Chapter 16: Lucky

At the overly confident voice, Nicholas’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re too confident.”

─ Hehe.

At that, Noah let out a sly laugh.

He then spoke in a tone full of confidence.

─ Because! He’s also met the third condition! Though it seems the person in question has forgotten…?

“…No way. There’s no way such a coincidence could happen…”

Nicholas couldn’t easily believe those words.

As he shook his head, saying it was impossible, Noah spoke in an excited voice.

─ I told you. He’s a man of luck.

The prerequisites for that quest were so incredibly difficult that it wouldn’t have been strange if it were deleted or modified.

Could meeting not one, but three of them really be explained away as just being lucky?

Nicholas had a realistic suspicion that Noah might have pulled some strings without his knowledge.

“No matter how much you want the quest to proceed, you must not interfere with the gameplay, Noah.”

─ Oh, for goodness’ sake! Are you calling me a fraud now? I didn’t do anything! This is all a product of coincidence! That’s why it’s so fateful!

“…That’s why I can’t believe you even more. You liar. How many times have you secretly meddled in the past?”

Listing his past offenses one by one, Nicholas showed his distrust.

Shaking his head, he manipulated the screen.

“This won’t do. From now on, I’m going to monitor this player closely. I’ve realized you might be up to your old tricks after a long time! I’ll let a reasonable ‘coincidence’ slide, but this is just too much.”

At that distrustful gaze and words, Noah squirmed.

After making a fuss with a flurry of emoticons, Noah finally exclaimed as if making a prophecy.

─ Just you wait! You’ll soon realize that what I’m saying is true!

***

A month later, Nicholas had no choice but to admit it.

The player Paul was just an insanely lucky person.

He was relatively luckier than others, to a degree that made one wonder how it was possible.

In a world where a luck stat exists, it was clear that those with a higher stat coefficient would be more advantageous from a realistic standpoint, yet strangely, luck always seemed to favor Paul.

Just watching it unfold left him in awe.

And that’s where the problem arose.

It was a problem that even Nicholas, who had first decided to monitor him, had not anticipated.

Having watched Paul’s daily life up close every day for a little less than a month, Nicholas had at some point reached max internal-familiarity with him all by himself.

He now felt a deep sense of closeness to Paul, as if they had been together for about three years.

If Paul were next to him right now, he might have very naturally struck up a conversation about what happened yesterday, acting as if they knew each other.

“Haaa…”

Today, as always, with Paul displayed on the giant hologram screen, Nicholas let out a sigh of frustration without realizing it.

Paul was rummaging around, picking up items that had fallen on the floor and putting them in his bag, looking just like a squirrel gathering acorns.

The only problem was, perhaps, that everything he was picking up was junk.

‘You don’t have to pick that up. That’s junk, Paul. It’s completely useless. No, it looks pretty, but it’s really useless…’

At some point, the way he referred to him had changed from “the player” to “Paul,” but Nicholas pretended not to notice.

***

And so, back to the present.

‘This is driving me crazy.’

Watching Paul leave the snowfield with Khan, Nicholas smiled as if he were in a bind.

“Do you have any idea that this is a quest you stumbled upon purely by luck?”

The conditions to activate the [King of the Forgotten] quest are as follows.

First.

Die at least once to the boss monster of <■■■ ■■ ■■■> without attacking it.

This is easy.

You literally just have to not attack.

Besides, the boss monster was a pre-emptive mob, so it was easy to die.

Second.

Summon the God of Light, Rasis, in front of the boss monster.

Third.

At the same time, Rasis must show interest in the player.

This condition was tricky.

To summon Rasis, one’s contribution to the Temple of Light had to be at least 100,000.

Or one had to possess a holy relic related to Rasis, or else be in the middle of a Temple of Light quest related to Rasis.

Fourth.

Possess items with the keyword ‘worn-out’, such as a worn-out sword, worn-out bow, worn-out wand, worn-out shield, and so on.

This fourth one was probably the easiest and yet the hardest.

And for all four of these conditions to be met was, even in his opinion, frankly close to impossible.

Unless someone told you directly, the probability of the conditions being met was extremely low, and therefore, it inevitably required a great deal of luck.

Especially these ‘worn-out’ series items, they were a type of junk item that dropped at a low probability anywhere, not just in that specific dungeon.

As a result, they were usually found and then ignored.

It wasn’t that there weren’t people who kept them out of curiosity, but without a related quest, they were nothing more or less than F-grade junk items with 1 durability.

So they usually just took up space and were eventually discarded.

Meeting the conditions up to this point was more than enough to be astonishing, but the final situation where the boss monster initiated a conversation with Paul directly was something that neither Noah nor even Nicholas had anticipated.

‘It must mean Paul’s actions were that peculiar.’

Nicholas thought so as he stared at the brightly smiling Paul on the screen.

“Paul, I have very high expectations for how far your luck will take you.”

***

The reason Paul was suddenly going on about a name was because of a new chain quest he received as soon as he escaped the dungeon.

□ [King of the Forgotten] [?]

└ □ [Chain 1| A New Name for ‘It’] [?]

▼ Your achievement of successfully emerging to the surface with ‘It’ is worthy of admiration. You may take pride in it.

Now, this is the beginning. Before the main story begins, there is something you must do. That is to give ‘It’ a new name. This task is more important than you think.

Did you know that a name holds the meaning of ‘existing here’? Conversely, not having a name is no different from not existing.

Until now, its existence has been forgotten and overlooked, preserved within the prison of a dungeon. But now that it is outside, the story changes.

Therefore, to continue to bind ‘It’ to this land, a name that can express ‘It’ in a single word is needed.

Of course, this is merely a recommendation. If you find it bothersome, it is alright not to give it a name. It is unsettling, but for now, ‘It’ has the designation ‘It’ instead of a name.

P.S. While the [King of the Forgotten] quest is in progress, you will now always be in a state of companionship with ‘It’. Until all chain quests are completed, ‘It’ will act alongside you at all moments, except in special situations, and will watch your adventures from your side.

※ The future course of this quest will be determined by your choice.

※ This quest is linked to the main quest.

※ This quest is a chain quest.

Reward: Next Chain Quest

As he quickly scanned through the quest details, a pen with a fancy feather and a new piece of parchment appeared before Paul’s eyes.

Inside the parchment was the sentence, ‘Please decide on a name for It!’ along with a blank space.

<Please decide on a name for It!>

[ ]

“Hmm~!”

A name…

Honestly, it was a very difficult problem.

He had no sense for naming things.

Even this nickname, ‘Paul’, had been chosen for him by his friend.

He was the type of person who would see a brown dog and name it ‘Cookie’.

Of course, the quest said he didn’t have to give it a name… but if he didn’t think of a new name, he would have to keep calling the boss monster ‘It’.

No matter how you look at it, that just wasn’t right, was it?

‘I want to become friends with that person!’

So it was the dilemma of the century.

A name of about four or five syllables would probably look cool, but he hated long names.

The reason was that they were hard to remember, which was also why his nickname was ‘Paul’.

So he thought about giving it something simple.

Preferably one syllable.

It’s neat and easy to remember!

‘Since he’s a boss monster, Boss… no. That’s not it. Even I think that’s a bit much. What’s the difference between Boss and It? This is so hard!’

After agonizing over it, the name that came out was ‘Khan’.

Where had he heard it?

He thought he remembered hearing that ‘Khan’ was a title used to call a king in another country… or maybe not.

If so, wasn’t it a perfect name for him?

No matter how he looked at it, he was a king.

Not just the quest content, but his appearance and the aura he gave off were not ordinary.

On top of that, it was probably no coincidence that the boss room he was in resembled a king’s audience chamber.

‘That person is probably something like the king of the monsters living here, right?’

Paul thought vaguely, and grabbing the feathered pen floating in the air, he scribbled [Khan] on the parchment.