Chapter 4 - A Choice at the End of the Line
Pointless—if I had to name this battle, that would be the only fitting word. It was a hell of a fight.
My only means of attack was kicking. I tried picking up some of the rocks lying around and bashing it with them, but they were just absorbed into its body the moment they made contact, resulting in a no-damage declaration. I told myself I was lucky it didn't heal from it, and I became a machine that did nothing but deliver fighting kicks.
The early-game event boss was surprisingly well-designed, even having pattern changes. After about an hour of kicking it and chipping away thirty percent of its HP, its behavior changed.
Specifically, its left arm also grew larger, turning it into an ambidextrous and dexterous stone doll.
Heh, they actually gave it a second phase, I thought, impressed. As the embodiment of the backstabbing fighting kick, I spent another two hours kicking the stone doll to pieces.
Honestly, more than once or twice, I considered just giving up and letting myself be turned into mincemeat. It was beyond a matter of patience… but I managed to see it through solely because my avatar, which felt no fatigue and could leap about so nimbly, was just that exhilarating.
—Yes, I saw it through.
Battle duration: three hours and just under twenty minutes. The pitiful stone doll, which had been kicked thousands of times, finally saw its HP bar disappear.
“—Hk… ugh.”
I thought I had kept my composure, but as I watched the Chosen Stone Doll crumble into a silent pile of rubble, I collapsed into a sitting position without even letting out a victory cry.
That was rough. My HP bar had remained untouched after the initial face-slide and straight punch, but if I had kept going much longer, I might have started questioning the meaning of my existence.
That was a deathmatch painted with pointlessness, emptiness, and futility…
“…Oh.”
Just then, a small sound played and a single window popped up in front of me. Figuring it was the battle results, I took a look—
◇ Title Acquired ◇
・‘One Who Throws Themselves into Conflict’
・‘One with an Unyielding Heart’
I had expected experience points or loot, but that was all that was written. The window vanished after a few seconds, and nothing else seemed to happen.
“…………Yeah.”
It was honestly a bit of an anticlimax, but I guess I should be glad I got some titles. I brought up the menu to check, and it seems they weren't the type you collect for some kind of reward, but rather ones you could set for specific beneficial effects.
The conflict one gave a slight increase to EXP gain, and the unyielding one reduced stamina consumption. As you'd expect from something acquired so early, the effects were negligible.
I set ‘One with an Unyielding Heart’ on a whim and closed the menu, then got to my feet. “Alright, then.” There was nothing more to be gained here. I had noticed that both the path I came from and the one leading forward had opened up when the stone doll crumbled.
An hour in [Arcadia] is forty minutes in the real world. This world has established some mysterious technology that accelerates consciousness and stretches time, allowing you to experience 1.5 times the time compared to reality. But since I'd spent three hours kicking a rock, over two hours had already passed in the real world.
My mother might let it slide if I miss dinner, but if I keep playing without eating or drinking, there's a high chance I'll get an earful. I want to find a good stopping point as soon as possible and log out for a break.
“I wonder what would have happened if I lost… would I have revived at a town temple? Or maybe the event would have just progressed without me dying.”
I walked on, imagining the alternate route that was now impossible to confirm.
“Wait, if I could lose HP from a face-dive, couldn’t I have just died by headbutting a wall or something… huh?”
As I muttered these useless thoughts, my view soon opened up. It was the third chamber, counting from the one where I awoke.
“…This looks like the place.”
First, the mysterious crystal that had sealed me. Then, the [Chosen Stone Doll] that was almost certainly a losing event. Unlike the previous two chambers, which each had only one distinct object, this place had several “likely-looking” things.
The space was a perfect circle, clearly man-made, unlike the natural-looking caves I had been in so far. The walls were smoothed and finished to some extent, and the crystals that served as the light source were shaped and placed at regular intervals.
What naturally drew my eye were the five pillars. A large one stood in the center of the room, with four smaller, waist-high ones arranged in a radial pattern behind it.
As I approached the central one, something happened immediately.
‘—O awakened one.’
“Whoa…”
A voice echoed inside my head. It was clearly different from what you'd hear with earphones or a headset—a fantastical phenomenon you could never experience in reality. As I instinctively braced myself, the central pillar began to change.
Countless pale blue lines raced across its pure white, patternless surface, its material unknown. An instant later, it disassembled into innumerable parts, and a ball of light pulsed in the center of the floating components.
‘—O one who has shown the will to fight.’
‘—O one who has shown an unbreakable heart.’
Oh, are these special lines based on the titles I got? As I watched with relative calm, my peak tension having subsided after the grueling battle with the stone doll, the flickering light began to pulse faster, growing brighter.
‘Wish, seek, and follow your heart—’
The sphere of light flashed brilliantly and then split in two. One half, the smaller piece, drifted down in front of me. It stopped at chest height, pulsating as if asking for something, and my hands moved on their own to receive it.
…No, they really moved automatically. So this part is a forced event, I see.
As I watched the orb of light melt into my chest, a majestic, fanfare-like sound echoed in my ears.
◇ Blessing of the War God Acquired ◇
・Level System has been unlocked.
・Status System has been unlocked.
・Skill System has been unlocked.
Ah, so the game systems unlock here. The reason I didn't get any experience from beating the stone doll was because I hadn't even obtained the concept of levels yet?
And the War God, huh. It feels like a bit of a mismatch with the beautiful, clear voice that would make you imagine an incredibly elegant, graceful goddess.
Its duty seemingly fulfilled, the disassembled parts reassembled, enclosing the remaining light and returning to their original form. With a final, gentle glow as if bidding farewell, the pillar fell completely silent.
“Hmm… so, what’s next?”
It was a rather solemn event, but this was still the tutorial, where I'd been given no knowledge, even with the three-hour battle in between. Feeling little sentiment, I bypassed the silent central pillar and faced the remaining four.
I saw that each was engraved with a different emblem. The designs were quite complex, or rather… for someone with only an extremely average aesthetic sense like me, they were so stylish I could only say “wow,” but the motifs were easy to understand.
In short—far left, a sword.
—Center-left, a heart.
—Center-right, a wing.
—Far right, a castle… or is it a castle? Something, a building.
And so, on top of each of the four pillars engraved with these emblems sat a glowing crystal. These crystals were also different colors…
“The usual setup would be to choose one of these—Hk…?!”
I casually approached the nearest pedestal, the one with the wing emblem, and the crystal on top suddenly began to glow, startling me again. The light enveloped my frozen, cautious form—
“…………I see.”
What the crystal provided was, in a sense, “promotional footage.” After being made to watch it a total of four times by approaching each pedestal, I now understood the gist of it and stood with a hand on my chin, thinking.
I had deliberately shut out information to experience this game completely fresh, but now I had a rough understanding of the world’s setting.
To put it simply, this game has four factions that players can join. And apparently, they are all in a state of war.
Well, it’s not a gruesome kind of war, but more like a sportified version. Essentially, it’s large-scale PvP… but as a latecomer who’s three years behind, I probably won’t be involved for a very long time, so I’ll set that aside for now.
Each of the four factions has a god who presides over a different blessing, and the blessing you receive depends on which faction you choose, each named after its god.
East Faction, with the symbol of the sword—Istia. The blessing it grants is Conflict.
West Faction, with the symbol of the heart—Vestol. The blessing it grants is Peace.
North Faction, with the symbol of the wing—Nortalia. The blessing it grants is Luck.
South Faction, with the symbol of the castle—Sotalm. The blessing it grants is Wealth.
They’re too abstract to understand on their own, but thankfully, a detailed explanation was provided with a system window.
Istia's blessing of Conflict seems to provide a positive modifier to combat-related skills, making it purely for battle. As a bonus, it also gives a bonus to experience gained in combat, and it seems to offer the benefit of maturing faster.
Vestol's blessing of Peace has a similar skill modifier to Istia's. However, unlike the blessing of Conflict, it affects non-combat skills like crafting. Since it affects the apparently far more numerous non-combat skills, it seems there's no bonus.
Nortalia's Luck, as the name implies, gives a positive modifier to all events related to the luck parameter. As someone with experience in online games, I can say with certainty that Nortalia must be by far the most popular of the four factions. Let me put it this way: a fixed value is added to all rare drops, not a multiplier. Do you understand why now?
Sotalm of Wealth is probably the next most popular. As you can guess from the name, it provides a modifier to money-related matters, and the multiplier is insane. Acquisition is doubled, and consumption is reduced to seventy percent. That’s strong.
Each choice grants a pretty broken blessing, but there's a good reason why the effects are so extreme and the multipliers are so high. However, that relates to the “war” I mentioned earlier, so it's not relevant to me right now.
—So, which one to choose?
“Nortalia is just too tempting…”
As expected, the pull of the North is strong. In an online game, especially an MMORPG, being able to increase your drop rate by a fixed amount is huge.
Someone who hasn't played this genre might not understand, but basically, rare item farming in MMOs is a bottomless pit. It's a world where a single-digit drop rate is scoffed at as being generous, where decimals are commonplace, and where it's a daily occurrence to see multiple zeros in the drop rate of a rare item from a rare enemy you hardly ever encounter.
And the value added is a whopping “10%”—a plus 10% on every single drop roll.
As someone who, in middle school, dedicated nearly two months to a single rare drop in an MMO I was obsessed with, only to never see it and quit in a rage, it's extremely… extremely tempting, but…
“Istia, it is.”
Istia had a pull that was more than enough to brush aside the allure of the other three factions, including Nortalia.
What’s so attractive about Istia? It's not the buff to combat skills, nor the experience bonus.
What is it, then? —It’s the overwhelming lack of members!!
The total number of players belonging to each faction, which can be checked by touching the pedestals, is by far the lowest for Istia!!
I can guess the reason. MMOs, at their core, are a genre where you enjoy the never-ending process of “self-improvement.” It's nice to have your frequently used combat skills buffed, but it's meaningless if you can't properly improve yourself to make use of it.
An MMORPG is a game where a desperate gap that can't be overcome by just “hitting a little harder” is created by your equipment set and enhancement status. So it's only natural that the faction that gives an advantage in that self-improvement would be popular.
So why kick that logic to the curb and choose Istia? Because it has the highest potential for me to get involved in the “war” in the future.
It’s not relevant now, but as someone who fully intends to get serious about [Arcadia], I naturally want to participate in the major event that is the war down the line… but it seems there's a limit to the number of participants in a single event.
Since the victory rewards you get from winning the war—or rather, snatch from the other factions—are truly insane, every faction must be desperately selecting members to win.
So, simply put—a lower competition rate is better. That's what it comes down to.
“Well, there's always the chance it'll be even tougher because it’s full of battle junkies…”
When that time comes, I'll deal with it then. And as a latecomer, the early-maturing bonus is helpful. I'm going to enjoy this.
◇ Do you wish to join the Eastern Faction of Conflict, Istia? ◇
I held my hand over the crystal on the sword pedestal on the far left and slammed the “YES” on the confirmation window that appeared.
I will continue posting today until I reach a good stopping point. If you have the time, please join me.