Chapter 375: Stacking Up Happiness

[Wolfgang]

Sunraku: "Hi, I'm Sunraku, primary shareholder of the Golden Scales, and they even give me VIP treatment when I show up without an appointment."

Oikatzo: "Uh..."

Pencil Warrior: "Think you could get us a friends-and-family discount?"

Sunraku: "Not enough sincerity."

Pencil Warrior: "Oops, is that an old grudge talking? You're pretty small-minded, Sunraku-kun."

Sunraku: "I get unlimited use of the Scales of Compensation, you know."

Pencil Warrior: "Sunraku-samaaa! I'll go buy you a yakisoba bun!!"

Oikatzo: "Pencilgon, the woman who'll grovel with everything she's got for a cheat-tier item."

Pencil Warrior: "I mean, if you abuse that thing even a little, you could destabilize the kingdom's economy, y'know?"

Sunraku: "Your idea of how to use it is far too evil. Divine punishment really is necessary."

Kyogoku: "Yeah. I'm looking forward to the event."

Mold: "I noticed the chat had updated, so I came to look, and... what even is this conversation...?"

Sunraku: "We're talking about SLF."

Oikatzo: "When three people put their heads together!"

Pencil Warrior: "The wisdom of Manjusri!!"

Kyogoku: "Isn't 'Danger: Do Not Mix' more accurate?"

Mold: "Ruhi-o."

Psyger-0: "Scales of Compensation?"

Sunraku: "A nice item that lets you offer basically anything as a sacrifice and converts it into temporary stat points or money."

Pencil Warrior: "It makes PK laundering super easy too!"

Kyogoku: "Whoa, that sounds nice."

Rust: "Mold's diaphragm is dancing like crazy. I want you to take responsibility."

Sunraku: "Just say his chronic hiccups got worse or something."

Psyger-0: "Come to think of it, is there anything specific we should be doing?"

Pencil Warrior: "Hmm?"

Pencil Warrior: "Oh, the Noirlind situation? If that's what you mean, there's no particular need to do anything yet."

Pencil Warrior: "Either way, right now it doesn't look like Noirlind and Siegwurm's decisive battle is going to happen immediately."

Pencil Warrior: "At the very least, until the exact coordinates of the white dragon, red dragon, and green dragon are pinned down, we've still got plenty of time to prepare."

Pencil Warrior: "And right now there's the raid monster some idiot took down, the Ctarnidd stuff Library exposed, and those new races that keep coming up in rumors... Even if the 'Never Forgive Noirlind' faction takes the lead, I'd say we've got a month of breathing room, don't you think?"

Kyogoku: "A month, huh... Then I should be able to join you guys on the day of the festival."

Oikatzo: "The first ship is heading back your way once, right? I heard that with resupply included, it'll be about three weeks before it reaches the New World again."

Sunraku: "Plenty of time."

Kyogoku: "Hmm... Oh, right."

Kyogoku: "If any of you make it to a Beastman settlement, I'd like you to go to where the fox Beastmen are."

Sunraku: "Oh?"

Pencil Warrior: "I smell information being kept secret."

Oikatzo: "Punish them? Shall we punish them on heaven's behalf?"

Kyogoku: "Well, even I have one or two secrets I'd rather keep hidden."

Kyogoku: "Actually, Sunraku, you're the last person I want complaining about that."

Pencil Warrior: "Come on, spit out the information!"

Oikatzo: "We won't hesitate to use inhumane methods!"

Sunraku: "Damn it, you immediately turned the guns on me."

Rust: "[Breaking News] Mold laughed too hard and faceplanted into an automatic door that wasn't open."

Pencil Warrior: "Isn't it unfair that he's already that funny on his own?"

Oikatzo: "As expected of the walking laugh bag. He's on another level."

Sunraku: "His facial muscles must be ripped."

Mold: "Aren't you all being awful!?"

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Rakuro: "What the hell..."

A tightly sealed, reinforced-plastic delivery box.

Amid rows of characters that are obviously not Japanese, my surname and the name Takeda tell me that the thing has finally arrived.

And when I shift my gaze to the side, there's the physical package of a certain game I spotted at RockRoll just a little while ago and bought on a whim.

Shift my gaze farther to the side, and there's yet another box wrapped in packaging written in a language other than Japanese.

When I checked inside, it contained one of those so-called memory cubes that can only be used once and never again.

Rakuro: "Requiem for Armies, Galaxia Heroes Chaos, and Fuuun Prejiden..."

What the hell. A game, a game, and another game... They all landed at once.

First, let's sort out the situation. Requiem for Armies is the one I bought myself. This is the game featuring Faceless Mercenary Jack, the character I cosplayed when I entered GGC anonymously.

I figured that if I'd gone as far as cosplaying him, I should at least play his game... Well, fine.

Next is Fuuun Prejiden. Sure enough, it came by the fastest shipping from Zimbabwe. That's Takeda-san for you. I want to be like that in the future too... Seriously, respect.

To begin with, Takeda-san — Takeda Ingen — is a different kind of trash-game friend from those two scumbags. I actually play games together with those two, while with Takeda-san it's more like we review the trash games each of us finds for the other.

And his trash-game career goes back to before full-dive VR, all the way to the retro era when games were displayed on monitors. He's an old veteran. He once sent me a photo, and the fact that he built an entire vacation house just for trash games says it all: he's simply on another level.

From games for little girls to R-18 titles, Takeda-shi has every kind of trash game imaginable. He's my idol, the destination I'm aiming for.

The reason I don't neglect my schoolwork is none other than the fact that Takeda-shi, who seems like a real-world winner, is my image of the finished product I want to become.

So there's no way I could put off the legendary trash game Fuuun Prejiden, which Takeda-shi and I got all fired up about around last year.

Rakuro: "First I'll send him an email... Wait, what's the time difference with Zimbabwe?"

I found out from his reply to my thank-you email that he's in Eastern Europe right now. His footwork is way too light... And when I casually worked backward from the building in the attached photo to figure out where it was taken, it turned out to be the headquarters of a world-famous company. Judging by the height, he was somewhere near the top floor too.

Rakuro: "Yep, let's not think too hard about it!!"

Takeda-shi really is amazing!! I want to become the kind of person who can build a trash-game palace someday too.

And finally, this. This thing right here.

Some pro gaming team is somehow involved in the middle of this, but the sender is Galaxia Label. Isn't that the developer of GH:C?

What is this... The pressure is intense. Like, You'll play it, right? I mean, a lot of that is probably just my own paranoia, but I'm starting to feel this creeping sense of urgency, like they're slowly filling in the moat around me.

Maybe it's just the Japanese in me, but after they've given me this much, I start worrying about whether I can really just pretend I know nothing... Alright, I'll pretend I saw nothing! Future me will figure something out. Believe in yourself. I can do it.

For now, I'll send Katzo the URL for the latest version of his own thread... there.

Rakuro: "Leaving games piled up unplayed goes against my pride."

Fine, let's do this. I've got school like normal tomorrow, but there's no other choice. I'm pulling an all-nighter!!

Alright, time to build a schedule. For now, SLF and GH:C get pushed back.

SLF is going to be quiet for a while anyway, so this is a good time to indulge in another game for once.

That means I'll clear Requiem for Armies — which I can finish just by doing the campaign scenario — today, then start Fuuun Prejiden while pounding energy drinks———!

Perfect.

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???: "Ah, Hizutome-kun, good morn— wh-what happened!?"

Rakuro: "...Nah, yeah. I got emotionally moved, you know."

???: "R-right..."

Jack... was such a cool character...

The one thing I can't approve of is how, just to tell a good story, they stuffed way too much content into what was supposed to be the campaign scenario... I'm sleepy.

A future where everything is ruled by economics... Mercenaries are managed by numbers and codes, and human dignity is trampled more easily than mud on a battlefield.

The protagonist is a mercenary belonging to a certain corporation. Sent to a rare-metal tanker seething with human greed, he becomes unwillingly entangled in a conspiracy that draws in the entire world...

A mercenary who lost his name. A mercenary who, even after losing his face, still cries out who he is. A corporate heiress offered up as a sacrifice. An execution squad that lost its human dignity... Everyone loses something.

Amid the endless battle, carve the "name" of you who are nobody.

Requiem for Armies. It is a requiem for mercenaries.

Near the end, the rare-metal tanker that appeared as the first stage shows up again and rams itself into a corporate battleship, while Jack sinks to the bottom of the sea together with a nuclear weapon.

That's basically how it goes.