I Became a 6★ Gacha Character-Chapter 520: Super Compressed Event 5
Under the dim moonlight, as we descended the cursed hill again and again, Han Se-ah's face twisted strangely. While viewers mocked my scolding with emotes and F-ranks, for Han Se-ah who was the target, the timing was too perfect.
Just as she was complaining about the armor's smell, that single "shh!" cut off her next words perfectly. Her suspicious glance suggested she wondered if her broadcast-only chat settings had been disabled, as if I'd heard her directly.
But that concern didn't last long. The darkness suddenly blocked even the moonlight as the curse seemingly lifted, making her look around startled.
"Where... are we?"
"The curse has activated. Is everyone alright?"
We'd clearly been descending a low hill under moonlight, but suddenly found ourselves in a dark forest that blocked even the moon - of course we were startled.
The curse activated literally in the blink of an eye, with no warning signs. One moment we were on the hill, the next we opened our eyes in a forest. Everyone looked around curiously, perhaps because it felt different from Magic Tower gates despite not being their first spatial transfer.
The trees were dense enough to block moonlight but not particularly tall. The climate and ground vegetation suggested we were still in the east, so we probably hadn't been transported too far.
"Oh look, the minimap went dark for the new area. Guess lighting all this up would be overkill."
-Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh! Hanna shh!
-Can't stay quiet for 5 minutes lol but cute how her voice got softer after being scolded
-The scene transition was so smooth it looks edited, how's it feel experiencing it directly?
-Looks same as tower gates on camera but feels different somehow?
-Betting Han Se-ah wouldn't notice differences even if there were any LOLOLOL
While Han Se-ah whispered in a much quieter voice, Katie had already drawn her sword at the changed surroundings. Mills flicked his wrist and put on leather gloves woven with silver wire, while Jacob donned gauntlets from somewhere as they all readied their weapons.
"I'll take point."
"Then I'll cover the rear."
Following Heroes Chronicle "common sense," Mills, who could be classified as rogue-type, took the lead. Since archers detected living things and rogues detected artifacts, the scout moved forward to stand beside Elize.
While Elize estimated direction and Mills searched for the witch's traps, Grace in the rear would detect any of the witch's familiars approaching or following us.
Having moved to a dense forest rather than a low hill, we started moving quickly without needing to stay quiet since stealth was impossible. While agile Mills and Grace might manage, the large Jacob, heavily armored me, and the mage and priest couldn't maintain stealth in a forest full of branches and leaves.
Rustle rustle, crack―
The forest remained silent even as we crushed leaves and broke branches while moving forward.
"...The forest is too quiet."
"You're right."
"What do you mean?"
"No nocturnal birds, no insects chirping - too silent. No bugs, no birds, no small animals - just trees and grass."
Mills muttered something was wrong before three minutes had passed, and Grace agreed. When Han Se-ah asked what they meant, Grace kindly explained.
The explanation made the strangeness apparent. Though full of sounds from crushed leaves and broken branches, the forest had no other noise whatsoever. Like we were in a movie set rather than a real forest.
Elize hurriedly pulled something from her waist at those words... but was a beat too late.
"Oh? You noticed faster than expected?"
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Something leapt out from between wind-swayed branches and shifting shadows, swallowing us whole.
※
A party sensing something wrong from the lack of insect sounds, and an enemy laying traps in the shadows - come to think of it, this was quite common. In novels and comics it would be called cliché... almost too cliché to even mention.
After all, this was a meticulous witch who'd one-sidedly destroyed fifteen high-ranked mercenaries. She could set traps assuming enemies would come through sorcery.
Elize had been tracking the sorcery to avoid traps and pursue the mad witch. In other words, if traps were set at the destination rather than along the path, Elize couldn't detect them. ...She probably laid out some kind of formation across this whole forest.
'What the fuck is this now...'
The burning village that suddenly appeared before us couldn't be real.
The dark forest that had barely let moonlight through suddenly blazed bright. Looking up incredulously, the full moon still hung there. But what happened under that moonlight was far from romantic.
A small village was burning as people died everywhere.
"Block them! We've got nowhere to run anyway!"
"Hic, Goddess, Goddess please, at least spare the children..."
"Fuck fuck fuck, they needed to reach the domain safely."
The fence, far taller and sturdier than the nameless village we'd left, finally collapsed backward. Breaking through the shattered massive logs came a group of yeti like the ones we'd seen during Katie's character quest.
As the log palisade crumbled, they charged through small fires that must have started from fallen braziers, seeming unaffected by the flames as they smashed into huts and devoured people.
Fires spread throughout the village, yeti scattered in all directions to eat people, humans slowly died while struggling hopelessly in groups.
"Please, please - where is the Margrave?"
The witch's vision showed me Bretagne. Specifically the frontlines of Bretagne county, a pioneer settlement attacked before it could even become a fortress.
Margrave Bretagne's heroic efforts should have cleared all nearby monsters, yet countless yeti had somehow swarmed in. They'd overwhelmed the frontier scouts and trampled the village before word could reach the rear.
The mad witch's vision continued.
『Child, child, doesn't your heart ache?』
After crushing the first village and devouring its people, the yeti roared and charged along faint traces of paths under the snow.
With their huge numbers, they split at forks in the road, some groups drawn by wildlife into strange forests or hills, but still hundreds remained clustered heading for human villages. The villages fell instantly, lacking proper defenses after the recent monster clearing.
Some places had resting soldiers and knights, but while they could cut down dozens, they couldn't handle hundreds of yeti drawn by the blood scent.
"Agh, ah, aah- oh Goddess..."
"Throw stones! If they catch the women and children-"
Simultaneously something kept pricking at a corner of my mind, like remembering forgotten memories.
The maid who brought towels to keep me warm during morning exercise, the knight who shared his mother's apple pie saying it was a local specialty, the captain who enlisted after being rejected proposing to his childhood friend, the old woman who always gave me fruit when I went out.
Information about people whose faces were hazy, like truly decades-old memories, kept surfacing.
『Look at them, what sin did they commit to deserve such a fate?』
The massacre continued as I pondered these memories that weren't mine but Roland's.
I watched small pioneer villages crumble, fortresses fall while gathering armies after assessing the situation, and finally the endless monster wave overwhelm Bretagne's lord's castle despite the panicked Margrave's command.
The vision ended, naturally, with Margrave Bretagne's tragic death while rallying his knights and the dignified death of his wife who refused to retreat while evacuating residents. The Margrave fighting desperately while reciting a knight's noble duty even in death was enough to stir any man's heart.
『Don't you think it's too cruel, the end that noble knight and gentle lady met?』
"Could you shut the fuck up, you bitch."
『Oh my? More cold-blooded than I thou-?!』
But being stirred was all. I could draw a clear line that they were Roland's parents, not mine, so watching a man die tragically in battle didn't particularly move me.
Honestly, it felt like watching a Lord of the Rings highlight scene rather than seeing my parents' deaths drive me mad. What surprised me instead wasn't the witch's vision.
『What, how, could-?』
It was the arrow that flew through the vision and precisely pierced the witch's head where she hid in midair. A very familiar arrow made of green mana sliced through the void.
Aimed precisely at the witch's head.
Enjoy the chappy!
