kscans

Chapter 5 - Two Worlds Collide

—I opened my eyes, and there was a beautiful girl.

I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, but I have no idea what happened either.

The moment I selected my faction, I was enveloped in a blue light and "transported" to another space—a phenomenon that I could never experience in the real world, no matter how hard I tried. As I let out a cry of excitement, I was sent off to a new land. When I opened my eyes, which had been closed against the dazzling torrent of light—

""Huh?!""

She was so close, it was a miracle I could even register her as a "beautiful girl." A face I'd never seen before filled my vision, and—

"—Wah?!"

"—Oof, agh?!"

While I calmly processed the situation—a running girl had crashed into me, who had just teleported right in front of her—the height difference caused her forehead to slam into my chin, and I was knocked flat on my back, stunned.

Wow, this game is something else. I was actually stunned. Look, there's even a status effect icon under my HP bar, probably indicating I'm incapacitated...

"Oww...! A-are... are you okay!?"

Though she was holding her forehead, it seems it wasn't a critical hit like it was for me. The girl rushed over, looking flustered. Her face, peering down at me with concern, was so beautiful it was like a work of art.

Dazzling blonde hair that seemed to have a glowing effect. Large, amber eyes that sparkled like embedded jewels. Every feature was so perfectly "adorable" that, though it's cliché, she looked like she'd stepped right out of a 2D world. Then again, Arcadia's graphics are realistic, so maybe saying she could be an idol is more fitting.

In any case, in this game, you can customize your appearance in any way, except for your gender and voice. I myself created my avatar with only minor adjustments to my real face for certain reasons, but I'm probably in the minority.

I've heard that if your avatar's height and other features deviate too much from your real self, it takes some getting used to the movement, but other than that, you can pretty much become a completely different person in [Arcadia].

Which means that this beautiful girl, who looks to be in her mid-teens, is almost a hundred percent likely to be a "created beauty." But—honestly, I couldn't care less. There's no point in worrying about the "person behind the character," so if the beautiful girl I see is a beautiful girl, then it's more beneficial to enjoy her as a beautiful girl.

In a game with character creation, the ones who don't make handsome men or beautiful women are definitely in the minority. This world will likely not be lacking for eye candy. As for the male-to-female ratio due to the inability to change gender—oh, the stun wore off.

"Um, uh..."

I had simply been unable to respond due to the forced stun, but as I slowly and silently sat up, the girl's eyes wavered with anxiety.

...Seriously, the degree of freedom in facial expressions is insane. It's becoming hard to believe this is a game.

"Ah, I'm fine. You surprised me, but this game doesn't have pain, so..."

I put on a smile, consciously making my voice sound cheerful and gentle. It seemed my customer service skills, honed through countless jobs during my part-time work days, were put to good use, as I could see the girl's posture relax slightly.

"Oh, is that so? I'm glad... Um, I'm so sorry. I thought no one would be coming to the starting point, so I was just running around...!"

The girl said, looking around. I followed her lead and saw that we were in the middle of a dense forest. Just as I was thinking we'd been teleported from a cave straight into a forest, I took a closer look and realized we were in a well-maintained clearing that practically screamed "this is a safe zone."

"Ah, so you were running around and I teleported right in front of you."

"Y-yes. You startled me... ah, I mean, I'm the one who startled you."

"Well, I guess you wouldn't expect someone to be at the starting point three years after the game's release..."

Huh?

"Wait, what... are you starting today too?"

Three years have passed since the release. The dedicated hardware costs a fortune. And on top of that, choosing the overwhelmingly unpopular Istia.

To be starting at the same time under these conditions, isn't that a pretty low probability? She seemed to be thinking the same thing, as she blinked in surprise a moment after I did.

"Wow, that's amazing. What a coincidence!"

For some reason, the girl said this with a happy smile.

...This tentative beauty's voice and mannerisms are just as beautiful as her looks. I'll upgrade her to 'presumed beauty.' Fantasizing is free, after all.

So, I've hit a low-probability jackpot rarer than an online game's rare drop and encountered a presumed beauty, but—uh, what do I do now?

As a healthy young man of my age, I would gladly party up with a presumed beauty in this situation. But while it might be fine in an analog game, asking a girl out in this world, which is indistinguishable from reality, is, by my standards, as difficult as hitting on someone.

As a battle-hardened part-time worker, I'm confident I've polished my communication skills to some extent, but as someone who could only see [Arcadia], I had no time to put effort into getting a girlfriend.

I'm a damn weakling with zero experience points. While I can handle customer service or work-related interactions, I can't come up with a way to communicate with a woman in a private setting.

"Y-yeah. What a coincidence, huh."

See? The only thing that comes out of my mouth is a low-intelligence agreement that has no conversation-extending capabilities. I'm starting to despair at the current situation where I have no choice but to entrust the conversation to the smiling girl, who seems to be having fun for some reason—

"Since we're here, would you like to party up for a bit?"

—Just as I was about to despair, a lifeline was thrown to me by the girl herself.

Should I be happy or feel pathetic? Either way, in my mind, the "presumed beauty" with the dazzling smile had earned the simple adjective of "beautiful girl."

◇◆◇◆◇

This is just my personal guess, but I think the place you get transported to after choosing your affiliation from that place I've tentatively named the [Cave of Awakening] differs depending on the faction you choose.

Why? Because if I had chosen Vestol, which preaches 'Peace,' and was unceremoniously thrown into a forest full of such aggressive enemies, I'm confident I would have been furious!

"............Um, I'm really sorry, Haru-san. You said we'd party up, but I'm just relying on you completely..."

I wonder how many it's been now. The girl made a deeply apologetic face at me as I let out an exasperated sigh while finishing off a [Goblin Mushroom], the giant mushrooms that inhabit this forest.

The monster mushroom, its HP completely depleted, froze for a moment before exploding into a polygon-like blue phosphorescence. Amidst the light, I glanced at the results screen that popped up and then smiled at the shrinking girl.

"No, I'm glad we happened to start together. I'd be surprised if you had managed to get through this forest on your own, Sora."

When I said it in a teasing tone, the girl—player name [Sora]—smiled shyly.

After that, we introduced ourselves with just our player names and left the safe zone, only to be attacked by fungi ten steps later.

Fortunately, there were some initial equipment items prepared in my inventory, so this time I didn't have to become the incarnation of kicking—but a few seconds into the encounter, Sora left the front lines.

It wasn't that she was ambushed and lost all her HP in one hit. To be specific, she screamed and ran back to the safe zone like her life depended on it.

Well, the fungus wasn't exactly what you'd call cute, and the sight of a giant, grotesque mushroom with a faintly eerie face and limbs growing out of it, attacking you... well, it was kind of horrifying.

I watched her girlish retreat with an amused smile and sliced the mushroom, which had the same agility as the stone doll, into pieces with my dagger. The problem came after that.

—This beautiful girl is fatally bad at combat.

Well, I'd be terrified if a girl who just started a VR game was skilled at combat in this game where combat is basically a real fight... but still, Sora's combat skills are so bad that I can't see any way for her to defeat a 'Goblin Mushroom.'

First of all, the fact that she always closes her eyes when she swings her weapon makes her a non-starter.

There are many other problems, and every time I point one out, Sora honestly tries to improve, but it's bound to be difficult to overcome them all at once.

While we were practicing, my follow-up was too slow, and Sora died. Feeling guilty for letting an innocent girl die, I too stood there defenseless as the mushroom's body slam pummeled me, and I meekly accepted my first death.

And we awoke at the starting point. It seems that for those who chose Istia, the cushy game mechanic of "reviving in town after death" is not allowed, and we have to live with the fungi unless we break through this forest.

For now, I don't know if it's a game specification or just for this forest, but it seems that death doesn't cause a decrease in accumulated experience points. That means that if we can just take out the mushrooms one by one, we should eventually be able to break through by brute-forcing our levels.

But from the looks of Sora, there's no telling how long that would take. Having judged the situation, I'm now playing the role of her knight, soothing her as she urged me to go on ahead alone—

"There are so many of them."

The number of mushrooms I've already sliced up is countless. For me, who acquired an indomitable fighting spirit from the deathmatch with the stone doll, the fungi, whose only means of attack is a pathetic body slam, are no threat. They were quickly reduced to mere experience points... but the encounter rate is just too high.

Since I'm proceeding cautiously while protecting Sora, the end of the forest is still not in sight—ah, I leveled up.

While I was thinking, I was dismantling another fungus, and I leveled up for the nth time. [Arcadia]'s level system seems to be a status point allocation system, where you get 10 points for each level up and use them to improve your abilities as you like.

Alright, let's distribute these points, something like this seems good.

――――――――――――――――――
◇Status◇
Name：Haru　 Lv：6
STR(Strength)：5
AGI(Agility)：20
DEX(Dexterity)：20
VIT(Vitality)：5
MID(Mind)：5
LUC(Luck)：5

◇Skill◇

――――――――――――――――――

By the way, the initial values were all zero. When it first appeared, I was Lv.1 with 10 saved-up points. In games like this, I usually go for a specialized build, focusing on one thing, but since I'm going in blind, I have no way of knowing which stats are useful and to what extent.

Surprisingly, Sora seems to have some prior knowledge, and when I asked, she said that it will be possible to reset status points eventually. So, for now, I decided to put one point into each stat to see what happens, and eventually decided on a policy of pouring points into Agility and Dexterity, as improving my physical abilities felt the most right.

Being able to move quickly is quite exhilarating, and I considered going all-in on AGI, but I confirmed that if DEX doesn't keep up, you end up getting thrown off by your own speed, so for now, I'll raise them both together.

Since we're in a party, experience points are shared, so of course Sora is also leveling up. She seems to be raising MID and LUC. Acknowledging her lack of talent for melee combat, she plans to aim for acquiring magical attack methods for now.

I thought it would be there, but there is magic. I'm having fun moving my body, so I plan to go with a melee build for now, but I'd like to try my hand at magic someday.

"How is it?"

"...Not yet, it seems."

I asked Sora, who was also distributing her status points, but she operated another window to check something and then shook her head disappointedly.

Currently, we are trying to get through the forest while leveling up, and we are waiting for a magic skill to appear for Sora.

This game's skill system is special, or rather, it has some pretty technologically advanced specifications. To put it simply, skills are automatically generated based on the player's actions and appear in the skill tree.

The number of skills confirmed so far is enormous, and there are many unique skills that have only been manifested by a single person. That's great, it's a story full of dreams.

Magic skills can be acquired relatively easily by putting a lot of points into MID, which is related to magic attack power and MP values.

"I haven't gotten any skills yet either, so let's take it easy."

"Ugh... I feel so useless."

She seems to be bothered by it, but as a guy, just having a girl with me is a bonus. I don't have the guts to say it to her face, so I'll just be grateful in my heart.

"It's just that there are a lot of them and it's a pain, but once you get used to them, they're just fungi, so it's fine."

I have no idea what's so fine about fungi, but I said it with a lighthearted joke and a smile. Perhaps giving up on making excuses, Sora bowed her head and said, "Thank you for your help," with a shy smile.

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contact (collision)