Can someone in MyGo stay in an adventure group forever?

Page 15

But what is the price of "precociousness"?

"Lixi, don't just think about charging forward. Crychic is an adventure team built around sustained spell damage. Rather than charging into battle, it's more important for you to protect the backline spellcasters. Everyone needs your cover."

As we all know, the best time to awaken the potential to become a professional is in the first year of high school.

Before that, to become a professional, one needed to experience intense external stimuli...

"Mu, the timing of releasing the vines was good, but the mana consumption was too high. We can try to improve our control and achieve the goal with minimal loss."

Motoyo Nagasaki had no idea what the others had gone through.

She tried hard to recall when she became a professional.

“Su Shi, I understand your desire to protect everyone. But you're positioned too far forward. Remember, the priest is the team's lifeline. You must ensure your own safety before the last person falls.”

Perhaps, from that day on—

"Su Shi, are you listening?"

"Akira, I understand." Nagasaki Motoyo came to her senses and looked at Toyokawa Shoko in front of her, who was trying to put on a serious expression but didn't seem serious at all.

After the simulation training, everyone slumped in RiNG's training room. Takamatsu was gulping down water, while Wakaba Mutsu stared at his guitar, lost in thought. Shiina Tatsuki brought a towel and was wiping Takamatsu Tatsu's sweat, while Toyokawa Shoko was carefully explaining to everyone how to improve their skills in a small notebook.

Looking at the chaotic scene before her, she suddenly couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Something hot and heavy quietly grew in her empty heart. It even overwhelmed the fatigue after training, the soreness in her muscles, and the gloomy memories that seemed to follow her like a shadow.

The feeling was so unfamiliar, yet so warm. Like a tiny flame, it burned tenaciously in that cold, gray world, bringing an unprecedented and comforting warmth.

This hard-won warmth made her willing to endure the hardships of training, made her strive to master those unfamiliar divine spells, made her willing to tolerate Lixi's impatience, understand Deng's timidity, accept Mu's silence, and made her willing to look up at the figure that supported the entire team.

Toyokawa Shoko.

Crychic is the only color in her gray world that she is determined to protect with all her might.

until that day.

Until that day...

------

"If that girl isn't coming, we'll just start training ourselves! Who does she think she is, coming and going as she pleases?"

After several months of training, the Crychic Adventure Team's teamwork has become increasingly seamless, and they are now able to leave the training-use simulated void and enter the voids marked by the Association that are accessible to novice professionals.

Everything is getting better and better.

Become—

After they officially breached the first hole, Toyokawa Shoko never came back.

"Wait, Taki-chan..." Nagasaki Motoyo tried to persuade Shiina Tatsuki, who had already drawn her sword and was preparing to walk out of the safe zone, "Sho wouldn't suddenly not come, there must be a reason... Besides, she's our team's main damage dealer, so let's—"

"Su Shi." Just then, Wakaba Mutsu, who had been silent all along, spoke up, "Let's go."

"Saki...she won't be coming today. (月-漪②疚qi 锍九易散虾陆)"

Nagasaki Motoyo's pupils suddenly contracted as she looked at Wakaba Mutsumi, who had her head down, and Takamatsu Akari, who seemed at a loss.

"Okay... alright," she said with difficulty, her voice hoarse.

------

The exploration process was dull and oppressive. Without Xiangzi's calm and clear instructions, the entire team seemed to have lost its backbone.

Lixi charged too aggressively and went out of the spell's effective range several times. In a panic, Gaosong Deng applied the buff to the monster on the other side. Su Shi frantically cast a blessing spell to remedy the situation, but the effect was minimal.

As Ye Mu silently manipulated the sparse vines to cover everyone's retreat, his face grew increasingly pale due to excessive exertion.

The atmosphere grew increasingly tense. Each strange noise from the darkness made Tohru clutch Motoyo's sleeve in alarm. Shiina Riki's breathing grew heavier, and Nagasaki Motoyo felt her nerves stretched to the limit, her palms sweating profusely as she gripped the bass. Anxiety, like icy water, slowly seeped into her chest.

Just as they finished clearing an area, footsteps suddenly came from behind, and a figure stumbled in.

"Xiangzi!" Su Shi's eyes lit up instantly, like a drowning person seeing a piece of driftwood; immense joy instantly overwhelmed all her unease.

She instinctively ran towards her, exclaiming, "Great! You're finally here!"

However, the words that came from Toyokawa Shoko's mouth made her feel as if she had fallen into an ice cave.

"I'm here to talk about something today."

She grabbed Nagasaki Motoyo's outstretched hand with displeasure.

"I want to quit Crychic."

Chapter Fourteen: Bubbles

"Huh?" Nagasaki Motoyo heard her own dry voice echoing faintly in the hollow.

"Why? Did something happen? Can't you tell us? Or is it our fault? We can correct any problems!"

“It’s my own problem,” Toyokawa Shoko interrupted her impatiently.

"Why? Didn't you enjoy the previous Void Exploration? You even said you wanted to participate again, right?" Nagasaki Motoyo continued to ask, unwilling to give up.

“I didn’t say that.” Toyokawa Shoko’s voice grew even colder.

"is that so."

Joy and peace of mind burst like a soap bubble, leaving only endless bewilderment.

"But you're the founder of Crychic, what if you quit, Xiaoxiang..."

"Are you really... going to quit?" In the dead silence, Takamatsu Akari, who was holding a laptop in her arms, suddenly spoke.

Toyokawa Shoko gripped her arm tightly again.

Nagasaki Motoyo then noticed that the cuffs of her shirt and the hem of her skirt were covered in stains, and her usually meticulously combed blue hair was now disheveled, with a few strands stuck to her bloodless cheeks by sweat.

“The light is asking you a question,” Shiina Tatsuki continued, “and isn’t this incredibly irresponsible?”

Seeing that Toyokawa Shoko hadn't replied, she picked up her sword, which was leaning against the side: "Why aren't you saying anything?"

"Lixi, don't do this..."

"If you're going to quit, don't cause us any trouble! If you had said you weren't coming today, we wouldn't have ended up in the void like this—"

“You chose to enter.” Toyokawa Shoko lowered her head, but her tone remained unyielding. “If you want to practice, just practice on your own. Anyway, when you rushed to the front without thinking, you never considered that there was a mage behind you.”

“But, if you quit, Xiangzi…” Gao Songdeng finally raised his head.

"Don't say such sweet nothings! Mingming, you're the one who needs the most practice!" Toyokawa Shoko's voice suddenly rose. "You never know how to correct your mistakes, and you can't seem to get the motivation right when I ask you to! If it weren't for the simulation, I would have died countless times because of your mistakes—"

Shiina Ritsuki abruptly drew his sword, which he was about to sheath, and pointed it directly at her, shouting angrily, "The light is waiting for you!"

"Wait a minute." Nagasaki Motoyo quickly pressed down on her sword. "Let's calm down and talk, okay?"

"We've all been happily forming an adventure team together for so long—Mumu thinks so too, right?" She turned to look at Mumu Wakaba, who was standing at the farthest point, silently wiping her guitar.

Under Su Shi's gaze, which held a last glimmer of hope, Ruo Yemu finally slowly raised her head. Her golden eyes were completely calm, and her lips moved slightly as she uttered a few words clearly in a flat tone:

"I... have never felt happy forming an adventure party."

Snapped.

The warmth in my heart was instantly extinguished, leaving only boundless desolation.

Like a building collapsing suddenly.

ended.

it's all over.

crychic... No, that so-called "community of shared destiny" is nothing but a fragile illusion.

Like a beautiful soap bubble, it bursts on its own without even needing any external touch.

Just before the suffocating air was about to fill the entire cavity—

The cave walls suddenly began to shake.

The ground began to tremble violently, and rubble fell from the cave walls, making a clattering sound as it hit the ground.

"What's going on?! Wasn't this area already cleared up?" Shiina Riki suddenly looked up.

Nagasaki Motoyo suddenly recalled that the Hollows in the Moon Forest textbook mentioned that for hollows used by novice adventurers, this situation could only occur in one way—

"Hollow... has gone berserk?"

Before she could react, accompanied by a deafening roar, the cave wall beside her was violently smashed open by an extremely brute force, as if it were a fragile toy.

A massive, suffocating black shadow, carrying with it rubble and a foul stench, burst forth like a battering ram out of control!

Its massive, bear-like body is covered in feathers, but extending from its enormous head is a sharp, owl-like beak.

Owlbear.

A large monster of challenge level 3.

This means that even if the entire adventure team were to use all their strength, they would still be unable to defeat them.

If one is a seasoned professional adventurer, perhaps they can still make a desperate attempt before death.

But they were just a group of middle school girls who had only experienced combat in the training room, and they couldn't even organize a proper resistance.

Nagasaki Motoyo felt her legs give way and she collapsed onto the already unstable, cold ground, her mind completely blank.

"Be careful!!!"

In a daze, I could hear Shiina Tatsuki's voice in my ear.

"Nagasaki Motoyo, use a protective spell! Quickly, use a protective spell!"

Nagasaki Motoyo's eyes widened in fear, tears streaming down her face.

He tried to raise his hand, but his body wouldn't respond.

He could only watch helplessly as the owl bear's terrifying forelimbs, thicker than an adult's thigh, slammed down with unstoppable force toward Toyokawa Shoko, who was closest to him.

Toyokawa Shoko instinctively raised her right hand to block.

then--

tear.

The arm, which should have been used to play the keyboard and was as exquisitely sculpted as a work of art, leaped high into the air, spraying blood.

She landed in Nagasaki Motoyo's arms.

It still carried the warmth of the past.

"what--!!!"

------

"what--!!!"

The sharp sound of its claws tearing through the air instantly brought Nagasaki Motoyo back to reality.

There was no way to dodge it, and no time to cast any protective spells.

Time seemed to stretch out infinitely, frozen in time.

Nagasaki Motoyo then realized that she had unknowingly let out the same terrified scream as before.

I see...

It turns out that all that gentleness, composure, and relief were just a disguise.

From beginning to end, I was nothing more than a coward afraid of losing.

Clinging to the warmth that immersed them, yet unwilling to accept the fact that it had already begun to crumble before it shattered completely...

The shadowy figure rapidly magnified in Nagasaki Motoyo's field of vision.

Perhaps dying here wouldn't be such a bad choice?

That way, I can stay in the past forever.

mom.

I miss you.

While Nagasaki Motoyo was quietly awaiting her sweet death.