Chapter 245: The Opening of the Wolf Strife: A Punch of Sound Logic is Unavoidable

Author's Preface
It seems I'll be quite busy from here on out, so daily uploads might become difficult. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause everyone.

Is this what they call a bed of nails?
All I did was break a window at a trivial in-game base, yet for some reason, I'm being glared at intensely.
Since I have absolutely no reason to back down, I puffed out my chest and stood tall, prompting them to awkwardly avert their eyes. Fufufu, justice prevails...!

"Basically, she's telling you to put some clothes on instead of letting them bounce all over the place, Sunraku-chan-kun."

"Apparently, it's entered its 100th thread."

Sun... I erased the light from Kei-kyun's eyes with a killer pass only he would understand, and with that, the discussion between the two wolves finally began.

"Now then, I will skip the self-introductions... Originally, I had planned to reaffirm the contents of our alliance today, but there is a matter we must resolve before that, correct?"

Almost all eyes in the room focused on Kyou-timate. The expressions of the players—who, despite being members of a hardcore faction, were equipped with strangely shabby gear—were particularly intense, looking ready to draw their swords and strike at any moment.

"Fuu~n, so we're starting there... Well, fine. Let me be blunt: eight... Obviously I'm joking. Let's settle on a fifty percent markup."

"...Factor in the possibility of the entirety of Black Wolf dealing with this. A twenty percent markup."

"Nooo way. Forty percent is my maximum concession."

A negotiation unfolding purely around the main points. The audience was split into those who understood what was going on, and those who didn't.
The former, the players who understood the context, accurately recognized the fierce haggling battle taking place between Pencilgon—who was intentionally starting with an outrageous demand—and Psyger-100, who was trying to drag out concessions by hinting at the possibility of retaliation... Fortunately or unfortunately, the involved parties—the Players who were scammed as the victims—belonged to the latter group.

"W-What exactly are you guys talking about...?"

"You don't understand? Your leader is currently negotiating the price to buy back my equipment."

In other words, to supplement the contents of the previous conversation:
"If you want your items back, pay the total vendor sale price plus a forty percent markup."
"If you keep acting cocky, the entire clan will retaliate against you. Settle for a twenty percent markup."
That's what it boiled down to.

A completely messed-up situation where the perpetrator politely explains things to the victim with a beaming smile. After freezing for a moment, the victim seemed to have finally understood.
Perhaps failing to comprehend why he was being told to pay a markup to get his own gear back, the victim shouted in a high-pitched voice appropriate for his age.

"Why... Why the hell do I have to pay money for my own equipment! Just give it back normally!"

"Why, you ask? Because the ownership of your... let's see, Ascension Blade Custom-6, currently belongs to me. So why would I give it to you for free?"

"It was originally mine, damn it!"

Aa~ aa~, he really doesn't get it. Look, Psyger-100 is holding her head in her hands, and Pencilgon is floating an incredibly sinister smile.
Keeping pace with the bastards around her perfectly, Kyou-timate—who possessed a remarkably high bastard attribute herself—began explaining why he had to pay, speaking as if she were teaching the ways of the world to a kindergartener... In other words, in an incredibly infuriating tone.

"Listen well, boy? PK isn't an illegal act in this game. The game system explicitly designed it as a valid playstyle. Meaning, yes, I took your equipment from you, but that doesn't mean I did anything bad, you know? Got i~t?"

Exactly. What you absolutely must not misunderstand is that the Player Killer system itself is an intended mechanic designed by the management.
For example, let's assume Pencilgon used her silver tongue to con that victim kid out of his equipment. In that case, he'd have the right to cry to management or expose her on an exposure thread. Even if it's just internet data, fraud is still fraud.

But PKers are different. It is a legitimate way to enjoy ShanFro, and a recognized playstyle.
If you get PK'd, you lose your equipment, but the PKers operate fully aware of the heavy drawback that they'll lose their entire fortune if they lose.

Setting aside the fact that having an Inventoria makes that issue virtually non-existent for the time being. In this particular case—ignoring the persistent harassment or the clan disputes—it simply reached the natural conclusion of a Player Killer winning a fight.

What the current owner, Kyou-timate, decides to do with the equipment she stripped from the victim is entirely up to her. Fundamentally, she has absolutely no obligation to go out of her way to sell it back to Black Wolf, so you could say that Kyou-timate offering to do so is a concession so kind it's almost too generous... Theoretically speaking, anyway.

But if the world operated purely on theory, wars would never break out.

"Uwaa, amazing. Just listening to this makes me want to punch her."

"Kyou-timate... She seems to be quite the exceptional talent... But she is the weakest of the Four Heavenly Kings..."

"Eeh~, I don't want to be a Heavenly King. I'd rather be the Demon Lord~."

"Then I'll be the character who is one of the Four Heavenly Kings but ultimately turns to the Light attribute at the end."

"You see those types of characters a lot in fiction, but don't you think it's crazy how they can act so proudly despite being basically Double Cross bats? Becoming an enemy is fine and all, but I feel like they should show a little more guilt, you know?"

"I get it, but it gets annoying if they just keep agonizing over it constantly."

"You know, there's this game where a character constantly whines and agonizes over it in the story, but during combat, they happily slaughter their former allies while screaming in high spirits because the devs just reused their voice lines from when they were an enemy."

"No matter how you look at it, that's just a trash game."

Well, yeah, it's a trash game, but because it's half-decent, you can't help but play it while constantly thinking, "If only it was made a little better..." It's a game like rotten dried squid where that feeling only gets thicker the more you replay it, making it quite addictive.
It's pretty damn funny when they're agonizing in the story like, "Is it really okay for a traitor like me to live happily without a care?" but the second combat starts, they're going full psycho like, "Now, let me hear your screams!"

"Psyger-san! Why do we have to do what they say!?"

Oh my, did they realize they couldn't defeat Kyou-timate in an argument and cry to Psyger-100?
But have they forgotten? Psyger-100 has been proceeding with the conversation on the premise of buying it back from the very beginning. So no matter how much you cry to her, there's absolutely no way you're getting it back for free.

At the very least, it's a blessing that it hasn't been sold off to another clan, so it'd be better to just pay up obediently, but... since I was a bit curious, I asked Kyou-timate a question.

"By the way, how much did the equipment you mugged amount to in total?"

"Nn~, when I asked an NPC for the price, I think it was around 14 million Mani in total."

Assuming a twenty percent markup, that's roughly 17 million...

"Ah, my bad, but I'll need that in a single lump-sum payment."

"Are you a demon?"

If you want to farm money in this game, your choices are either soloing bullshit-strong monsters or doing thorough mob-slaughtering.
Well, there are exceptional backdoor methods like hogging an entire mountain of treasure... but there probably aren't many people who can just casually cough up 20 million Mani (rounded up) in a single lump-sum payment.

"Well, from what I can see, it doesn't look like they were Unique weapons or anything, so why don't you just accept your loss cleanly and start crafting them again from scratch?"

She actually said it. That's a taunt worthy of me wordlessly slapping her with a white glove.
Humans generally get angry when they are simply insulted, but when you arm yourself with logic, they get even angrier. Sound logic is something that often hurts people. It's that feeling of "I understand, but I can't accept it."

".........!"

"Ah, I'll accept a rematch if you want, but I think you should wait until we're done talking?"

It was a taunt so severe I wouldn't be able to complain even if he punched her using a clenched, white-gloved fist as a stand-in for a formal letter of challenge. But judging from Pencilgon's expression, they probably planned this out beforehand, huh?
Knowing her, she definitely secured testimonies of the Black Wolf members picking a fight with Kyou-timate. In other words, she intends to frame Kyou-timate as the "victim" and then extort them.

"Now, now, Kyougoku-chan. What you're saying isn't wrong, but you should leave it at that."

"Fufufu... Since the clan leader says so, I'm not a demon either. I'll compromise just a little."

Casually appealing that we hold the moral high ground while spouting a blatant lie like "We're good friends, so I'll compromise." I wonder if I should learn from that shamelessness... No, I feel like my humanity would get contaminated, so I'll pass.

"Installment payments are fine too."

"That's where you compromise!?"

I couldn't help but blurt it out. You're compromising on the payment method instead of lowering the price!?

They couldn't win in a battle of words, and logic sided with Kyou-timate. The choices left were a shitty binary: pay an exorbitant fee to buy back the equipment, or give up and cry themselves to sleep. Having such a bullshit ultimatum slammed into them right out the gate by a minor clan caused the atmosphere of the esteemed top clan to grow incredibly tense, but our bastards completely brushed it off like the wind.
Every single one of them is thick-skinned, after all. If they weren't, they wouldn't be able to survive as a model, a pro-gamer, or a PKer.

Even so, out of the "Three Agendas" Pencilgon had planned for, you could say this marks our first victory.
One wrong step, and they could have demanded information from us in exchange for letting Kyou-timate's PK slide. Going out of our way to taunt the victims was purely to invert the relationship between victim and perpetrator so we could force our logic through.

The real show starts now.

"Well, let's wrap up the opening act around here... Shall we move on to the next agenda?"

Pencilgon smiled in order to overturn a situation where, no matter how you looked at it, we were in the wrong. Psyger-100 narrowed her eyes in order to properly pursue responsibility.

Now, onto the next agenda......... before that.

"Ah... Hello."

"...Um... I'm sorry... for being late..."

I found myself greeting Rei-san, who had just walked in looking incredibly awkward.

Author's Afterword
Apparently, if she seriously wanted to harass them, she would have sold it off to another clan without hesitation, and if not that, she would have just discarded it.