kscans

Chapter 3 - When Faced with a Losing Event, Resist with Your Fists

---After leaving the small chamber where I awoke, I walked for a while down a narrow passage. Relying on the faint light sources, I reached a second small chamber. Peeking inside from the entrance wall, I was trembling with excitement.

"Whoa...! Whoooa...! Seriously? This is for real...! A real golem! A real monster!!"

My very first encounter, my first monster. The chamber was just as plain as before, with no notable objects besides the glowing crystals, but inside, a rock-like mass about a meter tall was lumbering around.

It was bipedal, but too stout to be called humanoid. I called it a golem on a whim, but it looked less like a mud doll and more like a round rock with long arms and short legs.

"Is that an enemy...? I'm completely unarmed."

If it's a hostile enemy, it's likely a combat tutorial. Even if it's a real enemy without a tutorial, it seems to be moving slowly. I could probably evade it at a light jog if it spots me. It shouldn't be too hard to slip past it and dash into the new path I can see on the other side.

"...Guess I'll go."

In any case, this is the very beginning of the game. It's always best to just dive in and try things.

I have no weapon to ready, so of course I'm bare-handed. There's no cover to hide behind either, so I decided to be bold and strode into the chamber. The golem, which had been aimlessly wandering around the room, immediately noticed me and stopped dead in its tracks.

It's just... a rock. I couldn't see anything resembling eyes on its torso, which was the center of its limbs... yet strangely, I could clearly feel that it was watching me.

"Uh, hello there...?"

I tried to communicate, just to see what would happen. The response was, of course, silence—no, it moved.

It was slow. But fast. Its speed was about that of a young child's jog, but it was a world of difference from its previous tottering pace.

The rock mass moved straight toward me—

"Whoa, that's terrifying!?!"

That's genuinely scary! I'm a first-timer in both VR and a fantasy world! Having a rock with arms and legs running awkwardly towards me is just plain horrifying!

—Hey, what are you planning to do with that raised hand? If it's for a handshake, you don't need to swing it up with that much force!!

"So it is an enemy after all!"

The battle started abruptly, but aside from my fear of the unknown, I didn't feel a sense of crisis just yet. VR combat, where you actually move your body—in other words, it's synonymous with a real fight—but it's not like I'm uncoordinated.

I was active in a club in middle school, and in high school, I ran the grueling gauntlet of part-time jobs for three years. I'm reasonably confident in my physical abilities, and I have some idea of how to move my body efficiently.

Surely, I can easily dodge an attack as telegraphed as this—

"Hiee..."

SWOOSH! With a magnificent whoosh, a rock arm passed right by my body. It moved like a whip, and while I could track it with my eyes, that didn't mean it lacked power.

As if to punish my cockiness for trying to dodge with minimal movement, the golem's rock arm slammed into the equally rocky ground with a harsh thud, easily shattering it.

...Uh, what is this? Don't make me encounter something like this while I'm unarmed.

"...Running away is the best strategyyyy!!"

As a newbie who's only been playing for a few minutes, I haven't had time to develop any pride. Acknowledging defeat less than ten seconds into the fight, I spurred my legs, which were about to freeze up, with a pathetic war cry and fled.

—I tried to flee.

"Wha...!?"

For tactical reasons, I tried to retreat back the way I came to regroup, but a wall of rock erupted from the ground, blocking my path. I managed to plant my hands and avoid face-planting, but the exit to the passage was now completely sealed.

So, I turned back to dodge the golem and head for the passage ahead—

"Ah..."

I watched as the golem absorbed the surrounding rocks I had just raised, growing in size at an accelerating rate, and I understood everything.

"This is a losing event, isn't it...?"

Early in the story. An unavoidable, powerful enemy. Zero means to fight back.

With all these elements in place, anyone with even a little gaming experience would realize it. This was a so-called losing event, where defeat is predetermined.

Presumably, some kind of rescue will arrive the moment the golem is about to finish me off—or, if this is a game where the player is expected to die and revive repeatedly, this might be the place where I experience my first death.

Either way is possible, but the common theme is that "resistance is futile." For an experienced player, this is the moment to either die quickly or willingly jump into danger to advance the plot.

I absentmindedly watched the now-massive rock arm, which had grown to an incomparable size, as it was raised again, and I pondered my options.

—To resist, or not to resist.

To be honest, before I dedicated myself to my part-time jobs, if you asked me if I was a heavy gamer, I would have said no. I was what you might call a light otaku, delving into novels, manga, anime, and games just a bit deeper than the average person.

I'd played some of the so-called "death games" on analog consoles, games known for their difficulty, and in the early-game death events often found in them, I had always quietly accepted my fate.

I could follow the developers' intentions this time as well and just let myself be crushed. I admit I'm a little scared to experience death in VR for the first time, but [Arcadia] is an MMORPG, a genre where player lives are relatively cheap. I'll need to get used to the countless deaths that await me sooner or later.

—But that would be boring. Having finally arrived in the world I'd longed for after three years, my ever-rising excitement was screaming at me, and that was a fact.

Even if it's virtual reality, the things I see, the sounds I hear, the feel of the air, the temperature, the smells—every sensation is just like in reality. So, from my perspective, this world is no different from the real one.

For me, a representative of the average person who has never even been in a single fight in real life, this giant golem standing in my way, about to turn me into a stain on the ground, is a mass of unknowns from top to bottom.

I'm a modern boy suffering from adventure deficiency. With an opportunity like this, you gotta fight back, right!!

"—A man's gotta have guts! Hollywood diiiive!!"

I managed to dodge the descending rock arm with a diving leap to the side. It resulted in me performing a spectacular face-slide on the ground, but there's no pain in [Arcadia], which doesn't replicate the sensation of pain. The damage you take manifests as an impact and a numbing sensation that is suitably unpleasant.

My HP took a rather merciless hit from the face-plant, but getting hit by that rock mass, which had swollen to the size of a small car, would have been an instant kill for sure. Cheating death is a win!!

—Whoa, no time to be impressed by my first experience with damage-numbness.

"Against a right-handed opponent... counter-clockwise!"

From personal experience, in 3D action games with a high degree of freedom, the standard strategy for one-on-one boss fights is to circle them and harass them. For opponents who are right-handed, or rather, who tend to use attack actions from the right side of their body, it's safer to move counter-clockwise and get to their left side. Your mileage may vary.

The golem had grown larger overall by absorbing the terrain, but the growth of its right arm was particularly significant. Seeing as it attacked with its right hand for both its first move pre-transformation and its second move post-transformation, it's safe to assume that's its main weapon.

I thought it would become sluggish after getting bigger, but that doesn't seem to be the case. However, it still doesn't seem capable of agile movements. Getting behind it is relatively easy—and my very first attack will be with my bare fists! Let's go!

I have no weapon, so my only means of attack is my own body! Take this, a straight punch based 100% on manga knowledge!!

I've only been moving this virtual body for a short time, but even in that limited period, I can tell how high-spec it is. Probably because it's not bound by physical limitations, its reaction speed and the smoothness of its movements are on a different level from reality.

I haven't even seen a level display for myself yet, but even so, this body moves far better than my real one! With a sharp movement that surprised even me, I stepped in accurately and slammed my fist into the golem's wide-open back with all my might.

"Owww—!?"

Yep, no damage. Instead of the rock mass, which didn't even flinch, it was my right hand that took all the damage and cried out in agony. A fierce numbness, so intense it felt like pain for a moment, shot through me, and in the corner of my vision, my HP dropped more drastically than it did from the face-slide.

Honestly, I knew that would happen. So I'm not discouraged!

Bracing my body as it recoiled from the impact, I followed up with a kick against the golem, which still had its back to me. Hey, Mr. Rock, did you know? A kick is said to have three times the power of a punch!!

"N-no good!!!"

Unlike the bare-fisted punch, the front kick delivered with my shoe didn't send a shockwave back at me, but it didn't seem to have done any damage at all—and right at that moment, something changed.

With a bell-like sound, an orange cursor and a single HP bar popped up above the golem's head. Inscribed above the HP bar was what I assumed to be this enemy's name—

"[Chosen Stone Doll], huh..."

To put it bluntly, it's a rather simple, or should I say, plain-looking golem. I mean, a huge chunk of rock moving on its own is impressive enough, but design-wise, it's just a lump of rock.

For what it is, it has a somewhat meaningful name, which sparked a premonition.

"A losing event—this isn't one, is it...?"

I muttered, contradicting the certainty I had just moments before, and glared at the golem as it turned around with a slow, leisurely motion as if to show it was completely unharmed.

I think the developers' intention was probably for players to be killed by this thing here, with their escape route cut off. Given the complete lack of explanation right at the start and the absence of any system intervention as a tutorial after the battle began, I have no choice but to think that's the standard route.

But I've definitely noticed something. Probably because of my second kick, its HP gauge has been chipped away by a millimeter.

If there's no branching outcome to the battle, there's no reason to give the boss HP and not lock the value. That means this battle has a branching route that occurs if I can chip away at its HP or deplete it entirely!

"This is all just random guesswork and fantasy, though!"

Honestly, I'm just enjoying thinking about all this in the middle of the unknown, so it doesn't really matter to me whether I find the answer or not. Even if it takes a hundred hits to the back to amount to a pittance of damage, if I can chip away at it, I'll carve it down!

"Roar, my right leg!!"

—And so began the long, long brawl of bare hands versus a chunk of rock.

---

On the issue of the protagonist talking to himself too much: He's just so hyped up about finally reaching the virtual world after three years of hard work that his tension is through the roof. He'll eventually calm down and return to his original character, so please watch over him.