God-Tier Enhancement: My Upgrades Never Fail-Chapter 171: Episode 34_You’re the Mother (2)

3.

Until just a few days ago, the otter had been the object of all of Han Simin’s affection.

Even though he hadn’t managed to tame it, he had pampered it, granted its wishes, and even enhanced its ores.

Days and days of effort, all to somehow keep it attached to him!

All that consideration had vanished in an instant the moment he met a dragon—or rather, the moment he discovered a dragon’s lair.

“Kku-eong.”

And as if that weren’t enough, now he had abandoned it.

Left alone in the imperial palace with Squeaker, the otter let out a pitiful cry.

“Kyu.”

Squeaker tried to comfort it, saying it understood that feeling better than anyone, but that could hardly help.

It had only just started to open its heart.

It had been grateful to the human who had painstakingly enhanced its two ores to +15.

It had started to think that maybe, just maybe, it could entrust its whole life to this man.

“Kku-eong.”

Was this what it felt like to be a new bride abandoned on her wedding night?

As the otter grieved and waited, Han Simin returned, as if in answer.

“Huh?”

“Kku-eong!”

“Oh. Right. Sorry.”

A cool, straightforward admission.

He had, for a brief moment, completely forgotten about the otter.

He apologized and soothed it with a practiced, fake smile.

He had been too busy dealing with the big shot that was a dragon to spare any attention for an otter that only produced ore.

For someone who always pursued profit through relative comparison, it was inevitable.

’If I’ve got a dragon, why would I need ore production? I can just go steal it.’

A reasonably rational decision.

He only had one body, after all.

Still, after all the effort he had put into bringing it here, he couldn’t just toss it aside now that he didn’t “need” it.

If it had been a true either-or choice, that would be one thing, but being able to have both and discarding one? That concept didn’t exist in Han Simin’s dictionary.

“Kku-eong! Kku-eong!”

[You have successfully tamed the target!]

“Huh?”

And right on cue, a hologram appeared.

A sparkling notification that neatly washed away all the hardship and frustration he had faced until now.

“Nice.”

So even if your level was low, as long as the monster wanted it, you could tame it.

He had just confirmed another possibility.

But more than that, he was happiest about finally feeling like his hard work had paid off.

“Let’s get along from now on.”

“Kku-eong! Kku-eong!”

A weight lifted from his mind.

Now he wouldn’t have to put on an act for his own family.

He could be relaxed, like a friend. Warm, like a dad.

He could show them his true self to his heart’s content!

As he set the otter down, he let his gaze slide over to Kardian.

Her beauty was still dazzling enough to make any man swallow hard.

If just her face, peeking out from under a robe, looked like that, what was hidden beneath it?

It made you imagine things.

Even setting aside her combat ability and magical aptitude as a dragon, that beauty alone was an incredible power.

For a moment, thousands of money-making schemes involving her flashed through Han Simin’s mind.

He erased all the ones that weren’t suitable for an all-ages rating.

’Let’s stick to ways to make money while still progressing the game.’

Even then, there were plenty.

He couldn’t help but smile.

He reached out to Squeaker.

“Squeaker, say hi. She’s your mom from today.”

“Kyu!”

He immediately put the first of those ideas into practice.

She was speechless.

’He’s really going to make me play the mom?’

Kardian’s dumbfounded expression didn’t even register for him as he handed Squeaker over.

Completely clueless, Squeaker let out happy cries as it hopped onto Kardian’s shoulder.

“You really expect me to...?”

“Yeah, don’t take it too personally. She’s a dragon too.”

Her eyes widened.

“A Gold Dragon. And if you so much as think about doing anything to her, you know what happens, right? I trigger the Vow, and you’re dead.”

She bit her lip.

“Since you’re both dragons, think of yourself as her real mother and take good care of her. That’s your first order. She ate a lot this time, so it probably won’t happen, but if she says she’s hungry, feed her. Oh! And you handle that on your own.”

He was going to keep Kardian with him at all times.

Without a single moment’s exception.

Which meant that Squeaker, whom she would be looking after, would always be within his line of sight, and whenever he needed a mount, he could hop on right away.

Even so, there was only one reason he was entrusting Squeaker to her.

’I need to stop feeding her gold.’

No matter how much money he had, his nature of begrudging even a single gold coin hadn’t changed.

Especially now, when his spending had grown, and he didn’t hesitate to splurge when it mattered, the gold being poured endlessly into Squeaker for no “practical” return felt all the more painful.

So he dumped the responsibility.

’If I keep her with me, I’ll sometimes forget and leave her behind.’

But he could never forget Kardian in her beautiful human form, which might actually make him take better care of Squeaker.

That was his thinking as he shoved the job onto her.

With the label “mom” attached.

“Call her Mom from now on.”

“Kyu!”

Thoughtless as ever, Squeaker just nodded happily.

Of course, he was happy.

It might really think Kardian was its mom.

They were both dragons, and Kardian was the “lunch lady” who had provided it with more gold than most dragons would see in their entire lives.

“Kyu! Kyu!”

“Go away.”

Naturally, Kardian recoiled and tried to push Squeaker away as it rubbed its head against her neck, but she couldn’t bring herself to be rough.

Han Simin was watching with a wicked grin.

And there was the Mana Vow she had made.

She could ignore any other contract, but she couldn’t ignore the Mana Vow she herself had forged.

That was tantamount to declaring she was ready to be annihilated.

With a face like she had just bitten into something foul, she patted Squeaker’s head.

“Tsk tsk. Dragons are no different. So fake. No backbone at all.”

The man with the least backbone in the world, Han Simin, shamelessly spat out those words.

* * *

The Specialists were going through a rough patch.

“Wow. This is brutal.”

She stayed silent.

Even Jeong Seolah was frowning, her delicate brows drawn together in displeasure.

This was nothing more or less than hunting at a loss.

Even just hunting the monsters at the entrance of the mountain range was a waste of time and drained their stamina and energy.

And it wasn’t even guaranteed that they could kill them.

Unlike the northern mountains, the monsters here seemed to be linked somehow; if you dragged things out for even a moment, new monsters would join the fight almost immediately.

The terrain was terrible, and the monsters’ tendency to swarm made it the worst of the worst.

“If the north was all about fog, then this place is... this.”

East, west, south, north.

Each of the Four Forbidden Zones had its own distinct flavor.

Jeong Seolah, who had grasped that faster than anyone, couldn’t smooth out her furrowed brow.

She was too busy calculating.

’Is it better to keep doing this?’

The Guild Selection Tournament.

It was an event they absolutely had to participate in.

This wasn’t like other games, where events were held whenever things got dull, or the developers worried players might quit.

The game company couldn’t even host it.

Whether it was BetaGo’s will or the Emperor’s, it would take a year for the event to occur again.

Maybe even longer.

That was why they had joined.

Even though they didn’t dare dream of winning.

They at least needed to get their name on the board.

Since they had decided to remain a small, elite group, the Specialists had to live up to their name and build a reputation.

Only then could they compensate for the disadvantage of low numbers.

But the more they ran headfirst into that difficulty, the more they wanted to give up.

’Maybe we should just level up more and push the next Main Quest...’

You couldn’t have everything.

You had to choose and focus.

Wouldn’t it be better to use this time to widen their level gap over Kenji?

“Adventurers?”

“Heh. They said a fair number of adventurers joined the Selection Tournament, and here we are running into some.”

“But there are too few of them to call it a guild.”

“Probably a bunch of rookies who formed a guild for fun. Adventurers are weaklings anyway. Who cares how many of them there are?”

They could also cut down on pointless encounters like this.

Jeong Seolah stopped Jeong Hyeonsu from stepping forward and turned her back.

Anyone could see this was someone picking a fight.

Normally, she wouldn’t have let it slide, but now was not the time.

’Two days.’

They still hadn’t decided whether to give up on the Guild Selection Tournament or keep going.

Until then, they had to do their best, since they had already committed.

If they lost those two days, they would be completely out of the running in a game that was already brutally hard.

And if they were out?

There would be no more choice; all that would be left was the single path of grinding.

Her mind was already almost made up in that direction, but not like this.

Besides, this was not a situation they could afford to clash in.

The NPC guild that picked a fight with them had over 50 members.

Even if their levels were equal, they would have no chance of winning, and this was the opposite of that.

Those guys knew it too, which was why they were brazenly picking a fight like this.

This was a game where killing was allowed.

“Hey now. Where do you think you’re going?”

Naturally, there was no exit from a confrontation that had been started on purpose.

Over fifty of them surrounded the Specialists.

“Damn. When your luck’s bad, every piece of trash in the world comes crawling out.”

“Can we win?”

“No.”

The three of them quickly assessed the situation.

The mountain range was so densely overgrown that you couldn’t see even a step ahead, which meant their biggest mistake had been failing to notice the group approaching until they spoke.

’We’re dead.’

There was only one conclusion.

They didn’t need to fight to know the answer.

Unless the other side’s goal was something other than killing them, that wouldn’t change.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

So Jeong Seolah spoke up to test them.

If they had meant to kill them, they would have done it already.

Instead, they had surrounded them and were just watching.

With lecherous eyes.

She didn’t need to ask what that meant.

“You know how it is,” one of them said, his tone oozing with condescension. “It’s not like we’re dying to kill three weak little adventurers. Let’s just make this easy on everyone. Life’s hard enough as it is. Besides, you guys just revive when you die, right? So why don’t we just trade what we each want?”

“......”

This was the worst-case scenario. It was one of the main reasons 『Fantastic World』 drew such harsh criticism in the real world: its excessive realism.

Jeong Seolah slowly closed her eyes, then opened the guild chat.

—Let’s log out.

—Seolah...

—...

The only reason this game could survive, despite scenarios like this, was the ability to log out at any time. Whatever happened to the character left behind was something the player never had to feel or see. Of course, logging out now would not save them from death.

“We’re dead either way,” Seolah typed.

“...Yeah. Got it.”

After a brief hesitation, Kang Yeseul agreed. She played the game for fun, and situations like this were the last thing she wanted. She would rather just die and get it over with.

Only Jeong Hyeonsu remained silent, seething at his own helplessness. The mood was oppressively heavy, a stark contrast to their usual confidence. They were once again feeling the massive wall between NPCs and players that Kenji had spoken of.

However, the wall in front of them was a little different from Kenji’s.

—Oh? Hello? Ah, looks like you finally turned on guild chat. Where are you?

—...?

—...?

—I’m already here. Shoot some fireworks into the sky so I can get your location.

At the base of their wall, there was a doggy door just big enough for one person to slip through.

The deadly serious expression on Kang Yeseul’s face vanished, and she immediately raised her staff. Having played alongside Jeong Seolah for so long, they practically shared a mind. In a moment like this, she didn’t need to ask what to do; she knew better than anyone.

“Fireball!”

It was a basic spell, but dozens of blazing spheres shot up into the sky, amplified by the synergy of her 6.1-billion-won skill book.

“Tsk, tsk. Look at them struggle,” one of the NPCs sneered.

Whoooosh—

“Huh?”

BOOM!

The sneer was thrown back in their faces tenfold.

* * *