A hidden episode was unlocked, revealing a new building on the map.
[Count Avondale's Mansion]
To be precise, it was a place that had always existed but couldn't be entered before. A mansion of considerable size, located a short distance from Upper Lane, the residential district of the upper class.
"Oh, I didn't expect this place to open up."
The mansion looked rather desolate. There was no beautiful fountain or garden bursting with exotic trees, and no signs of human habitation whatsoever. That was only natural.
'Count Avondale's mansion is basically... an abandoned house.'
The setting within the virtual reality ga 'Golden Claw' goes like this.
The hidden episode 'Count Avondale's Secret' began when the newspaper boy Jack sent a note containing rumors about Count Avondale's mansion.
Jack, who traveled everywhere from the mansions of high society figures to back alleys and knew all sorts of rumors, said that the secluded mansion at the far end of Upper Lane was a 'haunted mansion.' He claid that if you passed by that mansion at dawn, you could hear strange sounds. He didn't forget to add in small letters at the corner of his crumpled note that this was real secret information he hadn't told anyone else.
In 'Golden Claw,' where killing monsters in dungeons makes up 80% of the ga content, ghosts wouldn't suddenly appear. At best, there might be items hidden by Count Avondale, who died 12 years ago. Or maybe so monster making strange sounds.
Players wouldn't forgive the developers if they were brought all the way to an abandoned house only to find no good items.
After getting decent items, you'd have to use them to fight bigger conspiracies, more difficult dungeons, and stronger monsters. Then you'd take the byproducts from defeating those monsters to magical engineers to be reborn as better equipnt, and take that equipnt to clear more dungeons. The ga was a repetition of that pattern.
'Golden Claw' was the story of hunters (players) who defeat dungeons and monsters that suddenly appear in a steampunk world inspired by 19th century London.
'I wouldn't mind if this kind of imperialist city disappeared, but.'
But to win in the ga, you had to protect the city, so there was no choice. You could only hope that the money earned from colonial managent and the advanced magical civilization would drop good items.
If they just threw gacha boxes after clearing all the story content... they'd see how terrifying the exodus of hardcore players could be.
An alert window appeared when I stood in front of [Count Avondale's Mansion].
I entered without hesitation. Creak. The massive gate opened with a sound like it hadn't been oiled for ten years. It felt like eerie background music was playing. The kind that mixed broken music box sounds with percussion that gradually quickened following a heartbeat. And at just the right mont, the cry of a crow—caw!
I crossed the garden where weeds covered the entire path and arrived at the dusty front entrance. I twisted the door handle with my hunter-gloved hand. Of course, it was locked.
"I brought sothing for occasions like this."
Breaking into empty houses in this ga wasn't a one or two ti thing. Any 'Golden Claw' user always carried disposable wire in their inventory. I inserted the wire into the keyhole and jiggled it around, producing click, click sounds.
Of course, if this were an ordinary magical engineer's house, they would have installed a device that would ring throughout the entire house the mont wire was inserted into the front door keyhole.
"......."
As expected, there was nothing. The owner of this house had been dead for 12 years. Even batteries would have died in 12 years.
What was Count Avondale supposed to have died from? I had skimd through the information newspaper boy Jack had brought, but I couldn't rember properly. Well, it wasn't important anyway.
"It's open."
The dead count would have been devastated to see this. So outsider was about to ransack his entire house. No wait, I should be grateful it hadn't been ransacked already, considering how poorly secured it was. The door, much taller than a person's height, was quite heavy. I pushed the door open and entered the hall.
Thump.
The door closed behind . Perhaps because of the sound that seed to cut
off from the world, even the air felt different from before.
The mansion wasn't much different from an ordinary noble's mansion. Despite hearing that Count Avondale, the owner, was quite an eccentric, there wasn't much sign of that. At the end of a hall displaying sculptures and pottery, there were stairs spreading out to both sides. I had expected to see bizarre stuffed animals or sothing, but he apparently wasn't that kind of eccentric.
I opened the map, but the mansion's interior structure was completely blacked out. It was structured so that the map wouldn't open until you actually entered each area one by one. Just like a dungeon.
In cases like this, where should I start?
The structure of noble castles and mansions is pretty much the sa everywhere. Let's refer to the royal castle, whose structure is already completely mapped out!
[Map: Royal Castle]
I opened the map of the royal castle.
There were too many rooms. No matter how I thought about it, this mansion probably didn't have this many rooms.
It would be better to refer to Lord Humphrey's mansion that I had ransacked before. I opened the map again and clicked on Lord Humphrey's mansion in the middle of Upper Lane.
[Map: Humphrey House]
Hmm. Now it looked more similar. Where should I start? I was going to check everything anyway.
For information, the study would be best. If he was an excellent magical engineer, he would have filled his study with quite a lot of useful information.
Referring to Humphrey House's structure, I went up the stairs. The place on the third floor with the best lighting. The perfect spot for a study. When I tried turning the handle, sure enough, it was locked.
[Inventory]
I took out wire. There were 157 wires left.
'Sohow it feels wasteful. I should have stopped by the hardware store before entering the mansion.'
So thought the owner of an obsessive-compulsive disorder who couldn't rest easy without keeping 999 items stocked.
The door opened. A large window letting in pure white sunlight. A desk in front of it. Unknown instrunts and small lights on the desk. And a space completely surrounded by bookshelves on all four sides.
'The ceiling is open.'
Whether it was just this room or not, the ceiling was open with bookshelves extending all the way to the second floor. Each bookshelf was packed full of books. A chandelier hanging from the ceiling sparkled brilliantly. Wait a minute.
"A chandelier?"
Did it make sense for a chandelier to be functioning properly in a mansion where even the front door alarm system was broken?
Sothing seed a bit wrong. Maybe there was a setting where soone still lived in this castle? An old butler or a young servant. It was obvious but usually that kind of setting.
My next step into the study was more cautious than before. Over the carpet, soundlessly. And I turned my head toward the inner space of the study.
"Who are you?"
"That's... what I should be asking, isn't it?"
Standing there was a man with two books tucked under one arm and loosely tied blonde hair hanging down. His white face, a million light-years away from the working class, was as pure and elegant as forget--nots. But the physique under his single-layer shirt was clearly solid even at a glance.
'An incubus dungeon that provides handso n to suit your tastes?'
This mansion was just an abandoned house, not a dungeon. If it were a dungeon, an alarm would have co. But now it didn't even seem to be an abandoned house, which was the problem. Were Jack's information lies?
When there was no answer, the man leaned against the bookshelf and asked again with a crooked smile.
"Who might you be to enter my mansion without a sound?"
No. Let
think this through carefully. It was definitely an abandoned house. The alarm system was dead, and the garden was a ss. And Jack never gives wrong information.
There are cases where they reveal 'Actually, there was this backstory!' but that should be revealed at the end of the story. There had never been a case where soone was living normally in what was supposed to be an abandoned house!
"I'm a hunter."
"A hunter? Then you should go to the forest."
"A hunter who catches monsters!"
The man set his books down on a tray. Was this the timing to draw a weapon? The man strode closer. I prepared my stance and got ready to draw a weapon. Just one more step and.......
My fumbling hand in the inventory caught a long rifle. It was the weapon I had first learned to handle skillfully, and even after I started using other weapons, I could still handle this rifle like it was part of my body.
"For soone who ca to kill , your conduct is sloppy, and for soone who ca to steal, you're too brazen."
The man grinned while stroking his chin and nodding up and down at a close distance.
"Your na?"
"......Esperanza."
"A good na. Esperanza, have a seat. Put down that ridiculously large weapon too. It's a type of gun I've never seen before, so I'm interested."
His speech changed to informal polite language. And he took sothing out from his chest and pressed it. Shortly after, there was a knock and the door opened.
"Count, did you call for ?"
"I've co to receive an unexpected guest. Bring tea. As for tea food......"
The man, confirming the flawlessly gloved hands, added.
"Sothing that can be easily picked up and eaten."
"Yes, Count. But that lady is......?"
"That's sothing I plan to find out. Millen, don't forget my stimulator when you bring the tea."
The man nad Millen, who appeared to be a servant, closed the door without expressing any doubt about the situation.
"There's a servant......?"
My belated question ca out trembling. Conceding a hundred tis, soone could live in an abandoned house. The interior could be in such good condition. But you couldn't live there with servants.
"You said it was abandoned...... No, it was definitely abandoned."
"Avondale mansion abandoned? That's an interesting story. This mansion hasn't been without an owner once in the past 150 years."
"But it's been empty for 12 years....... There's no front door alarm system, and the garden is overgrown with grass!"
"The gardener who did weeding work yesterday would be sad to hear that."
Esperanza pressed her lips tightly shut. The man sitting diagonally on the sofa with his arms crossed looked at Esperanza with an expression that said 'Now that I've heard all your nonsense, I'll say what I have to say.' When their eyes t, the man asked with a gentle tone that made goosebumps rise on the back of her neck, wearing a light smile.
"The shape of that gun is quite unusual—may I take a look at it?"
"Yes, well, go ahead and look."
I wasn't in the right fra of mind to think things like 'I shouldn't hand over my weapon.'
What on earth was going on? The entire ti I was handing over the gun, my head was full of thoughts that I couldn't understand. He said they did weeding work yesterday. I rushed to look down below the window.
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