I Became a 6★ Gacha Character

The one timidly trying to stop us was a tiny forest fairy. With a small stature that looked less than 140cm, a hesitant quiet voice, and a posture that suggested she wanted to flee immediately—just her head peeking out from behind a tree while her bottom was pulled back, making her stand awkwardly.

After the green-haired maidens and brown-haired mature women, now came a pink-haired girl? It seemed strange that villages would be divided by hair color and age group, but considering that nymphs, the root of forest fairies, were guardian spirits of plants, it made sense. Perhaps entire villages grew together like similar flowers in a flower bed.

Anyway, as the tiny pink-haired forest fairy began telling us not to dig up the flower, the hands of my companions immediately stopped digging.

"Hello? Um, my name is Irene."

"Ah, um, I'm Flora. Are you, Irene, a guest from another village?"

Seeing the forest fairy who looked like a middle or high school student thanks to her small stature and young face, Irene attempted conversation. True to her role as the big sister from the Temple, she smiled gently as she spoke, which seemed to lower the fairy's guard as she cautiously emerged from behind the tree.

Flora—even her name and pink color suggested a connection to flowers—slowly approached Irene. Despite her slow and somewhat frustrating demeanor, Irene watched with a cheerful smile, allowing Flora to begin her explanation at her own pace.

She approached the large flower that had nearly been uprooted and gently stroked it like someone petting a dog's head, then began to speak.

"Once this child finds a spot, it becomes an ordinary flower and can't move for a while. So if you pull it up now, um, it might die."

According to Flora, who had completely dropped her guard, this creature did appear to be the "fragrance" mentioned in the quest log.

This walking flower, which the forest fairies called a "big flower," was literally just that—a big flower. It loved sunlight, enjoyed being watered, and occasionally produced honey when it rooted itself, like a proper flower.

It seemed strange that they'd call something that walked around on two feet an ordinary flower, but if that was normal in forest fairy common sense, who was I to argue? Anyway, the big flower wasn't attacked by monsters or forest fairies because of the honey it produced.

So the "fragrance" mentioned in the quest window wasn't the scent from the flower itself, but the honey it produced.

"Monsters don't attack it because of honey?"

"Yes. Just like carnivores don't attack herbivores at a small spring. Everyone knows that if they harm the flower, they won't get to eat its honey."

At Flora's words, I looked at the shadow fang tiger lying obediently with its belly on the ground. Looking closely, I could see it subtly wiggling its rear end while inching its head toward the flower from its position at Irene's feet.

So it hadn't been trying to attack the walking flower, but rather hiding in the shadows to steal honey faster than anyone else.

Katie let out a small "pffft" laugh at the unexpectedly anticlimactic situation. Grace also seemed amused by how seriously we'd worried, rubbing her brow with her fingertips while her lips twitched into a smile. We'd agonized over whether it was a mimicking monster, only to find out it was just a flower with delicious honey—that was funny.

But Han Se-ah and I couldn't laugh so easily.

[Beasts wandering in search of the source of the sweet fragrance]

[An implicit agreement made before the sweet blessing bestowed by red petals]

[Even the forest master and the secret terror become gentle lambs before that sweetness]

"...Hey, this split into two—the forest master and the secret terror? So this shadow fang tiger isn't even a named monster, just a forest cat, and these 'master' and 'terror' are the real named monsters?"

The quest log had only updated after hearing Flora's explanation.

Han Se-ah was pondering whether the forest master and secret terror were named monsters or mid-boss and final boss monsters. But I was grinding my teeth thinking about the devious trap that BB Games had hidden.

Flora had warned us against attacking the walking flower. That meant if a player, ignorant and frustrated by the stalled quest log, had shot and killed the flower... what would have happened?

What if we'd encountered the flower without capturing the shadow fang tiger first? What if Grace hadn't been cautious and had shot the flower? What if Flora hadn't sensed the forest fairy emblem and intervened?

Only one conclusion came to mind.

Public enemy.

※

Thanks to Flora's guidance, we found the third forest fairy village and learned a great deal. Outwardly it appeared to be a village of young girls, but they had the closest relationship with the forest creatures.

"This feels like all the gimmicks are concentrated on the 61st floor, doesn't it? Like we need to collect everything here, then go up and perform the mechanisms."

-Yeah, it seems designed to make you go back to the starting village if you proceed mindlessly

-I sort of get the general feel of it

-But isn't it really like Pookiemon? Collecting emblems, honey, and poison while going up and befriending creatures?

-Could there be some kind of scenario branch point? Like different boss reactions depending on whether you befriended or hunted neutral mobs?

-Wow! You know that game? It's a god-tier game with genocide routes and pacifist routes where a skeleton blocks hell or something like that

The most important point was that the named monsters in the deep forest layer weren't limited to shadow fang tigers.

Plains wolves, forest orcs, cave snakes, swamp trolls, highland harpies... until now, there had been one type of named monster per layer. The golems in the cave layer's maze might be an exception, but that was a separate event map.

However, the deep forest seemed to have various named monsters besides the shadow fang tiger, and different ways to tame them. Just as we could make the shadow fang tiger lose its will to fight by surrounding it with overwhelming combat power, or tempt it with sweet honey or savory jerky.

No wonder people were making Pookiemon references.

"Come to think of it, the stone dwarf city moved alongside the mountain range as we climbed floors, right?"

"So here, as we climb floors, we must be moving deeper into the forest."

This meant we needed to discover as many forest fairy villages as possible on the 61st floor and collect honey before tackling the remaining layers. According to Flora, there were also named monsters that responded to the forest fairy emblems.

Collect forest fairy emblems like badges, and along the way gather byproducts from rare neutral monsters like the walking flower. The more gimmicks we activated and secured on the 61st floor, the fewer battles we'd have and the more comfortably we could climb.

Conversely, if we hadn't discovered Flora's village and moved carelessly... we would have faced all sorts of troublesome situations.

'They've made this place truly wicked.'

We'd easily obtained the forest fairy emblem thanks to the pure natural energy crystal from the Empire, but without it, wouldn't we have had to complete all sorts of side quests to earn their trust?

What if a regular player had encountered the walking flower while trying to earn the forest fairies' trust through various side quests? And what if they thought it was a monster and hunted it without a second thought? Or even if they didn't, what if they'd pulled it up to sell to the Magic Tower the moment it rooted itself?

This layer seemed designed around the principle of "if you don't know, you'll pay the price," which was truly devious.

"So what do we do with this guy?"

"Well... the forest fairy said it could be tamed."

"It's not like it ate people, and apparently it's just addicted to sweetness and eats fruit, so there's no need to kill it, right?"

Now that we knew the truth, we were left with the problem of what to do with the shadow fang tiger.

From a game perspective, setting aside the forest ecosystem, this creature seemed like a tutorial monster. A monster designed to teach players that neutral objects could be made friendly using the honey from walking flowers.

The same species of shadow fang tiger could either poison and assassinate high-rank adventurer parties or live peacefully eating honey and fruit—the comparison was perfect. Like the toothless fang tiger was the killer version, while the one with teeth was the pet version.

But a monster was still a monster, no matter how docile. Moreover, it was a named-level monster capable of assassinating high-rank adventurer parties.

"Since it found the flower, it seems like we just need to feed it. With Han Se-ah's inventory, let's try bringing it along in the forest for now."

"Seeing how the forest fairies aren't particularly wary of it, it doesn't seem to be a bad child...!"

"Well... judging by its behavior, it's just big-dumb-dog level, and it's definitely not the forest master or secret terror, right? Everyone seems fine with it, so I guess we should take it."

[Han Se-Ah The Straw Inserter donated 10,000 won!]

[Now you're sticking straws into beast spines too, Hanna]

"Hey! Watch your mouth, seriously!"

...Was I the only one still concerned? This bastard had definitely approached us to poison our food.

Enjoy the chappy!