Strongest Gamer; Let's Play in Another World Volume 1

by Shinobu Yuuki

  I served some of the water I was drinking to Sara while I introduced myself carefully. I happened to be out of tea leaves already, but the water around here was far more delicious than mere tea. Buying a tea capable of matching the taste of this water would cost some good money.

  "Milt Village... Do you happen to be one of Ann's friends?"

  "Yes, I'm Ann's best friend."

  ---Oh, one rank higher than a simple friend, huh?

  "I've heard about you from Ann before. She seems really happy about working out here with you."

  I see, so she heard from her. I wondered where she knew me from.

  "Is that so? What brings you here, Sara?"

  "I have a request to make."

  "Request? Would you mind telling me what is it about?"

  What in the world? As her best friend, she might want me to send Ann back to the village. But I had hopes of Ann staying here with me, and it seemed that was what she wished for as well.

  "I also heard she showed you her true form. Ann was really happy you didn't dislike her."

  So she knows about her true form. The best friend title was not just for show, then.

  "If... you're planning to do something awful to Ann... Then please stop it! I'll take her place, I'll do anything you say... So please..."

  "Huh...!? (cough) Excuse me! (cough)"

  She declared that with a face that was like the concept of determination itself. I was surprised I didn't end up spouting out the water I choked on just now.

  ---Last night, and today as well!?

  Holding back the part of me that wanted to nod at the proposal from a cute girl telling me she'd "do anything I say" was hard! Besides, aren't I the one being awful here? After it took so much effort to not do anything to her yesterday...!?

  "Please wait a moment."

  I took a deep breath to regain my composure. Nothing good could come from getting emotional in front of someone this serious.

  I'd only played it because it was being talked about, but there was this romance simulation game in which you suddenly had 108 sister-in-laws and little sisters, and each and every single one of them loved you. The promotional line was something like "I can't believe this harem is legal!", and it was called "Pole☆Sisters", if I remembered correctly. Compared to that, this wasn't all too illogical of a development. Yeah, this was nothing. If you chose any of them, the remaining ones would go crazy and try to make you break up as hard as they could. This was more real than a pointlessly brutal scenario like that.

  It had a phrase that went "Can you make it to the ending!?" and all. And you can bet I repeated the game over 20 times, but right after talking about breaking up with the 98th sister, the 99th came and stabbed me. Needlessly to say, I got a pretty bad ending and became unable to keep playing afterwards.

  "I did hire Ann, but I'm not planning to do anything cruel to her like you say, Sara."

  "Huh...? But Ann says you're always sleeping together."

  "The house isn't that big, and we just have one bed, you see. It's kinda embarrassing, but I didn't know much outside of the human race, so I thought Ann was younger from how she looked, and figured it would be kinda lonely for her to sleep alone..."

  ---Yes, that's what I thought until last night! Really...!

  But buying another bed now would be difficult. I think Ann would just cry if I suggested it.

  "Ah, Ann's always talking about how kind you are to her!"

  "She's a pretty cute girl, after all. She often reminds me of my sister that I just want to pamper and stuff."

  It was a shame my real little sister back in Japan wasn't as cute or innocent as Ann.

  "Are you sure you're not trying to do something indecent to her, and then dump her right after?"

  I understood very well just how strong Sara's imagination was right then.

  "If I was that kind of person, don't you think I would have sent her home already?"

  "Huh!? Wait... What!?"

  Seemed like Sara had noticed the words that came out of her mouth when she let her imagination run wild. She covered her completely flushed face with both hands and hung her head. Cornering her like that was kinda harsh, so silently I refilled her cup of water, waiting for her to settle down.

  "I want to ask you one thing---why did you say you would take her place?"

  When she finally calmed down, I decided to raise a question of my own.

  "Because I'm her best friend."

  Why would that be a reason to take her place? I didn't get it.

  "Ann is really, really happy whenever she's talking about you. I never saw her smile like that before."

  As far as smiles go, I remembered her making a really sweet-looking smile sometimes. Ann was pretty cute when she did.

  "Ann's my most important friend... That's why if there's something that might make her smile disappear, I'll take her place. I can't do anything but that for her," she said with a bitter tone, as she clenched her fist.

  ---So she's that important of a friend to her...

  I felt as if I understood something new about Ann, but it also made me kinda jealous. I'd had many rivals before, but never a close friend that thought about my well being like this..

  "Then I can't do anything bad to you, Sara. Ann would be completely heartbroken if I did anything to hurt her best friend."

  To be honest, my tone might have been quiet, but 90% of me was putting up with it and grinning.

  I'd been holding back for one whole month. That incredibly provocative event last night almost sent me over the edge. And if a girl like Sara came and told me I could do anything to her, then of course it would end up hitting me where it hurts. My desire was telling me to do so many awful things right now... I wanted to cry.

  "I won't... I won't lose! I've been the closest one to Ann ever since we were little, after all...!"

  Looked like I chose the right answer. Sara declared herself as my rival as she glared at me with regret and sadness mixed in her eyes.

  "Okay, I accept the challenge. No matter which one wins, I'm sure Ann will keep on smiling, so let's do our best, okay?"

  "O-Okay...!"

  Alright, I scored the first point. She got flustered when I accepted the challenge head on with a smile on my face... Not very adult of me, if I do say so myself.

  "Let me walk you back to the village. We can talk more about Ann if you want on the way. It's up to you."

  "Uhhh... I guess I don't mind."

  According to what she told me before arriving to the village, Sara was the only girl from a family that was relatively well-off when compared to the other villagers. It seemed like her body wasn't very strong, so she never could run around and play with the other children. But she never was lonely because Ann was her talking buddy.

  She had become unbearably sad when she heard Ann fell off the bridge in the Great Saredo Rift. It seemed when she heard the story about her being alive, but then leaving right away because she got employed, made her think the worst and act rashly. Was it my imagination, or did she immediately think that Ann was doing the most sinful things possible?

  ◇

  "That was way calmer than I thought it would be. He's a good adult."

  Sara muttered as she closed the door of her room. She and Aoi parted ways at the village's entrance. Sara had already pictured the kind of person he was, but Aoi was way different from the lascivious and corrupted adult she imagined. He turned out to be a pretty calm and polite adult.

  "It's a good thing he wasn't a bad person... Right? Oh Dark Lord...!"

  After confirming Ann was alright, the embarrassment of her actions, and the outrageous things she had said finally hit her all of a sudden. Her whole face turned as red as a tomato.

  "What should I say to Ann...? That I went to the place of her beloved Aoi and had a fight with him? Well, it wasn't a fight, but I can't tell her I talked about something like that."

  That said, it was really difficult to just go and apologize.

  "
What should I do... Eek!"

  As she walked around her room while thinking, Sara staggered and fell to her knees.

  "Huh...?"

  She felt like she was being crushed under the weight of a giant hand, and collapsed onto the ground with a thud. There had been many times where she had collapsed before due to her weak constitution, but rarely did they occur to the extent of being unable to do anything.

  "Sara's home! Hey, Sara, Auntie told me to give these to yo--- Ah! What's wrong!? Sara!"

  Fortunately, Ann found Sara collapsed on the floor after being sent by her aunt to deliver something. She fell unconscious seconds later.

  "Up you go... Now to get some help!"

  Ann carried Sara, laid her on top of her bed, and went to call her parents, or any adult, right away. Since her body had always been frail to begin with, her collapsing wasn't that unusual, but after spending so much time together, there was something about Ann that made Sara's parents react with urgency every time it happened. The adults gathered right away and started deliberating. Ann couldn't do anything but watch from the sidelines. She understood what was happening, but there wasn't much input she could herself.

  "This is the first cursed cold of the year."

  "If only we had some medicine..."

  Ann suddenly raised her head after listening what the smart elf of the village murmured when she was finally done examining Sara.

  There were no doctors in the pioneering village. Although, there were cases where the villages were poor, and most doctors only knew medical treatment for about one or two races.

  There were races that were similar, like humans and elves, but with different tribes and clans, the medical science differed greatly. There weren't many doctors that studied medical treatments for various races. The ones that did only lived in big cities where they got as many clients as they could possibly want. The chronic shortage of doctors was one of the evils of a multi-ethnic nation like this.

  Ann only had one clue: Aoi holding a difficult-looking book in one hand and saying...

  "I'll try making medicine today."

  From before she left for Jenny's house this morning.

  "Depending on her luck... it'll last about two or three days."

  Upon listening to the grave words of the elderly elf woman, Ann ran all the way to see the beloved labyrinth manager that saved her as well.

  ◇

  After I'd escorted Sara back to the village, I decided to watch the plants growing near the cabin with my copy of "Practical Medicinal Herb Studies ~Wetlands / Waterside Edition~" in hand.

  It was written on a coarse, bad quality paper, but the actual contents of the book were rather complex. It had everything from descriptions of the plants, to sketches by the author. It was awfully convenient to have.

  What surprised me the most was that it wasn't printed. Everything from the descriptions to the sketches were made by hand. I couldn't do anything but nod at the high price after realizing that. As I expected, the ravine in which the labyrinth was located was a really special location, because the plants the book referred to as "Legendary plants that have very limited habitats and are hard to come by naturally", were growing here like weeds. You could say I was blessed in that regard.

  Let's see... there was bluelight moss growing here and there. If I dried it out then boiled it, I could make a stamina tonic, and it was tasty enough that you could use it as a tea. If I ground it together with pure water, I could even make a vitality potion, and then...

  I took some in my hand, but It looked just like moss to me.

  "The clover-ish thingies growing by the sandbank are supposedly called 'phosphor buds'. If I grind them up and dilute it in water, I can make a stamina potion. And if I boil that down, it'll turn into a healing potion."

  While they may have looked a weed to me, the leaves were exactly the same as depicted in the book's sketch.

  ---It lists them as precious and limited potion materials, but I don't think I'll ever run out when there's this much around here.

  So there was 'medicine'; disinfectants to prevent festering, pain relieving effects, et cetera.

  And then there was 'simple medicine', which was a medicinal plant that was uncommon around the village---similar to finding Aloe Vera plants in the middle of the street. The difference was those had medicinal effects that were easy to understand in a modern setting...

  Finally there were 'magical potions'... They had an irrational effect when compared to modern Earth science, like recovering lost stamina directly, or restoring damaged organs. The book said that the rarity value rose when it came to raw potion materials, and that scarcity had a direct effect on the price of potions as well.

  "Ah, they're supposed to be scarce, at least."

  I prepared a basket for the plants and rocks I'd collected, and a glass bottle for the moss, then spent a while examining the surrounding area of the cabin with my book in hand. I found herbs growing all over like weeds, and as much moss I could ever need stuck to stones in the ground and all sorts of other places, like the cabin walls. Seemed like I could make as many magic potions as I wanted.

  According to the book, the streams and ponds I was so used to by now were "The bodies of water in which bluelight moss can appear and propagate are few and so far in between they're considered almost a miracle; magical potions can be concocted in such a place." I'd been drinking this ever since I arrived here. Would it be okay? I was kinda nervous now. This ravine was where a large-scale engineering process was supposed to occur in order to build a labyrinth fit for people to go in and out in hordes. Things became even more complicated when the possibility of destroying such a valuable environment in the process was uncovered there.

  ---If I started selling these in the village, it would be more like an emergency first aid kit rather than something for regular use, so I think it would be better to reduce the number and make more types of medicine.

  It was way different in the sense of easily buying medicine and taking it when you had a cold, back in Japan. In a poor pioneering village like theirs, they wouldn't rely on medicine unless the symptoms were too much to bear. That meant they'd go for medicine when they were practically in the worst situation possible, so I'd like to raise the quality as much as I could.

  ---Vitality, stamina, and healing potions. Those three are my main objectives right now.

  It was kinda pointless to use a basket when they were growing right in front of me, so I tossed the medicinal herbs into the iron pot I normally used for cooking, then sorted them all by kind over the table. It didn't take me even one hour to gather a mountain of material.

  I used the skill from time to time just to make sure none of the wrong herbs slipped in.

  ---Simple sorting work like this isn't that bad, huh? It reminds me of that realistic alchemy simulation game called "Atelier Meimei".

  Since the book said I should grind and mix with water, I drew some water out of the pod in front of me with a mortar I'd bought from Tundra. I threw some moss inside, and started grinding away with the pestle.

  I didn't hate this kind of simple trial and error work. The game I was thinking of was a real life-oriented PC simulation game made by a little indie company; but they made you grind a pebble against the mortar for eight hours straight while mixing in about three types of herbs and five types of minerals, with a set timer in the tutorial to make a salve. It was literally aimed at experts specifically---perhaps excessively so. The amount of game time required was so overwhelming that I didn't play much of it, but I had a friend that overcame the hellish difficulty and spent a whole month of real time in the game to farm gold. He was praised by the other players as a god... Well, he got hospitalized and almost turned into a real god after playing for a month straight. Man, those were the days.

  I kept moving the porcelain pestle until the liquid gained some consistency and a green tea-like color. After grinding away mindlessly for a while, I noticed the liquid was suddenly a mysterious cobal
t blue color.

  ---So my technique was too good... Nah. Maybe the materials are too good?

  It went from a green to a transparent cobalt blue when I mixed the green moss and the water. It was kinda hard to disregard nature when something turned into a color it shouldn't have, but I guess this was completed... Right? I thought to put it in a container for now... That was no good, I had to get a container for this thing first. Unlike with games, there wasn't a convenient mechanism that put the potion in a bottle right as it came out of the pot.

  I opened the Tundra eShop window, ordered some glass bottles for potions, and opened the cardboard box right away. Since Tundra always used cardboard boxes or manila envelopes to deliver things, I'd made a habit of carrying around both a knife and a paper knife to open them.

  ---I don't know if the level of technology is low, or if the quality of material is bad out where the labyrinth's placed in the desert, but they're cheap and functional, so I guess I don't care. It's really affordable. I wonder if they taught the glass manufacturing technology to nearby villages, then outsourced it all to mass produce them.

  I took one of the diamond shaped containers and poured the cobalt blue liquid from the mortar into it.

  I was using a large mortar; I could make about 100 milliliters of potion every time, and the bottles were kinda like, erm... Tiny energy drink bottles? I managed to fill up eleven of them with the cobalt blue liquid I'd prepared.

  "Execute Appraisal."

  I put the stylish lid it came with over the glass bottle and tried examining it as a finished product.

  Name : Grade 6 Vitality Potion (Quality+)

  Description : High quality medicine that replenishes Vitality greatly. Restores 2000 points of Vitality in 1 minute. Effect decreases 25% when applied to an open wound; performs the equivalent effect of a Grade 7 revive potion. Recovery time is sharply shortened due to the Quality+ effect.

  ---How much Vitality is 2000?

  I mean, it was good that it pointed out the effect accurately, but the unit of measurement was so alien to me, it was kinda hard to understand. I checked my 'Labyrinth Manager Status' screen again and confirmed my Vitality was just 120 right now. So this would bring me right back from death if I had a fatal wound. Is that how powerful it was?