Chapter 4: Reality Does Not Affect Quality, but the Reverse Is Another Matter

"Long ago, there was an era called the Divine Era."

Ah, that's the prologue-type thing.

"The great divine humans passed life on to later generations, then vanished."

"Time passed. We who inherited the will of the divine humans spread across the land as they wished, and continue weaving the great flow of life..."

...

"We who live in the present, from the legacies of the past that live on in history and ruins, learn of the divine humans—"

Sunraku: "Skip."

Skip the prologue?

Sunraku: "Skip."

I already read that part in the manual.

Without any hesitation, I skipped the prologue. Finally, a physical sensation arrived in my fully-dived consciousness. Since my height and build were different from reality, I moved my body a little and looked around...

It was a forest. Well, I already knew this. With the origin "Wanderer," unlike other origins, the initial spawn is "somewhere in the beginner area." I have to reach a town on my own, or if a monster defeats me, I can respawn in town via an "it was all a dream" scenario. The "Outcast" origin apparently starts in a city back alley. I have to admire how detailed the design is.

Sunraku: "First, let's get a handle on the situation."

I opened the status screen.

PN: Sunraku
LV: 1
JOB: Mercenary (Dual Wielder)
9,000 Mani
HP: 30
MP: 10
STM: 20
STR: 10
DEX: 15
AGI: 10
TEC: 15
VIT: 1 (2)
LUC: 30

Skills:
・Spin Slash
・Knuckle Rush

Equipment:
Left/Right: Mercenary's Twin Blades
Head: Staring Bird Mask (VIT +2)
Body: None
Waist: None
Legs: None
Accessories: None

Paper armor with real presence, and luck that's on the higher side. Half-naked equipment that straddles the line between pervert and hero, dual wielding.

Sunraku: "No more hesitation. I left my inner conflict behind in character creation...!!"

So, what should I do now? If I want to gear up, I should just die quickly and respawn, no matter how. But maybe trying out combat first isn't a bad idea.

Sunraku: "Amazing... my body moves so smoothly."

This is probably just a matter of when it was developed, but Fuckaria, made in the early days of full-dive VR, moved a little stiffly. This game’s avatar can move almost exactly the way I want it to. I recall there's a synchronization system that prevents in-game movement from affecting reality by re-syncing my real body and consciousness on every logout, but my avatar moves so intuitively that I barely feel the need for it.

Goblin: "Gigi!!"

Sunraku: "Oh."

My glorious first combat in SLF. The opponent is a major fantasy monster rivaling dragons in popularity.

In fantasy that only adults can watch, it's an ugly, green-skinned, grotesque humanoid monster that becomes absurdly strong...

Sunraku: "A goblin, huh."

Goblin: "Gugyagigi!!"

A goblin—a humanoid monster smaller than the player. This is the type of enemy mob that appears in almost any game with combat elements. Naturally, those kinds of monsters show up in kusoge too. For an instant, a nightmare of humanoid monsters spawning infinitely from all directions flashed through my mind, but I shook my head to chase it away.

Sunraku: "...Hah."

Goblin: "Gya!?"

I dodged the goblin's charge—its movements were almost too straightforward—and tripped it. In some games, touching anything other than your weapon would instantly kill you (the one-hit-death type), but in this game, just bumping into something doesn't seem to cause damage. However, the physics calculations seem to work properly, and the goblin, its feet swept out from under it, slammed face-first into the ground.

Sunraku: "Against the ribs... parallel!!"

Goblin: "Gyaaaa!!?"

In modern full-dive action games, just punching doesn't deal damage, aside from the visual depiction, because of increased realism. Some kusoge deal damage just by flailing randomly, while others are so meticulously crafted down to the internal organs that they have proper weak points and durability. It varies widely, so I decided to test it. SLF seems to be a kamige with thorough attention to that area. Instead of blood, red polygons scattered from the wound, and apparently, I depleted its HP in one blow. The goblin disintegrated and vanished like foam, turning into polygons.

It's the type that drops only items, not the type where you skin corpses. There was an incident a while back where things got too realistic and led to a crime, so this is probably a consideration. Back then, anti-game critics had a field day saying, "Games distort values." I remember some celebrity who acted like an intellectual said something extreme like, "If you can't educate children without losing to entertainment, then don't have kids—parents and teachers should go back to elementary school and start over." That sparked a huge firestorm all over the place.

Come to think of it, around that time I was growing corn in Thrilling Farm. It all got trampled by a giant monster, and I was furious. Good times.

Sunraku: "The drop... oh."

Basically, everything disappears into polygons. That means what remains on the ground is the drop item.

It wasn't exactly top-tier—a stone axe made of a wooden stick with a stone wrapped in vine rope. I picked it up, and it was automatically broken down and stored in my inventory.

Sunraku: "Hmm... 'Goblin's Hand Axe,' huh."

Dual-wield compatible. Durability is below half. Well, that's standard for a weapon dropped by a goblin. I won't use it as my main weapon, but maybe when I want to conserve the durability of my current Mercenary's Twin Blades... in that case, I'll need another one.

Sunraku: "If I recall, this game has hidden parameters like hunger, too..."

Which means I need to hunt a certain number of monsters and see what they drop.

...Ah, this feeling comes regardless of whether a game is a kusoge or a kamige. The exhilaration of diving into a new world and wondering what to do next is something rarely experienced in reality.

Sunraku: "Alright, let's do this while remembering to enjoy myself!"

I took a step forward into the pathless forest, searching for a path called a goal.

By the way, there's a pretty high chance of players starting half-naked. It turns out that selling your equipment in the character creation screen gets you more money than selling weapons at the in-game blacksmith.