< 4 : Karma System (3) >
“Looks like you have nowhere to run, huh?”
“Uh…”
Eutania bit her lip and looked up at the man in front of her.
She had no one to support her, and no one to protect.
This world was strangely unfair.
Her father had sacrificed his life for the weak, but he was imprisoned.
But the thief in front of her killed people mercilessly, and he was still roaming around freely.
“So, do you want to die here, or be sold as a slave?”
“…”
“Don’t you think it’s better to live as a slave, even if you suffer a bit?”
Hehehe.
The thief let out a disgusting laugh.
She didn’t want to hear his unpleasant voice anymore.
Instead of her father’s gentle voice, she had to listen to that arrogant voice.
She couldn’t help but think that the world was an unfair place.
And the moment she realized that fact, Eutania wished for something in her heart.
She wished that this world would just perish.
“If you can’t decide, I’ll decide for you.”
The thief finished his words and approached Eutania.
Thud, thud.
The sound of footsteps breaking through the bushes reached Eutania’s ears.
There was no place to escape anymore.
She had no choice but to accept her fate at this moment.
Eutania gave up everything and closed her eyes tightly.
As the thief got closer to her and reached out his hand towards her,
Crash–!
A thunderous sound echoed as lightning struck down.
“Aaaargh…!”
“Ah…?”
Eutania lifted her head and checked the scene in front of her with a deafening thunderclap.
There was an astonishing sight in front of her eyes, who had been denying reality until then.
The thief who was hit by the sharp lightning was rolling on the ground.
The damage from the lightning was so severe that the thief was foaming at the mouth with his eyes rolled back.
Eutania was startled by the sudden lightning strike, but it was only for a moment.
Soon, two more lightning bolts fell down.
“Ugh…”
Crash! Crackle!
The world flashed in an instant.
The thief who was hit by the lightning fell to the ground and didn’t move anymore.
The lightning had cut off his breath.
Eutania saw that and looked up at the sky with horror.
The sky where the thunder sounded had no trace of a dark cloud.
The lightning she saw was not ordinary lightning.
“Boss? Did he really die?”
“There’s no cloud in the sky. How did this happen…”
The thieves around him also showed signs of trembling with fear at the sight of their dead leader.
The lightning that fell from the clear sky had killed their boss.
They had never seen such a phenomenon before, even though they had been robbing for years.
One of them seemed to have figured out the situation quickly, pointing at the corpse of their boss that was turning into ashes and shouted.
“Magic! It must be magic!”
“Magic… magic?”
“Then is that girl a mage?”
The thieves’ eyes all turned to Eutania.
Mage.
They were objects of fear and awe for those who didn’t know magic.
Everyone knew the old story of how a village disappeared by an evil witch.
The thieves’ eyes were filled with fear as they looked at Eutania.
But this was also unknown to Eutania, who received their fearful glances.
‘Someone must have used magic. Then, who used magic?’
Eutania turned her head and looked around slowly.
A cliff cut off sharply.
A dense forest.
She couldn’t see any human figures on either side.
There was no one near her who could be suspected of being a mage.
Of course, while she was doing that, the fear in the thieves’ hearts grew bigger and bigger, and soon some people started running away with their weapons clanging.
“It’s a mage! Run!”
“Why is there a mage in this backwater place…!”
The thieves turned their backs on Eutania and ran towards the bottom of the mountain, screaming.
But the lightning that struck from the sky was not satisfied with one sacrifice.
Crash! Crackle!
Lightning struck again and swallowed up the fleeing thieves.
With a loud noise, the lightning mercilessly judged the scared thieves.
“Cough…!”
“Aah! P-please spare me…”
Every time the sky flashed, new screams came out of the thieves’ mouths.
The thieves died one by one from the continuous lightning strikes.
Some of them were lucky enough to avoid the lightning, but it was futile in front of the lightning that fell one after another.
All of the thieves met their end by the lightning, except for two exceptions.
And the last remaining thieves died painfully on the ground with bruises all over their bodies.
They died more brutally than the previous thieves.
Eutania got up from her seat with a blank expression as she saw the thieves being cleaned up in an instant.
“What is this…”
The enemy was a skilled thief.
They had been robbing for a long time, and they easily slaughtered the villagers.
But even those thieves couldn’t resist the lightning that struck one after another and fell down.
Eutania’s eyes looked at the ashes of the thieves that scattered.
The unknown magic had taken away even the remains of the enemies.
It was as if all life had been taken to where it should have been.
She could only think of one kind of being that could do such a thing.
The omnipotent being who watched over her from the distant sky.
In other words, the ones called gods.
“I was… not alone.”
Thud.
As she looked up at the sky, Eutania felt a sting on her head.
It was a similar feeling to when her father had given her a honeycomb when she was young.
It hurt where she was hit.
Tears trickled from her eyes.
But Eutania smiled faintly at the corners of her mouth.
She realized that she was not alone now.
“Thank you.”
Eutania folded her hands and bowed to the sky in gratitude.
The sky was clear and bright without a single cloud.
There was no second honeycomb coming to Eutania from there.
****
“Ah, there’s only one left.”
I suppressed the yawn that was about to come out of my mouth in the morning and looked at the screen of my smartphone.
There were various messages popping up at the bottom of the screen where I had turned on the game.
They were new messages that came up as I attacked the gathered thieves.
Of course, most of them were messages about using magic and gaining karma by knocking down characters.
-You used <Lightning>.
-You used <Lightning>.
-Your karma increased by 1.
-You used <Lightning>.
-Your karma increased by 1.
-Your karma increased by 1.
I used the <Lightning> magic to knock down the thief characters who were clustered together.
<Lightning> was a powerful skill that inflicted 15 damage with just one use.
It didn’t take long to take down the thieves who were not many in number.
However, even a powerful skill had its drawback of consuming mana.
At the end, I ran out of mana and had to move my fingers quickly to knock down the thief.
My fingers hurt from moving them almost a hundred times.
But I gained 5 karma, so it wasn’t a completely useless thing.
“Well, it’s over once I get rid of this one.”
I moved my eyes to the last remaining character.
A female character with ash-colored hair was standing up and looking around in the middle of the screen.
She was the character who was sitting on the ground and showing a crying emoticon until a moment ago.
Maybe it was because I had killed all the thieves who were near her.
She was now standing up and crying.
I didn’t know what had happened between her and the thieves.
But I had led the thieves who were chasing her to hell, so she could now face her end peacefully.
“Go with them.”
As I touched the head of the remaining character.
The speech bubble above her head changed.
I looked closely at the speech bubble that was blinking above her head.
Various emoticons were displayed alternately there.
-(Sadness)
-(Joy)
-(Gratitude)
-(Sadness)
-(Joy)
She cried and smiled, thanked and cried again.
I was puzzled by the emoticon pattern that I had never seen before.
The pattern that the characters who had been clicked by me showed was usually constant.
They either showed a question mark above their head suddenly.
Or they just showed a crying emoticon right away.
But this character was showing a strange behavior of crying and smiling.
“Is there a problem with the AI intelligence?”
My finger that was about to click on her hesitated for some reason.
A character who expressed gratitude after being attacked.
She was the most peculiar one among the characters I had encountered so far.
It would be nice to kill her and get karma, but I didn’t know when I would meet such a character again.
It wouldn’t be bad to play while watching this character for a while.
If I changed my mind later, I could just use <Lightning>.
As I put my finger away and watched the screen, the character who had been showing speech bubbles started to move.
And at the same time, a new message popped up at the bottom of the screen.
-[Eutania Highlost] acquired <Fanatic> trait.
-Your karma increased by 1.
I looked at the screen with a curious face at the new message that popped up.
Even though I didn’t kill the character, my karma increased by 1.
There was also a message saying that she acquired <Fanatic> trait.
Eutania Highlost.
I didn’t know whose name it was exactly.
But there was one character that I could guess.
“Eutania Highlost… Is that her name?”
The only character left on the screen came into my sight.
A female character with ash-colored hair who started to climb up the mountain slowly.
She must have been Eutania.
She acquired <Fanatic> trait and gave me extra karma.
I could get karma without killing characters.
It was information that I learned for the first time through Eutania.
“But hunting is still faster.”
Of course, it was only 1 karma after all.
I didn’t know which character would get <Fanatic> trait, so I couldn’t keep doing this.
It was still more efficient to hunt characters.
So I moved the screen right away to find the next prey.
