kscans

Chapter 11 - Ignorant Innocence

“Tenth one… got it.”

Having already confirmed I could handle them even in a pack, a single boar was nothing to fear. I crisply hunted down the Fool Boars one by one while receiving healing from a pouting Sora.

“Hmph… It’s also my fault for being dissatisfied that you’re defeating them without a scratch, Haru-san!”

“Would you prefer it if I died in one hit?”

“Eh…? W-Why are you so frail! And I just noticed, your armor! Why aren’t you wearing any?!”

“Frail…”

I can’t help the armor situation. If I equipped a straight sword, a great axe, and armor, I’d hit my weight capacity limit. Then I wouldn’t be able to carry back any loot from hunting, which would be a pointless situation.

Anyway, when I asked, it turned out Sora had distributed her stats in a fairly balanced way, just as you’d expect from a sensible person. I was relieved she hadn’t poured points into useless things like STR for her likely build path, but she was already sturdier than me. She could probably take a hit from a Fool Boar and be fine.

“Well, if you don’t get hit, you don’t take damage.”

“But I have a problem if you don’t take damage!”

She said “don’t take damage” like she wasn’t used to the phrase. It was kind of soothing.

That said, it was also a fact that my current build was extremely weak against area-of-effect or hard-to-dodge attacks. Case in point, I was currently stuck on the “first area boss.”

“But then again, willingly limiting myself to one weapon and letting my skills go to waste seems like a shame…”

Though it was inferior to a specialized aptitude, the game had bestowed upon me the skills `All-Weapon Aptitude` and `Quick Change`, as if tailored just for me.

It’d be a waste not to use them, and I wanted to see what kind of feats this avatar could accomplish once I mastered them.

I knew we were a mismatched pair, and I felt bad that I couldn’t give her a turn, but…

“For now, I’ll stick with the current plan.”

“Hmph… Maybe I should go buy a weapon too…”

Apparently, magic in this game doesn’t get a boost from weapons, so Sora, having only picked out a ring for mages, was currently unarmed. There were staves and such, but those were apparently for magic knight builds that mixed in staff arts.

Sora muttered while clenching and unclenching her empty hands… Yeah, let’s not? Let’s wait until you can swing a weapon without closing your eyes before you make your melee debut, okay?

When I gently explained this in the softest terms possible, Sora puffed out her cheeks in extreme dissatisfaction.


◇◆◇◆◇


“Huh?”

“Wah!?”

After we’d been hunting for a while, a sudden strange phenomenon made us both cry out.

It was a faint tremor. The detailed senses provided by virtual reality told us it was “gradually getting closer.” This shaking was probably—

“Haru-san, could it be…”

“Is this the omen…?”

My first encounter had been a real rage-inducer, with it bursting out from right under my feet just after I’d wiped out a herd of Fool Boars… I see. If we assume the condition for the boss to appear is “kill a certain number of mobs,” it was highly likely I had fulfilled that condition during the battle with the herd.

The vibrations coming from the ground were faint but definitely perceptible. It wouldn’t be surprising if I’d missed them while running around in a state of high tension.

If that’s the case, then…

“I can deal with the initial stun… Sora, I’m going to try fighting it, so stay back a bit.”

“…Could you please level up your VIT or put on some armor?”

“Sorry, I’ll give it serious consideration from now on…”

My healer, who had no job to do even in a boss fight for the crappy reason that her frontline fighter dies in one hit from anything, seemed quite displeased, glaring at me with narrowed eyes.

However, this time, Sora wouldn’t be a complete spectator either.

“I will do my part to support you.”

“Hmph… `Spectate Yell`.”

Sora, whose pouty expression was now second nature, bestowed upon me the support skill she had newly acquired.

She seemed to dislike the skill’s name, which probably meant “Spectator’s Cheer,” from the bottom of her heart, but its effect was quite unique and powerful.

By adhering to a set condition, this skill applied a multiplier to all of the target’s stats, and that multiplier was an astonishing twenty percent increase.

It was a pretty broken modifier for a new player to acquire so easily, but the condition for its activation was extremely restrictive: “the caster cannot participate in the subsequent battle.”

—I wonder whose fault it is that a skill like this manifested. Ahem, Sora-san, please stop glaring at me.

As Sora raised the hand wearing the ring and chanted the skill name, my body, the target, began to glow faintly.

“Ugh… this is still disorienting.”

The sudden shift in my senses from the boosted stats made me stumble… but I’d get used to it. I could work on adapting to sudden ability changes later.

My current level was 18, so my total stat points were 180. A 1.2x multiplier on all of them was equivalent to a boost of nearly four levels. Assuming the level cap is 100, if you used this on a max-level player, they’d become a level 120 monster, wouldn’t they?

“Haru-san?”

“Oh, just shuddering a bit at your future potential.”

“…?”

Just as my multiple weapon aptitudes grew into an all-weapon aptitude, if her `Spectate Yell` were to evolve further… I should stop thinking about it.

Rather than that terrifying thought, the master of the earth-shaking tremors approaching me was more important. …It’s a terrifying thought about Sora—

“—Dodged the bad pun!”

“BRRRMMMOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Just as I failed to suppress a spine-chilling thought, the dirt-covered giant I’d met before finally emerged from the ground beneath my feet.

As long as I could detect the omen, I already knew how it would appear. I timed a jump to evade the forced stun from the vibration!

The beast letting out a roar more like a raging bull than a boar was none other than the villainous fiend that had given me a stun-combo from hell, the [Buried Great Boar].

“Eek…?!”

I could sense the girl behind me gasp, and for good reason. If I hadn’t been pulverized three seconds after meeting it, I probably would have been terrified before I got angry.

It was easily over five meters tall, and its dirt-caked bristles were so thick and tough they’d make a scrub brush feel soft. Its two massive tusks, which spiraled flamboyantly like a wine opener, made you wonder how it even burrowed underground.

It looked like the very embodiment of VIT and STR—which meant, well, for starters…

“Allow me to introduce myself—now die!!”

Having evaded the opening stun-combo earthquake mid-air, I landed on one of its twisted tusks. At point-blank range, our eyes met—its pupils were surprisingly small—and I mercilessly plunged the tip of my straight sword into one.

The sword, thrust with the force of my entire arm, sank deep into its eyeball. Not even a few seconds after appearing, the great boar let out a scream as an effect like fresh blood sprayed from its right eye.

“This is [Arcadia], after all! Of course it has a part-breaking system!!”

I kicked off its snout to disengage as it writhed in agony. Behind the subsiding critical hit effect, a large wound was now depicted where its eye had been, and my excitement soared—whoops.

“…”

I could feel a gaze on my back. To be more precise, the kind of gaze one would direct at “something really messed up.”

Get a grip, me. This dark side of myself that I only just discovered last night at the ripe old age of eighteen isn’t something I can just reveal to an innocent young girl.

—Face it, me. Right now, you’re a real psycho.

“Be cool… stay calm and be cool, me…!”

That mutter itself wasn’t cool at all, but this was a side of me I had trouble controlling. I calmed my heart, but kept the torque of my thoughts revved up so as not to lose performance—

“Heh, not bad. Now come at me, you boss of morons—it’s time for a rematch.”

As I taunted it, having forcibly shifted gears, the great boar, now suddenly blind in one eye, furiously pawed the ground, declaring it would crush me on the spot.


◇◆◇◆◇


“—HRAA!!”

From a safe zone more than ten meters away, the player dodged a charge of such immense mass that it made even her, who wasn’t being targeted, freeze in her tracks. He sidestepped it as if it were nothing and followed up with a counterattack.

“Is charging all you’ve got, just like the small fry!?”

His taunt was insolent, but… well, it was more subdued than yesterday. Whether it reacted to the provocation or not, the great boar skidded to a halt near him and shook its body, scattering the dirt clinging to it with tremendous force.

It was clearly more than just what was on its body; a massive amount of dirt clods flew out in a game-like area-of-effect attack—and he,

“—Hup!”

Did he react?

“Ngh—!”

Was he thinking?

“—Hup… hah!”

Could he see it?

“————————Hah, dodged ‘em all!!”

He ducked, kicked off the ground, threw his body aside, leaped, did a backflip, a cartwheel, a one-handed vault—and hid his body behind a great axe he materialized in mid-air.

It looked exactly like an acrobatic performance. If she recorded it and showed it to him, would he realize it himself?

“He acts like it’s perfectly normal for a beginner…”

—He seemed to have no awareness of his own abnormality.

Haru had come to [Arcadia] knowing nothing about it. Sora had only just met him, but she had figured that out right away.

But Sora was different. She didn’t know why Haru was so ignorant and unspoiled, but this game was by no means a closed-off world. Even now, three years after its release, [Arcadia] remained the “only virtual world,” the unchanging center of global conversation.

Technical matters aside, even the smallest new discoveries within the game were reported on daily by every media outlet, each racing to be the first. Major events were a matter of course, with in-game footage broadcasted on a massive scale in the real world.

That’s why Sora knew, and understood. The way he flew around so freely was not something a person who had just dived into the virtual world could do.

“Haru-san, what you’re doing is actually incredible… you know?”

For some reason she couldn’t quite explain herself, Sora couldn’t bring herself to tell him that.

Just for a little longer… Even if it was just a pretense on her part, she wanted to stand on the same ground of “ignorance” as him—and watch him revel in his own innocence.

In the distance, where Sora’s complicated gaze fell—Haru, toying with the great boar, was smiling as brightly as a child.