"Well, then. Let's introduce you to your workplace at once."
Karumi-san led the way and we walked to the door opposite the room we were just now.
---Was that the entrance on the other side? Maybe it leads to the parking lot, the stairs, or even to an elevator.
The door squeaked as she opened it, and in came an unusual wind from the other side. It smelled of overflowing vegetation that reminded me of a time I had traveled to the mountains. A second ago I had been walking over hard ceramic tiles, but all of a sudden it felt like I was stepping on soft soil.
---Huh...?
Before I had even noticed, I was met with an awe-inspiring view from the bottom of the ravine.
"It looks like you've been assigned to Labyrinth #228, Kousaka-san. The conditions may prove to be somewhat harsh, but please do your best. Well then, we'll meet again when your training period is over."
"Eh? Labyrinth? Excuse me, can you repeat that?"
When I turned around, the only thing I managed to catch was the door getting slammed shut behind me. Upon closer inspection, all that was left in its place was a rugged wall of solid gray rock. There weren't any traces of the door or the office I had come from mere seconds ago.
◇
---And that's how it went.
"Hard mode, huh..." I sighed.
I recalled everything that had happened so far while I checked the pickaxe and the shovel that fell on the floor. You could say I was trying to escape reality as well.
"Wait. A community building labyrinth? Could this be a..."
I walked into the log cabin-style house nearby me. The metal hinges on the door were difficult to budge, probably because it hadn't seen much use. The interior seemed to be about 20 square meters wide. There was a simple bed, a cabinet, and a round wooden table which stood in the middle of the room. The interior somehow managed to look even cheaper than the cheapest hotel, in the cheapest city, in the cheapest country.
I noticed a brown A4-sized envelope on top of the wooden table.
"Ah, right. They're a management company, so there should be things to manage."
If Karumi-san's words were to be believed, then my training period would last three months. She said we would meet again after the training is over, so the pickup should be in three months at best. I didn't really have any guarantee that she was gonna keep her word, but I guess thinking positively would make it a little more bearable.
From the look of things, it didn't seem like I was going to be able to just waltz back home, so I guess I should be grateful my merciful employers had the decency to provide me a room to stay in. There was nothing man-made around here aside from the cabin. But if this place was a labyrinth, it wouldn't surprise me to find a huge structure sprawling out underground.
I opened the envelope and took out the contents; I found a stiff and seemingly old starchy paper with official looking information handwritten with a fountain pen. It read:
Purpose : Foster an environment to ensure inter-clan engagement, collection of military goods, and deposit base. This structure is also designated as the neighbor residents' evacuation point.
Scheduled Completion : Mid-scale Labyrinth --- Class 3.
I supposed this wasn't that much different from a building. Rather, a labyrinth being classified as a 'community building' wasn't too unrealistic a proposition.
Total Construction Status : 2% --- Construction of cabin for worker completed.
Current Construction Progress : 100% completed.
Interior Design Progress : 100% completed.
Facility Equipment Installation Progress : 100% completed.
Deployment of Golems for Facility Protection : Completed.
Awaiting for manager to take up their post...
---Hmm? There's two progress sheets here, but their contents are completely reversed.
Additional Notes : Person in charge of the labyrinth's construction, Barald Gain (49), has been arrested under suspicion of corporate embezzlement.
"Hahaha... This sure happens a lot with public projects, huh?"
So he hadn't even started working, and pocketed all the money intended for the construction. If I'm unlucky, he might have even stolen the money for management and maintenance costs; which meant the company thought they needed a management administrator because it was completed on paper, but in reality it was actually incomplete---I had nothing to manage.
I was at a loss for words. Managing a facility like this seemed more and more like a punishment game. I wanted to break down and cry, but attempting to escape my reality wouldn't get me anywhere, as unfortunate as it was.
"Did we need the embezzlement feature!?"
My scream echoed out into the ravine.
Screaming helped me calm down a little bit. This was unbecoming of someone as tempered a gamer as I, who had experienced countless RPG challenge runs. You know, challenges like 40-hour time limits, or game overs meant you had to start over with no resets or data backup. They were masochistic challenges that pushed even the most ruthless of frame-timed, auto-save limited experts to their limits.
I felt pleasure every time I got wiped out towards the end. The only truly masochistic thing were the challenges themselves. The games were innocent and magnificent pieces of work on their own... I wasn't playing because I'm a masochist or anything, if that's what you were thinking. All that aside, I wasn't particularly pessimistic despite the actual lack of a building to manage, or the obvious corruption.
Couldn't I make my own labyrinth if there wasn't one to begin with? They said they would raise my salary depending on how well I improved the place, so I figured it was pretty safe to say whatever I did would be an improvement over this shabby cabin. Besides, the idea of making my own labyrinth seemed like fun. Fortunately for me, the house was already kinda furnished... But I think I would have to give up on the dream of living in a comfy room with water service, gas, or heaters of any kind.
"So what am I supposed to do about food...?"
First of all, that translucent window that floated over my hand made me doubt whether or not this world was the same as the one I came from.
---There may be squirrels, mice, or even birds for all I know around here. It may not be much but it can make for a decent meal.
I looked in and around the cabin for about half an hour, but didn't manage to find even a trace of any of those.
---This is quite a problem, there's no fruits or anything either... I guess it's time to eat grass and leaves.
I did find some butterflies with glassy-looking wings, and I may be able to find some worms if I turned over some rocks or dug a little, but I'd rather not have to resort to doing so if I could help it. There was also the concern of hygiene as well, but there were a lot of ponds and little rivers nearby, so getting water wouldn't be that hard.
There were no fish shadows in any of the ponds or streams, though. The ponds themselves were several meters deep, and so transparent you could see all the way to the bottom with no problem. Maybe the water was too clean for fish to live. It didn't look like it could be dangerous to drink. With an environment with so many bodies of water, but no fish in sight, it was gonna be hard to get anything in the way of food.
I may have to give up on the hope of surviving by normal means. This seemed like one of those survival games where civilization collapsed and aimed way too hard for realism---they were so overused a setting that no one really liked them anymore.
"Throw away your dignity as a person in order to survive..."
Or so it went with those sorts of games. The only thing I learned about them was that you could postpone the time to starving if you focused on just surviving, but you'd lose something important as a human being.
To be specific, I was talking about a technique which involved cutting out the waste of nutrients by recycling and ingesting your own... Yeah. Let's be clear here though, that was truly the last of last resorts. That feature was in a game developed wit
h the help of professionals with real-life survival skills they had hired for reference, but I think that was the very same reason the genre didn't really kick off to begin with.
I looked around inside the cabin in hopes of finding some kind of stash of any kind, when I found something unusual hidden in a corner.
There was a complex pattern drawn on the surface of the floor---I wondered if they were letters or something. I also found some kind of box that looked big enough to fit two people inside. And there was what seemed to be a porcelain piggy bank standing on top of it, as if it was enshrined there on purpose.
When I tried touching it, a translucent window popped up. It displayed 'Delivery and Payment Box' on it. The separate window that appeared looked like something out of an online catalog. The title of it said "Regional World eShop Catalog: Tundra". I wondered if the person who made this thought the end users would be able to read English right away.
The catalog itself was written in English and had illustrations all over. When I operated it a little bit, the display changed to 'Foods > Seasonings > Salt... 1 kg Salt == 120 DL'.
---Ah, so it is an eShop catalog. This DL thing seems to be a form of currency, but I've never heard of it before.
But I couldn't be called a gamer if I let something like that confuse me. The fact this catalog popped up as soon as I touched the delivery box probably meant that if I put something of value inside the box... I might be able to get some currency. And if I put in currency, I could get goods... It was a pretty typical system in games.
As typical as it may be, with the
---I really want to try it out, but what should I put inside?
The rocks and fallen leaves scattered about around here didn't look like they held much value to them. I tried to fish something out of my suit pockets, and found a piece of mint bubble gum I normally used to keep myself awake. Now that I thought about it, it was still unopened. I put the bubble gum inside the delivery box, and a metallic sound resounded from within it, almost like the sound of coins dropping.
When I opened the box again there was no bubble gum to be seen; in its place were two metallic looking yellow-minted coins. They appeared to be worth 100 DL and 5 DL respectively. They weren't quite gold; they seemed to be made of some kind of yellow-metallic material, maybe some kind of brass? On the other side of the coins was a demon-like face motif carved out into it. Under that it read "100 DarkLord Coin".
DarkLord... As in a big bad demon? Did this mean it was the currency of the demon lord? I didn't really know how they appraised the value of the gum, but it was good news regardless. Now I could use the delivery box thing to get money. If only the
I opened the translucent window again and chose the 'Natural Salt' that was listed with a price of 50 grams for 55 DL. When I had confirmed the order in the eShop, a popup which said "Please Insert Fee" appeared, so I put the two coins I had inside the piggy bank. Right as I did, a 50 DL coin dropped from below the piggy bank, and at the same time a slot suddenly appeared in what was a seemingly empty gap, and burst open. An unusually heavy looking A4-sized paper envelope fell to the ground with a sonorous plop.
"Thank you for your purchase!"
A strangely high-pitched voice came out from the box, followed by another bursting sound, to which the opened slot unceremoniously closed back up. The word "Tundra" was printed on the envelope, and under it was decorated with what I assumed was their logo.
---Tundra? As in the biome?
There was also a note, which seemed to have been written with magic pen that stated the "Administrator of Labyrinth #228" as the recipient's name.
---How can this thing be so convenient, yet the
I needed to report this. There came a time in a man's life where he must report broken features.
◇
---I need to calm down, come on. Look at the bright side...
I managed to regain my composure in less than a minute. There was this one time I had stayed with some university friends, and we marathoned a bunch of games that were listed on a site called "The Worst of the Worst", which aggregated all of the worst games in the history of humanity. We played them one after another for God knows how long, so I should be able to cope in these kinds of situations.
Freezing after every battle in an RPG... Freezing while saving... Saved games disappearing just because... Final bosses that didn't spawn in the last area because of bugged scripts... Compared to that hell, this was still pretty tame. I had been living my life for games this whole time, and it had been of real use ever since I came to this place, at least.
After opening the A4 envelope, I found about 50 grams worth of salt inside a plastic bag, which was cushioned by a material similar to cardboard.
---So I can order food from this Tundra thing, huh? So the objective is use this box to get DL coins, and use those get food to subsist...
Nevertheless, there weren't many things around here that looked like they'd be worth much. My pickup was approximately three months out. Even if I'd sold everything I had on me, namely my suit, wallet, and shoes, I doubt I'd be able to get by more than one month at best.
"Valuable stuff, eh? Can't I use that thing..."
I looked around the room, and my eyes went straight towards pickaxe I'd created a while ago with the
---Depends on if I can even sell it to begin with...
I tried putting it inside the delivery box, but instead of turning into coins, a message in red letters popped up which said "Cannot Be Exchanged".
---What a shame. It's never that easy, is it?
It consumed a stat called Willpower, but it was also common in games to make it so you were unable to resell equipment you could create as many times as you wanted, or at the very least, make it sellable, but only for incredibly cheap.
"Let's try with a stone next."
I took my suit jacket off and headed out, pickaxe in hand.
You may not know this if you didn't live in Japan, but stone was often used as a building and interior material. The prices went up and down depending on the type and rarity, but they were always quite pricey to buy.
Once, I got addicted to this one game called "Moss Decoration Meister", in which putting moss on stones was considered a decoration of the highest order. I'd participated in a contest sponsored by the developer and won the silver medal in the 'Free-sized Garden' category. I even wanted to make some moss decorations in real life as well, but the cheapest stone bases would go over four figures a piece. I would be hard-pressed to find a memory more bitter than that one. Even if what I could find around here wasn't some fancy stone used for decorations, I could crush it and turn it into gravel. There was a lot of demand and uses for that as well.
I went to the closest rock to the cabin and held the pickaxe I'd created using the
"Ohhh..."
I unintentionally dropped the pickaxe. My hands went numb due to shock. I'd never taken up one of those part-time jobs that had you doing heavy manual labor, like making holes in asphalt, so it was the first time in my life I had used a pickaxe. I figured I had a knack for it, but was kind of hesitant due to the resulting muscle pain. I tried using a bit less strength and struck the rock again... and again... and again. It had slowly become easier on my hands. The cross-shaped crack expanded as I continued to strike the stone. Along with the sound of my strikes came perfectly cut square-shaped pieces of rock.
---Huh? Pickaxes don't normally cut into stuff li
ke that, right? Why are they all so square?
When I pulled apart the perfectly cut pieces, a heavy gray-colored stone cube covered with dark spots fell out. It was exactly 10 cubic centimeters. They would be easy to pile up as building material in this shape, but the fact that they could be cut up with such precise symmetry with just a pickaxe was downright bizarre. Rocks normally were supposed to crumble apart and break down into irregular shapes when struck with a pickaxe.
---The whole ravine is littered with regular rocks. Is this related to the pickaxe I have?
What was with the mysterious pickaxe that ate up my Willpower? I wanted to try the
---This UI is really easy to use. I haven't seen this kind of polish before, even in overseas games.
I was impressed by my handiwork as I maneuvered around the translucent window to enter the Skill Menu. I'd customized the UI to be like my favorite all-purpose internet browser for smartphones and touchscreen computers, "WaterRacoon". The only thing that I didn't seem to need to change to be more user-friendly was the simple character information screen from before. The UI screen which displayed a player's various information, and reflected their every action, needed to be perfect. It heavily influenced the amount of enjoyment one would derive while playing.
Usability played a huge part, but I found the most important thing was to make it intuitive enough so that one could understand everything at a glance. Something that made you go "Whoa, this is easy". The translucent UI window was perfect from the get-go. It was easy to use, and I could manage everything without any kind of explanation. Presumably, if you could use it as a computer to send emails and browse the internet, it would be a piece of cake, too.
I registered the
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 1 Page 2