thank you all for the stars.」

The boy pondered for a moment whether or not he should’ve said something longer, but soon dismissed the idea. Neither was this stream something he wanted to do, nor he knew what to say instead. The boy right now was so much different from the boy who had just lashed out at the men. If possible, he wanted to end the stream right now. But he couldn’t. He was desperate for stars

「Hardgay: I love how his reactions are brief. The other money-blinded streamers waste time by calling the donors’ nicknames out loud one by one.」

The boy closed the message log with a sigh. ‘Money-blinded streamers…’ He thought he wasn’t much different from them either.

All of a sudden, the boy felt his boiling heart growing very cold. The boy quickly resumed the game.

Yeonchul was standing frozen in place, seemingly overwhelmed.

Several relationship update notifications popped up for Gyeoul, the most notable one being the permanent upward revision to respect-type favor.

Amongst the three types of favors—friendship, love, and respect—respect-type favor was what was needed to be recognized as a leader in a group. What was the most surprising for the boy was the +3 permanent revision gained from this event.

“Are you going to keep staring at me?” Gyeoul asked.

“Huh? S-sorry. We should move.”

Either by mistake or on purpose, Yeonchul spoke to him even more cautiously. Half fear and half admiration. The Control AI displayed a piece of advice as if to support his thoughts.

「Psychological Analysis (Lvl 6 Insight / Lvl 6 Detection): Yeonchul admires you for what you have pulled off against the commissioners. (35% probability of containing errors / a higher level of Insight or higher intelligence stat is necessary to reduce the probability of error.)」

Following his lead, the boy arrived in front of a fairly large tent. To make sure it wasn’t a trap, he first looked into the window located on the side of the tent. Under the dim light of a light bulb, there were people, all of them looking completely nervous and ill at ease.

* Korean honorific for “Mr./Mrs./Miss”. Same as “-nim” but a bit less formal.

** No, it’s not that kind of “BJ”. It’s how they call streamers in Korea (Broadcasting Junkie).

*** New Samsung phone confirmed.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep