Chapter 16: Starting a New Mode (Part 1)

What is everyday life?

The dictionary says that everyday life refers to the life that is repeated every day.

A life that flows like a treadmill every day without any change can be said to be a typical ‘everyday life’.

The important thing is that the current state must be maintained and there must be no change.

Whatever the current state is, it can be expressed as everyday life only if that situation continues.

If not, if the current state is broken in any way.

That is called non-everyday life.

That means, in other words.

My current life was a non-everyday life.

-Rustle

The warm morning sunlight pierced my eyelids.

Thanks to that, I woke up.

As I turned my body to avoid the sunlight, the blanket slipped off.

I pulled the blanket and covered myself tightly.

“…….”

I lay in bed for 10 minutes after waking up like that.

It’s time to get up.

But, even though I know I have to get up, I don’t want to move.

It’s scary to get out of the cozy blanket.

I slowly reached out and groped the top of the bed, the head of the pillow.

I feel the smooth, trusty kitchen knife touching my fingertips.

Yes, it’s still there.

I was satisfied that my trusty kitchen knife hadn’t disappeared somewhere, and I curled up again.

The sunlight was still warm, and the inside of the one-room apartment was quiet and peaceful.

Yes. This is it.

This peace now was ‘non-everyday’ for me.

It’s been over three weeks since I returned from ‘that hellish world’, but peace still felt unfamiliar to me.

Well, it couldn’t be helped.

How much I suffered after being dragged into ‘that world’.

‘I went through a lot…….’

Just thinking about the uncivilized medieval hellhole made my body tremble.

I didn’t know it well when I first returned to the modern world, but now, just imagining it was enough to make me

grind my teeth, that world was terrible.

The commoners were ignorant, and the nobles were rude.

It wasn’t once or twice that I was praised as a Hero and then cursed at behind my back.

There was even a nobleman who had lustful thoughts towards me, the Hero, and tried to attack me, so it was an

incident that made me realize the level of the people in ‘that world’ to the bone.

And what about after I cut off the Demon King’s head?

‘They asked me to cut it off, but when things went wrong, they immediately shifted the responsibility to me.’

When the entire continent became a mess due to the Demon King’s army running rampant after losing its master, the

residents of the medieval hellhole, from top to bottom, all blamed me.

In the midst of that, I was a fool and fought the Demon King’s army alone to protect those people.

‘Thinking about it like this, I seem so stupid…….’

At the sudden thought, I shook my head.

No way. I’m not a fool. I just kept my untainted innocence!

I hypnotized myself like that.

Anyway.

It was like that when I was in ‘that world’, but now it’s different.

Because I’ve returned to the modern world, my home planet Earth.

Of course, I was dragged there out of the blue while watching internet broadcasting, so there was no guarantee that I

wouldn’t be dragged again.

But, I probably won’t be dragged.

Surely they wouldn’t drag me back to another world after I cut off the Demon King’s head.

My intuition was telling me so.

And my intuition has never been wrong.

Because during the days when I was fighting with the Demon King, it was thanks to my intuition that I survived more than once.

Anyway, I was enjoying a peaceful ‘non-everyday life’.

-Ring ring ring!

And the ringing of the phone that is currently ringing in the room was also one of the ‘non-everyday’ things.

I reached out and picked up the phone.

As soon as I pressed the call button, a powerful voice came over the speaker.

[Shihyun! Are you awake?]

“Yes……. I’m getting ready to wash up.”

[Getting ready to wash up, my. Don’t lie. You’re answering the phone in bed, aren’t you? I can tell by the echo in your voice.]

Euning, real name Kim Ji-eun, was quick-witted.

“Tsk, I hate quick-witted kids…….”

[What are you talking about?]

More importantly, a phone call in the morning.

She’s too diligent.

I rubbed my eyes and answered in a slow voice.

“It’s nothing. I was saying that I’m going to wash up now…….”

[Then hurry up and wash up and log into Arfellium! We said we’d do something new today. You said you were

looking forward to it, so how can you be sleeping?]

“I understand…….”

I hung up the phone and sighed.

And then I staggered to the bathroom to take a shower.

As expected, it was cold outside the blanket.

It’s been about three weeks since I became friends with Euning, that is, Kim Ji-eun.

After meeting her for the first time in an Arfellium multi-normal game, she often called me to play games together.

It wasn’t exactly as a broadcast guest.

Even on days when there was no broadcast, she played multi-games with me.

Seeing that she calls me regardless of the broadcast, it seems that she just likes games as a person.

‘Or maybe she doesn’t have any friends.’

Anyway, thanks to that, I became friends with her faster than I thought.

Now we know each other’s names and phone numbers.

She sometimes urges me to meet in real life, but honestly, it’s a bit burdensome in real life.

‘Because she’ll freak out if I bring a knife on the day we meet.’

Anyway.

After finishing the shower, I changed into clean clothes.

After that, I headed to where the capsule was.

Because it was a cramped one-room apartment, I could reach my destination in just a few steps.

I carefully placed my trusty kitchen knife on the newly installed stand on top of the capsule.

Because it was a stand installed using cable ties, there was no risk of the kitchen knife falling like before.

Of course, it looks a bit off.

Because it looks like a kitchen knife is stuck in the capsule.

“Well, it can’t be helped.”

Originally, if you gain something, you also lose something.

I quickly entered the capsule before Ji-eun urged me again.

A slightly uncomfortable cushion wrapped around my body, and I saw the capsule lid slowly closing.

And.

My mind momentarily went blank, as if it were a blackout.

******

-Stomp stomp

Seeing Shihyun walking from the end of the main hall, Ji-eun swallowed dryly.

It was just walking, but it felt like watching a scene from a movie.

Unlike before, thanks to turning on the non-contact setting and the invisibility setting, she wasn’t receiving the

attention of the people around her, but that made it feel even more unrealistic.

‘She’s really ridiculously pretty.’

Beauty that rivals an actress.

Honestly, Ji-eun was curious why Shihyun wasn’t an actress.

‘No, well. Even if she’s not an actress, she could just work as a model and easily make tens of millions of won a month.’

Or maybe she actually is.

Since she’s not the type to pay much attention to fashion, Ji-eun didn’t know much about models or magazines.

So, Ji-eun had no way of knowing if Shihyun was currently working as a model.

‘Well, she’ll probably tell me later when we get closer.’

If I try to find out, the other person might be uncomfortable.

Then it’s natural for the relationship to drift apart.

Ji-eun didn’t want the hard-earned friendship with someone like Shihyun to be broken.

‘It’s definitely not because of the duo. Yeah.’

Probably not.

“Hello.”

While I was lost in thought, Shihyun was already standing in front of me.

Ji-eun smiled sheepishly and said to Shihyun.

“You overslept again today.”

“It couldn’t be helped. It’s comfortable in bed.”

“Aren’t you just lazy?”

“Probably not.”

Shihyun answered as if making an excuse.

Of course, the content of the answer is extremely confident.

Ji-eun grabbed her forehead, shook her head, and shouted in an exaggerated voice.

“Alas! To be late because it’s comfortable in bed, is this the attitude of someone who is a whopping 3 minutes late!”

“So what is this new thing you were going to do today?”

Shihyun immediately changed the subject.

Ji-eun’s body trembled at the swift maneuver.

And then she scratched her cheek with an awkward face.

“I, I wish you would react a little……. Even though I’m a streamer, I get embarrassed when I do things like this.”

“…….”

“Shihyun, you’re really too much.”

Unable to withstand the pressure of the gaze staring at her indifferently, Ji-eun collapsed.

Ji-eun, who sighed a little, raised her hand and manipulated a few interfaces.

Then, a new window appeared in Shihyun’s field of vision.

The window had ‘Arfellium Online’ written in large letters.

“This is?”

Shihyun, who was examining the window, looked back at Ji-eun.

Ji-eun slowly began to explain.

“The new game mode we decided to do today is Arfellium Online. It’s a mode that pursues online multiplayer.”

“Online multiplayer?”

Shihyun tilted her head.

Online? Isn’t this already online multiplayer?

But it seemed not.

Because Ji-eun immediately shook her head.

“To be precise, it’s online multiplayer as an MMORPG.”

MMORPG.

It refers to a genre with a very complex and long name, Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

It’s such a famous genre that there’s no need to explain it.

Just, most RPGs that people often connect to are of this type.

As soon as she heard that explanation, Shihyun asked with a puzzled face.

“Uh, but wasn’t this game a fighting game?”

Was it not?