"Can we pass?"
Karumi's smile was more of a grimace. She slowly shook her head. Was she laughing? And also crying? That bad, huh? Hahahah... I kinda felt like crying, too
"What happens if I fail?"
"The usual procedure is just to fix up the labyrinth and get it operational again, but in extreme cases, they might opt to shut down the labyrinth. They typically only do that when the loss of the labyrinth won't mean any real loss of assets... which is certainly the situation here."
Karumi gazed out at the nearly empty Labyrinth #228, her eyes distant.
"What'll happen to me and Ann?"
"You're an official employee, so you'd be relocated to a semi-operational labyrinth. One that's in progress but not occupied yet. Think of it as getting transferred."
So I'd be transferred before I'd even been at my post for a year? I'd gotten kinda attached to Labyrinth #228. I'd regret leaving it all behind so soon.
"Aoi..."
Ann, who had been eating some candy Karumi had brought, reached out and took hold of my sleeve.
"Since you have hired Ann, she'll be treated as the manager's family, and it'll be up to her whether to transfer along with you or to resign and return to the village."
If Ann came with me, she'd be separated from her friends and family in the village for the rest of her life. But if she resigned, then the two of us would have to part. It would have been hard enough to say goodbye to the villagers after all we'd shared, but leaving Ann was simply out of the question.
"I don't want to leave you, Aoi."
Ann looked up at me, her eyes filled with worry, so I put my arms around her and stroked her hair.
"Don't worry. I'll make sure that doesn't happen. And you'll help me, right?"
"Yeah! I'm always here for you!"
Ann gave me a winsome smile. Ahh, I could feel my heart warming. Just knowing I wouldn't be alone was encouraging. In a part of my mind, I'd been worrying that Ann wouldn't want to stay with me.
"I would like to find a way to pass the inspection."
I gave my answer as Ann snuggled into my chest.
"That would be ideal. If one of the facilities under my supervision fails its evaluation, the Great Dark Lord will most likely call me in for punishment."
Karumi went pale as she spoke. It seemed failure was not an option for subordinates of the Great Dark Lord.
"Is it really that bad?"
"Father practically idoli---pardon, that is to say, he cares for me deeply, so I'm in no real danger."
Oh yeah, I'd forgotten she was the Great Dark Lord's daughter. Had she been about to say he idolized her?
"If I were taken in for punishment, well... First, Father would have me outfitted in a gown suitable for a princess. Then he would hold a ball in my honor and demand to pamper me, just like he did when I was a child."
Karumi laid it all out in such great detail that it was apparent she'd been through it before. Come to think of it, given her occasional bouts of airheadedness, she'd probably been through that more than a few times. My terrifying image of the Great Dark Lord was crumbling fast. But still, Karumi was worried about it, so I wanted to help her out. She's got a great figure, though. Bet she'd look fantastic in a gown, whatever the style.
"I'm a grown woman. I don't deserve to be subjected to the princess treatment anymore. It isn't right!"
She must've had some bad memories about it. She was tearing up a bit, her shoulders quivering. Karumi was always so cool and collected, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw her looking so distraught. Had she always been this cute? Man, I could kind of understand how the Great Dark Lord felt about her. Though, yeah, she was a bit too mature for the whole princess look. Man, was it weird that I kinda wanted to get away from this train of thought and go back to the gloomy conversation from before?
◇
I got us another round of tea and returned to the table in front of the cabin. We needed to get back to looking for a solution to our performance evaluation problem.
"I'm so sorry about all of this. I'll do everything I can to get the inspection canceled."
Karumi took a sip of the tea, which seemed to soothe her nerves. Well, by now I was certain I'd been on the right track when I first noticed she was a bit of a dork.
"I'm going to find a senior instructor to support you. Truth be told, I was hoping to let things settle down around here before doing that, but it doesn't seem we can afford to wait."
"Sorry, a what now?"
"We have a mentorship system in place where labyrinth managers with at least two years of experience help guide new managers. Technically, you should have gotten one as soon as you finished the training period, but Labyrinth #228 has some special circumstances."
"I'll take all the help I can get."
Given the utter lack of progress on Labyrinth #228, it wasn't like I was going to learn much about how to deal with employees or how to do anything of value, except maybe cook. Maybe if the mentor was a gardener, or a bonsai enthusiast or something, they could give me some advice on how to tend the vegetation. But honestly, there was nothing remotely labyrinthine about this place.
"Sound advice will improve your odds of success dramatically."
Karumi gestured with her hand, and a window appeared. She pressed a few buttons with her long, slender fingers.
Communication restrictions have been lifted. You may now contact a senior instructor.
Lines of text scrolled by as Karumi flicked through the UI window.
"The instructor hasn't been on the job long, but she's been producing great results over in Labyrinth #370."
I felt like I remembered that labyrinth. Had I bought something from there on Tundra? Oh, right, that was the place that sold the salt and fish paste. Man, they were a lifesaver! Karumi pressed a button on the UI, and a large window opened up in the air, with just the word "Calling". I bet it made a sound like a phone ringing on the other end. I mean, I hoped it did, at least. I kinda liked the sound of digital ringtones.
"Hello, Labyrinth #370 here. Katou speaking."
A girl dressed in a skirt suit just like Karumi's appeared on the screen. Her suit looked a little cheaper than Karumi's, but then again, Karumi's looked like it had cost a fortune. Her eyes and hair were a very Japanese shade of black, and her long hair was held in place with a hairpin. My first impression was that she was a fashionable, peppy girl.
She was obviously shorter than both Karumi and I, and I suspected she was even shorter than Ann. Honestly, she looked very young, but she sounded composed enough. She had to be, what, a middle schooler? I wouldn't have believed her if she said she was in high school. I just managed to stop myself from muttering, "A little kid?"
"Hello, it's me, Karumi. Do you remember the senior instructor arrangement we discussed a few days ago?"
"Oh, yep, sure do."
She glanced my way.
"I'm Aoi Kousaka, manager of Labyrinth #228."
I kinda wished I was in the sort of game where I could throw out a snappy military salute. Reality is so boring---just normal greetings and bowing all the time.
"I'm Suzu Katou. Since I'll be mentoring you, we're gonna be talking a lot, so let's keep it casual, okay? You can call me Suzu, and I'll just go with Aoi for you."
Dropping the formalities right off the bat, eh? Worked for me.
"Sounds good. Nice to meet you, Suzu."
"Heh, how about that. I'd have thought a cutie like you would be a little more uptight."
Suzu grinned at me.
"Well, I guess I've been through a lot."
I figured the reason I wasn't as 'uptight' as she was expecting was the fact that I'd spent most of my life screaming into a headset.
A lot of multiplayer games had voice chat, after all. Whenever I landed in a game with foreigners, it'd be "fuck this," "that's bullshit," and so on, non-stop. If I wasn't careful with my language, I slipped into that kind of thing pretty easily. I owed a lot to a guild leader from an
FPS game I'd played back in the day. When you were talking to him outside the game, he'd be totally calm and courteous, but once the game started, he'd be cursing like you wouldn't believe, laughing like a madman the whole time. And it wasn't like I was practicing being super polite while playing single-player RPG games or management sims or whatever to make up for the foul-mouthed multiplayer time, so I kind of got out of the habit.
All that aside, I had mixed feelings about this middle schooler calling me cute. And what was with that smug look? She had her chin tilted up and was looking down her nose at me with this absolutely unbearable grin on her face. Was it intentional? To be honest, I knew a few guys with certain questionable proclivities who would've been turned on by it.
"A DL for your thoughts."
"Oh, uh, it's nothing."
Oh shit, she was definitely onto me.
"Kousaka."
Karumi pressed another button and gestured for me to look at the display.
"Suzu Katou, Female, 22. Graduated from a private college. Joined the company immediately after graduation. Three years of service."
22? No way, she didn't look a day over ten. And I didn't mean that as a compliment. So she'd been working there for three years, huh? I was always seeing products from Labyrinth #370 pop up in the Tundra catalog, so it seemed like she was making the most of her time. I could see why Karumi had chosen her to help me out. There was no questioning her competency.
"Karumi told me you were in a bit a of a pickle, but she didn't mention you were hanging out in dullsville. Where even are you?"
"This is my workplace. Labyrinth #228."
"So it's a foresty one, eh? Kinda nice, actually. Karumi said you were the cream of the crop this year, but have you even finished the tutorial?"
"Uh, no. I actually didn't even know there was a tutorial."
"What the heck? You should've gotten a user's manual and a new manager tutorial! Even if there wasn't, you could've asked your hecking supervisor!"
Well, yes, normally there would've been documentation to consult, or a coworker or manager to ask for help. But I hadn't had that luxury.
"I didn't have a manual, or a tutorial, or a supervisor to ask for advice."
"What, for real? Explain."
"Yeah, I've actually been wanting to vent about this."
I explained my situation to Suzu, being careful not to sound too mad given Karumi was around and all. Her jaw practically hit the floor when I told her how the place had been when I first got there, and she looked pretty indignant on my behalf for a while, but she calmed down as I kept explaining. By the end, she was looking at me with this pitying look, like I was a little lost puppy she'd found on the way home. Man, it sure felt good to get all that off my chest.
"Jeez, dude, you're lucky to be alive."
She seemed pretty impressed by how I'd started fending for myself without so much as a guide.
"Well, I did work my ass off. And I have played a lot of survival games and whatnot, you know? Hahaha."
"Oh come on, you seriously think there's anyone else out there who would actually last through a situation like that just based on what they learned playing video games? I play a lot of hecking games myself. Mostly management and strategy games, though, not so much the survival thing."
I was surprised to hear that Suzu was a gamer, too.
"I'll play pretty much anything as long as it looks like fun, but I'm mostly into competitive games. You said you're into strategy games, Suzu?"
But, in retrospect, I should've seen it coming. Familiarity with games had been right there in the help wanted ad.
"I bet those games set you on the path to success as a labyrinth manager. Maybe I should call you the labyrinth tsarina."
She'd worked her way up from a nobody to a top-tier labyrinth manager in only three years. I had to give her props for that.
"That's a rather specific choice of words. Hey, Aoi, you ever play a game called Flaming Crest?"
Now that was a blast from the past. Flaming Crest was a series of historical strategy games focusing on post-World War II power struggles. I wondered if people were still playing it.
"Yeah, for sure."
If Suzu associated the word "tsarina" with that game, maybe we'd even played on the same server?
"I don't remember hearing about anybody named Aoi playing it. If you're such a hardcore gamer that your survival game knowledge pulled you through getting dropped into an unbuilt labyrinth, I'm sure I would've heard of you."
Suzu put her hand to her chin and thought. Sure your handle would only be notorious within the game where you used it, but truly great players were as well known to the gamers as any pop star to a normal person.
"Aoi... Wait, so like, Blue? Were you the guy called 'Blue' in US-West 3?"
She got it in one. I'd even gone out of my way to use a nondescript name back then.
"Yeah, that was me. Did you play on that server too?"
"I did! That Blue guy ran the northern alliance that beat us over and over again. You remember right after the unification war, when infantry rifle armies became the norm? I was in charge of the southern tsarship back then."
Huh, so she was on the other side? Man, I remembered how insane the southern tsarship's resource productivity was. That'd been a close match.
"That was a great match. It's one of my fondest memories from back then. Suzu, were you Tsarina Belka?"
"You bet your ass I was. Man, you wiped the floor with us each time, no matter how much prep work we did. By the end of it everybody was calling me the Loserina!"
She may have looked back on it as a failure, but the way she'd always been able to go back and amass another huge force, despite getting completely wiped out each time, was proof of her ludicrous management abilities.
"I can't believe this shit! I worked so hard at management games and still couldn't reach the top, so I became a labyrinth manager and worked my way up, and now you're here too?!"
Suzu flailed her arms around a bit, pouting.
"Pardon me for interrupting your friendly chat, but could we focus on the matter at hand?"
Oops. We'd gotten a bit carried away reminiscing. Karumi dragged us back onto topic, explaining to Suzu how we needed to get Labyrinth #228 into a shape where it could pass the performance evaluation.
"...I see. But really, there's no way you're going to make up for twenty years' worth of work in six months. Maybe if you at least had a functional labyrinth, but all you've got is a hut."
"I see your point, but we have to do it anyway. How do you rake in all your achievements, Suzu?"
"Me? I'm located near a sea, and my labyrinth's purpose is to gather resources, so I made a salt pan and gather salt and fish. I dry the fish and stockpile it all in a warehouse, selling it off for a steady income stream. It doesn't even matter how much I sell as long as the warehouse is always stuffed, so passing the evaluation is easy."
Man, that sounded nice. Sure, she needed high productivity and a sound business strategy, but all she had to do was gather stuff. But it made sense that someone had to do it; if all the labyrinths lost money, things probably wouldn't work out. Someone had to balance the budget.
"Your labyrinth is the typical kind where you've got to lure in intruders, right? It's totally impossible to do twenty years' worth in six months there, at least with the usual steady approach."
"I agree. So we won't do the usual steady approach."
I wasn't going to find some cheat code that would turn my labyrinth into a hangout spot, obviously. But if we used the normal approach, we were bound to fail. We had to do something drastic.
"So, the thing my labyrinth gets evaluated on specifically is luring invaders and repelling them..."
I tried to think back to some fantasy games I'd played and how people thought about labyrinths there.
"Karumi, do you get the most points off of attracting intruders and repelling them?"
"Definitely, but it's not all about the score. As long a
s the labyrinth is in excellent shape, you can pass with only minimal results."
Karumi navigated a few more menus, eventually landing at a page filled with numbers.
"Let's see. You could pass the evaluation if you got at least one hundred and eighty intruders, and if your traps repelled about thirty percent of those."
I was horrified at those numbers, but they really wouldn't be that bad spread over twenty years. Less than ten intruders a year, right? I could have managed that. This all meant I would be turning this idyllic ravine into a death trap, but unfortunately---or fortunately, I suppose, given the circumstances---that actually sounded entertaining to me.
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 2 Page 4