After the Storm, and Before the Storm (Premium)

by Sakon Kaidou

  I couldn’t quite seem to remember.

  Side Story: Nightmare at the Gaol

  April 6th, 2045, Bow Hunter, Gerbera

  Hello, I’m Gerbera! My real name is Kikuko Belmont, and I’m a seventeen-year-old domestic helper so charming, I put flowers to shame!

  “Gerbera” is a very clever name that comes from my real one — “kiku” is how they call the flower in my dad’s country!

  Right now, I’m here in Dendro, having a very good time—

  “...Like hell I am. Screw it. It’s not working,” I sighed as I rested my head on the counter of the café on the first floor of my gaol residence.

  I’d tried to distract myself from the heavy mood by starting a cheery monologue, but it was just making me feel worse.

  “You’ve just logged in, and you’re already so down... What’s wrong?” asked Sechs Würfel, who was my clan leader, landlord here in the gaol, and the owner of this café. He actually sounded worried.

  No matter how many times I interacted with him, he seemed like a really good guy. How had he, of all people, ended up as the King of Crime?

  “Give me some iced coffee, please,” I said. “Pour it in the usual dolphin glass.”

  “Mm-hm. Very well,” he replied before preparing my drink like a true professional.

  I watched as the black liquid filled every part of the intricate dolphin-shaped glass. It was my favorite among the many interesting glasses we had in this café.

  Even the customers knew that by now. Recently I’d overheard a conversation that went:

  “That dolphin glass is Lady Gerbera’s favorite.”

  “Guess we can’t use it, then.”

  “...Isn’t that all the more reason to pick it and lick it?”

  The Legendarian-sounding perv had received a taste of my Alhazred’s attacks.

  “Here you go,” said the leader as he gave me my coffee, bringing me back to the present.

  “Thank you,” I replied as I took a sip. It was as good as ever.

  The CLOSED sign was up on the door, so there were no customers inside, which made the place very quiet.

  April the Prism Person — the only employee besides our leader — was just sitting on a chair with her eyes closed.

  What’s she doing, anyway? Why is a robot sleeping? I wondered. Well, whatever. Let her rest while the café’s closed. I relaxed and took another sip. Ahhh, it’s so refreshing.

  Noticing that I was feeling a bit better, the leader asked again, “So, what’s wrong?”

  It made me remember the reason why I’d been in a bad mood in the first place.

  “My death penalty just ended,” I revealed.

  “Ohh, now that you mentioned it, I haven’t seen you recently,” the leader said. “So who got you this time?”

  “I... think it was the ‘Fu’uta’ guy. I entered the dungeon that I think was his territory, my vision started to glitch, and I died before I could even make sense of what was going on.”

  “Ohh... Well, that certainly sounds like a battle against him,” he said, implying that he knew what the deal was with Fu’uta’s Embryo.

  Personally, I still couldn’t make any sense of what he’d done to me.

  “So now you’ve fought all the Superiors here in the gaol, haven’t you?” our leader asked.

  “Yeah... but it wasn’t even a fight against half of them,” I whined. “I’m probably one of the weakest gaol Masters...”

  A whole three weeks of Dendro time had passed since my arrival here.

  It didn’t seem like a lot, but it had dramatically changed my mentality.

  The Chinese saying “The frog in the well knows not the sea” seemed to describe me perfectly.

  I was a sheltered little froggy before, but now I’m out in the salty sea, and it’s basically killing me...

  I was training to regain confidence that I was the strongest, but the more I trained, the more distant that goal seemed to become.

  I did think that the leader’s guidance had made me stronger, but it felt like I had no chance against the other Superiors.

  The leader never died even if he was killed, while Hannya had just completely curbstomped me.

  That had already been a heavy blow to my confidence, so I’d decided to check on how strong the other two Superiors were, and now I regretted that immensely.

  Jumping into a battle between Candy and one of the gaol’s UBMs, I’d just crumbled to bits, and I still didn’t have the slightest clue what had happened when I’d tried to go against that “Fu’uta” guy.

  I’d just walked into the dungeon he was rumored to stay in, and the next thing I knew, my vision and stats had started to glitch and I’d just died.

  So now I’d lost a whole four times in a row. Thankfully, I’d only gotten the death penalty the latter two times — when I’d fought Superiors of my own accord — but losing still kinda hurt.

  Honestly, it felt like nothing I did by myself ever came out right.

  Back in Caldina, when I’d tried to use Alhazred to steal a national treasure, I’d been found out almost instantly, put on the wanted list, and even dropped the item.

  Back in Gideon, when I’d tried to win against the King of Destruction, he’d sent me here to the gaol, and that had been in addition to Rook destroying my mentality.

  Nothing ever seemed to go my way.

  I want to believe that my Alhazred and I were the strongest, but the world, and especially this gaol, was full of weirdos that felt like they existed to deny that.

  “Is the gaol just a hive of people with broken Embryos?” I muttered.

  “I believe many would call yours broken, as well,” the leader commented. “And you should bear in mind that the three besides me are focused on wide-scale attacks... or conditional indiscriminate attacks... so you have bad compatibility with them.”

  “I guess you’re right...”

  Hannya was someone you couldn’t let have the high ground.

  Candy was someone you shouldn’t — or couldn’t — come close to.

  And Fu’uta... I just didn’t know what to think of his powers.

  “You’re usually a solo battle-type, aren’t you?” I asked him. “Have they ever killed you?”

  “No. So far, Shu is the only one who’s ever given me a death penalty.”

  ...How many times?

  And how the hell had the KoD pulled it off? The leader was basically immortal.

  “Ohh... the days when I can once again call myself the strongest feel sooo distant...” I moaned.

  “You may start getting to them by maxing-out your new jobs.”

  “Mgrr...”

  One of the first things the leader had made me do as part of my training was to remove my old jobs — including Dead Hand — and take new ones.

  I’d whined about how much time I’d spent leveling them, to which he’d replied, “They have next to no synergy with your Alhazred, so there’s no point in keeping them.”

  That actually kinda hurt.

  Anyway, back to the present...

  “Your Alhazred is a Guardian, so it’s not hard for you to level, is it?” he asked. “The created dungeon here in gaol has good XP efficiency.”

  “Yes, but... straightforward work is so hard. Why can’t there just be a way to grab a Superior Job like it’s nothing?”

  Right now, I was leveling jobs from the hunter grouping.

  I had started with Hunter, then the low-rank offshoots of Trap Hunter and Poison Hunter, and now I was working on Bow Hunter.

  Once I was done with this, I’d go for the high-rank Great Hunter.

  Good thing that the gaol had job crystals from all the countries.

  But as far as I knew, all the hunter grouping SJs, offshoots included, were already taken.

  The fact that I couldn’t get one no matter how hard I worked was a real downer.

  “Even a Master with a Superior Job can be a third-rate if he isn’t thorough,” said our leader. “Even I supplement my build
with sub-jobs.”

  Oh, yeah. I always thought that you just had to get a Superior Job and just level that, but I guess that’s not how it works... !?

  “Speaking of which, what are your most-used sub-jobs?” I asked him.

  “Recently, I’ve been using Glass Meister a lot.”

  “How does that supplement your build?!”

  There’s no way it could be useful in battle! He just has it as a hobby!

  “It’s very dear to me,” he continued. “The café’s glasses are all made by yours truly.”

  “You made this?!” I shouted as I looked at the dolphin glass in shock.

  It was very impressive, even if you took the effects of the job into consideration.

  “Upon coming here, I realized that I like making glasses... or more like, pouring coffee into them.”

  “That’s a weird thing to like,” I told him.

  “I hear that a lot. But... you know how it fills every edge, no matter how complicated the glass is? I’m fond of watching that happen.”

  “Hmm...” I half-understood what he meant, half didn’t.

  But I did know that he had many complicated-looking glasses here, and I’d always wondered if it was hard to clean them.

  (It turned out he used The Saint’s purification magic.)

  “I believe I like it because it feels... familiar,” he added.

  “...Familiar?” What, exactly, could coffee poured into a glass remind him of?

  Also, it hit me that this was the first time he’d said that he liked something.

  “Would you like some more coffee?” he asked.

  “Yes, please. And be generous with the milk.”

  As he began pouring the coffee, I asked him something that had been bothering me for a while.

  “Why did you become the King of Crime?”

  He really wasn’t the type of person to act like a criminal.

  Honestly, it never even seemed to me like he had any desires that would motivate him to commit crime.

  He had a gentle demeanor, and I hadn’t heard him say that he liked anything until just a moment ago.

  That was why I kept wondering why such a person would become the King of Crimes, much less the leader of Illegal Frontier.

  “Well... I can’t say I have any reason worth naming,” he replied.

  “Eeehh? I don’t believe you. I mean, King of Crime is a high-risk job that could have you sent to the gaol... and actually did!”

  As far as I knew, that was the reason why, despite not being a lost job, it was a job that no one before him had ever managed to take.

  If they’d tried, they’d been captured by Masters or killed by tians during the process.

  “You misunderstand. Becoming the King of Crime was merely a side effect,” he explained. “I committed crimes day in and day out, and one day, I got a message saying that I’d unlocked a job change quest.”

  “You weren’t going for it?” I asked.

  “Yes. It happened by chance.”

  Now I was even more confused about his reasons for committing crimes.

  “By the way, which control AI were you handled by when you started out?” he asked.

  “Two children,” I said. “Twins. You can get different ones?”

  “Yes. I got a cat.”

  Ohh? That’s nice. I like cats. They’re as cute as me.

  “During the introduction, I asked him, ‘What should I do?’” he asked.

  “Eh?” You were starting a game so... just game, right?

  “As embarrassing as this might seem, I started this game because I had nothing to do on the other side, but because I was like that, there was nothing I really wanted to do here, either. That was why I asked the cat to help me with that.”

  He’d had nothing to do on the other side?

  That reminded me that he was online more often than me, and I was a NEE— uhh... a domestic helper.

  Did he have no job?

  “He answered my question by saying, ‘You can become a hero or the demon king, a king or a slave, a good person or an evil person. You can do something, or you can do nothing. It’s all up to you.’”

  “Interesting...” It was kinda fun to imagine a cat saying something like that.

  The twins had said something similar to me, actually.

  “And that is why I am the King of Crime, Sechs Würfel.”

  “Umm... I’m not sure I get it.” Had I blacked out and missed part of the conversation?

  “It’s nothing complicated. He gave me six options: hero, demon king, king, slave, good person, evil person,” he said as he took something from the counter.

  It was a die, just like the ones decorating this café.

  “I assigned the six options on each of the sides and rolled to decide which one I would be.”

  “...Eh?”

  He rolled the die on the counter. Unlike the one out on front, it had normal values instead of all sixes, but he still rolled a six.

  That wasn’t important right now, though.

  What was important was the fact that...

  “...You decided by rolling a die?!”

  “The room was a bit disorderly, and there were things such as chess boards and dice, so I borrowed a die, rolled a six, and decided to become an evil person.”

  So he had... rolled to become a criminal?

  “Is... Is that it?” I asked.

  “Yes. There’s nothing more to it. That’s why I am Sechs Würfel — I rolled a six on a die,” he said as if it was nothing, then picked up the die and rolled it in his hand.

  “...Ahaha.” I laughed with no energy or glee.

  I was pretty sure that if he’d rolled a five, he would’ve been a really good person who went around helping people.

  And if it was a four, he would’ve willingly become a slave.

  He’d be completely faithful to those roles, just as he was faithful to being evil now.

  I’d known him for almost a month now, so I knew him well enough to know that that was just how he was.

  I’d even known him when he was The Saint, when he’d truly behaved like and had an aura of a perfect holy maiden.

  Ohh... I suddenly understood what he found so familiar about coffee being poured into a glass.

  He himself is exactly like that.

  No matter how complex the role — the container — he could change himself accordingly and fit it perfectly.

  I’d fought all the Superiors here, and they all had powers that were scary in their own ways, but no one... no one had a mind as terrifying as this Master here.

  “But I guess you need someone like that to take charge of a criminal clan,” I thought out loud.

  The two sub-leaders had probably thought the same thing — that no one was more fitting to lead us than this person here, who changed himself in order to fit the mold.

  No one could do a better job at being the king of us criminals.

  “Is anything the matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing at all. By the way, about today’s training—”

  I was about to ask him what we’d do today—

  “KING OF CRIME! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! COME OUT, DAMN IT!” A thick voice resounded from the outside.

  What’s this about? I wondered.

  ◆◆◆

  April 4th, 2045, gaol

  “Shit!” Upon logging in and realizing that they were in the gaol, Gakido and his Sixth Realm Chaos couldn’t hide their frustration.

  Gakido had climbed up to the tenth in Tenchi’s duel rankings and fifteenth in their clan rankings, but now that they were here in the gaol, it was completely meaningless.

  “It’s all their fault!” he cursed.

  There were two people Gakido blamed and hated for this.

  First was, of course, the person who had directly sent them to the gaol: the King of Brigands, Bigman.

  And the second was the slave dealer who’d caused them to attack that village: La Crima.

  During their dea
th penalty period, they’d gotten online and discovered that La Crima was actually a very infamous character known for pulling such schemes.

  He specialized in modifying tians using his parasitic Embryo and selling them on the black market as either battle or pleasure slaves, which led to him developing vast amounts of wealth.

  His deeds had earned him lots of enemies, and back in Caldina, he had even been targeted by two Superiors: the King of Termination and the King of Revelry.

  The enigmatic man had somehow survived the encounter and soon gone on to Caldina.

  “That goddamn parasite fucking used us to test the strength of Hokugen’in forces!” I shouted.

  And even if Hokugen’in hadn’t interfered with Gakido’s work, La Crima would’ve just gotten some new slaves, meaning that he hadn’t stood to lose anything in this debacle.

  “That goddamn slaver asshole played us like a fuckin’ fiddle!” I screamed.

  “Yeah!” another member of his clan agreed vehemently.

  They had cooperated with La Crima on their own free will, but they conveniently forgot that part.

  As a side note, the member who’d negotiated with La Crima wasn’t online. He probably felt he couldn’t show his face after what he’d led them into. No doubt he was afraid of being the target of the clan’s ire.

  “What now, boss?” asked one of the members.

  “Looks like there’re dungeons and shops here in the gaol, too,” added another.

  They were worried about what would become of their Dendro life, now that they were here.

  Gakido, however, just grinned like a ravenous beast and said, “We’ll start by settlin’ the score.”

  “Eh? But they’re outside...”

  “No... we’re puttin’ the blame on La Crima’s boss.”

  “Boss...?! Y-You mean, the King of Crimes... Sechs Würfel?!”

  From their investigations, they’d found out that La Crima was in a clan called “Illegal Frontier,” which was led by the King of Crimes, who was now in the gaol.

  Someone had bought this info from the DIN and spread it everywhere as a way of getting back at the clan.

  Despite that, there was only info on four of the members: La Crima, Emily, Rascal — whose activities really stood out — and Sechs, their leader.