CH 154

“Kyu…?” Hamchi’s eyes shot wide open in surprise.

“Kyu? What are you talking about? Just get on,” Siegfried grumbled in response.

“O-Owner punk… Are you offering to give me a piggyback ride…?”

“Ah… just get on, will you? Crouching like this is tiring.”

“All right… Kyu…”

Hamchi got on Siegfried’s back after hearing the latter’s annoyed grumbling.

“Kyu… Owner punk… is Hamchi not heavy?” Hamchi asked with a slight blush.

“You’re fucking heavy,” Siegfried curtly replied.

“T-Then put me down. Hamchi can walk alone—”

“Shut up. Do you really think that you can walk when you’re in that state? Your back is a pincushion right now. It’s full of holes!”

“Kyuu…”

“It hurts a lot, right? Just hang in there. I’ll make you feel better in no time.”

“N-No…”

“And thank you. It’s all thanks to you that we won. The two of us would have died if it weren’t for you,” Siegfried said.

“T-That was nothing! Hamchi is strong! That was nothing for Hamchi!”

“Forget it. Just don’t do that ever again.”

“Kyu…?!”

“I’ll come back to life if I die, but that’s not the case for you. Just run away next time if you don’t think that you can hold on any longer. Do you understand?”

“H-How can I do that?! Hamchi will always protect owner punk no matter what!”

“Shut up, and just don’t die…” Siegfried said with a hint of anger in his voice.

“Kyu…?”

“What, do you expect me to watch you die?”

“…”

“You’re not the only one who is protecting someone? I have to protect you, too. We have to protect each other and watch each other’s backs.”

“Owner punk…”

“Anyway, don’t ever do something like that again. And don’t forget that I can come back to life after two days.”

And that was the end of it…

Siegfried did not say anything else after that. He silently walked toward Turnlock Fort with Hamchi on his back, and Hamchi didn’t say anything during the entire walk either as he buried his face into Siegfried’s back and closed his sleepy eyes.

Zzz! Zzz! Zzz!

Siegfried walked toward Turnlock Fort with Hamchi’s snores as his background music.

The sun was setting, and the orange hue of the sunset painted their surroundings.

***

The battle at Turnlock Fort was done by the time they returned.

Seung-Gu greatly contributed to the defeat of the Adunyadet Marines.

“Wow, you performed pretty well,” Siegfried said.

“I leveled up quite a bit after you left, hyung-nim,” Seung-Gu replied proudly.

Seung-Gu was already Level 165. He had leveled up a lot after taking care of the small skirmishes and dungeons occurring in the Proatine Kingdom during Siegfried’s absence.

“Good job.”

“What happened to the hamster? Is he hurt?” Seung-Gu asked while pointing at Hamchi on Siegfried’s back.

“Ah, that is…” Siegfried explained.

“Y-You managed to defeat them…?”

“I was lucky. I managed to kill nineteen of them in a single blow, and I got lucky because I managed to replenish a portion of my mana while fighting the last one.”

“That’s amazing, hyung-nim. That’s really sick!” Seung-Gu was amazed by Siegfried’s story of going against twenty high-level gamers on his own.

“I cannot even dream of doing that!”

“That’s because you can’t fight one—” Siegfried trailed off.

“Hehehe…”

“Well, what matters is you’re making full use of your advantage.”

Siegfried didn’t feel the need to tell Seung-Gu that he sucked at one on one fights. His class, Golem Maker, was hopeless when it came to one-on-one fights, but he was extremely devastating to fight against in a group fight.

He was strong against many people, so what if he was hopeless in one-on-one fights?

In the end, Seung-Gu’s own view and perspective of his class were what mattered the most. It was up to him whether to view his class specialty as an advantage or a disadvantage.

Siegfried believed that the best fun a gamer could have was whenever they were seriously min-maxing their characters and making themselves even more powerful as a result.

“But what’s going on here? I thought we won?” Siegfried tilted his head in confusion while looking around.

The Turnlock Fort was enveloped with a heavy solemn atmosphere.

“…”

The faces of the knights and the soldiers in the fort were far from jubilant, and they were silently moving the dead away. They moved their dead to one place while they stacked the corpses of the Adunyadet Soldiers and burned them.

“Did we really win…?” Siegfried asked.

“That’s because we can’t see any hope in all this...”

Someone replied to his question.

“Ah, Lord Angele,” Siegfried recognized the voice and turned toward her. Lord Angele was surrounded by her attendants, and they were all wearing the same solemn looks.

“Stone Island has no hope. We won today’s battle, but our enemies are going to swarm us once again. The victors and losers of this war have already been decided, and it is only a matter of how long we can delay the inevitable. How can we smile when we know that?”

“…”

“I seem to have babbled about useless things. It’s late, but please accept my gratitude,” Lord Angele said. She respectfully bowed toward Siegfried before adding, “We would have surrendered if it weren’t for Your Majesty’s help.”

“Ah…”

“We took care of your deceased people, so you can take them back to your kingdom. We also treated the injured among your people,” said Lord Angele.

“Thank you very much for your kindness,” Siegfried replied. He had been worried about how he was going to transport the corpses of those who had died in the shelling, so Lord Angele’s words brought him much relief.

“But, Your Majesty…”

“Yes?”

“If I may… May I make a proposal to Your Majesty?”

“Later.” Siegfried immediately cut her off. He pointed at the hamster on his back and explained, “This guy is in bad shape right now. Let’s talk later. I have to look after him first.”

Siegfried’s response made Lord Angele think, ‘Siegfried van Proa… You truly are a king who cares deeply for your subjects. I don’t sense any vanity or malice in your actions as well. You are truly a benevolent king…’

Truth be told, how many kings were there on the continent who would go crazy just because a few laborers in their kingdom had died? Most of them would diplomatically say that it was a regretful incident before trying to squeeze as much value from it.

However, that wasn’t the case for Siegfried. He came running down from the mine and massacred the Adunyadet Forces just because a few of his subjects had died from a wave of shelling.

Of course, a king of a nation couldn’t be emotional. After all, a king would still have to take into consideration various factors such as their kingdom’s political standing as well as any diplomatic ties involved in it, along with vested interests.

At that angle, Siegfried was either of the two—he was either a fool who lacked control over his own emotions—or he was either a king confident enough to take responsibility for whatever trouble he stirred up.

‘Just where is your limit?’ Lord Angele wondered.

She was certain that Siegfried definitely belonged to the latter.

However, Siegfried neither belonged to the former nor to the latter.

Rather, he was living with the philosophy of repaying whatever he had received.

‘The fate of us Stone Islanders will be in your hands…’ 

Lord Angele decided to place the destiny of her nation in the hands of a foreign king.

***

Siegfried disinfected Hamchi’s wounds. He poured a potion on them and applied ointment on them before bandaging his wounds up. Afterward, he crushed a few mana stones and fed them to Hamchi.

Once he was done, he went over to meet Lord Angele.

“You took quite a while,” she remarked.

Siegfried took three hours to patch Hamchi up.

“I couldn’t just watch him suffer,” Siegfried replied.

“You seem to really care about your subjects.”

“You can put it that way, but I’m just trying to take responsibility for them.”

“Responsibility…?”

“My people died while working in a place thousands of miles away from their homes, and my partner also turned into a porcupine. They all got hurt while trying to help me, so it is only right that I take responsibility and look after them.”

“But you could have let the professionals treat them…”

“It is only right for me to do as much as I can with my own hands, right?”

“Why are you going that far?”

“It is not because I am nice or anything, but maybe… I think it’s maybe because I do not have a lot of friends?” Siegfried replied.

Immediately afterward, he inwardly lampooned. ‘Did I just smear shit on my face?’

Siegfried gnashed his teeth.

Why?

It was all because the gamer, Han Tae-Sung, only had two people he could call friends.

They were none other than Cheon Woo-Jin and Seung-Gu.

“Those are very wise words. It seems that being a leader truly is a lonely path,” Lord Angele said. However, it looked like she misunderstood Siegfried’s words.

“Huh…?”

“Most people in seats of power tend to feel lonely at times. Even I myself, although I was voted into authority—I also cannot help but feel lonely sometimes, too.”

Lord Angele seemed to have interpreted Siegfried’s loneliness as something that all people in authority had in common.

‘Let’s not tell her the truth. There’s no reason to go around telling people how much of a loser I am, right…?’ Siegfried decided that he had no reason to tell her the truth.

“Anyway, what proposal did you want to make?” Siegfried asked to change the subject.

“I wish to enter into an alliance with your kingdom,” Lord Angele replied.

“An alliance…?”

“Please help us.”

“…!”

“We will certainly repay you for your help once the war is over.”

Then, a quest popped up in front of Siegfried’s eyes.

[Danger! Stone Island]

When you're just trying to make great content at bit.ly/3iBfjkV.

[Help Stone Island destroy the Adunyadet Kingdom.]

[Type: Normal Quest]

[Progress: 0%]

[Rewards: Chance to benefit from trade with Stone Island +200%, Chance to obtain Stone Island architectural blueprints, Chance to obtain Stone Island energy source technology.]

The rewards were amazing.

‘This is insane! How much are all of these worth if I complete this quest?’ Siegfried exclaimed inwardly.

The quest rewards were bountiful simply because this wasn’t a deal between people but a deal between nations.

Siegfried suddenly recalled what Cheon Woo-Jin said last time.

“And it’s the same here in the game and in reality. The one who owns some land will always be better off than others. Do you really think that the saying: landowner is above the creator[1] exists for no reason? Owning land will automatically make you reap tremendous profits. Lands don’t lie. You wanted to become rich, right? Grab the opportunity while it’s up for grabs.”

Cheon Woo-Jin definitely wasn’t kidding.

If Siegfried had been a normal Adventurer, then the quest rewards would have either been a lot of gold or a decent artifact. However, the scale of the quest rewards was greatly amplified because he was a king, even though his kingdom was tiny.

In the end, Siegfried’s ownership of land helped him potentially obtain a tremendous amount of profit. The truth involving how a person could earn a lot of money but would never be able to earn as much as a country would earn was applicable here.

Of course, he had to complete the quest if he wanted to earn these amazing rewards.

‘How the hell am I supposed to destroy the Adunyadet Kingdom? I can help them vent their anger, but this is a bit…’ Siegfried grumbled inwardly.

The Adunyadet Kingdom was a small kingdom, but it was only small when compared to the average size of kingdoms on the continent.

The Adunyadet Kingdom was still at least three times bigger than the Proatine Kingdom or its proxy kingdom—the Renoma Kingdom. In short, there was nothing much Siegfried could personally do against the Adunyadet Empire.

“Thank you for the offer, but I do not think that I can decide on the spot,” Siegfried replied.

He had no plans to waste time attempting an impossible quest, so he decided to buy more time to look for a feasible solution that would enable him to complete this seemingly impossible quest.

“Can you give me more time? I know I’m not in a position to play hard to get, but I don’t want to accept your offer on a whim and end up being unable to uphold my end of the bargain.”

“I am confident that you will not disappoint. I believe in you, Your Majesty. Please enter into an alliance with us and lead us to victory in this war. I beg of you, Your Majesty!”

If a third party were here, they would definitely mistake Siegfried as a Master judging from how desperate Lord Angele sounded as she begged him to accept her offer.v

However, those cognizant of Stone Island’s current situation would agree that they were truly in desperate need of help.

“Please give me two or three hours to think about it,” Siegfried replied.

“I will wait for your response, then,” Lord Angele agreed.

Afterward, Siegfried went straight to the communications room and called Michele to seek advice. Michele was the smartest in Proatine, so he should be able to quickly judge whether the offer was worthwhile or not.

“…So what do you think? Should I accept it or not?” Siegfried asked.

— You should accept it.

— The alliance will be a pot of gold.

It was a bit absurd, but it seemed that Michele didn’t think as deeply as Siegfried when it came to the question of establishing an alliance with Stone Island.

1. The saying in Korea is a wordplay since 건물주 and 조물주 both have the same ending sound. Basically, it means that the landowner is above the creator who created the land. ☜