Chapter 46: It’s a Trap?, Part II

“With this, we won’t be hurting Deva Lee Jiwon; we’ll be giving him a huge advantage. He’ll be getting free Stat points without having to level up. He can get at least 520 Stat points just by sleeping for a couple of years. Isn’t that right?”

“Hehehe. What a wonderful idea, Manager #17.”

“He’s right! I say we do it. With all those free stat points we’ll be giving him, he’ll have to thank us, really!”

“He’s getting a Rank 10 item, at the morn of the Otadolon stage. Aren’t we doing him a huge favor? Hahaha!”

The other managers showered Lalaku with praise.

“Hohoho. Then am I to presume that everyone here is in favor of my plan?”

“As expected of Manager #17. I’m very impressed.”

“Thank you, Manager #1,” replied Lalaku to the Manager #1’s praise with a smile.

“This is why I invited you all to this meeting,” Lalaku said, tapping on the Sleepy Trainer.

“Even though this item has only one use to its distraught monarch curse, it’s still a Rank 10 item. I had to spend twenty billion golden rings, buying it secretly off the Troll Market. That price is too much of a burden for me to bear alone, and so I asked you all to join me in this meeting.”

“I’ll put in two billion golden rings,” Manager #1 cut in as soon as Lalaku finished his sentence. The other managers stopped talking for a second.

“As expected of Manager #1. I knew that I could rely on you and bought the item at 20 billion golden rings.” The other managers had whispered amongst themselves when Lalaku mentioned golden rings; to try to pay Lalaku the least amount possible. When Manager #1 made his offer to split the cost in tenths, the other managers immediately fell silent.

“Haha! Manager #1 made his amazing offer of two billion golden rings. Would the other managers be ok splitting the rest evenly?”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Is there anyone opposed?” The managers eyed each other, but no one raised their hands. “Then let’s begin the operation.”

“How do you suggest we start?”

“Devas get quests, don’t they? We’ll use that,” replied Lalaku smiling, as if the answer was obvious.

“We may have to put in more golden rings as part of the quest reward, but I’m sure with a bait this delicious, he’ll bite for sure, won’t he?”

I woke from sleeping at ten AM, and got up from my bed after yawning and stretching.

“Now I need to get to Mt. Fuji…ugh.” I had a good night’s sleep, but I frowned when I thought about Mt. Fuji.

“It’s so big!”

I had been to Hokkaido’s mid-grade dungeon a few times before, so I wasn’t too worried about that. It’s just that Mt. Fuji was so damn big.

“Besides, all I know is that the dungeon is somewhere on the upper half of the mountain. It’d be real nice if I knew which side of the mountain it was on.”

I decided to start at the peak and make my way down in a spiraling path. Just knowing that it was on the upper half of the mountain made it difficult for me to gauge the midline of the mountain. If I chose wrong, I could end up wasting a lot of time searching the wrong places. I had to cover as much ground as possible.

Once I found Japan’s dungeons, Japan’s devas would be able to begin hunting sooner than expected.

There was no way that they wouldn’t be able to find a giant dungeon entrance in the middle of Mt. Fuji and Hokkaido. I even thought about waiting until the end of the eight months before finding the dungeons, but I thought against it as the timeline was too close to when society was supposed to collapse.

I also doubted that I would be able to freely come back to the dungeons again. I decided it was best to find the dungeons while I had the chance.

“Still, it won’t matter to me. I’ll have all of the dungeons’ bonuses, and no matter how hard the Japanese devas train, they won’t be able to catch up to me.”

I had no good feelings towards Japan. Or, to be honest, I didn’t really care how strong Japan got. I just wanted to focus on my growth.

I wasn’t going to push back my progress just to help out Japan. Even if I wanted to, it wasn’t like anyone was going to recognize my efforts, anyway.

“Fine, I’ll go. I can’t even enter dungeons, anyway; I might as well find as much as I can.” I had already booked a 1:30 PM flight from Incheon International to Sapporo Airport the day before.

“I should start getting ready.” I stuffed a carrier with underwear, comfortable pants, and t-shirts, that way I could carry it all in one inventory slot.

“Ten slots really aren’t enough. Inventory check!”

[-3,505 golden rings

-High grade health potions x5

-Shining high grade potions x2

-Bread x5

-Beverage x5

-Orb of Vitality

-Orc champion’s unexpectedly durable greatsword

-Money case, ring case, notebook, pen

-Luggage carrier

-Remaining slots x1]

“I’ve only got one slot left.”

Multiple small, Earth objects could fit into one slot. I took out some cash from the case into my wallet and put the money case, ring case, my notes, and my pen into one slot.

Small items dropped by monsters took up their own slot.

“I should have at least one slot open.” I had equipped my orc champion armor and red orc belt so that they wouldn’t take up more room in my inventory.

I gave one last check before hailing a cab to head to the airport.

When I arrived at the airport, I still had another 30 minutes before my flight and decided to have a coffee at a nearby café. I ordered an iced coffee and sat down, facing a window.

“Huh?”

I spat out my coffee. Something very unexpected just happened.

“A quest? Why did I get a quest now? And why here at the airport, and not at the Store?”

It was definitely a quest. There was a glaring exclamation mark in front of me so there was no doubt about it.

I just couldn’t understand why there was a quest marker at the airport. Normally, they only appeared on the notice boards on the first floors of Stores.

I stood up and walked over to the quest marker.

“What in the world?” It was a real quest marker.

I couldn’t think of a reason why there would be a quest marker in Incheon International Airport when they were only supposed to show up at Stores.

I looked around me but no one else seemed to have noticed the quest marker. They probably couldn’t see it as only devas could.

“Hah, geez.” I was truly flabbergasted at the sight and could only laugh.

[Pop-up Quest (Rank 5)

Help cure insomnia!

Danhari found a very rare treasure, but is losing sleep over it. Danhari is afraid that someone might steal it from her or that she might lose it herself. She has never let the treasure go from her hand and has never stopped thinking about it.

She is afraid that if she falls asleep, the treasure will disappear from her hands and hasn’t slept since.

After holding on to the treasure for 357 years, Danhari is now exhausted.

She is sick and tired of the insomnia that has become part of her daily life and is now looking for someone to take this treasure away from her. She wants to know if there is someone out there who could sleep with the treasure in their possession. She believes that if someone can, then she could, too.

Receive quest item on accepting quest. (Forfeiting or completing the quest returns the treasure to Danhari.)

Losing the quest item requires a reimbursement of 1,000x of quest reward.

Time limit: none.

Quest reward: 1,000,000 golden rings

Accept/Reject]

“What is this?” I had nothing else to say about this weird quest. “What the hell kind of quest is this?”

In the past, I had completed my fair share of quests. I knew about the Hokkaido dungeon that I was heading to now because of a quest. The quest required me to farm some materials from the monsters in the dungeon. I’d never seen a quest like this one before.

“This isn’t a kill quest or a gather quest. It just wants me to sleep.” And the quest reward was a million golden rings. A million!

I read the quest description another three times, in case there was a catch, but I didn’t see anything that suggested there was.

Can you sleep with the treasure in your hands? If you can, you get a million golden rings.

If I lost the quest item, I had to reimburse for it at 1,000x the quest’s reward. That was a whopping 1 billion golden rings! But really, there was nothing for me or any other devas to worry about. I had an inventory.

As long as the item was held in your inventory, no one could steal it from you. Inventories were the safest place to store your items.

“I really don’t get this at all.” The whole part where the quest marker appeared at the airport didn’t make sense. But I couldn’t pass this up, not with a quest reward of a million golden rings.

“That’s a lot of money, especially this early in the game.” No matter how much I thought about it, there was no reason for me to not accept this quest. There was no chance of failing this quest. It’s so simple.

“I’ll do it. There’s no time limit, no way for me to lose the quest item. Not accepting the quest would be stupid of me, especially for a million golden rings.” I really couldn’t let all those golden rings go.

“I doubt anyone else would reject this quest. Besides, there’s no real reason to be suspicious about it. Quests are designed to help devas in the first place.”

Quests only existed to help devas progress in their growth. There was not a single quest out there designed to intentionally harm devas. Sure, some devas ended up dying trying to complete a difficult quest, but that’s because they were insufficiently prepared for it. It wasn’t the quest’s fault. As a result, it was the norm to complete quests as much as possible. It was what I did before, too.

“Of course I should accept. There’s nothing to lose and it’s simple enough.” I made my decision. Actually, I didn’t have a decision to make; it was already decided.

I placed my hand over the Accept button.

[Pop-up Quest (Rank 5)

Help cure insomnia.]

You have accepted the quest.

As the message screen disappeared, something began to materialize in front of me. I stretched my hand out to catch it.

“Is this the treasure?” The treasure that supposedly prevented that Danhari person from sleeping all this time wasn’t really that big. It was about as big as a shoebox.

“Item check!”

[This treasure box is locked. A password is required. If you would like to open this treasure box without the password, please pay 10x the original lock fee.

Original lock fee: 100,000,000 golden rings.]

I expected something like this, finding out that it was locked only made me more eager in anticipation.

“Fine. I just need to go to sleep once to complete the quest. I don’t need to know what’s inside.”

I quickly put the mysterious treasure box away in my inventory.

“The quest’s reward is a million golden rings and the box was locked for a hundred times that. Whoever made this quest had a lot of money.” Happy with what I just got, I began to walk towards my gate.

“It’s done.” As Lee Jiwon disappeared into the crowd, two men seemingly materialized from behind the quest marker. One man was wearing a hoodie with the hood up, obscuring his face. The other man was bald, large and gruff-looking.

“Recall!” The quest marker vanished at the bald man’s command.

“I’ve done as you asked, but this is very inappropriate.”

“It might be inappropriate, but it’s not illegal, right? Besides, this is all good for the deva.”

“You’re being sophistic.”

“So what if I am? It’s fine as long as we don’t do anything criminal.”

“Fine, but with this, my debt to you is clear.”

“Hahaha. Of course. But take this with you. You need golden rings, too, don’t you?” Lalaku took out a pouch of a million golden rings and held it out to the bald man.

The bald man glared at the pouch for a minute. Lalaku didn’t react and continued to hold the pouch out. After what seemed like an eternity, the bald man finally took the pouch.

“Good choice.”

“Don’t ever contact me again.” The bald man then vanished with his pouch and quest marker. Lalaku watched as the bald man vanished and turned in the direction Lee Jiwon disappeared in.

“Hehehe. You’re getting a lot out of this, so don’t be too mad. Who knows? If you’re lucky, you’ll end up with a tremendous amount of stat points. Although, I’m not too sure if you’ll ever be that lucky. Hehehe! Sweet dreams!”

I sat down on my assigned seat on the plane heading for Sapporo.

“The flight’s supposed to be almost three hours…”

The flight from Incheon to Sapporo took exactly two hours and fifty minutes.

“Huh…I might actually be able to sleep.” I put on the complementary earphones and put on a pop song to settle in to my seat.

I thought about a few things regarding the time I was about to spend in Japan. What would be the best way to search Mt Fuji? Should I look for some local fine eats while I’m there? Should I visit a hot spring inn while I was at Mt Fuji? Before I knew it, I soon fell asleep.

And I slept for a very long time.

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