Chapter 5: Tutorial (5)

Suddenly, an unexpected situation unfolded before my eyes, making my mind go blank.

The knight NPC in the tutorial area that I remembered was a middle-aged man with wrinkles all over his face and a bushy gray beard.

But the knight in front of me now was of a different gender.

Long, silver hair, carrying the glow of the radiant moonlight, flowed down her back, reaching halfway down her thighs. Her bangs neatly split into three sections, half-covering her forehead.

Beneath those strands were eyes gleaming with a silver hue, as if they too had drunk in the moonlight. Objectively and subjectively, her face bore an immense beauty.

The shock was so profound that my mind was incapable of processing the situation. Sensing my stare, the female knight, who was lightly kicking a rusted helmet on the ground, turned to look at me. Her silver eyes met mine.

“Why are you staring like that? Do you have something to say?”

“Um, well, you’re… a woman?”

“Do you think with this face I’d be a man? What an odd question,” she said, chuckling lightly. Her faint smile was incredibly beautiful. She seemed to think I was joking.

But to me, it was a sincere question.

‘What the hell is happening…’

Struggling to quell my shock, I desperately tried to understand the situation. Was this woman not the knight NPC from the tutorial area?

However, aside from the gender and appearance, all other elements matched the NPC from my memory. In other words, there was no room to doubt the identity of this female knight.

I hadn’t changed any genders in the mods…

‘Wait, mods?’

Suddenly, a possibility crossed my mind.

Careful not to seem rude or harbor ill intentions, I glanced surreptitiously at the female knight’s face. Her long silver hair reaching her waist, and the silver eyes like her hair.

It was a vague memory, but it was a familiar appearance.

‘That looks like the design from the appearance changing mod.’

The “Brightest Darkness” series was set in such a bleak and hopeless world that the significant NPC roles were nearly all held by men.

Emperor of the Empire, knights, Pope of the Holy Kingdom, clergymen, tower masters, wizards, and even the majority of middle-boss level enemies and random mobs on the streets were all men.

There were female NPCs, but they were so few in the entire game that you could count them on one hand.

Initially, mods that made these female NPCs prettier and more beautiful were mainstream. Nobody bothered to mess with the male characters when there were female ones.

But as time went on, modders’ skills at reworking appearances became more refined. Eventually, a mod appeared that transformed the appearances of over a hundred key male NPCs into women.

I, too, had once been unable to resist my curiosity and had tried it out.

It was indeed a well-made mod. Not only were the NPCs’ appearances beautiful, but they also felt natural, didn’t cause crashes with other mods, and didn’t impede my ability to dodge enemy attacks based on the boss’s patterns.

The only issue, if any, was that while the appearances were of attractive women with great figures, the voices remained male. Changing voices was beyond the realm of a modder.

While many people ignored the disparity between appearance and voice and enjoyed it, I just couldn’t adapt and coincidentally, another mod had been released, so I had uninstalled it after a while.

“Could it be… that one?”

The only way to explain my current situation was that the appearance changing mod, or the NPC retouching mod, was in effect.

“This is going from bad to worse.”

While I was frantically trying to make sense of the situation, the knight, who had been wiping off the blood on her armor, furrowed her brow and clicked her tongue. The place where the black blood had been wiped off was severely corroded and rusted.

The knight promptly discarded her own armor without hesitation.

“What the…?”

And the moment the armor was taken off, revealing her bare body, I doubted my eyes.

A sleeveless white shirt, exposing smooth arms and underarms without a trace of excess fat. This was what the knight was wearing under the armor. Her skin was so white it didn’t lose out to the attire.

Due to the size of the clothes fitting so snugly to the body, her figure and physique were clearly visible. Glimpses of her stomach and the side of the waist were an extra bonus.

That wasn’t all. She was wearing silver dolphin shorts on the lower body. Her slim thighs and calves could be seen beyond the armor falling with a clatter.

“No, wait… what the hell is happening?”

My mind was more confused than when I first identified the knight’s gender. A sleeveless shirt and dolphin shorts, underneath full plate armor?

I tried to recall. As far as I could remember, the appearance changing mod and NPC retouching mod honestly only changed appearances. But now, even the clothes had changed. And they were obscenely revealing.

The knight quickly took off her shin protectors and gauntlets, wearing only the sleeveless shirt and dolphin shorts, and sheathed her sword into the belt around her waist.

“…This is insane.”

It was a highly suggestive scene. The white sleeveless shirt sticking to the body damp with sweat, the bottom of her silver dolphin shorts revealing a small part of her shining buttocks, and thighs that seemed incredibly soft.

I had to force myself to look away.

This time, I figured out the situation faster than the previous two cases. Along with the mod that changes the NPC’s appearance, the mod that changes the clothing must have also been transferred.

The Darkest Light mod is already applied, the appearance change mod is also applied, so why shouldn’t there be a clothing change mod?

Although I couldn’t remember whether I installed such a mod, it could have been bundled in some kind of pack.

“Hey, prisoner?”

Caught off guard while recalling the list of mods I’d installed, I jumped in surprise at her voice.

“Yes, yes?”

“Do you have somewhere to go now?”

I felt a bit grounded as the familiar dialogue sounded. Regardless of the confusion, for now, I needed to do what I could to survive.

“No. I don’t.”

“Right, I suppose that’s to be expected. Your options here are either to become a fugitive or be transferred to another prison. So, here’s a proposition. Would you consider following me and joining the knights’ order? Your skills could easily pull your weight with a bit of polishing. I vouch for it.”

‘I made it.’

When I was given the same choices as in the game, I internally celebrated.

If you manage to defeat the human butcher during your first encounter, you can follow this NPC right away and join the knights’ order. It was the easiest route to get through the initial part of the game.

There’s only one life, so it’s best to take the easiest route possible.

“Having downed that beast without any decent weapon or technique proves your skills, and your bravery is more than adequate considering you did not flinch even in a face-to-face confrontation with such a monster. I think it’s a waste to let your abilities rot. Oh, don’t worry about your status. Whether you were a prisoner or not, if you decide to join the knights’ order, it won’t matter at all. One can generally grasp a person’s nature by looking into their eyes. I can trust you.”

Hearing that line, which had become a meme on the internet, directly in front of me was quite surreal.

It was a line the original NPC, who the knight was based on, would inevitably utter during the initiation event. She said she could tell a character’s disposition by looking into their eyes, hence her trust.

That seemingly ordinary line had become a meme because it would always appear regardless of the character’s appearance if you initiated the event.

Even when a player customized their character to look utterly inhuman, she would use this expression, leading to fan art depicting her as having severe sight issues or even being blind.

Not that my current appearance was a grotesquely distorted face with skin colored purple and eyes bigger than my mouth.

“So, are you interested?”

In the game, this would have been the moment a choice popped up: ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

Of course, the choice I would make was a given.

“Yes. I will.”

“Good. Let’s leave immediately then. There’s no point in dawdling here, especially for you.”

With that, the knight turned around and walked towards the entrance.

Her hips, covered in dolphin shorts, provocatively swayed with each step, revealing a small valley where her slender waist and spinal line dipped.

No matter how many times I saw it, her outfit was hard to get used to, as was the full plate armor right above it and her indifferent expression towards her attire.

“Ah, before we proceed, a moment.”

The knight paused her stride and locked eyes with me again.

“I just realized, we’ve bypassed introductions. My name is Iris.”

‘Iris?’

I had never heard of such a name in the game. With the gender having been switched, perhaps the name has also changed from a masculine to a feminine one.

“What’s your name? I can’t keep referring to you as ‘you’ or ‘the prisoner’.”

I suddenly realized that I had never given thought to my own name here.

In the game, any haphazard mix of characters could be a name, but that wouldn’t work here. And using my real-life name didn’t feel quite right either.

After a moment of consideration, a brilliant idea occurred to me, and I began to speak.