When the plot-skips players into the game world-Chapter 1279 - 9: What Used to Be, Now Is Perverse_2

As he spoke, he leaned back in his chair, lazily waved his hand, snapped his fingers, and said loudly, "Alright, folks—please step out for a moment, will you?"

The next moment.

Everyone in the rowdy tavern suddenly fell silent in unison.

Patrons, drunks, sailors, bards... including even the part-time front desk worker, chef, bartender, and the owner, all stood up uniformly, intending to leave.

"Hey, you can’t leave!"

Arsene suddenly lunged forward, grabbing the owner’s sleeve: "Get me some beer—plus a serving of beef stewed in red wine, creamy peppered veal tripe, chicken liver mousse, and a donut. Oh, and a portion of rice pudding with ice and linden honey. Put it on the tab—charge this gentleman’s bill to me as well."

"Don’t even think about it, you despicable thief! Robber! Duck!"

The owner, struggling to break free, retorted unceremoniously, "You’ve already charged your tab three times, small businesses can’t handle you defaulting on your bill like this!"

"I’ll pay next time... I didn’t bring money this time... you know, I usually don’t take money with me when I go out..."

"No next time, Arsene! You’ll drink plain water!"

The owner stormed off angrily.

Yes, that was not mind control.

—It’s just that everyone in this bar was his people.

As a phantom thief active in the Iris Flower for more than a dozen years, his stories are still hot in Iris Flower to this day, and could even be written into novels and sold overseas... All of this could only be spontaneous; not even a slice-of-life sitcom running for thousands of episodes or a children’s animation could achieve that.

Being a phantom thief of the Path of Devotion, of course, he also has his own forces.

He has always been one to fight the strong and help the weak, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Even though he had given away almost every penny he stole, completing a "reasonable redistribution," this doesn’t mean he lacked the ability to form forces. After all, there were many whom he saved, and many detested individuals who got severely punished by the phantom thief. It’s only natural for those people to become followers of the phantom thief.

With a solid network across various industries, he’s always able to send out absolutely accurate "crime notices." This is something he couldn’t investigate clearly on his own, as some crimes could only be understood in terms of their gravity by those within the industry; laypeople might not even understand the professional terminology.

After all, this was an era without search engines, and industry knowledge was such a high cognitive barrier.

...However, once he blended in thoroughly, the "idol halo" around him faded away, and people gradually shifted from adoration to disdain.

Being a nationally renowned idol, he finds himself in a situation similar but opposite to Sherlock’s—Sherlock becomes more revered and distanced as people get to know him, whereas he, through increasingly blatant outrageous acts, gets shunned and distanced by the "fairly conservative-minded" Irisflower People.

Aiwass knows some of his dark histories—after all, Arsene appeared quite frequently in mid-stage events. The usual form of these events was that he hid a newly stolen treasure in a specific location and then composed a riddle for players, his close friends, to find. Whoever found it could earn a tiny bit of currency points...

Considering you could copy answers instead of solving riddles, Arsene remained quite popular as an NPC purely giving out benefits.

And the most bizarre and admired thing about Arsene was that in the main storyline, he would make a bet with the players. Unsurprisingly, he would lose the bet—if the player chose the most absurd of three punishment options, "dancing the cancan in just underwear on the street"...

—He would really do it.

Arsene agreed without hesitation.

Though it sounds like a "graceful gesture of accepting the bet’s outcome," he agreed so firmly and almost eagerly that it made some players think, "Did he originally want to do this?"

The officials even designed a complete CG specifically for this option—showing him in a fiery red dress, with his makeup and disguise removed, exposing his handsome yet deep, weathered face, while his lower half wore only underwear.

Known for its skirt-flipping and high-kicking moves, the cancan is famous for revealing what’s under the skirt and the thighs, performing splits and high kicks.

When the police arrived to arrest him, he danced the cancan skillfully disappearing into the streets, becoming what felt like a collective hallucination urban legend.

—Such a person, indeed, could get along quite well with the players.

That’s why Aleister instinctively mistook him as a pervert—she, of all people, was the least in a position to label Arsene as such.

Because of sensing the goodwill and the fact that Alice was sent away, Arsene roughly guessed Aiwass’s group’s possible identity and confirmed they weren’t with the Sons of the Moon.

So Arsene said, "The Sons of the Moon didn’t come to seize the Moonlight Key. This key is of no use to them... they intend to destroy it.

"Because some of the Sons of the Moon seem to be planning something particularly dangerous with this key. And this ritual might even affect the entire faction of the Sons of the Moon... to prevent any accidents, other factions among the Sons of the Moon want to destroy this key.

The source of this c𝓸ntent is fr(e)𝒆novelkiss