by Aneko Yusagi
The king looked down at me condescendingly. I felt goose bumps crawl up and down my spine.
“Now then. Ren, Motoyasu, and Itsuki, correct?”
“Your Grace, you’ve forgotten me.”
“Ah yes, pardon me, Mr. Naofumi.
So the old guy was a little slow on the uptake. But you know… I was still feeling somehow out of place among them all there. And now he forgot to include me in such a short list?
“Now then, Heroes. Please confirm your status, and give yourselves an objective evaluation.”
“Huh?”
What did he mean by status?!
“Excuse me, but how are we supposed to evaluate ourselves?” asked Itsuki.
Ren sighed loudly, like he couldn’t be bothered to explain it to us. “You mean to say that you all haven’t figured it out yet? Didn’t you realize it the moment you arrived here?”
Oh come on, he just knew everything. Was that it? Guess he was some kind of genius.
“I mean,” he went on, “Haven’t you noticed any weird icons hanging out in your peripheral vision?”
“Huh?”
But since he mentioned it… if you looked off vaguely, and focused on the soft edges of your field of vision, there were little marks there. I could see them too.
“Just focus your mind on that icon.”
I did, and heard a soft beep, just like I was sitting in front of a computer, and the icon expanded to take over my field of vision. It was like opening an Internet browser.
Naofumi Iwatani
Class: Shield Hero LV 1
Equipment: Small Shield (Legendary Weapon)
Other-World Clothes
Skills: None
Magic: None
There were still quite a few things listed, but I decided to ignore them for the moment. So this is what the king meant by status? Wait. Just what the hell was all this? It felt like I was in a game.
“Level 1… That makes me nervous. “
“Good point, at this rate, who knows if we’ll even be able to fight at all.”
“What is all this?”
“Do these things not exist in your world, oh Heroes? You are experiencing ‘Status Magic.’ Everyone in this world can see and use it.”
“Really?”
I was amazed at how normal everyone seemed to think it was, this numerical expression of your physical body.
“And what are we supposed to do? These numbers seem awfully low.”
“Yes, well. You will need to go on a journey to further polish your abilities, and to strengthen the Legendary Weapons you possess.”
“Strengthen them? You mean these things aren’t strong right from the get-go?”
“That is correct. The summoned Heroes must raise their Legendary Weapons by themselves. That is how they will grow strong.”
Motoyasu was spinning his spear and thinking. “Why don’t we just use different weapons while these ones are bulking up? Seems smart to me.”
That did seem like a good idea. And besides, I was stuck with a shield, not even a weapon in its own right. I’d better get another weapon.
Ren cut in to clarify, “We can work all that out later on. Right now, we should focus on improving ourselves, just like the king has asked us to do.”
It was so exciting! We were heroes summoned from another world! It felt a little like manga, but any Otaku worth his salt would jump at a chance like this. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I couldn’t get myself to calm down. It looked like the other heroes around me felt the same way.
“Are we going to form a party? The four of us?”
“Wait just a moment, Heroes.”
“Hm?”
Just as we were preparing to set out on an adventure, the king spoke again. “The four of you should set out separately, to recruit your own companions.”
“Why is that?”
“According to the legends,” he began, “The Legendary Weapons you possess will interfere with one another should you form a party. Both your weapons and yourselves can only grow when you are apart from one another.”
“I don’t really understand all that, but if we stay together, we can’t level up, right?”
Huh? Everyone found instructions near their weapons. We all began to read at the same time.
Attention: the Legendary Weapons and their owners will experience adverse effects if they fight together.
Caution: it is preferable that the Heroes and weapons are used individually.
“I guess it’s true then…”
But why did all of this sound so much like a game? It was like I’d been transported into a game. Anyway, games don’t feel this real, and there were real humans living here, so I guess it was still a reality of one kind or another. Still, the system reminded me of a game nonetheless.
The instructions on the weapons went on at great length and detail, but there wasn’t enough time to read them right then.
“So you think we should try and form our own parties?”
“I will attempt to secure travel companions for you all. Regardless, evening draws near. Heroes, you should rest for the night and prepare for departure on the morrow. In the meantime, I will find companions for you from the village below.”
“Thank you very much.”
“Thanks.”
We all thanked the king and retired to our room for the night.
Chapter Three: A Heroic Discussion
There were ornate beds prepared for us in the provided chamber. Everyone was sitting on them, closely inspecting their weapons, and letting their vision drift absentmindedly to check on their status screens.
I glanced at the window, only to find that the sun had set long ago, which just goes to show how much time we had spent reading the instructions.
Ok, so let’s see here. The Legendary Weapons required no maintenance at all. They were powerful and sturdy enough on their own. The material the weapons were constructed of reacts to the level of the hero who wields them, and any slain monsters were recorded in something called a weapon book.
The weapon book was something that apparently kept a list of all the forms the Legendary Weapons were capable of transforming into. There was a weapon book for my own shield that could be viewed from the weapon icon. I opened it.
Fwip!
The border of the window quickly expanded to fill my field of vision, and it was filled with rows of weapon icons. It appeared as though none of them were currently available for upgrades. Huh, would you believe it? It looked like certain weapons could be set and improved upon, growing more powerful with time.
Got it. It was just like the way that skills and weapons are leveled up in online games. It said that in order to learn skills, the powers hidden in our weapons would have to be set loose. It really did seem exactly like a game of some sort.
“Hey, this is just like a game, don’t you think?”
It looked like the other guys were reading over the help menus too. One of them responded to my question.
“Like a game? I think it actually might be a game. I know games that are just like this,” said Motoyasu, bristling with an air of conceit.
“Huh?”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty famous online game. Haven’t you heard of it?”
“Uh, no? And I’m a pretty hardcore Otaku.”
“You’ve never heard of it, Naofumi? It’s called Emerald Online.”
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“Naofumi, have you even played an online game before? It’s famous!”
“Nah, I’ve only played stuff like Odin Online, or Fantasy Moon Online. Those are pretty famous too.”
“I’ve never heard of them before. Must be minor titles or something.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know what any of you are referring to. This is nothing like an online game. It’s more like a console game.”
“Motoyasu, Itsuki, you’re both wrong on this one. If anything, it’s a VRMMO.”
“No way. Even if we suppose, for the moment, that we are in an online game, it still must be the sort that you control by a mouse, or with a controller.”
Ren looked confused by Motoyasu’s theory, and he jumped into the conversation. “A mouse? A controller? What kind of antique games are you guys talking about? These days, aren’t all online games VRMMO?”
“VRMMO? I guess you mean a Virtual Reality MMO? Cut the sci-fi crap. You know the tech isn’t ready for stuff like that yet.”
“Huh?!” Ren nearly shouted in surprise.
Thinking back on it, he was the first of us to figure out how to use the Status Magic. It kind of seemed like he knew what he was doing. He might have known more than he was letting on.
“Um, excuse me? You all seem to think this is like a game you know. Can I ask what the names of those games are?”
Itsuki raised his hand and answered quickly: Brave Star Online.
Emerald Online.
I spoke up next. “I dunno. I mean, are we even in a game world?” I also thought it seemed a bit like a game, but could we really have arrived in a game that I had never even heard of?
“I see. As for my opinion, this reminds me of a console game called Dimension Wave.”
And so we all seemed to think the world represented a different game.
“Wait a second. Let’s try to collect what we know for sure.” Motoyasu rested his head on his hands and tried to calm us down. “Ren, This VRMMO you speak of means exactly what we said, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Itsuki, Naofumi, you guys understand what he means, right?”
“I think it sounds like a game from science fiction, but yes.”
“I think I read about something like it in a light novel once.”
“Fair enough. That’s about all I can think of too. Okay then, Ren. The game you mentioned, Brave Star Online. Is that a VRMMO too?”
“Ah, right. The VRMMO I played was called Brave Star Online. The world felt very, very similar to this one.”
Considering the way Ren spoke of it, it seemed like this VRMMO thing was ordinary technology for him. It sounded like computers could read the user’s brain waves, and allow the user to dive into the computer world directly.
“Ok fine. Well, if that’s true, Ren, in the world you come from, do they have any games similar to the things we have mentioned? Like maybe in the past?”
Ren shook his head. “And just so you know, I consider myself pretty well-versed in the history of games where I’m from. I’ve never heard of anything like what you are all talking about. But the games you guys are talking about… You all consider them relatively well-known titles, right?”
Motoyasu and I nodded in agreement.
If we knew anything about online games, which we all thought we did, it seemed impossible that we wouldn’t know anything about the games we were all mentioning. Even if, for the time being, we grant that we were not as well versed in online games as we all assumed ourselves to be… We all thought we were mentioning famous games. How could we be so wrong?
“Ok then, let’s start with some common-sense questions. You can all name the current prime minister, right?”
“Sure.”
“Ok, let’s all say it at the same time.”
Gulp.
“Masato Yuda.”
“Gotaro Yawahara”
“Enichi Kodaka.”
“Shigeno Ichifuji.”
We all fell silent.
I had never heard of the other names. Not even in the history books.
We went on to compare our knowledge of Internet terms, famous Internet sites, and famous games. None of our examples matched up. In the end, we didn’t seem to share any references at all.
“It kind of seems like we all came from different Japans.”
“It does seem that way. I certainly can’t imagine how we could be from the same place.”
“I guess that means that there is a Japan in all our parallel worlds?”
“I thought at first that we could just be from different time periods. But none of our experiences match up, so that can’t be it.”
Even at that, we all had one thing in common: We were Otaku. That had to mean something.
“If that’s the case, it seems like we were all brought here for different reasons, and in different ways.”
“I’m not really into having useless conversations. Do we really need to have these things in common anyway?”
Ren spoke up as if he was the coolest person in the room, and he wanted everyone to know it.
“I was on my way home from school when I hit a spot of bad luck and got caught up in a murder case. It was the talk of the town at the time.”
“Uh huh.”
“I was with a good friend. I remember saving him, and I remember the criminal getting arrested…”
…Ren was rubbing his side, softly, as he spoke.
I wanted to poke fun at him. What kind of hero did he think he was with all this talk of saving his best friend and all that? I managed to keep my thoughts to myself.
I suppose he was saying that he caught the bad guy but then was stabbed in the side during the struggle.
He looked like the kind of guy to boast about things that never happened. I instantly wanted to file him away as untrustworthy… and yet, he was one of the heroes summed here. The least I could do was hear him out.
“Anyway, so then, before I knew it, I woke up here.”
“Makes sense. Pretty cool of you though, isn’t it? Saving your best friend and all?”
He responded to my compliment with even more aloofness. Fine then.
“Ok, I guess I’m next,” said Motoyasu, lightly pointing at himself.
“I have… Well, to put it simply… I have quite a few girlfriends.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Something about him seemed like a thoughtful older brother. He also gave off the impression of being popular with girls.
“And well…”
“You had too many at once, and they stabbed you or something?” Ren said, laughing to himself.
Motoyasu snapped his eyes open in surprise then nodded.
“Yeah well… Women are terrifying.”
“Goddam it!” I took no time to disguise my anger and found myself flicking him off. He could die for all I cared… or wait, I suppose he already had. Is that how they got here?
But wait… Itsuki placed his hand over his heart and began to speak.
“Now it’s my turn. I was on my way home from prep school. I went to cross the road, but a dump truck came screaming around the corner at full speed. And then…”
Again, we all fell to silence.
So he was almost certainly hit by a truck… What a sad way to go…
But wait… Wasn’t I kind of an outlier in this situation?
“Uh… do we really all have to talk about how we got here?”
“Well, we all already have.”
“I guess. Well… Sorry everyone. I was at the library, flipping through a book I’d never seen before. Before I knew it, I woke up here.”
Again, silence.
They were staring at me, cold as ice.
What was that supposed to mean. Did I have to come here under miserable circumstances to be part of their group?
The three of them started whispering among themselves so that I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Yeah… but he… he has a Shield.”
“I knew it… Motoyasu, you too?”
“Yeah…”
I started to feel like they were making fun of me. It was time for a change of subject.
“All right, so is it fair to assume that we all have a pretty good idea about how the system in this world works?”
“Sure.”
“Done it a thousand times.”
“I think I get it well enough.”
Well, there you have it… but wait! Am I the only amateur here?! This sucks.
“
W…Well…. Maybe you guys could teach me what I need to know to fight in this world? There were no games like this where I’m from.”
Ren narrowed his eyes and glared at me. Again, ice-cold. For whatever reason, Motoyasu and Itsuki were looking at me with kindness.
“All right then, your big brother Motoyasu will, as best he can, teach you the basics.” He sounded fake, with that big smile on his face. Soon his hand was on my shoulder, and he was talking away.
“First of all, and I’m only talking about the game I know, Emerald Online… but you’re a ‘Shielder.’ Basically, your job is to use the Shield and protect people.”
“Uh huh.”
“In the beginning, your defense is super high, which is great and all, but as you go up in levels, the damage you start to take gets a little unbalanced.”
“Uh huh…”
“There are no high-level Shielders. At higher levels, it’s a useless class.”
“Noooooooooooooo!”
That was not what I wanted to hear. What was with the death report? All they wanted to say was that I was doomed? Hey, no thanks!
“What about updates? Were there no updates?”
Like… to balance out my class?!
“Nope. Because of the game’s system, and because of the game’s population, the class was abandoned pretty early on. It’s really not good for much. I think they had even planned to delete the class altogether…”
“And I guess I can’t change jobs?!”
“Well the associated jobs are all… how to put it? Dead.”
“And I can’t change?”
“Nah, the game never let you switch to another job tree.”
WHAT?! Was I really stuck with the worst job in the game? I was staring at the shield in my hands and thinking. Was my future really so gloomy?
“What do you guys think?” I asked, turning to Ren and Itsuki, but they both turned away from me.
“Sorry…”
“I feel the same…”
No! So I really was stuck with the short straw? I was dwelling on this, absentmindedly, when I saw the three of them in the corner of my eye. They were all deep in conversation about the game.
“What about the geography?”