Chapter 53

The ceiling spun wildly. Holanghee felt as if her body had grown weightless, floating up into the air. Everything seemed both near and far at the same time. Her senses were razor-sharp, almost painfully so, and the kaleidoscope of colors flashing before her eyes made her stomach churn.

She couldn’t even tell if she was lying down, standing, sitting, or crawling. A silly laugh slipped out of her, and everything around her seemed to get sucked into her body, only to bounce back out again in a dizzying cycle.

“Shiiit… I’m totally tripping…”

If she vomited now, she was sure it would come out like a rainbow. Fighting to steady her drifting body, she barely managed to crawl over to the temporary storage and began rummaging for an antidote. But then her vision fractured into dozens, then hundreds of overlapping layers. She felt like a fly with compound eyes. Clenching her eyes shut, she relied solely on the sense of touch to find the antidote and drink it down.

Not long after, the overwhelming surge of sensation began to ebb. Her body, however, felt as heavy as waterlogged cotton, her limbs limp and drenched in cold sweat. Even a finger refused to move. Checking her system window, she saw her fatigue gauge maxed out.

This had to be a drug. Whatever Kilimanjaro had crafted from the Bayan Mushrooms was nothing short of a narcotic—a mix of every stimulant and hallucinogen imaginable, only possible inside virtual reality.

“Crazy bastards…”

The curse slipped out before she could stop it.

Even in VR, the device should’ve blocked anything harmful to the user, but this concoction had somehow bypassed those restrictions. Kilimanjaro had found a way to slip through the system’s safeguards.

“They broke the law, not us. Disgusting bugs.”

Grinding her teeth, Holanghee shoved a pinch of Retai Powder into her mouth, forcing herself upright with a groan. Her eyes, bloodshot with fury, burned with resolve as she stormed out of her house.

She bolted straight to Lucilvania and kicked open the guild house door, unleashing a torrent of curses as she demanded Father’s presence. The sheer venom in her voice stunned everyone inside; it was rare to see Holanghee like this.

Her gaze swept the room like a blade, but Father wasn’t there. Clicking her tongue, she shouted the category command.

“Guild, hey, where are you?!”

[Guild] [Noquia: ?]

[Guild] [If It’s You Then Me: ??]

“Not you guys—Father!”

[Guild] [Father: Me? I’m in a dungeon with Hana.]

“Hurry and get to the house!”

[Guild] [Father: I just came out.]

“If we don’t act fast, the whole Serengeti’s gonna end up branded as criminals! Move it!”

[Guild] [Father: What are you talking about?]

[Guild] [Noquia: Did you find something?]

“Find something? I found too much. At this rate we’ll all be wearing cuffs together.”

The guild chat erupted. Father and Noquia replied they were on their way back, while Theo, watching the storm brew, stepped up beside Holanghee, leaving Blaine fidgeting nervously behind.

“What’s going on?”

His voice carried real concern. Holanghee held up a strange square silhouette—an item with no shape, no name.

“What the hell is that?”

Theo reached out instinctively, but Holanghee pulled it back.

“That’s what they made. From the Bayan Mushrooms.”

“What? You figured it out?”

“Yeah. I’ll explain when everyone’s here.”

Theo nodded slowly, taking her word for it. From behind, Blaine crept closer, curiosity outweighing his fear. Holanghee glanced at him over Theo’s shoulder.

“Good thing Sweetie got out of there early.”

“Huh?”

“They’re out of their goddamn minds, that’s what.”

Holanghee rolled her eyes, twirling a finger beside her temple as if to say they’d all gone crazy. Theo and Blaine just stared at each other, blinking in silence.

Before long, Father, Noquia, and the other guild members filed into the central hall. Once everyone had gathered, Holanghee set a small item on the table and began to explain. The thing had no form—just a faint, box-shaped silhouette.

“It’s a drug made from the Bayan Mushrooms.”

Every gaze fixed on the strange item. Father reached for it, only for Holanghee to shout urgently.

“Don’t you dare use it like last time!”

“Huh?”

“You downed a raw Bayan Mushroom before, remember? Don’t pull that stunt again. This time you really could get arrested.”

Her harsh warning made Father flinch. She quickly set the item back down on the table.

“What the hell is this? Why are you acting like this over it?”

“I can’t say for sure… but it feels like a drug.”

“A drug?!”

The room erupted in shocked voices. Father frowned, deeply skeptical.

“That’s impossible. Alcohol or cigarettes might slip through, but drugs? The system would never allow it. It shouldn’t even exist in the game.”

“Check the item info yourself. It’s listed as ‘Unknown,’ with no form, no name. An item that shouldn’t exist—yet here it is.”

“And what’s your proof it’s a drug?”

“I can’t describe it properly. It was too bizarre. But nothing else fits. All the effects lined up with narcotics.”

Anyone who pushed Alchemy to Tier 4 inevitably picked up a lot of random knowledge. Holanghee had read and heard about drugs—their categories, effects, and hallucinatory properties. Everything she experienced had been a jumbled cocktail of those, packed into this one Unknown item.

Father froze, stunned. Then her brow slowly furrowed as she asked in a low voice,

“Wait. Don’t tell me… you actually used it?”

She pointed at the Unknown item on the table. Holanghee nodded without hesitation.

“I had to. To know what it was.”

It was like thunder cracking overhead. Everyone stared in horror. Father’s face twisted as she exploded.

“…Are you insane?! You used something without even knowing what it was? If it really is a drug, you could be implicated too!”

“If we explain how we found the mushrooms and how this item got made, it should be fine. Besides, we haven’t distributed the mushrooms or this thing.”

“Even so—!”

“We don’t have time to argue among ourselves. The longer we sit on it, the more suspicious we look. We need to report this to the system, right now.”

She was absolutely right. Father clenched her teeth, lips twitching as she fought back her temper. Finally, she forced it down, slumped into a chair, ripped off her hat, and threw it onto the table. Messing up her hair with both hands, she pulled up her system window with a scowl.

The first thing they needed to do was report it.

Father, along with Noquia, Holanghee, Theo, and Blaine, compiled everything about the Bayan Mushroom incident. They listed each event in order, without a shred of distortion or omission, and sent it off to the administrators. Then they waited—restless, uneasy—for a reply.

But what came wasn’t a system message. It was the sound of knocking at their guild house door. When Father opened it, two administrators stood outside with grave expressions.

“Hello. I’m GM Santana.”

“And I’m GM Cocoa. Thank you for receiving us on such short notice. Is this the guild house of Father and the Guest?”

They hadn’t just read Father’s report; they’d felt the gravity of it. That’s why they had come in person to investigate.

Because they were there directly, the GMs wanted every detail. Father’s group gave them everything—what they remembered, what they’d seen. They explained about the Bayan Mushrooms, the Unknown item crafted from them, the recipe, the mushroom farms in Rakvana, even what they knew about Kilimanjaro Guild.

Once the GMs had pieced together the sequence of events, they asked for permission to review the guild’s transaction logs. Father and the others agreed, and only then did the two administrators leave.

It wasn’t long before word spread: Kilimanjaro Guild members, along with the players who had bought the Unknown item, were all summoned for questioning based on those logs.

The guild thought the case would end there, with bans on anyone tied to the mushrooms. But things turned out much bigger than expected. A few days later, real-world police came knocking. The questioning was harsh, but thanks to the GMs repeatedly stressing that Father and the Guest guild bore no fault, everyone inside the guild walked away cleared of charges.

Kilimanjaro’s scheme, however, ran deep. They had outside brokers supplying illegal programs—tools for cultivating, modifying, and distributing the mushrooms, for laundering gold, for hiding the flow of money. Everything had been layered under this shield. The profits were converted into real cash through those brokers.

And why? The police eventually uncovered the truth: they wanted next-generation body modifications. At first Kilimanjaro claimed it was for Third-Gen procedures. But when they were forced into a mind scan, something darker surfaced.

Kim Na wasn’t after Third-Gen at all. He wanted Fourth-Gen. The same as Blaine. His hatred, his obsession with casting Blaine out of the guild—it had all come from jealousy of what he could never have.

Thanks to Father and the Guest Guild, the chain unraveled. Kilimanjaro, the buyers, and even the brokers were rounded up in one sweep. The case exploded into the news. And when Father and the others realized the whole mess had begun because Kim Na craved the very same Fourth-Gen surgery Blaine already had, they were left with nothing but dumbfounded disbelief.