"It's quite pretty, but I wonder what it is... Execute Appraisal."
Name : Waterdry Amber
Description : The solid state of waterdry tree sap. It's rarely produced when raising waterdry trees with abundantly clear water. The higher the water quality is, the higher the transparency of the amber and the rarity of the same will be.
So it was some kind of amber. I was surprised when a jewel fell out of a tree all of a sudden. Ambers on Earth were fossils of tree sap, but the fact it was produced inside the tree made it something more akin to a pearl. Or like kidney stones, if you wanted to think of it that way. They were really pretty, so I added collecting waterdry amber to the daily ritual of gathering firewood.
Since we had been selling tremendous amounts of stone every single day, we were kind of well off money-wise, so I bought a glass container that looked very much like a goldfish tank, and decide to decorate the room with them. Maintaining peace of mind with interior decoration was important, too.
◇
It was nighttime after work was done for the day.
When we had started working on the stairs, both Ann and I would almost pass out in the bed each night, as we had spent all of our stamina during the day. But as we repeated the same routine everyday, my body gradually adapted, and the effort needed became less and less. And with more time to spare, my lifelong craving began to surface.
In other words: I wanted to play games.
There were many games you could make in places where tools and materials are limited, but playing those said games by yourself was kinda restricting. Fortunately, I wasn't alone. I had my trusty Ann with me. At first we played tic-tac-toe using the bluelight moss and branches to draw symbols in the soil.
"Umm... A circle around here... Ah, I lost!"
"It was a good call, but you're rushing to win too much."
I bought a parchment from Tundra and drew a 8x8 grid on it, cut out circles out of a piece of thick leather, and coated half of them black to make a makeshift othello board.
"I got you now, Mister! The four corners are mine. Heheh! Huh? Why are you doing that when you have no place to move? No! Don't!"
"You're smart, Ann, but you're too upfront as well. You have to match your movement to your rival's."
Unsatisfied by only board games, I created my own primitive RPG that only needed paper and pen to play, no need for computers. If I wanted to play with someone, said person would need to be able to read and calculate, but Ann was qualified enough for that.
"I take two steps ahead and attack the thieves. Umm... I attack for eight points. It's a critical hit!"
Ann absorbed things like a sponge. She familiarized herself with the game I made from scratch, and got hooked right away.
"Man, you're amazing, Ann. You have the qualities to make a genius gamer. World tournaments aren't just a dream if you keep up this pace."
"I don't really know what a gamer is, but I'm happy when you praise me! Hey, hey, Mister! We still have some time before bed, right? I wanna play that 'Labyrinths and Dragon's Feast' thing again!"
"I see, but it'll take a while, okay? It's not good for your eyes at your age to create characters with only the lamp's light."
"Yeah, I know. Let's hurry, then!"
I hadn't realized it at first, but at the time, the main factor in retaining my sanity in this unfamiliar environment, where I worked myself to the bone everyday, was that I had Ann as my Player 2.
◇
It hadn't crossed my mind initially, but after overworking my body every single day for one month to build the stairs in this unfamiliar, nature-filled environment, I felt my technique and my strength had improved a lot compared to the first day. It wasn't like I had huge muscles or a six-pack all of a sudden, but my body felt strangely light. At first, I could only dig out one stone at a time, and had to hit the stone with the pickaxe several times. But now, if I put some strength into it I could dig out eight at a time, and my hands didn't even get numb from the shock, like the very first time.
Ann's limit at first was five or six trips back and forth of carrying stone back to the delivery box, but she carried so much stone now that the wheelbarrow was the one screaming for help.
---I'm not imagining this, am I...? Oh, I forgot I have an easy way to check myself.
It had been a long while since I brought up the translucent menu and checked on my status screen.
Aoi Kousaka
Vitality : 121/121 Stamina : 640/872 Willpower : 60/80
Skills :
The reason I was able to spend my time well and keep my sanity was due to having Ann as my game partner. Yes, our daily efforts were being rewarded. My Stamina increased so much it was almost scary. My stats, which looked like a stamina-specialized tank in an RPG game, was not what came to mind when you considered I was supposed to be a labyrinth manager. I wonder if I'm the only one who thought like this... My mental image of a labyrinth manager was more like an intellectual, or a magic user, or something... I felt like all of that was crumbling inside my head.
"I wonder if Ann's the same. Execute Appraisal."
She was on her sixth wheelbarrow replacement by now. They became broken right away if they got overused since they were made purely out of wood. We didn't have the means to repair them ourselves, so we would just get a new one from Tundra. I got a really sturdy one this most recent time. It even had a load-carrying tray which Ann made good use of to load the stone.
Ann
Half-Kobold
Vitality : 42/42 Stamina : 206/226 Willpower : 28/28
Ann's gotten pretty strong, huh? Seems like her race's tendency was to lack in the power department, but as far as I could see, she was way stronger than I was just a month ago. I continued to dig up the staircase afterwards as Ann kept carrying the stones back to the new stone storehouse near the delivery box. She cashed out some stone when there was no room in the storehouse, and so our days continued.
It had been about a month and a half since we first started building the stairs, and by the second month since I'd first come to this labyrinth, we had finally reached the surface.
Chapter 2
"So this is the surface... It's lot less green than I thought it would be, almost like a wasteland, really."
"Monsters hate living in places like these, so it's easier to build fields and villages. There's a forest at the other side of the bridge, see?"
I looked to the west and saw there was grassland spreading out on the other side across the bridge, just like Ann said. I could just make out what seemed to be a forest filled with trees further out, too.
"Are there dangerous creatures living in places like that?"
"Yeah. There's some intelligent monsters in there, but most of them are vicious and can't communicate, so it's pretty dangerous"
"I see. So there's a lot of rough places in this world too, huh? Well then, how about we head to the village? You haven't seen your family in a long while, right?"
"Yep. This way, Mister!"
Ann held my hand and walked with a fast pace. We ended up on a simple hardened soil road as she guided me away from the stairway. When I looked back at the Saredo Great Rift, I managed to catch a glimpse of a simple bridge made out of rope and planks of wood that looked like it'd struggle to even give pass to a single carriage. Did Ann fall from that? Upon further inspection, I saw traces which indicated that it was repaired recently.
Ann continued to guide me along the road to the east for nearly an hour. Along the way, I saw some fields here and there. I wondered if there was a clan of giants that pulled dead trees from their roots in those far off fields. They seem to be at least three meters tall, or maybe my depth perception was out of whack. The fields in the immediate vicinity were, to put it bluntly, very dry. There were lots of stones in them, and the dirt seemed coarse and dehydrated compared to the ri
ch black soil back at the ravine. They lived in a pioneering village, maybe that was related to why the soil was rather sterile.
"Ann, is life at the village difficult?"
"Yeah. My Auntie said it would take ten years for us to get a good harvest. There's not really any rich people back in my village."
Yeah, it might be because it was still just a pioneering village, but it seemed life was hard even in a world like this.
"Then you guys will be having lots of tasty crops in a decade? I hope it works out."
They may be mere words of consolation, but that kind of thing was important when facing hard times.
It was a bit of an old story, but I tried out the marriage feature in an online game once. It was supposed to be like a fun way to display that you married someone else's avatar using an event item called 'Wedding Ring'. On paper it seemed like a good idea, at least... But some players who married their friends ended up becoming mentally unhinged, and desired to monopolize their partners. In due time, they leveled up and changed class from online stalkers to real stalkers.
I remembered this one time I was being ambushed in front of my house, and I ran away to a childhood friend's house without thinking.
"It's okay now."
I could never forget the feeling of security those mere words of consolation gave me.
"Yeah, me too. Everyone's doing their best to make it happen!"
Ann's smile as she nodded at my words was simply dazzling.
"A-Auntie! Auntie!"
When we approached what looked like a village with a bunch of tiny buildings, Ann started running towards one of the fields all of a sudden. Right ahead of her there was a... dog-faced creature with a dumbfounded expression on her face. And I say 'she' because there was an unusually large swell in her bust area, so I figured it was safe to assume they were female.
"Ann? Is it really you!?"
Ann ran to hug her even though her clothes were covered in dirt and dust. The kobolds that were hard at their farm work started to gather around them when they heard the commotion.
"Well if it isn't Ann!"
"You're alive!?"
The surrounding kobolds started a bit of an uproar. Yeah, the same way we Asians couldn't tell Caucasians apart from each other, and vice versa for them, I couldn't really tell apart one kobold from another, among the flock that started to gathered. The only real differentiating feature was their height, and Ann, because she was wearing a pretty dress.
The kobolds seemed to differ in their coats of fur. There were some that look like Shiba Inus, some with black or white spots, different colored eyes and arms, and so on. I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to tell one apart from the other if they looked kind of the same and you shuffled them around, though.
"So Ann is back? Now that's something! I'm sorry, but I'd like to hear all about it in detail. Would you mind coming over to my house? Jenny, Ann, you girls come as well."
A huge minotaur wielding a hoe arrived after hearing the commotion. It seemed like he was the mayor of this pioneering village... In the end, I was guided to the mayor's residence together with Ann and her aunt.
The mayor looked rather old, and had some wrinkles on his face. He also had a kind of calm demeanor to him; but between his stern face and his large build---that seemed more than capable of folding a human in two with just one hand---I almost wanted to back down on reflex. It was hard for me to keep a straight face while Ann walked alongside him as if it was the most normal thing in the world. There weren't any kids who would be happy about you getting scared by their friends, I guess. The humans that have been born in this world might be used to this sort of thing, but my culture shock had started to kick in pretty hard.
The village I was guided to was structured in a radial manner, where roads and fields spread outwards, and the houses were built towards the center. Speaking of which, all of the houses are pretty simple buildings. The walls were made out of dry hardened earth blocks and tree bark, while the roofs were made out of straw and simple wooden planks.
If you made a house like this in Japan, it would get blown away by a typhoon or a small earthquake. I wondered if there were even any of those around this region. Eventually we arrived at a house which appeared to be particularly large compared to the others. Apparently this one belonged to the mayor. Rather than being bigger just because he was the mayor, I figured it was just a house tailored to his rather large stature. I mean, really, the guy was well over two meters tall.
"Oho... Who would have thought there would be a labyrinth of the Great Dark Lord down the Great Saredo Rift. "
While I told him about my job as labyrinth manager, the mayor poured me tea in a cup as big as a helmet from the human world.
"At any rate, the fact that Ann was saved after falling down the bridge is of most importance. I would like to extend my thanks to you, Mister Aoi. These days, Jenny, Sarah, and all of Ann's acquaintances were quite depressed because of the incident, you see."
I talked about the whole story regarding how I ended up taking care of Ann. He seemed pleasantly surprised, and pleased she was safe this whole time. He may have looked all macho and scary, but he very much seemed like a simple and mellow person on the inside.
"I'm really glad I saved her as well. It would have been painful for such a nice and healthy girl to die so young."
I went in 'working adult' mode for the first time in a long while. I also figured I would have to greet the villagers, so I thought it would be good to put on my suit's tie and coat as well.
"Thank you so very much. Ann's like a keepsake from my sister. Whenever I thought she wouldn't ever come back I... (sniff)"
Ann's aunt, Jenny-san, cried while hugging her.
---Jenny-san... Ah, it's kind of weird to reference her the same way I would someone back at home, huh? Force of habit, really.
"Here, a handkerchief. Please be happy Ann came back safe."
I offered a linen handkerchief to Jenny. The fact I hesitated back then to give Ann the medicine mouth-to-mouth because of her cute doggy face sent pangs of guilt through my soul---like a thorn right into my heart.
"I can't believe such a nice person saved you... FNNNRK..."
Was that no good? It seemed to cause the opposite effect. I'd dealt with these kinds of situations a lot in dating sims, but when it came to real familial interactions, I had no idea what options there were.
"Umm... Mayor Hopper, I have about one month left until my labyrinth manager apprenticeship period is over. Would you allow me to trade in this village? There is no one but me in the labyrinth, and I have a few things that could be considered special products, so I think it would be beneficial to able to purchase and exchange things in the village."
"We welcome you with open arms. Our village is rather poor, as you see, so peddlers only come occasionally. It's really good news there'll be new business, however small," he replied, while nodding.
---Alright, I can finally say goodbye to the daily pumpkins!
"Oh yeah, can you use this currency? I use it to buy and sell stuff with the other managers."
I took out a silver 5000 DL coin I had in my pocket.
"It's quite alright. That's the same currency that's widely used across all of the domains of the Great Dark Lord. There are certain local currencies issued by regional lords themselves, but regular currency like this is better to use."
It was good to hear that I could use the coins here. If I combined that with the delivery box from the labyrinth, I really might be able to become kind of a merchant. Tundra was always short in the fresh food department, after all.
"Though, I have to say, your coat looks way glossier than before, Ann. You look like you filled up quite nicely as well. You look so fancy now that I almost didn't recognize you."
---So kobolds add hair glossiness to their appearance assessment? I'll keep that in mind.
"Yep, the food back at his place is really tasty. He lets me eat until I'm full, too!"
Despi
te Ann's cheery tone, all we had most of the time was that insipid pumpkin that didn't improve one bit, no matter how much salt or sugar you'd sprinkle on top. She talked about the food with so much joy, even though the most we ever really had outside of pumpkins were the occasional beef jerky, or dried fruit from Tundra. Her joy made me feel a complex mix of happiness and guilt. I wondered if it was the difference between a child raised in a pioneering village where life is difficult, versus a Japanese that got to eat as much as they wanted.
"You really took care of Ann so well..."
Jenny continued crying while holding Ann close. Aunts and uncles who took children under their wing were usually pretty cold to them in stories and fairy tales. It was basically a cliché, but Ann seemed to be really loved.
"Aoi, what do you plan on doing from now on?"
"Since I'm still a labyrinth manager, I guess I have to go back there and actually manage things."
Although it might be presumptuous of me to call that ravine with a cabin, some trees, and the stairs going up to the surface a labyrinth, but I was at least a labyrinth manager in name.
"I see. Please, feel free to come to the village at any time. The village market opens up every ten days. Let's see... The next one should be in eight days, and it lasts from early in the morning until noon. You're welcome to participate, if you wish."
"Thank you very much. Ann, thank you for helping me out so much... Well, then---"
I got up and almost fell over as I tried to leave after stroking Ann's head. Her hands were firmly holding the cuff of my slacks.
"What's wrong, Ann?"
---Oh, there's big tears coming out of the corners of her eyes. Did I set off some weird event flag!?
"I don't want you to go... Aoi... I want you to be with me."
---I class changed from Mister!?
Wait, no. I was happy about that, but it wasn't the problem here.
Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 1 Page 7