Chapter 330: Wickedness Isn't Limited to the Brain

For now, an update.

And so begins the "Why don't we split Fuckaria apart and just make what Heroine-chan saw Spell Creation Online?" plan.

Sunraku: "Tottori the Shimahne... I feel like I've seen that name somewhere... Ah, I remember. You're the guy who found the elves and has been escorting them without dying."

Tottori: "Sunraku... wait, THAT Sunraku!? Seriously? The real thing? Not somebody cosplaying him?"

Sunraku: "If there were a roleplayer who could reproduce getting cursed in two places by Lycagon, I'd probably send them a friend request..."

On one side was a player known on the SLF forums as "The Last Hope of Elf-Lovers," "Our Hero," and "The One to Whom Death Is Not Permitted." On the other was a player known on the SLF forums as "Unique Hunter," "Suspected Dev Account," and "The Perverted Exhibitionist Dragging Around a Bunny-Girl Slave"... Hey, hold it, what the hell is that last one!? A female rabbit and a bunny-girl outfit are on completely different levels of perversion—no, she isn't a slave in the first place, and being half-naked isn't by choice, and—GAAAH, who the hell spread this around!!

Tottori: "Whoa... you really are half-naked all the time. I'm kind of moved. Going around the New Land with no equipment is suicidal, though..."

Sunraku: "Well, I make up for that with skills... No, that's not the point. Anyway, can you hear me out first?"

Tottori: "Huh? O-oh, sure."

Good. If my guess was right, Tottori was the irregular element here, but he was also the only person here who could understand what I meant from a meta perspective.

Sunraku: "Right now I'm on a quest from Saint-chan, escorting former king Toravante and First Princess Aria."

Tottori: "Toravante? That's the kingdom's king, right? Wait, did the throne change hands?"

Sunraku: "How should I know? Apparently his son overthrew him."

Tottori: ".........???"

The old guy getting laid off wasn't the important part. The problem was our current situation.

Sunraku: "This is just a guess, but... I think the king getting stranded in the New Land and then running into elves where he was stranded weren't coincidences. They're probably events built into the quest. What do you think?"

Tottori: "........."

Tottori fell silent as though thinking it over, then glanced toward the edge of his vision—toward the nonhuman people, the elves, who had suddenly grown noisy after my party and the king and princess joined up with them.

The elves were textbook examples of slightly slender, beautiful men and women. Tottori glanced at the king and Fa— the First Princess surrounded by them, and at Emul, whom the elves were bizarrely terrified of for some reason. Then, as though resigning himself to it, he opened his mouth.

Tottori: "...Mine is a Unique Scenario. It's called 'Great Migration of the Forest People: Immigrant Elf,' and the condition is 'Bring the elves to the frontline base'... But now that you mention it, coming into contact with King Toravante as the story progresses doesn't feel all that strange."

A Unique Scenario, huh... I'd already experienced a Bonus Unique Scenario being connected to a normal Unique Scenario, but could an ordinary quest and a Unique Scenario really link up in real time?

Still, according to Tottori, the elf we'd restrained earlier... Erina, was it? Apparently she'd suddenly taken off running for some vague reason like a "divine revelation" or a "premonition."

Sunraku: "So here's my proposal. We're both headed for the same destination, so why don't we team up?"

Tottori: "...I get why it helps you. More people means more stability. But what do we get out of it?"

Heh heh heh. It seemed he still hadn't noticed that we had already seized complete control of the negotiation. This was not a negotiation between equals. We were going to do Tottori and the elves the favor of letting them protect us.

Sunraku: "Those two are pro-demi-human, but the current king—the First Prince—is a hardcore bigot."

Tottori: "Ahhh............ So if we don't protect that father and daughter here, the elves are basically screwed?"

Sunraku: "If you can call being treated like slaves or pets 'friendly,' then I guess you don't need to worry."

Tottori the Shimahne. Never mind the name—I could tell just by looking that he had enough guts and motivation to keep accompanying the elves without dying. In that case, he obviously wouldn't want to do anything that increased the odds of losing one of the very few chances to reject the current regime.

Right. Unlike Tottori's side, whose NPCs could scout and fight, ours consisted of a slightly chubby old man and a powerless wic— no, a powerless princess. Even if someone like Rei-shi, a tank, had taken this escort quest, leaving the whole thing to one person would still feel risky.

Tottori: "...You aren't giving me a choice at all. What part of this makes you Arthur Pencilgon's puppet...?"

Sunraku: "No, no, I'm totally a puppet. Completely a puppet. Everything is her fault."

Blame it on Pencilgon and things will somehow work out. That was the shared understanding between Katzo and me. In exchange, we dealt with the occasional giant bombs she dropped on us, so it more or less balanced out... Wait, did she drop those bombs as a counterattack because we kept dumping all the blame on her? Hmm... whatever. Curse you, Pencilgon.

Tottori: "Fine. A lot of players have been waiting for interaction with demi-human races, and if this keeps things from turning R-18-ish, that's even better."

Deal struck. Emul and I temporarily dissolved our party and joined Tottori's party with the elf from earlier—Erina—and one other elf who, unlike the others, looked every inch a mage: Hesh.

Sunraku: "There's something I've been wondering about for a while... There are a ton of elves here. How does the party system treat all of them?"

Tottori: "Anyone who isn't actually added as a party member becomes useless. Even if we encounter monsters, they prioritize running away, so we have to draw the monsters ourselves."

W-what a cowardly race... Well, from a community-level perspective, that was perfectly reasonable, but... Just look at Emul. The elves' Vorpal Soul was so low she was getting angry.

Emul: "Muuuh... these guys don't have nearly enough Vorpal Soul, wa!"

Sunraku: "Come on, calm down, Emul. If you're trying to survive in a hellscape like this, avoiding unnecessary fights is only natural, right?"

Emul: "Then what would you do if it were you, Sunraku-san, wa? Would you run away, wa?"

Sunraku: "Meat, materials, EXP... There's no way I'd let any of that get away."

Emul: "Now that's Vorpal Soul, wa!"

With a "Yeah!" I high-fived Emul, broke into a cold sweat when Aria entered my field of view, and then got back to discussing the route ahead with Tottori.

Sunraku: "Now that we've got a deal, I'll be honest: they're actually being targeted by assassin-like pursuers... specifically, the Kingdom Knights—state power."

Tottori: "...Hey."

Sunraku: "No, wait, wait. I'm not planning to throw the elves at the knights. I've got a way to disguise my appearance, and if you want to hide people, you put them in a crowd or behind the textures, right?"

Tottori: "Textures...? Well, whatever. I get what you mean. You want to hide them among the elves and enter the base that way, right?"

Exactly. What I wanted from the elves wasn't their combat strength. It was their numbers. In SLF, encounters with demi-human races other than ordinary humans were something countless players had long awaited—literally, something they had waited for and wished for.

If elves appeared at the frontline base, an uproar was inevitable. And if anyone tried to harm an elf right in the middle of the players, then even if the attacker was an NPC, they wouldn't escape the players' cold, contemptuous stares.

Yes! This was the Noisy Majority Plan, not the Silent Majority! Battles were won with numbers. A hero worth a thousand warriors could simply be trampled beneath two thousand mooks...!!

Sunraku: "Honestly, if I could ignore the red-name consequences, wiping them out wouldn't be that hard... Kidding, kidding."

Don't look at me the way I look at Pencilgon... Honestly, if I were free to use [Seiryu] and [Shoro], it'd be pretty easy. Mr. Die Hard looked like his range topped out around medium distance anyway.

Still, if I carelessly raised their aggro, got my Avenger job revoked, and wound up jobless again, that would be the worst possible outcome. So if I was going to act, it would have to be indirectly. On that front, that scarred three-headed tyranno had been excellent. I wonder what materials it drops?

As though he'd just remembered something, Tottori clapped his hands once and spoke to me.

Tottori: "Ah... right. I should probably tell you this. We actually haven't been taking the shortest route to the base."

Sunraku: "Meaning?"

Tottori: "The Awakening Altar. It's probably somewhere around here. I'm in a mapping clan, so I wanted to open up the route while we were at it."

The Awakening Altar... that thing that removes the level cap! Wait, seriously? There's one nearby!?

The gods' little game before service launch.

Worldbuilding-Focused Genius: "Put the level-cap unlock facility in the elf village."

Game-Balance-Focused Genius: "Sure, why not... But it'd be a problem if they got wiped out, so beef up their defenses."

Worldbuilding-Focused Genius: "Fine. We can't have the elves going extinct either, so beef up the defenses and resume."

(The elves abandon the village in three days and become a nomadic people.)

Both geniuses burst out laughing. Decision: proceed exactly as-is. More stomach medicine was ordered.