Chapter 19 — We Came to Spoil Something for You!
Youko wasn’t invincible in this world. Since her powers came from the game, they were also limited by it.
One of those limits was the guard system. Those who patrolled towns would always notice if she committed any illegal acts in public, and they would appear out of nowhere to apprehend her. They weren’t invincible, and Youko could even defeat them in battle, but every time she did, they would become stronger. As she committed more crimes, the guards would continue to grow in power until she couldn’t beat them anymore.
Being captured wasn’t Game Over, but she would be trapped in prison for a time, where her stats would continuously drop. So Youko generally chose to act like an ordinary adventurer while she was in the towns. The restrictions placed on criminals were too much of a threat to her daily life. However, as long as she didn’t do anything to brand herself a criminal, she could do whatever she wanted.
For example, she could create a closed-off room. As long as she was in a place where guards wouldn’t normally go, there would be no issue. If she were to take over a mansion and seal all of the exits and entrances, the guards would have no way of knowing what crimes were being committed inside. Alternatively, since guards only really existed in larger cities, she could always go to more rural settlements. Some guards patrolled the highways, but there weren’t too many of them, so she could avoid them if she was careful.
In addition, there were no guards on boats. They had soldiers whose job was to protect the ship from outside threats, but they weren’t considered to be guards by the game. “Guards” were affiliated with the state, so private passenger ships were beyond their jurisdiction.
With that in mind, she figured picking the lock of a first-class cabin or attacking a hero wouldn’t be counted as criminal acts. Of course, she would have to be careful when facing off with a hero, but by dropping the difficulty level, she figured she’d be able to manage.
At first, things went well. She could even defeat the hero in battle if she set the difficulty to Very Easy. But for some reason, her opponent had changed. He had suddenly begun using attacks that were completely different from before, taking Youko by surprise. She’d felt a bit worried after he had so easily erased the NPC she’d brought with her, and then he had summoned a huge swarm of insects. That was one of Youko’s weaknesses. The Tactical Support System could track multiple enemies, but it would freeze if there were too many at once.
So she had immediately fled. She was completely reliant on the TSS for combat, so she would have been utterly defenseless against the swarm. It was possible to fight without the system’s support, but that required an entirely different mindset.
Right after escaping, she activated her stealth skill, then got as far away as possible before hiding in a random room. The stealth skill could be used and leveled up in a variety of ways, so her current level was extremely high. Finding her when she was making a serious effort to hide would be next to impossible.
“What a nuisance. Maybe I should have left him alone.”
Youko was not a battle junkie. She enjoyed winning in combat but only when she could overwhelm an opponent with minimal effort. She didn’t enjoy the process of developing a complex strategy to defeat a powerful foe and only winning by the skin of her teeth.
“Maybe I should lock him up somewhere? He probably has some sort of warp ability, though.”
Trapping NPCs in places was something she very much enjoyed and did often. She would lead them into a closed room, make the room indestructible, then put an indestructible object in the way of the exit. The NPCs would do everything they could to escape but eventually fell into despair and lost their minds. That had been her backup plan if she’d found the hero too difficult to defeat: lock him away somewhere so that he couldn’t deal with the pirates.
But now she wasn’t sure that plan would work against him. She was uneasy at the prospect of trying it against someone who could move through Subspace.
“My main objective is to get to Ent and burn down the Elven Forest, so I could just ignore all of this anyway. I don’t have to defeat him; maybe I’ll just mess with him a bit.”
The thought of running and hiding irked her. She wanted to do something that would make for good content. She began pacing around the room, trying to think of what exactly that content should entail.
But something felt off. She wasn’t sure what it was at first but soon found her answer in the mirror. In it she saw a skinny woman, staring back at her with wide eyes.
“Huh?” Youko froze at the all too familiar sight. It wasn’t the avatar Yousuke Hiiragi, but rather the image of Youko herself. “What’s going on?”
“Aw, I was hoping for a more dramatic reveal.”
As she stared in shock, she heard a voice from behind her. Turning, she saw two girls who looked like twins. Unlike her seedy-looking self, they were genuinely cute.
“I’m Malna!”
“I’m Rilna!”
“The two together are...Malnarilna! Yay!” They clapped in sync.
“Wh-Who are you...?”
“We’re God!”
“We came to spoil something for you!”
“We wanted to come surprise you before you figured it out yourself!”
“The truth is, this game—”
“—isn’t a game at all!”
“It’s another world!”
“You actually died in your home world!”
“What?”
The two spoke in rapid succession, making it hard for her to keep up. She didn’t understand what they were saying at first.
“There was an experiment to try and imitate all human senses, so they stuck a needle into your head and pumped electricity into it.”
“And then bam! Your brain was fried!”
“But we thought, wouldn’t it be funny if you thought it was a game?”
“So we made it seem like it was.”
“We made a body for you here and pulled your soul into it.”
“Then we gave you powers that made it seem like you were in a video game!”
Deciding to try to attack these two strangers, Youko made the usual gesture to open up the system window. But nothing happened.
“Right now, someone is using a power to nullify all other abilities.”
“Your powers are all part of the Battle Song system.”
“So if someone uses a really strong power to nullify it, there’s nothing you can do!”
No matter how many times she tried, the window wouldn’t open. The Tactical Support System wouldn’t activate, and she couldn’t use any magic. She couldn’t change the game’s settings or even look at her stats.
But Youko was still unable to believe what the girls were saying. She couldn’t possibly be in another world, where monsters lived and magic was real. It was far more believable that this was all just part of the game. Even now, it was more natural to think there was some sort of problem with the system that was preventing her from executing commands. These two must have been developers who had come in to explain the problem. Their original explanation had been a prank, but they would surely tell her what was going on any minute now.
“Come on now, use some common sense,” one of the girls said. “Do you really think anyone could make a game this realistic?”
“B-But...I was told it was technology that hadn’t been made public yet! That it was, like, super advanced, secret military technology!”
“Wait, you really believed that? Weren’t you suspicious at all?”
Youko remembered having felt a vague sense of suspicion at one point, but after she’d started the game and seen the system window, she had stopped worrying.
“It would be way more difficult to make a whole world in VR—”
“—than it would be to add AR to another world!”
“Well, most of the powers in this world come from Battle Song.”
“It’s kind of like a game already.”
“It’s pretty easy to misunderstand!”
“B-But why would gods from another world know about something like video games? That’s weird, right? You must be working for the developers!”
“We don’t know that much about them.”
“We just peek into other worlds to see what kind of culture and entertainment they have.”
“Th-There’s no way I died though, right?! I’m alive right now!”
“Well, I mean...”
“We are God.”
A sudden light appeared from behind the twins, forcing Youko to her knees. She had been struck by a primal fear, an emotion drawn from looking upon something truly enormous, rooted in her most basic instincts. Something that wouldn’t let Youko stand. And with it, whether she wanted to or not, she was forced to accept that this world was not a game. She couldn’t help but recognize that bringing her back from the dead and taking her to this world would be possible for these two.
“So, about all the people you killed so far...”
“None of them were NPCs.”
“They were all born and raised in this world.”
“They felt pain, and they got hungry.”
“They loved, got married, and had children.”
“They were ordinary people, living ordinary lives.”
Despite hearing that, Youko didn’t feel guilty right away. The violence filter had made all of those deaths as cartoonish as possible. Even after being told that real people were dying, it didn’t seem true.
“So...what am I supposed to do, then?”
“Huh?”
“What?”
As if praying, Youko tried to grasp at these twins who had called themselves God, but all they gave her were confused looks.
“We don’t really care.”
“We just wanted to see how you would react when we spoiled it for you.”
“It was supposed to be such a shock, but what a weird response.”
“Wh-Why did you do this? Is this what you call fun?!”
“Yep.”
“Of course it’s fun.”
“Just like you thought it was.”
“You enjoyed being really powerful and playing with the lives of all those NPCs, right?”
“You had fun toying with all their fates, right?”
“We enjoy doing the same thing.”
“Really, being a god is kind of boring.”
“It really makes you want to meddle in things.”
“Anyway, it’s time for us to go!”
“Yeah, this situation will only be temporary!”
“If the one who’s neutralizing your power stops...”
“Or if you get far enough away, you’ll be able to enjoy this like a game again!”
“See you!”
With that, Malna and Rilna vanished. Youko remained on her knees in shock. She had no idea how to deal with the information that had just been dumped on her.
But as she sat there, dumbfounded, something changed. Her body transformed back into a thin but muscular male form. As if everything before had just been an illusion, she felt power surge through her body once again. With a small gesture, the system window appeared in her vision. Her powers were back.
“Dammit! What the hell was that?!”
Having her power back didn’t mean that she could relax. Someone had the ability to nullify her skills, and they were on this ship. Had they gone somewhere else or just turned their own power off? She couldn’t feel safe until she knew the answer.
“First, I guess I should call my allies.”
Using the system, she summoned the three maids who had been waiting in her room. They appeared instantly. She could call them to her side no matter where they were.
“You know how to fight, right?”
“Well, yes, we are Battle Maids,” one of them responded.
If their powers were nullified, at least their raw combat skills would be useful. Youko had formally hired them, so even if her abilities were being blocked, they should still have been willing to fight for her.
But I don’t know if they’ll uphold their contract if they see my original form.
“Okay, search the inside of the ship and eliminate the user of that power.” The hero was now of secondary concern.
“Who would that be?”
“I don’t know. Kill anyone who seems like they might be responsible. My form might change because of their power, but don’t worry about it. If you kill them, I’ll go back to normal.”
“Understood.”
Youko left the room with the three maids in tow. Things outside seemed pretty noisy. A plump man ran fearfully past. Youko activated the Tactical Support System and used the Ice Needle spell. The man vanished in a flash of light, his expensive clothing all that was left behind.
For some reason, the way the man had been running had bothered her. She didn’t feel any regret or guilt over his demise. In her mind, this world was a game. Her mind wouldn’t be able to handle it if she thought otherwise.
“That’s how it was supposed to be from the start. Kill everyone we meet!” Youko figured if they killed everyone on board, eventually the user of the troublesome power would be gone.
“Understood!” her maids replied, full of energy. “Ah, there’s someone now!”
A boy appeared from around the corner. Youko’s loyal maids dashed forward to carry out their master’s orders before suddenly falling to the ground and lying quite still.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” She didn’t understand how they had tripped and fallen in a place with no obstacles.
“Oh, it’s you. I figured you’d end up doing something like this,” the boy commented.
Youko remembered speaking to him briefly before boarding the ship, but such a fleeting connection wasn’t enough for her to consider sparing him. She had already decided to kill everyone there, so she would dispatch him right away.
She activated the Tactical Support System.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login