The D-Rank Guild Master of the No. 1 Guild

A new era of “Ranking of Soul” has begun. Officially, characters now have the freedom and choice to engage in the game as they wish.

“You all have your freedom. I’m the one suffering.”

Even the day after Akata dragged me to the after-party, I was still working as a real estate agent or a landlord.

‘40% of the characters who left the guild fortresses to live independently are still homeless.’

Their homelessness is a problem, but solving their housing issues might kill me from overwork first. I can’t just leave it to the characters to solve on their own.

Small houses in the village, unlike the guild fortresses, don’t come with a self-customization feature.

It will take a few more days to finish everything. Until then, keeping all these surplus characters cooped up in the refuge might cost me public favor, now that I’ve taken over the new regime.

Fortunately, I managed to teach programming to Akata, Shemarin, Ifrea, and Blance, so they could handle simple tasks. We’re now sharing the work, and I can finally breathe a little.

Blance is in charge of space design, Akata handles furniture modeling, Shemarin is responsible for basic design and implementation, and Ifrea manages customer calls and records.

Aleon and Runehan are on-site, moving customers into their new homes.

In our temporary office, everyone was silently engrossed in their work. Ifrea’s voice softly echoed as she handled customer complaints.

“Yes, this is Ifrea from the leadership. You don’t like the color of the wallpaper. You want to change the green to blue. But did you know? Green is better for your eyes than blue. Living in a blue house gives you a 99% chance of losing your eyesight within 100 years. Yes, that’s right. Ah, you’ll keep the green? Then please sign the contract we sent online…”

Good, everything’s going well.

However, there was one house that, despite being newly built, was going to remain vacant for a while.

This house was special, designed secretly by Akata and me. We hid its location so that no other characters could find it.

But the homeowner wouldn’t be moving in anytime soon.

“If I had known Taggiros wouldn’t move in right away, I would have built it later.”

I worked my eyes out on that place.

While I sighed with regret, Taggiros looked up at the clear sky with a puzzled expression.

When I told him the house was ready, he said he absolutely had to go to the real world. He insisted he had something important to do and declined to move in.

‘Something important. He said he had forgotten his past life, so does that mean it’s something that happened after he became a game character?’

Who knows. Aria might have taken him out into the real world for something.

It’s not difficult to let him go out. As long as we keep in touch.

However—

“It’s been 10 years since you lost your first life. The world has changed a lot, hasn’t it?”

Despite knowing nothing about the world, he stubbornly insists on going alone.

‘That changes things! There are countless dangers out there!’

He could get lost or end up on the news for unintentionally attracting attention with behavior that doesn’t fit modern norms.

Moreover, Taggiros is someone whose face has been exposed to viewers.

“Alright then, I’ll assign a Mijon company employee to accompany you on the pretext of a business trip. Will that be acceptable?”

After much persuasion, Taggiros finally nodded reluctantly.

Akata had grown up and was managing to get along with people, but here came another silent type.

Having secured Taggiros’s agreement, I felt a sense of relief.

Before he left, he had a conversation with Akata.

“Where are you planning to go?”

“Far away.”

“I don’t want you to leave alone and feel lonely.”

It seemed less about Akata being particularly worried and more about how Taggiros’s solo actions would weigh on my mind.

Nevertheless, Taggiros’s expression softened, as if he was moved.

“I won’t be lonely. …I’m going to find someone.”

“…?”

Akata’s lips twitched, clearly wanting to ask. He seemed to be thinking, “Who could he be looking for in the real world? Who does he know?”

“Is it someone important?”

“More important than myself.”

For the first time, a distant light appeared in Taggiros’s eyes, something I had never seen before.

“…I hope you find them.”

There was no Aria to interfere now. Akata could have pressed for more information, but he didn’t. Maybe he felt he had no right to pry into Taggiros’s past connections.

“I don’t even know if they’re alive or where they might be…”

At those words, Akata hurriedly grabbed Taggiros’s arm, likely fearing that Taggiros might never return if he didn’t find that person.

“Will we see you again?”

Taggiros turned back slowly.

“Of course. I look forward to introducing them to you.”

He spoke with a tone that left no room for the possibility of failure.

Just when I thought we were done with our farewells, Taggiros surprisingly called me aside.

Despite his usual stubbornness of communicating through notes rather than speaking, it was still a significant step forward.

[In case I don’t return… I want to share what I know with you.]

I froze momentarily, my mind racing. How could I ensure he comes back? Keeping him tethered to Mijon staff permanently wasn’t an option.

But… how do you stop someone willing to leave even Akata behind?

“What is it you want to tell me?”

I decided to hold off and listen to what Taggiros had to say. Honestly, I was extremely curious about his past events, which might even include secrets Aria didn’t know.

[It’s about the connection between Akata and me. I believe you, as the leader and representative of the game company, and Akata’s partner, should know this.]

Hearing that, I found myself momentarily unable to breathe.

Right now, there’s a colossal secret bomb right in front of me.

But just before I could let my emotions take over, I thought of my boy.

“What about Akata? He should know first.”

[Being directly involved might make it harder for him to accept. I want to tell him gradually.]

After that, Taggiros told me quite a long story.

“…”

After hearing it all, I couldn’t stop Taggiros from leaving. Instead, I felt like I had to push him to go.

* * *

After Aria decided to create her world as virtual reality, she tried various things.

At first, she brought out Taggiros, the only person she kept by her side, into the real world, attempting to make him a link to virtual reality.

As her powers grew, she finally believed things were going smoothly when Taggiros began to have a physical impact on reality.

At that point, Taggiros was, if you could categorize it, half-human and half-spirit.

However, the expansion of the world she created with programming and supernatural powers was excruciatingly slow.

So Aria took Taggiros around the world, showing him different places.

Slowly but steadily, the world grew.

She even involved him in her murders. It was much easier with a strong hand to help. This way, Aria could collect souls more efficiently and in larger quantities.

Taggiros, despite wasting away from the shock, had no choice but to follow her commands, being bound by her power.

Aria, with Taggiros, even wandered through the crime-ridden slums of the U.S., where law enforcement didn’t reach.

One night, after they obtained two souls, they found a white woman being beaten by robbers in a slum alley.

In that moment, Taggiros acted on his own, not under Aria’s orders. He reached out and saved her.

“Thank you.”

The woman had grown up in the slum’s only orphanage and was struggling to feed the children there.

“An orphanage, huh. Lots of people to kill at once, easy.”

Aria, hiding her true intentions, pretended she wanted to help the orphans and followed the woman.

Despite living in such harsh conditions, the woman’s dimples bloomed like a flower when she smiled.

From the moment he met her, Taggiros felt an unexplainable thirst and a strange fluttering in his chest.

He followed her hesitantly, meeting her eyes. She hid her bruised arm and smiled brightly.

Taggiros was stunned. For the first time, he felt an attraction to someone.

When they arrived at the orphanage, it was old and shabby.

“Here, take this money and use it to care for the children.”

Aria used money to gain the trust of the orphanage’s head and stayed there, planning a crime that would incinerate the place in one fell swoop.

Meanwhile, Taggiros often suffered from seizures, temporary memory loss, and frequent crying, all due to the trauma of the killings.

“What’s wrong?”

The woman, concerned, sat beside him on the orphanage’s old bed as he wept.

Perhaps it was because their eyes met and his heart was stirred, but Taggiros found himself gripping her wrist.

They were alone in the room.

A few weeks later, the woman found herself pregnant. Despite the circumstances, she didn’t regret it.

Taggiros was the most beautiful and pitiable man she had ever seen.

The feverish look in his eyes, his tear-soaked face, and the gaze he gave her as they lay side by side afterward were precious to her.

When Aria learned of the woman’s pregnancy, an idea sparked in her mind.

‘This is it.’

A bridge to more firmly connect her virtual reality with the real world: the child in the woman’s womb.

The child wasn’t based on a soul that had already died and been turned into a character but was the first being born from a union of a soul and a real-world human.