Chapter 222: Real Strong
Author note: The World Truth Book “Abyss Arc” has been added to Interlude: Stage Three. Please take note.
Before I knew it, summer was nearing its end, around the time when cicadas, having spent all their years of savings, began falling to the ground.
Rakuro: "I've got my assignments, and my student ID... Alright, I'm good."
Wearing my freshly dry-cleaned summer uniform and making sure my hair wasn't sticking up, I opened the front door.
Rakuro: "I'm off."
Mother: "Okay, have a nice day."
Ushered out by my mother's voice, the season was September. As a high schooler, I had to go to school.
As I walked the dangerous route to school, littered with cicada-final landmines, I thought about how busy things would get now that the long break was over.
For starters, I probably won't be able to play games as much as I used to. I'll mainly have to play at night from here on, but I'm used to that routine.
The problem is that SLF is synced with real time. The monster spawn tables change between day and night, so I need to think about that too.
I'd defeated the Unique Monster "Ctarnidd of the Abyss" and conquered two Uniques, but as expected, the troubles increased proportionally.
What greeted me when I returned to Fifticia was a horde of hawks, squawking and carrying stacks of letters that had grown at a terrifying rate.
The sender was Professor—the fake magical girl who leads the lore-analysis clan or whatever it was.
The emails, sent with such frequency it felt like spam, all basically said "I want to talk with you." By the time the hawks hit twenty, I was genuinely starting to feel creeped out.
I had no choice but to pick one, a hawk that looked familiar, and attach a reply saying "I'll message you eventually, so stop the spam emails, idiot," which seemed to solve the problem. But I realized that, if things went wrong, I might not be able to walk around the city at all.
The Blue Grail is useful, but a pain to use. Maybe I should defect to the Rabituza... maybe just live there permanently...
Rakuro: "Nothing ever goes smoothly in an MMO..."
What makes it fun is that the majority of people play it, but that's exactly why it's such a pain. It's just like life... meaning reality is an MMO, and games are life.
Rakuro: "So, what should I do today... repair weapons, I guess."
After the whole thing, I was so tired I logged out and went straight to sleep. And after that, I just didn't feel like playing for a while...
Walking down a road lined with cherry trees in the spring, past a few traffic lights and turns, and you reach school. If I take a little detour here, I can get to RockRoll.
I don't have anything specific to buy, but maybe I'll stop by on the way back.
That person is a hardcore otome gamer, so she probably has an even more grueling and packed schedule than me. She's a formidable woman who brushes off a game like LoveClock as "pretty busy, I guess." In terms of sheer "execution" of a plan, she might surpass me, Katzo, and even Pencilgon. That's what it takes to pursue the harem route, I guess. The galge industry is scary.
Ah, speaking of which, I need to check if I can make anything from all those seafood monster materials I got. My money problems are completely solved, so I might as well splurge a little.
Rakuro: "…………"
Now.
Let me change the subject. People's presence is said to be electromagnetic waves emitted from the human body. Because they linger, that's why after watching a horror movie, you get that common feeling of "someone's here even though no one is." You're just hypersensitive to presences and picking up on residual electromagnetic waves.
So what I'm trying to say is...
(I feel like I'm being followed... right?)
No, scratch the "right."
And it has nothing to do with electromagnetic waves. I've been hearing a distinctly different set of footsteps for a while now.
A stalker? No, no way. Let's calm down and think.
The most likely possibility is that our destination is the same... meaning another student from my school.
We're almost at school, so that's probably the highest possibility... but still. They're awfully close.
(Judging by the footsteps, is there only about a meter between us...?)
Based on the clicking footsteps, I feel like if I stopped suddenly, whoever's behind me might crash into me.
(Are they walking while looking at their phone...?)
That seems likely. They're not looking in my direction, which is why they can be this close, and why they're so close is because we're walking at the same speed.
If that's the case, the solution is simple. If I speed up just a little...
(………They're keeping up.)
What, is the stalker theory actually gaining traction? No way.
That would mean it's someone I know? My house is in a weird part of the school district, so none of my friends live nearby. So, except for when I take detours on the way home, I shouldn't run into anyone I know on the way to school.
What? I'm starting to get scared. I know I could just turn around and check, but the awkwardness if it turns out to be a complete stranger is bothering me. We'd both end up feeling this "why is this person following me?" and "why did this person suddenly look at me?" awkwardness. I don't want to deal with that on the first day back from summer break.
What should I do... Should I just run away and shake them? No, but if I run at this time, when I'm not even late, they'll realize I knew they were there without even looking.
And it might feel like a "win and run," but I'd be running away with a bad feeling, so it's more like a "lose and run." Damn. The difficulty is already high in early September. So reality really is an MMO where all of humanity participates...!
???: "……Ah, um!"
Rakuro: "!!?"
A voice! No, someone called out to me! What is it? What's her angle? Why make contact in this situation? Did I have something stuck to my back? No, in that case, the adult thing to do would be to respond like a gentleman and laugh it off.
Rakuro: "YES-WHAT-IS-IT?"
???: "Um, well... you're Hizutome-kun, right?"
When I turned around, standing there was a girl my age, completely different from the "person behind me" that my brain had automatically imagined.
Rakuro: "Ah, uh... Saiga-san?"
Rei: "Yes! Hizutome-kun, um, well... it's been since summer break, hasn't it!"
Rakuro: "Summer... ah, right, it has."
I see. The reason she was following me was because she couldn't be sure it was me from behind.
Unlike the cool summer dress she wore that day, Saiga-san, dressed in our school's girls' summer uniform, smiled happily, her face slightly flushed, perhaps from the lingering summer heat.
Hmm, as expected of the athletic and academic Saiga-san, who also has good looks and personality. When you put it in writing, it sounds like a galge heroine, but she actually exists.
Rakuro: "Hey, does Saiga-san live around here?"
Rei: "W-Well, I thought I'd change my route for once, just for a change of pace, and I happened to... yes, I happened to see you!"
Rakuro: "I see..."
Well, I've run into her at the convenience store near my house, so it makes sense that we live nearby.
Still, her house is about as far removed from my interests as things get, so it doesn't really matter.
Now, if I just say "Okay, then" and cut the conversation, it wouldn't be very human of me. So I guess I should engage in some "idle small talk."
Rakuro: "Even so, summer break is over and school's starting again."
Rei: "Th-That's right... we're going to school, after all."
Don't get me wrong, I'd like it if summer break lasted forever, but then life would lose its rhythm. It's precisely because things don't always go smoothly that both reality and games are fun. Though, I suppose there are people out there who just do whatever they like for a living. I'm looking at two particular scoundrels and Natsume. And the American monster pro gamer, Sylvia Goldberg, is a perfect example.
Rakuro: "…………"
Rei: "…………"
Damn, she doesn't want a back-and-forth "pitch-and-catch" style of conversation. She wants a one-sided "pitcher-to-batter" style. If I were a high-spec, super-popular guy, I'd be able to supply topics like a machine gun, but I specialize in a different direction of "enriching my real life." A six-shooter revolver is about my limit. Hold out, my conversational skills...!
Rakuro: "Ah... oh, yeah. Speaking of which, Saiga-san plays SLF, right?"
Rei: "Fweh?"
Rakuro: "Fweh?"
Rei: "N-No, it's nothing! Yes! I play SLF!"
Come to think of it, I had to cut that conversation short because those two scoundrels were rushing me that day, but I'm pretty sure that's what we were talking about.
Perhaps because I'd suddenly changed the subject to games, Saiga-san's shoulders twitched. Whatever that hairstyle with a name like Beverly Hills was called, it swayed softly.
Rakuro: "So Saiga-san plays too. Are you a healer or something?"
Rei: "N-No, well... I'm a warrior class."
Not that surprising, actually. I've heard rumors that she's really good at kendo and such. Wethermon is just insane; against regular monsters, martial arts experience is a huge weapon.
Rakuro: "I see... Do you play a lot?"
Rei: "Yes, well, you know... yes. I'm even part of a clan..."
Rakuro: "Oh, is it like a friends-and-family clan?"
Rei: "Well, you could say that..."
Clans made up of friends and family carry the risk of real-life fallout if things go wrong, but they have the advantage of much stronger bonds than playing with strangers.
Me, Katzo, and Pencilgon all came from other games, so we're basically a friends-and-family clan, though we're closer to a swarm of locusts.
Despite a certain incident, we've added new members, so it's hard to call us a "friends-and-family" clan anymore. I've learned that "fresh" and "vegetable sticks" don't necessarily have to be paired together.
Anyway, this is a good flow. Without having to force a change of subject, the topic of SLF can keep us going.
Rakuro: "The New World has been unlocked, but will you be able to challenge it?"
Rei: "W-Well, I'm sure a lot of players... want to go..."
It's true that they're building a bunch of ships, and most newcomers still base themselves out of Thirdrema, but I doubt there are less than a hundred players holding back from going to the New Land. I've also heard that top clans like Rei-shi's Schwarz Vulf reduced their numbers for the first ships to the New Land out of consideration for other players.
Rakuro: "True, but the current land hasn't been fully explored either, so I doubt it'll get boring."
After all, the Unique Monsters were mostly left alone.
Rei: "That's true. Hehehe..."
Saiga-san laughed happily. Had my meager conversational skills at least managed to pass the time for her?
Then, a small shadow darted into the scene. A single cicada, having exhausted its stock of life and likely unable to leave behind any offspring, fell with a strangely contented look.
It traced a downward parabolic arc, heading straight for Saiga-san.
If this were a game, I might have been able to react. But in reality, I don't have a body that can keep up with my thoughts. The only reason I even noticed the falling cicada was because it happened to enter my field of vision. Before I could shout a warning or move my body, the cicada was about to hit Saiga-san on the head...
Rei: "Hya!"
SMACK!!
Rakuro: "Gwah!"
Rei: "Huh? Ah, aah!?"
Despite realizing it later than I did, Saiga-san's hand moved faster. Her knife-hand chop smacked the cicada away.
The cicada, spinning in the air, made a perfect belly landing on my cheek.
Having never expected a stray bullet to come my way, I lost my balance and fell over. As if to add insult to injury, the cicada, shock-revived by Saiga-san's chop, turned into a cicada-final landmine and went wild.
BRRRRRRRRRRZZZZZZTTT!!
Rakuro: "Ow, ow, ow, ow!!"
Its legs! Its legs are getting caught! Its wings are smacking me! This is bad!
Rei: "I-I'm so sorry! I'll get it off... Kyaah!?"
Thus, Rakuro Hizutome's first memory after summer break was getting a face full of slap, cicada and all.
Saiga-san is strong.
Q. How strong is Saiga-san?