kscans

Chapter 15 - The Goddess and Sadaharu

A world of pure white, with no ceiling or walls.

In that vast space, there was a single, solitary desk. On the desk was a keyboard and a monitor, floating in the air without any support. The language displayed on the monitor was not of Earth.

A lone man stared at the monitor, typing something on the keyboard.

For hours, for dozens of hours.

The man barely moved anything but his typing fingers and his eyes, simply continuing to type what looked like some kind of program.

"Saaa-daaa-haaa-ruuu!!"

A hole opened in the white space, and a blonde beauty who looked to be around twenty years old appeared from it.

"Hey, Sadaharu. Are you even listening?"

Completely ignoring the beauty's call, the man called Sadaharu still did not stop his hands.

"Listen to me!!"

She forcefully snatched the keyboard away, stopping Sadaharu's hands.

"...Ah, Goddess-sama. You were here."

"Don't give me 'you were here'! Listen to me properly."

This blonde beauty was the master of this space. And the being who had made the dungeons appear on Earth. So that earthlings could recognize her more easily, she called herself a Goddess.

"So, was there some kind of bug?"

"The Black Dungeon got cleared! Isn't that a little too fast!?"

"Oh, is that so. But that was set up for beginners, so it's not a problem if it gets cleared on the first day."

"B, but still."

"I'm still in the middle of implementing the Grade 4 dungeons, but it will probably be a while before the people of this world can clear Grade 2."

Sadaharu was a former human who had been brought to this place by the Goddess. Not just any human, but the programmer who built the core systems of Farhlm World Online.

Now, under the Goddess, he was single-handedly carrying out the task of reflecting the dungeon and monster settings from the world of FWO into the real world. In truth, most of the dungeons that appeared all over the world were just empty structures, with no monsters inside.

What the self-proclaimed Goddess could do was create structures and items, and make created beings move according to their settings. Created beings referred to the monsters that appeared in dungeons, but she was not good at setting their movements and adjusting their strength.

For that reason, the Goddess had invited Sadaharu to this place and had him help with dungeon management, such as balancing monster strength.

"What's the status on implementing monsters for the Grade 4 dungeons?"

"About 60% complete."

"Do you think you can finish that in about three more days?"

"No way I can finish! Do you have any idea how big and numerous the Grade 4 dungeons are!?"

The Goddess's body tensed with a jolt as Sadaharu yelled at her.

"D, don't get mad. It's just that a Grade 2 dungeon got cleared just a little while ago. So I was hoping you could hurry up just a little bit, Sadaharu."

"............Huh? A, are you saying a Grade 2 dungeon has already been cleared!?"

"Seems so. By the way, the first one to clear it was Japanese."

"Ohh. As a former Japanese person, that makes me a little happy."

He had received an ageless, immortal body that didn't get tired from the Goddess, and had already quit being human.

"So, that Japanese person is going to Grade 3, right?"

"I think so."

"You insisted on doing the trophy settings there yourself, Goddess-sama, so I left it to you... What did you implement? It looks like something humanoid is placed there. Were you able to make an autonomous doll? If you have such a convenient ability, I'd like a few assistants."

At this point, Sadaharu did not yet know that the Goddess had abducted a living human, was going to strip them of their will, and turn them into a trophy.

"In FWO, you get a pet NPC that helps you in battle for clearing Grade 3, right? I took a hint from that and came up with it myself! Aren't I great!? Hey, you can praise me, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, amazing, amazing."

"Praise me a little more seriously. Oh well. In any case, Grade 3 should be fine until the end, but it's not good that Grade 4 isn't implemented yet. Is it really impossible?"

"I told you it's impossible."

"Then, I guess it can't be helped. Let's insert a losing event here. We can use that to buy some time."

"Oh. Is it okay to implement that?"

"I can't allow humans to catch up to the world that I, the Goddess, am remaking."

Sadaharu thought that the fact that the preparations she had spent months on were about to fall apart in just two days was already a loss, but he didn't say it out loud.

That was because she had told him it was okay to implement, as a losing event, the original mid-boss he had created in the intervals between implementing monsters. A monster he had set to a strength that humanity at its current level could not possibly win against, no matter how much they struggled.

"Thank you very much! Then, I will add it as the mid-boss of the Spring Dungeon."

"By the way, are you sure they can't win against it?"

"Unless they have weapons they can get from a Grade 5 dungeon, they absolutely cannot win. In the first place, this was created by perfectly tracing the movements of the strongest solo player in FWO. If their equipment strength is the same, no one can beat him, as he masters cheat-level character control. He was the only one who could perfectly master the Manipulator system I designed."

"So, what happens if that strongest player himself shows up?"

"It's fine. That's why I had you add the condition that you can't enter the dungeons that appeared in the real world unless you're an adult."

Sadaharu had quit being human, but he wanted to avoid children losing their lives for no reason. So he persuaded the Goddess to only allow adults into the dungeons.

"Ah, I see. So that strongest player is still a child."

Incidentally, the Goddess had set the entry restrictions for the dungeons after reading materials from Japan's Heian era. She was under the impression that adulthood meant being 15 years or older.

Due to this misunderstanding, 'the strongest player,' who was 16, was able to enter the dungeons just fine and was currently dominating the monsters.

"I don't think it's likely, but just in case some hardcore gamer with superhuman physique breaks through the losing event, I'll go ahead and set up the boss character I had on hold. You wanted to possess that body, right, Goddess-sama?"

"Yes! Since I went to the trouble of preparing a trophy, I want to be the one to protect it."

"I won't set it to the level of a losing event. It's plenty strong as it is. For the rest, please do your best with your character control, Goddess-sama."

"Leave it to me!"