Chapter 9.

With my enhanced hearing, even with the large distance between us I still heard her loud and clear.

“What the hell? I didn’t punch that hard, did I? Was I even that strong? Did I break through some sort of limit from rage because of that defective NPC?” Of course not, you stupid brat. I just wanted to enrage you so you’d punch me with everything you had, that way I could jump back and make it look like it was all because of you.

Overall, my escape had been a great success.

“Ah. He’s inside the village now! What the hell! He didn’t even die from that? Seriously? Did landing inside the safe area in the beginner village counteract the damage and save his life? What the hell? I didn’t know that was possible.”

That’s because it isn’t.

I weakly stood up and stuck my tongue out to taunt her.

“Cocky NPC, next time you won’t be so lucky! You hear me?”

“Whatever you say you DB.”

After that little exchange, she stormed off in the direction of the cliff where I parted ways with the hero.

Women were seriously all lunatics. To think she held onto a grudge for over half a year without even seeing me once. This charm stat of mine really was something.

As for why I don’t just kill her? Well, I don’t like bullying people weaker than me with my bullshit stats. I’d rather bully them with words. At least there’s a chance I can lose in a battle of words. It’s no fun when you already know you’re going to win the fight before it even begins. Thus, as I couldn’t lose in a physical fight, I’d opted to only battle with words these days.

Though there’s still nothing I can do about the final boss fight. Asteroids don’t exactly listen to words.

Trust me... I’ve even tried that approach too.

Hey, Mister Asteroid, can you please not destroy our world? Pretty please with a cherry on top? As you might expect, a message from the system popped up in front of me that read, “NPC69 used Words… Asteroid is immune to Words, you moron.” Even the system mocked me when I tried that approach.

Now that I was safe within the confines of the beginner village, I returned to my place and brought the day to a close.

…

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The night flew by quickly and day broke in no time. Though, today started off a bit different than the norm I was used to as I was awoken by the sound of knocking on my front door.

“Coming.” I answered lazily.

I got out of bed, exited my room, then opened the front door.

“You again? Did you already master those two techniques I taught you yesterday?”

“Uh… the first one is a bit inconsistent, I seem to have about a fifty percent success rate somehow. I don’t really understand how it works at all though.”

Well, that’s to be expected.

“Oh, it’s good that you can at least succeed with it at all. Congrats. ” I half heartedly commended him.

“The second one is too hard for me right now. Maybe if I level up a bit I might be able to pull it off.”

“Well, keep at it and one day you’ll be able to do it I guess. By the way, what do you have in your hand?”

“Five dandelions as you requested. Did you forget?”

I squinted my eyes and tried to recall our conversation from the day before.

“Ah. You’re… right. I did say that, didn’t I. Well, quest complete I guess. Consider the techniques I taught you the day before your reward for completing this quest.”

“Hey NPC69, why don’t you come with me on my next quest?”

“When you meet the trigger condition for the main storyline, I will. Before that happens, I won’t.”

“What the hell is with this unreasonable trigger condition?”

“I really can’t say, the most I can say is to not overthink it. Anyway, your next quest is to find a lost puppy and return it to its owner.”

“A lost puppy?”

“Yeah, it should be easy enough, right? But if you’re opposed to such an easy monotonous one, I can give you a more difficult quest.”

“No way, easy is good. I like them easy.”

“Then, when you find the puppy, bring it back to me and I’ll return it to the owner for you. Here’s a picture.”

“It’s pretty cute.”

“Yeah… cute.” Hahaha. Tsk.

That bitch just released that little bugger into the village just to tick me off. She then came to me three days ago with an ‘it’s your problem now, find it for me,’ smug smile on her face.

One of the sixteen demon lords, a subordinate of the GDR’s subordinate’s subordinate. It’s a real mouthful to say.

Below the GDR is the LDR, the Lesser Demon Retard. The LDR serves and reports to the GDR, while four Demon Emperors serve and report to the LDR. Each demon emperor has four demon lords under their jurisdiction. Below the Demon Lords are their Demon Generals. It’s seriously a pain in the ass to deal with them all. There are sixty-four of those pesky cockroaches serving the Demon Lords to kill.

The hero has to go and slay four Demon Generals under a Demon Lord before he can kill the Demon Lord. Once they kill their first Demon Lord, they will obnoxiously laugh at them smugly and say, “You may have beaten me, but you will never defeat my three other comrades. I was the weakest of the three. Muahahahaha!” Then they die and the hero is like, “I will kill them all!”

Why does he have to kill them all? I have no freaking idea. Maybe it’s just their retarded sense of justice or something. Either way, once they kill all four Demon Lords, the last one will pull a stunt similar to the first Demon Lord they killed and reveal the existence of their boss, the Demon Emperor. Once they kill the Demon Emperor, the process repeats and they kill the other three Demon Emperors along with all the subordinates below them in an epic war once the hero is recognized as a threat to demonkind.

When the last Demon Emperor dies, he laughs cockily as the LDR descends out of nowhere. When the LDR is killed, the GDR is ‘enraged’ and finally comes out to finish the hero off.

Anyway, all this is beside the point. That Demon Lord bitch is just trying to tick me off because she knows she can’t beat me in a fight. Because she knows that, she went and ‘lost’ her dog in the beginner village to bug me. Because of me, she has nothing better to do with her time since the hero still hasn’t started the main storyline yet. But like hell will I play along with that Demon Lord bitch, I’m not going to expend my valuable energy and drinking time to find that mangy mutt of hers.

Thankfully, now that I’ve lowered this kid’s wariness towards quests with the last easy one I gave him, he won’t be the slightest bit suspicious about the difficulty of this one.

“Hey, are you heading to the bar today?” The hero suddenly chimed in as I secretly conspired against him.

“Why?” I was startled when he asked me that of all things. It was a very touchy topic for me that always got me a bit jittery when asked by a hero.

“I was just thinking of treating you to a beer as thanks for treating me the day before. A true hero can’t be mooching off an NPCs money.”

“Oh. Uh… no… I’m not heading to the bar today.” Thank god I hadn’t instinctively said yes.

“You’re really not going today even though I heard from other villagers that you go every day?”

“That’s right… I was thinking of taking a day off from the bar today.” I averted my eyes to the side praying he didn’t catch on. I had to avoid that at all costs. It definitely wasn’t because that was the trigger condition to start the main storyline or anything. I swear… it absolutely wasn’t that. I just didn’t want to get close to the hero. Yeah, that’s right! That’s what it was.

“Then I guess I’ll start looking for this puppy.”

“Yeah, you do that.” Just try not to die.

The hero departed while I, like an old hermit, went back inside to hide from the great threat of being treated to a beer by the hero.

…