━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Obviously, none of her teammates knew about the fact that Emilia had made a secret 'deal' with Darryl. Or the fact that Colman was just trying to establish a reliable communication channel between them.
After all, while people could chat with each other within the game regardless of the distance between them, they had to be mutually added as 'friends' first. And the only way two people could do so was for them to have some form of 'physical contact', then 'accept' each other's request.
While there was no limit to the number of friends one was allowed to have, the fact that there was no 'search' function, and Arcadia didn't enforce a unique naming policy either, made it difficult for people to keep track of too many friends.
The moment they shook hands, Colman couldn't help but grin. "Miss Emilia's palm is even softer and smaller than it looks."
Of course, in sharp contrast to his words and expression, his real feelings at that moment were incredibly complex.
Every player in Arcadia had a unique ID number assigned to them when they first logged in, and… Emilia's ID number was fifteen zeros, followed by a one.
That is to say, she was the fastest player to finish her character creation when the game launched… even faster than his boss!
Darryl had specifically asked him to pay attention to this detail, and it wasn't without reason.
Being a close friend of the genius who 'created' the game, aside from knowing that the 'spawn' location could be changed based on where someone physically was, Colman was naturally privy to many other secrets as well.
Although the game had technically opened its gates for everyone at the same time, the amount of time it took for a person's soul to sync with the game world actually varied a lot when they did it for the first time.
It might only take around five minutes or so, but that was more than enough time for someone who got there first to rush through the character creation process.
What Emilia's ID showed, therefore, wasn't just the fact that her soul was incredibly 'strong' and compatible with Arcadia, but also that she was incredibly reckless and uncaring of how her character creation impacted her later.
'Will such a girl really be a good wife for the boss?' Colman frowned. 'Even if she's gorgeous, if all boss wanted was a pretty and dumb girl, there are already thousands waiting for him to choose one.'
Unfortunately, his sharp-eyed stare was interpreted as a look of perversion by Emilia's teammates, and before Colman even realized it, he'd been scolded bloody and left in the dust.
Shaking his head with a helpless smile, Colman could only log out first. 'I'll just leave these things for the boss to decide.'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Darryl didn't show much of a reaction to the fact that his 'friend' had managed to convince Emilia to join his side, and added her as a friend within the game for easy communication.
However, when he learned her player number, the genius couldn't help but frown. 'Am I thinking too much, or is this girl… really unusual…?'
Obviously, he'd had her investigated to the best of his ability, and she seemed to be someone born in a remote community near his hometown who'd just recently moved to the city.
Her being a little silly and na?ve seemed to be quite natural, and the only two things that stood out about her were her beauty and her luck.
Having already pulled her to his side, Darryl should have had no reason to worry anymore. But for some reason, he couldn't help but feel a little uneasy.
'It seems like… I have to meet her in person, just to be sure.' He sighed.
Unfortunately, he wasn't really as free to travel around the world as some of his friends, and he couldn't just rush to the Fire Kingdom in Arcadia either. It was too troublesome and time-consuming, after all.
But thinking about the fact that he could feel a change coming to the 'world' soon, Darryl's expression soon eased into a smile. 'Forget it, when the time comes… I'll definitely know what this feeling is.'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Emilia naturally had no idea of the hero's internal struggles, and continued to lead her team to make rapid progress while pretending to obediently listen to their lectures on how not to deal with her 'fans'.
Obviously, she also understood that most of the people claiming to admire her only did so out of some form of greed, and very few might actually like her genuinely. But since Danielle explaining it all so seriously looked unexpectedly cute, Emilia didn't bother to interrupt her.
The [Minor Tentacled Plant Demons] that were usually avoided by other players could only feel wronged while being slaughtered by this uncaring team again.
As proud monsters near the capital region, did they not deserve even a little bit of dignity?
Unfortunately, the Crimson Witches had long since gotten used to dealing with them, and now they couldn't even leave a single trail of slime on Emilia's thigh despite her being the team's sole vanguard.
Of course, their mission this time wasn't to deal with these monsters on the outskirts, they just happened to be in the way.
"How much further do you think we have to go to encounter these so-called [Ravenous Rabbits]?" Robin frowned.
Danielle hummed thoughtfully as she checked the mission details again, then shrugged. "Since it mentions that the rabbits are also in the outer regions of the forest, I don't think it should be too much further in."
In fact, if not for Emilia leading them and pointing out the fact that they'd never encountered such beasts despite hunting the tentacled plants for so long, Danielle and the others might even have spent some time going through the outskirts first.
They couldn't be blamed, since the forest really was far more vast than it appeared on the map, and even dashing straight towards the center for nearly an hour would barely get them through the outskirts.
Just when they were worried that the mission might have to be put off for the next day, however, Robin abruptly paused, and the rest of the team quickly turned their attention to what had caused her to freeze.
A few meters ahead of them, peeking out from a particularly lush bush, was an incredibly fluffy rabbit butt adorned with a colorful pink scut.
'We found it…!'
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The source of this c𝐨ntent is fre𝒆w(e)bn(o)vel