It was like a sack full of overripe fruit being crushed under a heavy weight.
Bato’s fat body was instantly flattened into a shapeless mass beneath the giant foot, mashed together with the gold and jewels he hadn’t spent in time.
The immense pressure forced everything out between the toes, spraying it all over.
Faruhir watched it all coldly.
After crushing Bato, the monster’s massive foot lifted without pause.
Its enormous body turned toward her, letting out a more furious roar.
Dozens of tentacles on its body suddenly shot out, stretching like venomous snakes toward the bell tower where she stood!
Faruhir’s eyes narrowed, her figure flashing again.
She abandoned the vantage point of the bell tower, dropping down into the tangled maze of the streets below.
She couldn’t just keep dodging like this…
Faruhir thought, rapidly searching her mind for a way to break the stalemate.
Zehril, that old fox a thousand years in the making, had endless tricks up his sleeve.
Tonight, their battle of wits and strength had pushed both to the limit—Faruhir had cornered Zehril, but she herself had used up every trump card.
Yet this hellish scene still raged on.
Her hands… were empty.
—
At that moment, chaotic noise erupted from afar.
Dodging as she leaped, Faruhir glanced over her shoulder.
A dark mass of people surged from the end of the street, dressed in outlandish clothes and wielding exaggerated weapons.
“Whoa! Main city world-class BOSS? Did ‘Tingmoon Covenant’ finally open a new version?”
“The forum’s going wild! They’re saying NPC summons are attacking the city—monsters everywhere, tons of EXP and loot!”
“Brothers, protect the NPCs and farm event contribution! Healers, keep the magic girl NPCs alive—the better they do, the higher our mission rating!”
Excited shouts exploded across the battlefield like ice cubes thrown into boiling oil.
“Council of Truth! Everyone, follow my lead!”
A calm, powerful voice cut through the chaos.
It was [Jingwei Sage].
“All combatants, standard squads of ten, free to seek targets! Prioritize clearing monsters that directly threaten civilian evacuation routes! Support group, keep group acceleration and Sacred Shield up—ensure NPC unit survival! If they die, mission rating drops!”
With these reinforcements, the pressure on Erin and the others eased almost instantly.
“Level 40 and above! Follow me!”
At the same time, a massive shield—projected by who knows which player—blocked another attack from the monster.
Faruhir seized the chance to retreat swiftly, landing atop the spire of a still-intact building.
“Hello, Honored One Favored by the Gods.”
[Jingwei Sage] had appeared behind her at some point, a subtle, unreadable smile on his face.
“I saw news of the monster siege on the forum and called the guild right away. What can we do now?”
—
The giant shield the players raised temporarily held back the fleshy monster, buying Faruhir a brief moment to breathe.
With the main force of players arriving, [Shadowfang Breaker], who had been standing on a rooftop, also leaped into the fray.
As a technical map-grinder, he was well-known among players.
Several greeted him.
You’re only just arriving?
Jiang You felt a smug satisfaction he could barely contain.
I was a huge help to the God-Favored One just now…
Once I see [Tutu], I’ll definitely brag to her about it.
Huh, where’s [Tutu]? With all these people here, there’s no way she’d miss out.
He instinctively searched for that unique blend of pink and silver twin tails—a girl who always had a lollipop in her mouth, grumbling about troublesome quests but always managing to survive danger with bizarre summons.
In a battle like this, a strong summoner like her was vital.
Just a few rare elites would ease the front line’s burden tremendously.
Yet, as he scanned the battlefield and every corner, he never found that familiar figure.
Strange… With so much action, how could she not be here? With her personality, even if she wasn’t fighting, she’d be perched somewhere high, snacking and spectating.
A faint sense of unease crept into his heart.
[Shadowfang Breaker] darted across rooftops, smoothly sheathing his dual blades as he approached Faruhir.
“Hey, Lady God-Favored, I did pretty well on the quest, right? But did you see [Tutu]? She’s essential for this kind of event…”
He asked playfully.
Faruhir slowly lifted her head.
Her gaze passed over [Shadowfang Breaker]’s shoulder, looking toward the rampaging Zehril in the distance, before returning to the man in front of her.
Her eyes were unusually calm—so calm it was unsettling.
She was silent for a few seconds, as if weighing her words.
“She won’t be coming.”
“Huh?”
[Shadowfang Breaker] blinked, not understanding.
“What do you mean? Disconnected? Caught up in some quest? That girl, always so unreliable…”
“She’s not your companion,” Faruhir interrupted, her voice quiet but sharp as an ice pick.
“[Tutu Cute and Edible], or rather, Minai… is a spy Zehril planted in the royal city. The information about our actions in the Demon Domain Forbidden Marsh came from her.”
[Shadowfang Breaker]’s smile froze.
He blinked, as if he’d just heard an absurd joke.
“Wait, wait… What did you say?”
He dug at his ear, exaggerating his disbelief.
“Lady God-Favored, are you out of it? This plot… isn’t it a little too wild? A mole? She’s an NPC? Is this some new hidden quest line? Is the reward worth it?”
He still tried to rationalize it all from a player’s perspective.
To him, it was just another twist devised by game developers, a dramatic plot development that sounded cool.
But Faruhir’s eyes shattered every illusion.
“She’s not a ‘player’ as you call it,” Faruhir said, enunciating each word—each one a stone dropped into the calm lake called ‘game’ in [Shadowfang Breaker]’s heart.
“She, like me, is a person of this world. A summoned being whose soul was bound by Zehril through contract.”
The air seemed to freeze.
The noise around them faded away.
[Shadowfang Breaker]’s smile vanished, replaced by blank confusion.
NPC?
Tutu is an NPC?
The girl who competed with him for monsters, who teased him for his bad skills, who schemed to get a bigger share of loot, who dragged him across the world in search of food… was an NPC?
How could that be?
He remembered the first time they teamed up.
She had a lollipop in her mouth and mumbled, “Uncle, your gear looks good, take me along? My summons hit hard.”
Leveling in the Demon Domain Forbidden Marsh, he’d mocked her for fearing the cold.
She had pulled a steaming roasted sweet potato from her pack, shoved it at him, her breath steaming.
“Eat. You talk too much.”
In a Night Dragon Kingdom tavern, she’d summoned a sticky slime to glue him to his chair just to snatch the last piece of Dongpo pork, then ate it smugly in front of him.
All those lively, genuine interactions, all those trivial, meaningless squabbles and jokes—how could they be the work of a scripted program?
“No… Impossible.”
He muttered, his voice hoarse.
“She… I clearly…”
Suddenly, he realized—he’d never heard [Tutu] mention anything about the real world.
Even [Jingwei Sage], with whom he’d rarely interacted, sometimes talked about real-world stocks… though he hadn’t cared.
“So… where is she?”
[Shadowfang Breaker]’s throat tightened, clinging to a final shred of hope.
“Where is she? Even if she’s an NPC…”
Faruhir closed her eyes, as if unwilling to meet his gaze any longer.
“What happens to a summoned being when their summoner dies, or the contract is dissolved?”
She didn’t answer directly, but asked a question of her own.
[Shadowfang Breaker]’s heart plummeted.
Death.
The word struck his mind like a sledgehammer.
In ‘Tingmoon Covenant,’ death for a player meant only a blackout and respawn at the Starfall Tower, with a little lost EXP and a random item drop.
It was cheap, inconsequential—sometimes even a convenient way to return to town.
He’d never really thought about what the word meant to the natives of this world.
Not until this moment.
The death Faruhir spoke of was absolute, irrevocable, permanent erasure.
That lively girl, who laughed and joked and got angry and cheated him out of loot… his friend.
Just like that…
Gone?
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