Chapter 24: # High Risk High Return (11), Paso Robles
「Viewer Quest has been granted by MURD3R.」
Viewer Quest. Anyone watching a stream could give the host a quest in exchange for 「Stars」, the virtual currency. It was a system that the developers created for the viewers to be able to participate in the game indirectly.
Gyeoul cast a sidelong glance at the new message while comforting Yura and couldn’t help but be surprised. The message was very simple, yet very… vulgar.
「MURD3R’s message: I want sex… I want sex! SSSSSEEEEEXXXXX!!!!」
The goal of the quest was also very straightforward. Having sex with Yura. Neither did it include a time limit nor detailed information. Just by sleeping with her, he could earn one thousand Stars.
Stars. The very thing he needed for his ‘flower’. That was the only reason why he decided to do this whole thing. If he gave up this quest, there might not be another opportunity as good as this one.
But no matter how hard he struggled to justify himself, he just couldn’t erase the feeling of repulsion.
‘There must be… another chance.’
In the end, the boy chose to turn down the Viewer Quest.
Another night fell on the gym as the daylight quickly faded away. But unlike the other nights that the people in the gym had gone through so far, this time, not a single person’s face was clouded with anxiety. The stories of Gyeoul’s heroic exploits spread by the soldiers, although they were quite exaggerated as all epic tales were, gave hope to not only the students but also all the other adults.
「AI Advice (Lvl 10 Insight / Lvl 10 Detection): You have been recognized as a hero by this transient community. They now believe they will be able to overcome any hardship with your presence. The Crowd Panic level of the community will gradually decrease just by staying with you. The quantified value of Crowd Panic is currently 19% (with a 2.8% approximated margin of error).」
Before activating Time Acceleration, Gyeoul opened the skill window to spend his newly acquired experience points.
Gyeoul first acquired two new skills, 「Throwing」 and 「Projectile Weapons Mastery」, and raised their levels to five. 「Throwing」, as its name suggested, was a skill that helped the user hit the mark more easily with throwable objects such as grenades and knives. If it had been one of his previous playthroughs, he wouldn’t have learned it this early in the game. But this playthrough was different. He had already encountered two variant mutants in just one day—he had to be ready for more of them.
「Projectile Weapons Mastery」 was a skill that enhanced the efficiency of ranged weapons skills such as 「Small Arms Mastery」, 「Heavy Weapons Mastery」, and 「Bow Mastery」. Of course, as with most skills that covered a wide range of skills, it only provided a very slight, almost imperceptible effect while requiring an immense amount of experience points.
On top of this, Gyeoul also raised 「Small Arms Mastery」 up a level, reaching level 11, the beginning of the superhuman levels, and learned some movement-type skills.
Though Gyeoul still had a fair bit of experience points left, he temporarily pushed the matter to the back of his mind. He would be given additional points for accomplishing the rescue mission once he got back to the camp.
Gyeoul’s consciousness was brought back to the world by a deep, earth-shaking rumble. It wasn’t an explosion like last time. This was the sound of helicopter rotors. When the boy opened his eyes, he saw Staff Sergeant Ashford conversing with someone through the radio.
According to the conversation he overheard, they were attack helicopters and they were here not because of the rescue mission but because of the report of variant mutants they received. The man on the radio, the pilot of one of the helicopters, then said that their mission was to acquire samples of the variant mutants, thus asked Ashford about the mutants’ whereabouts. When Ashford gave them the approximate location of the two Grumbles they had fought, as well as the fact that they had managed to kill both, the pilot sounded taken aback.
It was only after an hour of being surrounded by the rotor noise that Bravo Company arrived with another convoy, and this finally marked the end of the rescue mission.
# Past, The day of the deal
[From here on it’s NSFW]
The boy who had been born in winter was entering a mansion with his parents. A palatial mansion with a soaring ceiling and a cavernous hallway. To the boy, it didn’t feel like a house for people to live in.
Although they were merely in autumn, it felt so much colder inside, as if winter had already set inside this mansion. A cold and lonely season. The boy didn’t like the season he was named after.
Shortly after their arrival, a woman came to guide them into the mansion. The boy was quite surprised when the woman, whom the boy thought was just an usher, revealed that she was the chairman’s daughter. Her appearance was so young that she looked like she was in her late 20’s. He would’ve believed her if she said she was the chairman’s granddaughter. For some reason, half of her face was covered by her hair.
After walking for a few minutes, Gyeoul and his parents arrived at a room that had an unusually large door. Upon stepping inside, he found an old man on a couch waiting for his arrival. The old man uttered no words of greetings.
“Take your off clothes,” spoke the chairman in a brusque manner.
“Uh… Pardon?”
“I said, take off your clothes. I need to see if the commodity is genuine.”
Gyeoul stood for a moment, dazed and bewildered. ‘How could he ask for such a thing without even batting an eye? Do I really take off my clothes? But there are so many people here…’ A series of thoughts about the situation he was in circled inside Gyeoul’s head. And when he took a look around, he noticed that the other people also looked perplexed.
“You can stay like that if you intend to ruin the deal. I could just transplant myself into a clone.”
Ahyoung turned to her father with a reproachful look. ‘What a barefaced lie,’ she thought. But despite being aware of the lie, she knew there was nothing she could do. When her thoughts reached that point, she eventually stopped glowering at her father. The chairman stayed indifferent to his daughter’s look.
The boy’s parents fretted over the boy’s inaction and began poking him with a stiff smile.
“Be a good boy and do as the chairman says, will you?” Said one of them, with a tone as if placating a disobedient child.
The stone in his heart, which had been growing heavier each day, began to roll around once again, banging and clashing against the boy’s heart. Gyeoul felt the chunks rising from his throat, but he managed to hold them in.
‘Just a few more minutes and I won’t have to put up with this anymore.’
Rolling his eyes down to the ground, the boy slowly took off his clothes, layer by layer.
“Underwear. Take it off.”
The boy hesitated, but only for a moment.
At last, the boy was left standing in the room in the most natural appearance a human could possibly have. The chairman brimmed with a contented smile.
“What a quality product. Well done.”
Chairman Guncheol walked up to Gyeoul and began touching, pressing, and rubbing all over the boy’s body. He seemed to have found his well-built body quite satisfactory.
“From top to toe, everything’s looking handsome. Great. This will suffice.”
It would’ve been nice if he stopped there, but the chairman suddenly brought his face close to Gyeoul’s armpit and began sniffing at it. The boy felt like killing himself. But to his dismay, this was not the worst yet to come.
“Now, make it erect.”
“Excuse me…?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t hear me. Yes, I’m talking about this.” The chairman spoke while poking at the boy’s nether regions.
Everyone in the room was dumbfounded at the chairman’s request. Ahyoung, despite knowing it would be useless, stepped up and tried to put a brake to her father’s tyranny.
“Stop this nonsense! You already got the report from the medical staff stating that there’s nothing wrong with the product! Don’t you think this is too much?”
“Too much, you say?”
The chairman gave her a mocking look.
“You know how much I promised to pay this family for this body? Five billion won. It’s the amount of money someone with a hundred-million-won annual income would accumulate when saving half their income for a fucking hundred years. What’s the problem with checking a product worth that much money with my own eyes?”
“But…”
“Don’t you fucking ‘but’ me! I’ve been a merchant all my life. Do you know what I learned about trade during that time? You cannot just believe what others say about the product you’re about to purchase! You have to see with your own eyes and touch with your own hands, and that’s called discretion! God, I can’t believe my only child would be a fucking pushover…”
The people who were listening to the chairman’s words, especially the boy, couldn’t believe how he could be so shameless when making such an illogical request. His parents also kept their mouths shut, only to look at the boy nervously.
“What are you doing? Make it erect. Just jack off or something.”
Thankfully, the surrounding people turned their heads away from him. Perhaps it was out of disgust or out of consideration. Whatever the reason might’ve been, Gyeoul took the chance and tried to think of something erotic. But it was impossible.
“I’m sorry… but I can’t.”
“I guess you don’t want the money then?”
“…”
“You thought it would be easy to pocket someone else’s money, huh? Besides, you’re not just earning money through this deal. You get to live the rest of your life inside a virtual reality world. Do you even realize how lucky you are? There are hundreds of thousands of people in the world who commit insurance fraud in an effort to make it into the virtual reality world. But, you kid, just got a free ticket to others’ dream world and you’re taking it for granted.”
“But… I really can’t do it.”
The boy trembled in humiliation. In anyone’s book, this would be an irrational situation. He was on the verge of letting go of all reason and screaming out loud. But such reaction only added fuel to Guncheol’s anger.
“Tsk! Kids these days are so weak! If something doesn’t work out well, they just give up without even trying! What’s there to stop you if you have the will to carry on?”
The old man shouted to exhaustion as he started huffing out breaths. But the boy stood as still as a rock. In spite of his muscular body, he looked rather small and miserable. This was due to the feelings that must’ve been rotting inside him without a way to vent them out.
The chairman, while glaring at the boy with a displeased look, called his daughter.
“You, come over here and suck this.”
“…What?”
“Goddamnit! Can nobody understand at once? Go suck his cock!”
Ahyoung, who first thought she had misheard him, was left speechless for a moment.
“What are you doing staring at me? Do it now.”
“Are you… Are you mad? I’m your daughter…!”
“Yes, you are my daughter. Do you know what that means? If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be in this world!”
“How can you do this to a married woman?”
“Well, then it should be easier. Just show him whatever you did with your husband.”
No one in the room could handle the old man’s perverseness. Ahyoung felt her whole body shaking with anger. She scowled at the man who was supposed to be her father. But the old man snorted at her response.
“You insolent little bitch, how dare you scowl at your father? You want to get kicked out of this house, huh? Do you think your husband will keep you after I ditch you? Do you think you can take care of yourself and your kid entirely on your own? Tell me what you think.”
Ahyoung dropped her eyes at the mention of her daughter.
Ahyoung’s daughter was a pretty girl. But her father never liked her. Women are born impure, so there is no reason to rejoice when one is born. That was what the father had told her when she had her baby.
Ahyoung knew her husband didn’t marry her because he loved her. He was not married to the woman named Ahyoung, but to the possible successor of the Hyesung Group. If she were to lose that position, her husband would abandon in the blink of an eye.
There was no one apart from Ahyoung who could protect her one-year-old daughter from this harsh world. But if she were to get kicked out of her house, she’d lose the only thing that had been keeping her and her daughter safe. Ahyoung, thus, had no choice but to succumb to reality. She knelt before Gyeoul.
“Huh? H-hold on a second…”
Gyeoul tried to back away, but Ahyoung grabbed on tightly to the lower half of his body.
“It’ll be alright. Just hang in there.”
Before the boy could say anything else, Ahyoung nipped at his penis.
“Nghh…”
Guilt, humiliation, and indignation. He felt all these negative emotions swirling inside his heart. And yet, the thrilling sensation coursing through his body made it impossible to hold in the moan.
Ahyoung felt her mouth being filled. She felt nauseated. But her father would only laugh at her if she were to let it show. Ahyoung got back up emotionlessly and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief.
“Are you satisfied now?”
“Give me the handkerchief.”
Upon receiving the handkerchief, the chairman grasped the boy’s dick and violently wiped away the saliva. Then the chairman nodded his head in satisfaction.
“Looks good enough.”
“…Is it over now?” Gyeoul asked beggingly. But the chairman’s next words completely shattered Gyeoul’s hope.
“No, not yet. I need to see you ejaculate.”
“…”
The old man then turned to Ahyoung without a word. Ahyoung, who had given up on arguing with her father, silently approached Gyeoul.
“Please…” the boy groaned.
Despite the boy’s cry, Ahyoung hugged the boy from behind, whispering in the boy’s ear.
“This is all just a bad dream…. It’ll be over before you know it…”
“Ugh… I c-can’t…”
The genuine geniality he couldn’t find in his parents stirred up his mind. The sweet scent of her perfume, her hot breath tickling his ear, her soft breasts pressing against his back, the warmth of her body swaddling him like a blanket, and above all, her lean, white fingers giving his skin a gentle rub made it impossible for him to think straight.
Thick white liquid burst out from the tip of the boy’s cock. The old man gave an exclamation.
“Yes, this is what I wanted! Good work. I’m satisfied.”
With a broad smile on his face, the chairman patted the boy on the shoulder. It was so different from the madness he had shown until now that the boy had to rub his eyes to see if he didn’t mistake him for someone else.
“Now it’s my turn to show you .”
“You mean… the money?”
“No, not that.”
Chairman Guncheol continued with a solemn expression.
“I pride myself on being an honest merchant. I’ve broken the law a few times, but I’ve never broken the business ethics I’ve set on myself. One of them, as I said earlier, is checking the products before confirming a deal. And I believe that should go the same for you too. Now that I‘ve run fastidious check-ups on your item, I’m willing to offer you to do the same with mine. Money is, of course, an essential part of the deal. But what’s more important to you, I believe, is the virtual reality world that you will be living in for the rest of your life.”
“Virtual reality…”
Indeed, the money and the house weren’t the only parts of the contract. He had also promised him to ensure the continuity of his life in the virtual reality world. Of course, for the boy’s parents, money was still the most important part.
“The best way to do that should be by experiencing it firsthand. I’ll bring the demo model to your house tomorrow.”
He didn’t need an answer. The boy nodded gracefully.
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