The Beginning of Another World Read online

  Guilds were teams of multiple players, and the most common type of community in Elder Tales. Players who joined a guild were given access to an exclusive guild account at the in-game bank, were able to use safe-deposit boxes for easier item receipt and delivery, and could take advantage of several convenient services. It was easier for guild members to contact one another and to put together parties when leaving on an adventure. Belonging to a guild was convenient and profitable, and as a result, many of the players in Elder Tales joined up.

  Shiroe had always been the type to get totally immersed in whatever interested him, and on top of that, he’d read everything he could find on the overseas versions of Elder Tales. Even among players who’d been around for the same length of time, he had an exceptional amount of knowledge. No doubt the guilds had seen him as a useful recruit.

  No single player had a perfect grasp of the game’s innumerable zones. Even Shiroe’s memory couldn’t handle that much information. Still, just knowing about the main traffic routes, the way various zones were linked together, and the Fairy Ring transport devices was enough to shorten travel time. It was also important to constantly accumulate knowledge on what sort of items were sold in which zone and what sort of monsters appeared where.

  Elder Tales was an imaginary world created from a jumble of innumerable zones that held countless types of items and monsters, commissioned adventures known as “quests,” all sorts of folklore and ancient knowledge, and an enormous assortment of other elements that the developers had dreamed up.

  However, Shiroe hadn’t been able to get used to relationships built around convenience and profit and loss. He’d grown up a bit now, but at the time, Shiroe had been far more willful, still very much a kid, and—embarrassingly—obsessively conscientious.

  Shiroe wasn’t good at relying on people, but he wasn’t bad at being relied on by others.

  Just because he wasn’t bad at it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt.

  Online games attract all sorts of people. Where there are people, there are human relationships, and not all of those relationships are pretty. There are countless ugly ones as well, and they were too much for a middle schooler like Shiroe.

  A little while after joining the guild, Shiroe realized that the people around him were using him as their own personal solutions site. Even though Shiroe’s level was already high, he was being shuffled this way and that like a jack-of-all-trades and loaned out to help other players battle. Shiroe couldn’t get used to that sort of relationship, and he wasn’t able to deal with the other members. He’d left the guild and, ever since, had stuck to temporary relationships or adventured on his own.

  Before he knew it, Shiroe had become a lone wolf. Since he had quite a lot of knowledge and level status for a loner, he’d also become fairly well-known, and as if in proportion to the notoriety, he’d become a rather jaded player.

  Shiroe had met Naotsugu after his skills had improved and after he’d given up on guild ties and journeyed alone for a while, just about the time he’d grown numb to the loneliness. They’d met at the notorious Debauchery Tea Party.

  The Debauchery Tea Party was not a guild. It was the Debauchery Tea Party, no more, no less; there really were no other words to describe it. To an objective spectator, it looked like nothing more than an accidental group of players who’d just happened to be there. Even if they “just happened to be there,” though, they were there, always, at any time. —That was Shiroe and his friends.

  They were from all sorts of guilds.

  Their personalities were all over the place.

  They had nothing whatsoever in common.

  Even so, Shiroe and the others met sometimes in ruined buildings, sometimes out on the plains, sometimes on hills under a sky of falling stars.

  They met, and they adventured.

  Elder Tales was a medieval sword-and-sorcery fantasy. There was an idea—so common among players that it was practically treated as official background—that the Elder Tales world probably came a few thousand years after the present-day world. According to the in-game folklore, an enormous war had broken out and destroyed the world, which had then been miraculously rebuilt by the gods. It was a pretty common fantasy game creation myth.

  Of course, the world swarmed with all the usual monsters: orcs and goblins, trolls and hill giants, Chimeras and Hydras. Most of players enjoyed battles. Fighting monsters, earning experience points, leveling up, and acquiring rare and powerful items was the most common way to play Elder Tales.

  However, that was “battling” and “getting items.” It wasn’t “adventuring.” The Debauchery Tea Party was where Shiroe had first learned that fighting battle after battle and adventuring were completely different things.

  Then, too, she had been a regular fixture at the Debauchery Tea Party, along with friends who supported her. Shiroe had been a solid part of that group.

  At the Debauchery Tea Party, Shiroe had found what were probably his very first friends in Elder Tales. One of those friends had been Naotsugu.

  2

  “If you were thinking about coming back, had things calmed down at work?”

  “Yeah. Finally. I tell ya, it was a crazy year.”

  The Debauchery Tea Party had been active for two years. Those two years were the happiest, most fulfilling years of all the time Shiroe had spent in Elder Tales. However, due to a variety of overlapping circumstances, the Debauchery Tea Party had closed its doors, leaving several legends in its wake.

  One of the triggers had been Naotsugu’s departure from the game. One winter, things had gotten busy at Naotsugu’s company, and he’d had to stop gaming for a while. As luck would have it, several other members had also had to leave the game around that time due to personal matters.

  The Debauchery Tea Party hadn’t been a guild. Since it wasn’t a guild, none of the relationships in it had been formed around shallow profit and loss. Although they were all old enough to be embarrassed by the idea and would never have said it aloud, Shiroe and the other members had really treasured one another.

  That was why the Debauchery Tea Party had suspended its activities indefinitely, even though no one had specifically suggested this. They’d considered inviting new friends and keeping the Tea Party open, of course, but that would have been another adventure, another story.

  It had been sad to see the group dissolve, but none of the members hung their heads and mourned. They’d shared lots of adventures and enjoyed themselves more than anyone else. That was compensation enough.

  “I finally got used to the job; thanks for asking. It’s been going pretty well, actually… I guess one thing does have me worried: There’s not a single cute girl at my company.”

  “Big deal. Who cares about that?”

  Shiroe shrugged off Naotsugu’s complaint.

  If ever there was a good guy, it was Naotsugu. In terms of true grit, Shiroe was confident that Naotsugu was much braver than he was. Sometimes he was too brave. Shiroe couldn’t recall a single situation that had been enough to stop Naotsugu from joking around.

  “What’s with the glare? Moody perv.”

  “I’m not a moody perv.”

  “No, trust me, you’re a moody perv. There are two types of guy in the world: liberated, ‘open’ pervs and introverted, moody pervs. I’m the open kind, and I love girls’ panties. You’re the moody kind, and I know—know—that you love panties, too.”

  Shiroe grimaced at that outrageous theory… Not that he was actually upset.

  For as long as he’d known him, Naotsugu had picked up on the atmosphere in situations and tossed oddball topics like that one around to lighten the mood. Besides, although he’d rather not deal with anything too glaringly raunchy, Shiroe was a healthy, young adult male and not entirely uninterested in the opposite sex. He liked to think he wasn’t narrow-minded enough to let a petty line like that one make him mad.

  “Well, yeah, I— I mean, sure, I like girls, but I wouldn’t take just any girl.”

&n
bsp; “Hey, I know what’s inside the package is what’s important. I just don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting worked up over the package, too, you know? …But under the circumstances…”

  Naotsugu heaved a big sigh.

  “Yeah.”

  Shiroe nodded. He knew all too well what Naotsugu meant.

  “Work may have calmed down a bit, but I sure didn’t ask for a vacation in some other world,” Naotsugu cracked, trying to make light of the situation. “Seriously, are we even gonna be able to get back?”

  All of the countless players who’d gotten dragged into this world were no doubt asking themselves that exact same question. The fact that Naotsugu was able to joke about a question that was so heavy it made it hard to breathe just went to show how mentally tough he was and how considerate he was toward Shiroe.

  “I think what we have here is one god stepping down and another one taking over. The new god has the brain of a delusional thirteen-year-old.”

  “Talk about a grim situation. Just look at all this. The world’s gone completely around the bend. What kind of a party is this, anyway?!”

  “Right. It’s probably best to assume we won’t be going home anytime soon.”

  “…And a merciless view of said grim situation. Wonderful.”

  “Only people who want to die add mercy to grim situations.”

  “Now that sounds like the Tea Party strategy counselor I know,” Naotsugu wisecracked.

  He shook his head a few times as if resetting his mood, then continued, his expression more serious. “All right. For now, I’ll give up… So, what next? This is one of those stock fantasy novel situations, and we’re going to have to survive from here on out, right?”

  Shiroe nodded reluctantly. From what he could remember, he hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary. He’d gone through his daily routine, taken a bath as usual, logged in to Elder Tales as usual, practiced hunting with the new twin players he’d met the other day, then been knocked out by something he hadn’t seen coming. He couldn’t remember anything else. He’d been doing pretty much the same things he usually did when he’d been forcibly pulled into this world, or dragged into this situation. There might have been some sort of cause or error on his part in there somewhere, but under the circumstances, there was no way of knowing.

  In addition, even if there was some way to get out of this other world (or situation), Shiroe didn’t know what it was, at least not right now.

  That meant that, whether they managed to find a way to get back to the world they’d left or simply waited to be sent back by the same sort of accident that had pulled them into this world in the first place, they’d have to survive here until it happened.

  “It’s possible that we’ll wake up back in our world if we die here, but I wouldn’t recommend trying it. It would be a little like those guys who are sure the world’s going to end, so they go and borrow a hundred million yen from a loan shark.”

  “Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a genius move. If we really just died, we’d just be dead. Loser city.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Still, we shouldn’t have much of a problem with the survival part. Right, Counselor Shiro?”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Well, no. We’re level ninety. We might have a problem getting through a super-tough zone, but if we’re talking about just surviving, it shouldn’t be that hard. We’ve even got money. Equipment, too… Mine’s kinda old, but it’ll do. See? No problem.”

  The Elder Tales RPG included a level system. At level 90, Shiroe and Naotsugu had reached the highest level there was, but it didn’t make them exceptional. Almost half the game’s players were at level 90. Elder Tales had a long history, and like most online games, it had added several hundred expansion packs with all sorts of new elements over the course of that history. Shiroe hadn’t experienced it firsthand, but he’d heard that when Elder Tales was first released, the highest level had been 50. Fans had loved the game, and they’d wanted to keep adventuring even after they’d hit level 50. An expansion pack had been released in response to the demand; in addition to adding new enemies, dungeons, and adventures, it had raised the level maximum to give the heroes more room to grow. The level maximum had been raised several times since then, until it had reached the current level 90. The last increase had been part of the Sacred Heart expansion pack released three years ago. There’d been an announcement that, with the Homesteading the Noosphere expansion pack, the level maximum would rise to 100.

  That meant many players had plenty of time to level up their Adventurer alter egos. It wasn’t at all surprising that, right now, just before the release of the new expansion pack, about half the players had hit the level maximum.

  “……I’m not so sure about that.”

  “Why not?”

  In spite of the circumstances, Naotsugu didn’t seem discouraged. Shiroe envied his optimism. He didn’t have that particular type of resilience.

  What he did have right now was a vague uneasiness. As if spurred on by that unease, he mentally began pulling words together.

  “I don’t know whether this is some other world or the world in the game, but either way… Just the fact that we’ve been pulled into it is weird.”

  “Huh? Well…yeah. What about it?”

  “I was just thinking. If things were normal, it wouldn’t have been possible for us to wander into another world, but we did. Since something impossible has happened already, we can’t trust the normal things to behave the way they usually do. In that case, if we believe we’ll be able to survive the way we could under normal circumstances, we’ll probably get hurt.”

  At Shiroe’s words, Naotsugu looked taken aback for a moment. Then he pulled a very unpleasant face. “That’s one ugly syllogism.”

  “Still…I think we need to face facts.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Naotsugu flexed his hand, opening and clenching his fist, as if uncertain about whether or not it was safe to trust his supposedly level-90 body.

  “One other thing. Since all this has been going on, I’d forgotten about it, but they’ve probably introduced that new expansion pack by now.”

  “Homesteading the Noosphere? That one?”

  “Right. If we assume the new expansion pack has been installed, then there’ll be new zones, plus new items, monsters, and quests. They may even have redesigned existing zones.”

  “Now that you mention it…I guess so.”

  Shiroe had looked away from Naotsugu, but the words kept coming. “It looks as though I can use spells without any trouble, but if I use them straight from the spell book, I have to select them from the menu first. That’s slow, so it would be dangerous in the middle of a fight. I checked, and if I register shortcuts, I just have to say a short chant to use them.”

  “Yeah. I know what you’re talking about; I checked to see if I could use the sword techniques I’ve got registered a little while back.”

  “That doesn’t mean we’ll be able to win a battle, though.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “About how tall are you, Naotsugu? In real life, I mean.”

  “A hundred and eighty-three. Same as my character.”

  Naotsugu waved one hand, skimming it over the top of his head.

  “I see. I guess it wouldn’t feel that weird for you, then. My height’s a few centimeters off, and it feels pretty strange. It feels…a bit like I’m wearing shoes with really thick soles, I guess. If the lengths of your legs and arms are different, it makes things feel weirder, I think. There’s a gap between these bodies and our real ones. In other words, these bodies aren’t the ones we’re used to. Even if we can use sword skills and spells, if things feel this odd, I don’t know how well we’ll be able to move in an actual fight.”

  “Oh. Yeah, there’s that. Trouble city. Pain in the butt.”

  “…And on top of that, under the circumstances, it won’t be easy to keep an eye on our statuses.” Naotsugu looked puzzled,
so Shiroe explained.

  “It’s true that if we concentrate on our foreheads, we can see the status screen. If we form a party, we should be able to check each other’s HP, but it’s not going to be easy to keep a close eye on our statuses when we’re fighting. I might be able to manage, but you’re usually out on the front line facing down enemies. It’s going to be hard to pay attention to status when you’re out there trading blows.”

  “So battles will be pretty tough?”

  “It’s probably safer to assume so.”

  Although Shiroe didn’t bring it up, their vision would pose a big problem, too. When playing the game on a computer, it was possible to pull back and view the situation from a wider perspective. Under the circumstances, though, they’d only be able to see the 120 degrees directly in front of them.

  When they fought trolls, hill giants, or other huge enemies, they’d be dealing with blind spots unlike anything they’d had to field before. Battles would pose a mountain of problems.

  “Is that all?”

  “…Not quite.”

  “Well, what is it? Is it hard to talk about or something?”

  Shiroe was startled by the sound of his own troubled sigh. To be honest, all the issues he’d spoken about before—problems with battles, differences between their current situation and the game—were trivial. They’d be tough to deal with, certainly, and they’d make battles more difficult, but he didn’t think any of them would be impossible to overcome. He’d detoured onto those topics to buy himself time, because the subject still to be broached was an unpleasant one.

  “C’mon, Master Counselor. The suspense is killing me. Speak.”

  Naotsugu always called him that, but Shiroe didn’t feel cut out to be a counselor. He was talking about all sorts of things now, but only because he was talking to Naotsugu. Ordinarily, Shiroe was far more likely to worry about this and that on his own privately. The Debauchery Tea Party had nicknamed him “the Counselor” because he tended to take all the details into consideration, and since he was good at talking, they’d handed him the roles of negotiator and strategist. That was all.