Chapter 363: No One Can Shut People's Mouths

Aria: "A-ah, um... you are...?"

Sunraku: "Ah, right. This is the first time you've seen me in this form. It's me, Your Highness—Sunraku."

Aria: "Oh my!"

I instantly pull a lady's facade over myself and start role-playing. Hey, quit grinning while you record me! Divine punishment for you later!!

Aria: "Um... so, were you actually a woman all along?"

Sunraku: "No, I'm originally male. Well... through a certain connection, I obtained a way to change my sex."

Deep Throater: "Hey, Sunraku-kun, I am suuuper interested in that, so I'd really, really love for you to tell meee..."

Sunraku: "Sharrap! (in the sweetest voice I can possibly make)"

Deep Throater: "Ghk... uheheh, falling for you for real is unavoidable at this point..."

Keeping the Ctarnidd stuff secret got too annoying, so I've dumped most of it on Pencilgon. If you want to change sex that badly, let the scumbag and the pervert cannibalize each other.

Sunraku: "I'm glad to see you safe, Your Majesty. We had a little trouble on our end too, but... yes, we managed somehow."

Toravante: "Mm, I see... Watching someone who was a man only moments ago speak as a woman is, I must say, a rather strange experience... but you have done well to return safely."

I mean, I did die once, but let's keep that part to myself.

Still, this raid battle was one hell of a detour. If I got so wrapped up in it that I let the actual objective come in dead last, that would defeat the whole point. Honestly, I want to log out once and sleep... Actually, this is perfect. Let's take a break. Yeah, let's do that.

Sunraku: "So, break time."

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

Sunraku: "Come on, at least pick up on this much of what I mean."

Deep Throater: "We have been logged in for quite a long time, now that you mention it."

Sunraku: "Hey, don't read my mind—my intent. That's an invasion of privacy..."

Deep Throater: "I'd love to know what the model answer was supposed to beee..."

The answer to a problem involving people usually changes as time passes. Reality is cruel like that.

And so we wound up taking a break for about an hour, and I logged out at the instant save point the elves had hurriedly put together...

[Wolfgang]

Pencil Warrior: Ahh, this is the final warning. Be a good boy and confess what you did just a little while agooo.

Oikatzo: Confessss.

Pencil Warrior: Otherwise, we'll have no choice but to exercise direct sanctions against youuu.

Akitsu Akane: Sanctions!!

Rust: Specifically?

Pencil Warrior: I'll sic a zombie contaminated by Bakumatsu on him.

Kyogoku: WEEEELCOOOME...

Sunraku: Says the fake samurai who can't even deal with divine punishment on login.

Kyogoku: Hah?

Sunraku: Wait, don't tell me that announcement went out to every player?

Pencil Warrior: Aaaall right, you just coughed it up yourself, huhhh???

Oikatzo: Your lips are way too light... what, do you live on helium?

Sunraku: Come back after you trigger a Unique yourself, then you can talk~? (high-pitched voice)

Oikatzo: I hate that it actually made me snort a little.

Rust: If Mold had been awake, we'd have lost Mold for half a day for sure. That was close.

Pencil Warrior: So it really was you, huh—you—you bastard... Sigh. Library's about to get noisy.

Sunraku: No, hold on. This time I did nothing wrong.

Sunraku: Let me state for the record that I was one hundred percent a victim who got dragged into it.

Oikatzo: Says the guy whose natural ecology is basically a black hole that drags some kind of event in every single time.

Sunraku: Doesn't it make you sad living that satellite life, piggybacking on the Uniques other people trigger every time...?

Oikatzo: Fine, come to Constipation sometime. I'll beat the hell out of you.

Sunraku: Bring it. Bug Vale Tudo, right?

Pencil Warrior: Hey, don't casually schedule a fight through the natural flow of the conversation.

Pencil Warrior: So, how was it?

Sunraku: How was what?

Pencil Warrior: If it's a raid monster, its behavior patterns can be reused.

Pencil Warrior: Tip Library off or something and we could get a pretty big flow of money moving...

Sunraku: I dunno about that. The broad flow is probably the same, but the main body's actual motions could be different...

Rust: Constipation...?

Sunraku: Either way, you need around thirty people for this thing.

Oikatzo: That's pretty shameless coming from the guy who cleared it with three people...

Sunraku: No, this time we also used a ton of NPCs and monsters, okay?

Sunraku: It's only listed as three.

Akitsu Akane: I still think that's amazing!

Pencil Warrior: So who'd you team up with this time? Are we gonna have to run another recruitment operation?

Sunraku: .........

Sunraku: ...No. You don't need to recruit them.

Sunraku: Yeah.

Sunraku: For the sake of my mental health.

Oikatzo: Someone you know or something?

Sunraku: More like... someone I know, except the whole thing is a lot more tangled than that.

Sunraku: He's basically the mastermind behind the "Spell Creation Online Incident"...

Oikatzo: Is that bad news? Nope, that's gigantic bad news.

Rust: I just looked it up. This is the mastermind?

Pencil Warrior: Incidentally, the Sunraku-kun acting like a victim over there was on the resistance side of that same incident.

Sunraku: Yaaay, directly involved party right hereee.

Sunraku: And the other one was a guy called Tottori the Shimahne.

Oikatzo: The Spell Creation Online Incident... A lot more games tightened their regulations after that, huh.

Pencil Warrior: Let's talk about SLF right now.

Pencil Warrior: I should be able to join back up with you guys pretty soon too, so can we all meet on the SLF side once?

Psyger-0: Specifically, when?

Sunraku: I want to sleep, so maybe tomorrow night...

Sunraku: Ah, Rei-shi. Hey.

Psyger-0: Good evening.

Akitsu Akane: Tomorrow night works for me!

Kyogoku: Event season's almost here... Come back to Bakumatsu... Ah, tomorrow night should be okay for me too, I guess.

Rust: Night... Well, I'll manage somehow.

Pencil Warrior: All right, then it's settled!

Pencil Warrior: The interrogation is unavoidable, so prepare yourself.

Sunraku: Ehh.

Oikatzo: Don't "ehh" me.

Rakuro: "Ehh..."

What a pain... No, forget the guaranteed interrogation. My body just feels sluggish in general. Still, if a little heaviness like this is enough to beat me, I'll never be able to game. Time to wake myself up properly.

Rakuro: "Hehehehe... If you're only getting mildly wired, Japanese-made really is the way to go."

The kick is weak enough to wake me up just the right amount, and I can still sleep soundly afterward. Perfect system... Aaah, the energy drink is soaking into my body...

Rakuro: "All right. I'm awake."

I'm a little hungry too, so I'll put something in my stomach before I log back in.

After that, I helped myself to a little liver-and-garlic-chive stir-fry that had been cooling in the fridge, filled my stomach, and logged in again... Maybe I was more keyed up than I realized, because I never noticed the single new message sitting in my mailbox.

Sunraku: "Hmm... Maybe dying once to refresh myself wouldn't be a bad idea..."

In combat, once I move with it as just another part of the body, I stop noticing it. But during normal downtime, these breasts taking the full force of every bit of centrifugal motion on this torso are hard not to notice.

Sunraku: "They're only part of the avatar's shape, but damn, they're in the way..."

Deep Throater: "If they're in the way, at least let me get one squeeze!"

Sunraku: "Begone, evil spirit!"

Deep Throater: "L-liver...!"

I've got energy drink in me now. My edge is completely different from before. Completely different.

Sunraku: "Harassment still gets flagged even between the same sex. If anything, this is a merciful fist, you know?"

Deep Throater: "But wouldn't it be more immorally satisfying to drive a straight punch right into the navel instead of the flank? Aah! Agh! Nooo, not the temple grinding!!"

Barely any muscle, yet the nerves work just fine. The head really is a weak point most of the time. Makes perfect sense that a headshot can one-shot you.

Deep Throater: "Anyway, setting that aside, it looks like the elves are planning to come back here again..."

Sunraku: "It's their homeland, so that part isn't weird... but what does the place actually look like now?"

Deep Throater: "If we had a top-tier builder... maybe, I guess?"

You can safely call the elves' construction technology incredible. They can build a save point out of just a few tree branches, leaves, and a handful of other items, so of course it is.

But put another way: if the first two items are fast and cheap, the third is fragile.

Even that tsundere who is obviously the highest-ranking one... uh, what was it, something like Umeshu—plum wine... whatever. Even Ms. Plum Wine is a seasoned survivalist. These people are fundamentally used to abandoning their homes.

In other words, from the perspective of Japanese people like us, who are so used to disasters that a middling earthquake or typhoon barely fazes us anymore, what they're doing looks less like reconstruction and more like playing at reconstruction. Do you people even take construction seriously?

Sunraku: "Patch a hole in the wall with leaves and call it rebuilt? That doesn't even qualify as an emergency repair..."

Deep Throater: "Then how about putting leaves on the undamaged walls too, so nobody knows where an arrow might come flying from?"

Sunraku: "RNG is bad. Even if it's only a ten-percent chance, if it can nail you on the very first shot, that's bullshit. Bullshit."

Passive RNG in particular is seriously better avoided. Leaving the decision of victory or defeat to something other than yourself gets the blood rushing to your head far more easily than you'd expect.

Tottori: "I'm ba—... What the hell is that abnormal communication style?"

Deep Throater: "You can tell!? Come on, we're in an abnormal relationship, sooo!!"

Sunraku: "Wanna crank up the output—vibes?"

Deep Throater: "ELECTRIC MASSAAAGER!!?"

Crack... crack... skull, crack... there we go, grind grind.

The sight of them carrying on a conversation the whole time, one grinding a head and the other having theirs ground, is—no matter how you look at it—abnormal and immoral.

For the record, it doesn't actually hurt all that much. Deliberately putting on a wildly convincing overreaction is Deep Throater quality.