Chapter 14 — I Tried Burning Down the Elven Forest
As acid burned her throat, Youko dropped to the ground. She felt no guilt at having killed a bandit; it was only an NPC in a game. They were nothing more than treasure boxes that dropped loot in her mind, but she couldn’t help the physiological response, given how realistic the scene was. It hardly felt like a game at all.
With shouts and curses, the other bandits charged at her, but their swords and spears were harmless. The gap in their levels was so large that none of their attacks could overcome her defensive stats.
Even so, she sat there on the ground, trembling. The smell of blood, viscera, and vomit made her dizzy. She was frozen in fear at the rain of weapons falling on her and the twisted, drunk-on-violence faces of the men wielding them.
The maid at her side did nothing. She seemed concerned about the fact that her master was vomiting but not about the attacks that were coming her way. She was confident that her master wouldn’t suffer so much as a scratch.
I’m done with this! I’m quitting!
As she opened the system menu to log out, Youko noticed a new message in the tip window.
TIP: For those uncomfortable with grotesque imagery, try adjusting the violence filter.?
They must have had a filter to reduce the amount of blood and gore being displayed. Opening the appropriate menu, she immediately set it to maximum.
Blood disabled.
Injury display disabled.
Smell disabled.
Pain disabled.
Damage pop-up enabled.
Corpse disappearance enabled.
Cartoon shading enabled.
Flicker disabled.
All of the settings changed at once. In an instant, her vision was completely altered. Everything took on an animated look, with clearly defined lines and shadows. She no longer felt any pain, and each time she was struck by an attack, a bubble displaying “0” or “1” would pop up. She couldn’t smell anything anymore, and her discomfort began to abate.
Youko stood up. Even the bandits had lost their sense of realism now. They looked like generic video game enemies, not the least bit scary. She delivered a kick to one of them, destroying him in a single blow. Her opponent disappeared in a burst of glowing fog, and all that remained were the items he dropped.
“Yeah, this is a game, so looking like this is fine.”
Youko quickly recovered. With the intense, lifelike depictions of battle gone, she recognized once more that this was only a game. Finally realizing that their opponent was no ordinary human, the remaining bandits screamed as they began to run away.
“You think I’ll let you go?” Opening the targeting window, she selected the Ice Missile spell and aimed it at her three fleeing enemies. With the lock-on function, the projectiles could automatically pursue them within a set area, so she wouldn’t need to aim precisely.
Chunks of ice appeared in the air. They flew forward, deftly weaving through the trees to strike the heads of the three men. All of her targets promptly vanished in bursts of light. She noticed that the bandit she had killed first had also disappeared. All that remained was the equipment they had been carrying.
“They turned into light and disappeared... I thought something was strange about you today, Master, but were you just testing that out?”
“Huh? You can see all that?”
“Yes. A little while ago, the bodies and pools of blood suddenly vanished, but that was because you did something to them, didn’t you?”
Clearly, the violence filter modified more than just Youko’s vision.
“Shouldn’t a filter only affect my own view?”
Youko decided to test it out. Using the material search function, she entered “animal bones,” and the compass displayed the distance to the closest one.
“There’s an animal over there. Go kill it and bring it back,” she ordered the maid.
The woman was strong enough to follow Youko around on her adventures, so something like a wild animal posed no challenge for her. After a short while, she returned, holding something in her hand, but it quickly vanished in a puff of white smoke.
The maid let out a startled yelp. “Huh? What happened?”
Looking down, Youko saw that a slab of meat had dropped to the ground by the other woman’s feet. A small bone was lying there next to it as well.
“That was a rabbit?”
“Yes. Its entire body was here a second ago, but...”
It seemed that once the object entered Youko’s field of view, it was transformed by the filter. And if she averted her gaze, it didn’t transform back.
“I see.” The environment had been crafted in such a realistic way, but it still seemed like the game elements were rather over the top. “I guess I’ll have to modify the settings bit by bit. What should I do next?”
Aside from playing the game, the developer hadn’t given her much in the way of instructions. The idea was to observe what effects the long-term use of the technology might have on the human body, so all they had asked of her was to play like she normally would.
It seemed like a wasted opportunity to simply laze around without a goal, though. Youko would be paid considerably for her help either way, but she couldn’t be satisfied with doing nothing. She intended to upload the footage of her adventure to a video sharing site. It would be the first ever demo video of a FIVR game. There was no doubt that it would be popular. Everything she did was being recorded, and she had been given permission to release it to the public.
Playing a FIVR game of any kind would give her plenty of rare material, but leaving it at that would be boring. The viewers always demanded greater stimulation, and she would need to answer that demand. So she decided to do all sorts of things that her future fans would enjoy.
“Okay, take off your clothes,” Youko ordered her maid.
“Huh?”
Just as she thought the maid was about to comply, the woman stopped to stare back blankly, leaving her at a bit of a loss. Maybe she had gone too far or there was some restriction on explicit content. But if that were the case, she was glad to have found out at the start.
“Oh, my apologies,” the maid finally answered. “I was just a little surprised. I didn’t think you had an interest in such things.”
If she had been set up to carry on the role of the maid who had accompanied Youko through previous versions of the game, her confusion wasn’t surprising. Youko had little interest in a maid of the same gender as herself.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
“No! I will!”
Without further hesitation, the woman removed her clothing until she was naked. Due to the Cartoon Shading filter that was currently active, she didn’t look especially lifelike, but it was enough to tell that everything had been designed accurately. Nothing one would expect from a woman’s body was missing.
Be that as it may, this doesn’t seem like the right direction to take.
It would make her video “adult only.” It might be popular, but only in limited circles. Youko was interested in a much broader kind of popularity—one that would take the nation by storm.
“That’s enough. Put your clothes back on.”
“What?! What are you saying? Are we not going to begin an illicit relationship?”
“No? I was just wondering what your privates looked like.”
“So it’s some sort of neglect fetish, is it?”
After that, Youko decided to check out her own privates. They were there.
Late at night, Youko headed for a small settlement close to her mansion. Thinking a larger group might be noticed, she brought only a single maid with her. Her Stealth level was quite high, so alone, it was highly unlikely she would be seen. But there was a lot she didn’t know about this world, and the maid seemed like she would be useful. Youko worried that if she was alone, she would make mistakes regarding things that were supposed to be common sense in this world. She wanted the other woman’s assistance to prevent that.
“Just to make sure, there are no guards or anything, right?”
“Correct. Not for a settlement of this size. But if you’re concerned about that...”
“No, I don’t plan on doing anything bad.”
Youko chose a random house and walked over to it. It was a wooden building with only a single floor. Stepping up to the door, she pulled out a hairpin and inserted it into the keyhole. Her intent was to pick the lock.
Of course, Youko herself possessed no such skill. The ability to pick locks belonged to “Yousuke” alone.
Once she began the process, a small minigame began. Regardless of the form the lock itself took, if she could clear the minigame, it would open. Perhaps because it was a rather rundown house, the difficulty was fairly low, and she broke in rather quickly.
“Doesn’t this count as doing something bad?” the maid asked.
“It’s their fault it’s so easy to open. If they really wanted to stop intruders, they would have a stronger lock.”
This world was realistic to a fault. The locks should have been created to match that, but instead they could be opened merely by playing a minigame. Youko interpreted it as an invitation from the game to break in.
Opening the door quietly, she stepped inside. There was a single man there, lying on a bed.
“Okay, let’s steal whatever we can. You help too.”
“So, we’re doing something bad after all,” the maid replied with a sigh before doing as she was told.
From the contents of the chests and pots to what the sleeping man himself was wearing, there didn’t seem to be any restrictions on what she could take. She could even strip off his clothes while he slept.
“This is so cruel,” the maid remarked. “This poor man is going to be totally penniless.”
“He’ll still have his house and furniture. Wait, can I take those too?”
Youko opened workshop mode. It was a feature designed for the management of buildings and settlements. Through it, she converted one of the chests to its base materials. In an instant, it had been transformed into a stack of wooden planks that she could move to her inventory.
“I see... This is interesting.”
She continued to reduce the man’s furniture to base parts. After collecting everything, all that remained in the house was Youko, her maid, and the sleeping man.
“I can’t help but feel bad for him, seeing him lying here in an empty house like this.”
“Oh, we’re not done yet.”
Youko went outside, ordering her maid to carry the man out with her. Then she disassembled the house itself. A large amount of wood and a small amount of metal appeared, which she took.
The man was now left with absolutely nothing.
“Incredible. That’s incredible, but what was the point of picking the lock if you could just do that?” the maid asked.
“You can’t disassemble a house while there’s anything inside of it, right?”
She tried to disassemble the house next door just in case, but nothing happened. As expected, the building had to be empty.
“How many homes are in this village?”
“I’d say about twenty. Wait, you don’t mean...”
“It wouldn’t be fair to leave just this one guy broke, would it?”
Cleaning out and disassembling twenty buildings would be a tremendous amount of effort, but that’s why it had value. Videos in this vein had merit because you were doing something that others wouldn’t ordinarily do, even if it was a pain to get it done.
By morning, there was nothing left in the village. As one would expect, the villagers awoke and immediately panicked. Their home had become an empty lot, and they were all lying naked on the ground. “Confused” couldn’t begin to describe how they felt. They didn’t even have the composure to consider what they should do next.
Youko smiled, watching them for a while from a distance before leaving. She didn’t care much about what the villagers did after that.
Over time, Youko continued to do anything she could think of that would make good content for her streams. Following an NPC around and sowing chaos in his or her daily life; instigating monsters to attack a town and then stepping in as their savior; kidnapping young girls to force the men of their village to dig holes endlessly... She tried it all.
Most of it went well. Whether it was interesting or not, with Youko’s abilities, she could accomplish almost anything she set out to do.
“Hmm. How does ‘I tried burning down the Elven Forest’ sound for a video?”
At present, Youko was in her mansion, thinking of what content to work on next.
“What’s an ‘elf’?” the maid at her side asked.
“Oh, are there no elves here? What races are there besides humans?”
There had been no choice of race in the character designer, so she didn’t have much knowledge of what types of beings existed in the game.
“Besides humans, there are the beastkin who bear characteristics of various animals. Then there are the demons, who excel at magic, and the half-demons, who have large reserves of magical energy but aren’t particularly skilled at using it. There are also the childkin, who look like children even as mature adults. That’s about it. Of course, I only know of the races on this continent.”
Beastkin could be found in any city, so their standing seemed little different than that of humans. They didn’t have any dedicated settlements that she could find.
Demons lived in demonic kingdoms under the rule of a Demon Lord, so interfering with them would likely mean declaring war on the entire nation. She didn’t mind the idea, but it seemed like a much more “main story” route. If she was going to go down that road, it should be at the end.
Half-demons secluded themselves in settlements deep in the wilderness, so they sounded perfect, but they were so often preyed upon that they took great pains to remain hidden, and finding them was difficult.
So Youko decided to attack the childkin.
“Oh, this is no good.”
The settlement was ablaze. The cute little buildings, packed snugly together like they’d been pulled right out of a fairy tale, were all on fire.
A little girl fleeing a burning building was struck down by Youko’s maid, disappearing in a puff of light. Only her clothes remained. Another maid dragged more children out from where they were hiding behind a barrel and killed them. These kinds of events were happening all over the village, leaving a mess of children’s clothes everywhere.
“This won’t do well overseas, will it?” Even if the violence filter erased their bodies, it didn’t change the fact that it looked like they were killing children. She had thought the idea of “wiping out the childkin” was an entertaining one, but now that she’d done it, it didn’t seem like it would make for very good shared content. If she were to publish a video like this, she would no doubt face vicious criticism.
“Okay, stop for now! Come back!” she called out in a loud voice, bringing her ten armed maids to her side.
“Master, there are still a few survivors.”
“That’s fine. This whole thing was a waste of time. Let’s go. Thanks for your hard work.”
“What are you people?”
As they turned to head home, a young boy approached them. The HP bar above his head had dropped low enough that it was red, so it seemed he had taken considerable damage, but there were no indications of what sort of injuries he had sustained.
“Oh! A survivor? Is this the birth of a young hero?”
“What did we do? Why did you do this to us?!”
“Oh, sorry about that. I just thought you’d be a good stand-in for the elves.”
“Elves? What does that tiny race living in Ent have to do with us?”
The boy tried to extract some logical reasoning from Youko’s words. She had done something awful, and he was desperately trying to think of what could possibly justify such an attack.
“I wanted to make a video called ‘I tried burning down the Elven Forest,’ but there aren’t any elves here. So I thought you guys would do as replacements, but I eventually decided it would be a bit too depressing to watch. I probably can’t use any of this footage, so we’re done. Oh, do you want us to put out the fires?”
“What... What the hell is wrong with you?! What are you?!” The boy grabbed at Youko, and immediately vanished in a puff of light. The damage from the barrier around her had been enough to finish him off.
“What a waste of a young hero,” she muttered.
“No matter how old they are, they always have the appearance of children, so there’s no guarantee that he was actually young.”
“Man, was this setup supposed to cater to lolicons or something?”
“By the way, he mentioned something interesting earlier. About the elves living in Ent.”
“Ent is the island country in the east, right? I’ve never been there.” Youko had traveled to all the important places on the continent, but she hadn’t been overseas yet. “So there are elves... Interesting. Well, let’s go on an arson tour!”
She had no idea what elves were like in this world, but going to find out would likely make for some good content.
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