Chapter 134: A Straight Flush with a Joker

When I first saw that email, I thought it was some new kind of spam. Our relationship was fundamentally one where we didn't get involved in real life — and now a stone had been thrown into that. On top of that, the writing style had "something fishy" written all over it.

For starters, I sent a demand for an explanation to the sender… Katzo. Meanwhile, I fired off a confidential email to the brain of our clan, Wolfgang — Pencilgon.

That said, if I were to summarize my conversation with Pencilgon:

Sunraku: "What do you think he's after?"

Pencilgon: "Depends on the details, but the real question is how big a 'favor' we can rack up."

Sunraku: "He's covering all travel and entry fees — I don't know what's going on, but he sounds pretty cornered."

Pencilgon: "Good thing my work's at a nice stopping point."

Hmm. As I suspected, you really can't hold a normal conversation with a madwoman. I'm asking whether we should take him up on this, and that bastard's already talking about what comes after.

Still, after firing off several interrogation emails, the information he spilled boiled down to this:

GGC — the Global Game Competition. True to its name, it's a massive event showcasing countless games from around the world: games that were made, are being made, have been greenlit for production, or are still fishing for investors so please, fund us.

Until a few years ago, it was held overseas — in the UK, the US, and so on. The choice of venues gave you a peek at which countries had the strongest sponsor muscle. But last year and this year, two years running, Japan has been the host. The reason, of course, is largely the existence of a certain colossal title called Shangri-La Frontier.

Even the blockbuster games that major American corporations poured hundreds of millions into were still just "games." Compared to SLF, on the other hand… well, need I say more?

Before SLF launched, the global gaming landscape was roughly divided into three spheres: quality from America, characters and story from Asia, innovative systems from Europe. Each had its national flavor — characters that looked like they were about thirty percent gorilla DNA, mostly scrawny guys or pretty girls swinging giant swords, or things so wildly original it took humanity years to understand them. For better or worse, there were loads of amazing games and loads of shitty ones.

And now, SLF — not "Asia," but a single company in Japan — has swept up everything. In my estimation, there's a gap of three… no, five generations between SLF and current titles.

About half a year after SLF's release, various developers, both domestic and international, started announcing SLF-esque titles. But considering that even I — with my sharp nose for this sort of thing — have only flagged a few, you can guess the rest. SLF wannabes blazing across the sky like a meteor shower, shining for an instant before fading away… I can't wait for them to come out.

Getting back on track, the point is that the current state of the gaming industry is SLF running away with the lead, far ahead of even the Americans, whose financial firepower casually blows past 530,000. Naturally, any game that contains even a single element SLF encompasses — action, RPG, simulation, whatever — has SLF as its hypothetical rival. Since GGC is fundamentally a place where god-tier and good games are announced, I'd only ever bothered to watch the livestreams. But recently, the GGC's had a brutal atmosphere hanging over it… or so Katzo told me around last year.

He's a fairly famous pro gamer, and since the companies announcing games at GGC hire pro gamers for live demo play, he apparently shows up at GGC every year. So if Katzo's been invited this year for work, why is he going out of his way to invite me and Pencilgon?

Sunraku: "In short, he's up against someone he absolutely refuses to lose to, but almost every member he'd originally planned on had to drop out, and now he's facing a forfeit crisis…"

I'd read his emails in the gaps between logging out of SLF and logging back in, and I couldn't help snorting. What a chain of slapstick accidents. The energy drink tastes better than usual today.

Sunraku: "Still, what to do… The day after tomorrow, huh?"

Well, it's not like I have anything in particular going on. I'm not in a clan that requires daily logins or quotas. I do have plans to meet someone in SLF later, but that's not an issue. Honestly, there's no reason for me to refuse this other than my own will.

In short, it's filling slots to avoid a forfeit from missing members — that's the role Katzo wants from us. Still, the fact that he's chosen us specifically means this isn't just about making up numbers. I can feel the intent to win.

I have endless questions, like whether it's even okay to randomly enter non-pro-gamer civilians, but it's hard to imagine Katzo would invite us without thinking that through, so I probably don't need to worry.

Sunraku: "The day after tomorrow… I'll get everything ready and leave tomorrow… Hmm, yeah, I can probably make it."

The only thing I have to do today is clear one scenario. That should be easier than a forced march to break through an entire area, at least. If this were overseas, I'd have gleefully fired a spam email right back at Katzo, but if it's just two or three hours by maglev, that's easier than hunting for trash games by touring backwater game shops.

The GGC itself runs for three days, but the "exhibition live demo match" Katzo mentioned will be over in one day, so the time commitment is short. And most importantly, the currently flourishing Uomi Kei-sama, who apparently makes a tidy sum as a pro gamer, has said he'll cover all expenses. I've been sprinting full-tilt through SLF lately, so a little breather now and then wouldn't be bad.

Sunraku: "I'll take you up on that invitation... there."

I sent the email, and then it hit me.

Sunraku: "…Now that I think about it, this means I'm going to meet Towa Amane and Uomi Kei in real life…"

An event like "meeting celebrities" ought to be something you get more excited about, but… we just chat normally via email and in-game, so it doesn't feel all that rare. Maybe I'll grab an autograph board for my little sister.

…And so, for all those reasons, I had to make a bit of a trip to the GGC venue tomorrow night. But right now, my immediate priority was verifying the Unique Scenario with these two.

Mold: "Hey, Rust… it's been quite a while since we stepped away from this game. You think someone else might've already cleared that Unique Scenario?"

Rust: "…I think it's fine. Even we don't really know what the trigger conditions are."

The Unique Scenario the two of them had offered me, "Strike the Apostle of the Abyss," starts by talking to an NPC called the self-proclaimed "Great Pirate Stude." But how you even get to that point — apparently even the two people involved don't fully understand it.

Mold: "The first time we came here, Rust got… well, genuinely furious at the NPCs' provocations and beat the crap out of every last one of them."

Sunraku: "Beat the crap out of all of them…? She looks like a ranged archer build to me… And you can drop the formal speech."

Mold: "Oh, right… Rust switches between 'magic bow' and 'power bow,' so her base STR is really high. Against humans — especially NPCs — just punching them normally was more than enough, so…"

Sunraku: "Ahh…"

There was a keyword in there that caught my attention, but anyway — Rust apparently went on a total rampage. She brawled so hard it was basically "if their face looks evil, just deck 'em." Then, before she knew it, an NPC calling himself the "Great Pirate's Messenger" had led her to the Unique Scenario. Hmm. Is the condition beating up a certain number of NPCs? No, wait — I feel like Pencilgon once told me that killing NPCs also builds up your Karma Value. If it were a Bonus Unique Scenario — rare among the rare — it might not be impossible, but… you don't actually have to kill them? Maybe it's something else entirely.

In the first place, this game penalizes you equally whether you kill a player or an NPC. In a game system like that, people who'd think to beat the hell out of NPCs are a tiny minority. If you want EXP, just leave town and take down an area boss or a rare enemy. It's not exactly a loophole in the system… but it's definitely a blind spot.

Rust: "And then, you play along with that self-proclaimed 'Great Pirate' little shithead and chase a ghost ship... that's this scenario."

Sunraku: "'Little shithead'...?"

Mold: "Ah, yeah... that really is the only way to describe him..."

Even Mold rates this NPC that way…? Just so we're clear, my personal "little shithead" certification is based on the Fearia trash-game standard. Your garden-variety brattiness won't earn my recognition. The greatest evil in the Fearia trash game is, naturally, Fuckaria—otherwise known as Faria—no contest there. But a "little shithead" on par with that Fuckaria actually existed.

His name was "Ark," commonly known as "Gaiark." He was an artificial evil — intentionally designed as a "little shithead" by the very same developers who'd spawned Fuckaria, a character who unconsciously scattered disaster everywhere. In the story, his role was the "beloved child of the spirits" within the Spirit Church, wielding immense authority and repeatedly obstructing the protagonists. Starting with placing bounties on the hero's party and sending assassins (minimum ten, elites included), poisoning the wells of villages the hero was heading toward, siccing monsters on them, setting forests on fire, stealing key items… the list goes on. These weren't actions designed to be obstacles for the protagonist — they were clearly aimed at making the player miserable.

Even knowing all that, it was still stressful, and in the end, his reason for targeting the hero — or more precisely, Fuckaria — was the selfish motive of "the spirits love you more than me." On top of that, he went berserk and you had to fight him as a boss. The wiki devoted an entire page solely to how to beat the ever-loving crap out of him. He was the little shithead among little shitheads.

As for his fate: abandoned by the spirits, he was demoted from a powerful little shithead to a regular little shithead and kicked out of the church with nothing but the clothes on his back — a surprisingly brutal ending. And if you progressed the story far enough and talked to a specific NPC in a specific town, you could hear that "some incredibly bratty kid got hauled off to a male brothel… or a certain kind of establishment." That was the character.

If the Fearia trash game had been an R18 game, maybe you could've seen Gaiark-kun meet an appropriate fate in an appropriate establishment. But most players were satisfied just beating the shit out of boss-form Gaiark-kun and watching the scene where the spirits abandoned him — so was kicking the corpse that necessary? Did the devs not understand how to handle a "villain" character? And hey, Fuckaria, during your boss fight you were all "Even all the suffering in the world would not be enough for you," so why are you suddenly acting all saintly and pitying him? In the end, it just piled on more trash-game points.

Sunraku: "Exactly. A mere 'cheeky' attitude won't be enough to earn the title of 'little shithead' from m—"

Several minutes later.

Stude: "Welcome! I am the Great Pirate Stude-sama! My word is absolute!"

It feels a bit weird to say this, but… I think I've just learned, in the truest sense, what a "little shithead" really is.