I wasn’t a fool. This Shin wasn’t just telling me a mythic story. His tone, his way of speech, and his previous hesitation even when I said my oath were referring directly to only one conclusion.
“Are you one of those man descendants? Are we now in your time loop?”
“You are smarter than you look, silly girl.”
I didn’t bother with his teasing. What he confirmed just now made me jump to the next reasonable conclusion.
“Am I the regrettable incident that you want to change? Is it related to my problem?”
He replied to my question with his silence and sad looks. I felt as if he was recovering some painful old memories.
I felt shocked. This man says he was living in hell! I started to doubt his sanity than to remember my oath. I felt cheated! I couldn’t even suspect his words.
But when I remembered again all that he said and did with me, I felt some sense in his words. Whatever he just said, what matters to me now was the part related to me.
Something deep inside me felt his words were true. That frightened me. As if what he said was true, then my end wasn’t that good. Or why he would choose my fate and wanted to change it?
I felt strange; if I had such a curse then I would choose something related directly to me. Was I related to this young man in front of me?
I looked at him with many questions in my mind but I asked the most important one for now.
“If you are telling the truth then prove it.”
He didn’t get anxious from my question, instead, he smiled very bitterly. I felt a cold hand squeezing my heart from just the gazes he gave me.
“That’s easy. You aren’t from the Kronig Kingdom near Frod. You are a princess from the Treen Kingdom in the far west from us. Since your birth you got a prophecy that determined your fate.
You tried hard to fight against your fate. You were a genius and by the age of nine, you were an army leader. You experienced so many battles and you told me a lot of your old stories.
I can describe the details of your victories and the regrets you had after each defeat. You came here to be a fiancée of the crown prince of Frod.
You entered the Frod test and got a very high unique rank as Guild Master. That was the reason behind changing your real name Dolly to Agatha. Agatha is the name of your beloved little sister. Is this enough proof for you?”
I felt petrified. Literally petrified! I stood motionless in my place for a long time before my body shivered on its own.
I drew back a few steps before stumbling and falling on the ground. Shin didn’t look surprised but I felt he was feeling sympathy towards me.
I kept shivering for a while before I managed to calm myself. This man knew every single secret of mine. He even knew all about my past in my kingdom.
I clenched my fists and asked in s shaking tone:
“In the mordinal plains, I felt regret, why?”
“Because you failed to organize your troops well and many of your legions failed to follow your commands. You regretted this defeat a lot.
You decided to be very strict over your subordinates and never let them rest. You always do tactic maneuver trials to your subordinates and you never feel satisfied.
They gave you a nickname back then: The cold-blooded little princess.”
I opened my mouth wide open from deep shock. He wasn’t lying to me.
I really felt that way after that defeat and I really was called by this name. I swallowed with difficulty as I felt my throat was dry as a desert.
He was telling me the truth. If he was telling me the truth then I was in very deep trouble.
“Tell me, Shin, how many times have we had this conversation?”
“I really lost count to it.”
That was even worse. If that was true, then there must be a hard rock in his path. No, it was a hard giant rock blocking my path.
Did he tell me everything because he lost hope? Or are we on the doorstep of this crisis?
“What was the main problem that you couldn’t solve?”
He sighed again to deepen my worries.
“I can’t tell you. It’s not like I don’t trust you, but I tried this approach multiple times and the end wasn’t good for both of us.”
“Then tell me when will this crisis befall on us?”
“Soon, before you reach level 9 precisely.”
That was really close. I have only nearly four levels to live now. I wasn’t pessimistic but this crisis included my death at least.
I was brave enough to face such a possibility. Eventually, everyone died, but the difference was in his way of death. I would rather die fighting than waiting for death to take me.
I developed my resolve! I wouldn’t die that easily. It’s a Shin curse but it’s my life.
“I will fight Shin. I will fight hard. How about we delay my arrival at level9?
You can train me and make sure I’m strong enough to face this crisis.”
He sighed again then said:
“We also tried this approach. We failed.
This crisis is related to how much time you play here. If you didn’t reach the highest possible level then you don’t have a chance.”
This solution was a dead end too. I thought a little and found a problem. I didn’t know any details about this crisis.
“I want to know any possible info about this crisis to help me formulate a good strategy.”
Shin went silent for a while. He was thinking hard and deadly serious about what he could tell me and what he couldn’t.
I respected his silence and gave him enough space. After a long time of thinking he said:
“This crisis is about the attack of a coalition army from five different aristocratic families.
They aim to kill you and end your threat. Their numbers are huge. Not less than 10k players. When you die you will lose your rank qualifications.
That is not the game issue but because someone dear to you betrayed you. They will use a special item they brought from outside the game.
When you die, you will lose your rank as Guild Master. Then you will be expelled from the game. When you get outside you will get really dead from these families. When you die here I lose all the abilities to help you.
I won’t be able to save you. That was my regret. That was my mistake that I wanted to change.”
I kept thinking hard. That number was a really big number for me.
I remembered what he advised me before. His words weren’t to help me pass the problem of my rank; he was trying to help me in my upcoming crisis.
I thought about my skills. If I reached level 9 by then, then I would be able to kill whoever stood in my way.
“I’m now one of the strongest players in this game. I don’t doubt my ability to kill this army by myself.”
“You are wrong. You should worry. I tried once to get you some unique skills and you were nearly as strong as now. In the end, you were killed.”
“I have many special skills, Shin. I have many types of skills. I could kill them.”
“Don’t fool yourself. Yes, in ten seconds you are like an invincible god.
But what after those ten seconds? You lack a lot of experience to judge a PvP battle. Your greatest weakness is your skills CD. Your enemies’ biggest advantage is their huge numbers.
You can kill 500 maximum in these ten seconds. What about the rest then? Who will kill them?”
“That’s why you wanted me to have a team. That’s why you were trying to help them upgrade their level.”
“Yes. I didn’t try this solution before. Your personality is very difficult to deal with. You close yourself to those strangers to you.
We don’t have enough time to test their seriousness and their loyalty to you. But I know you better than you know yourself.”
Actually he was right. I agreed with difficulty when he invited those five players to join our team. But what he just said had a great impact on me.
In dire situations, extreme measures must be taken. Now I didn’t have the luxury to stick to my personality. I needed to take drastic measures or I and Shin would lose everything.
I tried to make sure he didn’t have any clue or more info that could help me so I asked with seriousness:
“If you have any plans or suggested ideas you can tell me now. If you know any info that might help me, then please tell me.”
Shin looked at me with a look that made me feel I asked a silly question. When I thought about it I understood that my question might seem silly indeed.
He knew more info than he told me. But I was really desperate and needed to know anything that could be useful.
Suddenly I noticed a glimmer of light in his eyes and he started to speak very slowly as if he was recalling a very distant memory:
“Once during my early failed trials, I told you everything I know. Back then you believed me a bit but didn’t trust me fully.
When you were about to get killed, you knew that I wasn’t lying to you. At this moment you typed a single sentence in our private chat.”
“What was it?”
I felt tense and somewhat weird. It was really weird to hear about your past deceased self. Shin replied as if he found a difficulty in remembering this sentence:
“You wrote ‘Tell my future self that loneliness is the root of all defeats, so the larger the better, the earlier the better.’ I remembered that I told the next few versions of you this advice but they didn’t understand anything from it. Do you understand what you meant that day?”
I was lost! I knew I loved using metaphors, but not when I was advising myself of something important. What could I possibly mean by these words?
