Evil Avalon - Volume 1 - Chapter 4

Chapter 4: The Setting

With the first day of school over, I set off for my room.

I walked toward the dorms adjoining the school grounds where most students resided, as they had traveled from across the world to attend. I imagined I’d be no exception and made that my destination. I’d plunged into DEC’s world without warning, and I wanted some time alone to calm down and get my head around what was happening.

However, I couldn’t find the name Narumi on the room list by the dorm’s entrance, so I asked one of the dorm staff.

“Narumi, wasn’t it?” the woman asked. “You’re not registered here. You must commute in.”

It seemed that I lived at home. “Err, yeah...I do. Could you tell me my address? I seem to have forgotten.”

She handed me one of the school’s introductory pamphlets and told me the address. I also heard her mutter under her breath, “And he’s just a kid” as she pointed a pitying look at my bulk.

I flicked through the pamphlet and found a map of the local area, and I recognized the names written there. That was when I recalled DEC’s setting was in an alternate reality version of modern-day Japan. My memories of visiting this area in my previous life told me I should see tranquil residential streets and scenic parks overlooking mountains and the sea. But tall buildings and apartment complexes instead blocked the view from within the school grounds. I wasn’t likely to figure out the reason for the discrepancy by thinking about it now, so I thanked the woman and headed to the address that she’d told me was my home.

***

I passed through the thick and robust school gate only to land in a bustling shopping district. The street in front of the school had hotels, department stores, and commercial complexes all lined up. The scene wouldn’t have looked out of place in my Japan were it not for its citizens. Some wore suits of armor, others carried large weapons, and all of them unmistakably belonged to DEC’s world. I stared at the buildings and passersby as I walked on, and after a few minutes I reached my home.

The first floor of the house was a store, and above the door was a sign with “Narumi’s General Goods” written in large letters. The door-plate also read “Narumi,” spelled with the same characters as Piggy’s family name, so I’d found the right place. I hadn’t known that Piggy’s family ran a convenience store. A car was parked outside, so I could tell that I wasn’t the only one living there.

Is it okay to go inside? I wondered. It doesn’t feel right barging into someone else’s house. Wait a second... I know this place.

A fragment of Piggy’s memories had found their way to the surface. Looking at the building again, I felt a spark of recognition and a warm sense of belonging. Of course, Piggy did belong here. It was home.

After I’d been loitering outside the house for a while, a woman in her forties emerged from the shop wearing an apron.

“Oh, it’s you, Souta,” she called. “I thought it was someone up to no good.”

She had a gentle face and a slender figure, so different from Piggy’s huge frame that I assumed we couldn’t be related. Yet Piggy’s memories told me that this middle-aged beauty was my mother!

“Umm... I’m back,” I said.

“Hey, bro!” another voice chirped. “Welcome back.” A girl wearing a large hoodie came out of the shop while tying up her long hair. She had a young-looking face and must’ve been in middle school or the upper years of elementary school. She was adorable...and had called me “bro,” but surely she couldn’t be Piggy’s sister!

“What are you staring at?” the girl asked, puzzled.

“Oh, err, nothing.”

I’d stumbled across one of this world’s oddest mysteries: into this house of beautiful thoroughbreds, a mule had been born...or perhaps a pig. I entered the house in a daze, my mind preoccupied with the impossibility of my family.

Mother and daughter were standing in front of the refrigerator discussing tonight’s dinner and paying no attention to me. I searched my mind to see if I could find my room. Up the stairs, second from the back. I was gradually getting the hang of how to draw upon Piggy’s memories. The process worked differently from remembering my own as I had to visualize Piggy’s mind as separate from mine and stare into it, which was why my past attempts had failed. Most of the time, I was the basis for my thoughts, and the memories that came most readily were much the same as when I’d lived in my old world.

Sometimes Piggy’s emotions resurged unbidden, especially when I’d spoken to people he shared a bond with, like his family or Kaoru Hayase. It was easy to recognize these emotions because they were too different from mine. For example, I’d started to feel anxious when I first thought about Kaoru Hayase, and seeing Piggy’s mother and sister had filled me with comfort. I didn’t have a family, and I certainly didn’t have a hot girlfriend, so the sudden rush of these emotions had confused me. I’d never felt them before.

This emotional link suggested I hadn’t simply taken over Piggy’s body. I’d merged with him—my consciousness coexisted with his emotions and memories. Or, at least, that was my hypothesis. I wished I knew a way to leave Piggy’s body and let the poor boy take his life back from this parasitic stranger who’d warped in from another world. Although, DEC’s devs were ultimately to blame for everything, not me.

Anyway, there were a few things that I’d need to find out to overcome the challenges of this world, regardless of whether I’d live out the rest of my days here as Piggy or return to my world. I thought about what I should investigate first.

I reached Piggy’s room, on the northeast side of the house and away from the sun, so it was dark inside. As I went in, the floorboards groaned slightly either due to their age or the heavy mass walking on them. I gazed across the room while pulling from Piggy’s memories, and nothing felt out of place. In fact, I felt remarkably at ease. For the first time, I realized how strained I’d felt until this point, thrown into this world so suddenly and clueless about what to do. I chucked my school bag onto the bed and breathed easy, but then I noticed something.

Gross! I thought. This room is a complete mess!

Nothing felt out of place here, but the floor had discarded clothes and candy wrappers scattered across it. And there was a huge, messy heap of books and manga. The place was a dump. I decided to turn the TV on and tidy up. I had to do something about this mess.

A broad-shouldered middle-aged man appeared on the screen, saying something from the National Diet’s podium. Text at the bottom of the screen listed his name and explained that he was both a member of the Diet’s upper house and a count.

A count, eh? I thought.

DEC’s setting was based on Japan, but was not identical to it. The political systems, international relations, and views of their citizens differed greatly between the game’s world and modern, democratic Japan. The militaristic authoritarian political regime and the existence of the aristocracy bore a closer resemblance to the prewar Empire of Japan.

The political system consisted of an upper house called the House of Lords that only the aristocracy could join and a lower house called the House of Commons that even commoners could enter. The nobles didn’t rule over traditional fiefdoms, but the titles came with societal privileges and vested benefits, such as immunity from prosecution and exercising political powers. The exact amount depended on how noble their title was.

Some students at the school were nobles or retainers in the service of nobles, usually descendants of the defunct samurai class. It would be important to take care in my interactions with them. Though I was pretty sure that the old law that allowed the upper classes to cut down anyone who offended them was off the books now.

The Narumis were...clearly commoners.

After a little investigation, I discovered that this world mirrored Japan’s history until the early Meiji era when the dungeons first appeared. I used my textbooks and terminal to look up the names of the commanders in the Warring States period and the Shoguns of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and everything looked right. The Meiji Restoration appeared to have progressed the way I knew. After the dungeons appeared, the path this world took to reach modern-day Japan branched off severely from what I remembered. The names of the imperial family and politicians after Emperor Meiji were different from my Japan. I wondered whether something related to the dungeons had caused a change in the line of succession or whether pre-Meiji Japan had merely served as inspiration for this world but was a different country. The second option seemed more likely to me, but I’d need to research more to know for certain.

I changed channels. A news broadcast announced that a dropout adventurer had turned to terrorism and abducted a politician. Law and order seemed far weaker here compared to modern Japan.

Adventurers’ physical enhancements should have only taken effect in the presence of a magic field. But about fifteen years before, scientists had succeeded in creating an artificial magic field. Since then, society had endured more and more acts of violence perpetrated by disgruntled adventurers, who’d leveled up so high that bullets bounced right off them. Several terrorist organizations had enlisted these outlaw adventurers as muscle to further their political agenda. In response, the state had invested in making more adventurers and deployed them to combat the threat. Apparently, the diplomatic and intelligence services were teeming with secret agents with superhuman strength. Three cheers for the Age of Adventurers! Hip hip... No? Okay.

Magic field detectors at sporting arenas screened players for the use of magical enhancements, allowing the sporting world to brag of their fairness. That made sense. Imagine if a superhuman capable of taking down a giant dragon went out and played soccer. Actually, I’d watch that.

I switched the television off and picked up a newspaper from the floor, and the date was...four years earlier than it should be. I compared this to the date in my terminal and found that the newspaper was only a day old. DEC had been released four years ago. Perhaps that fact was related somehow.

I turned to the paper’s economic pages, hoping I could cheat on the stock market if this world really were four years in the past. I recognized some names, but the economy here functioned on the so-called zaibatsu system. And the same handful of names appeared in all the companies with controlling stakes in the economy. The Nikkei index differed from the numbers I remembered, so my knowledge of the other Japan wouldn’t be helpful. I turned to the four-panel comic strip pages... Oh look, they have Boko, the Li’l Rascal, I noticed.

Afterward, I sat in front of the room’s PC and browsed the internet. The news sites and video-sharing platforms looked almost identical to the ones I knew. As I continued to browse, I noticed something strange. Sites with glamor models posing in lingerie showed up in the search results, but I couldn’t find any nude images. Perhaps there was a strict censorship regime in place? Such restrictions on thought and freedom should’ve been detrimental to the country’s development, but maybe I was wrong.

All these things led me to believe this country was an alternate version of Japan that had resulted from the continuation of prewar Japan’s political system. Based on this, there had been a divergence between the 1910s and 1930s.

The Japan of this world had avoided a decisive defeat in the Second World War, even if its territory remained the same as my reality. It wasn’t clear why the Empire had ceded its possessions despite there not being an unconditional surrender. I’d been able to ignore these details as simple fiction when I’d played the game. Now that I’d taken up residence here, I couldn’t be so blasé.

At first, I was excited to read about how the dungeon had changed this alternate Japan’s history. It felt like I was reading one of DEC’s behind-the-scenes articles. The problem was that the game was my reality now, and what I was learning was telling me that this version of Japan was unstable and full of trouble. How safe could a world be with ideologically driven bands of superhumans running rampant? The Adventurers’ Guild supervised all active adventurers, but terrorists and dropout adventurers were damaging the political landscape and public order. Even worse, the enshrinement of the aristocracy in the legal system gave me doubts about the state of civil rights. I couldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that my Japan’s notions of civil liberties, fair trials, and trustworthy policing carried over to this society. I’d need to readjust my preconceptions, and soon.

I also had to remember that this was the world of DEC, meaning events or storylines could happen at Adventurers’ High or anywhere in the world. The familiar Kariya event from the game’s opening scene had already started, playing as in the game, and was definitive proof that the events could become real. This event’s outcome wouldn’t affect me, though. It was the game’s other events that worried me. Battles against a secret service, a full-blown war between states, the eradication of an entire dungeon floor... Plenty of catastrophic events had occurred in DEC’s story. I didn’t think I could survive any of those. Unfortunately, I shared a class with the protagonist, who was naturally inclined to get caught up in everything. It’d been possible to play the game and avoid such events, but the ones in the main story might be inevitable.

A player would think that the riskier the event, the greater the enjoyment. To someone who had to live in this world, it was nothing but trouble. I needed to hurry and start raiding the dungeon to level up to be ready for those events if they happened. School was out for the next two days, and they’d assigned us no homework. There was plenty of time to go on a raid and jump at the opportunity to have fun in the dungeon.

After an hour of thinking about that, I finished cleaning the room. I’d sorted the trash into bags, tied the bags with string, and piled them in one corner of the room. I’d leave them there for now and take them out another day.

While cleaning, I found something labeled “Nuptial Grimoire” but had no idea what it was. It looked like regular colored paper, but the word “grimoire” suggested it had a spell cast on it. Curious, I searched Piggy’s memories and learned the book was a written promise to marry Kaoru Hayase they’d made when younger. Nothing about that sounded the first bit magical. Little kids promised to marry each other when they grew up. The thought was cute, though. The book probably held sentimental value for Piggy, so I decided to keep it, storing it away in the back of a drawer.

***

The cleaning was more or less over, and it was a little past noon. A lot of time remained in the day, so I planned to take a trip into the dungeon.

But first, I wanted to eat something, and my stomach had been growling incessantly for some time. Piggy’s memories showed him devouring a huge breakfast that morning, yet I felt so starved that I feared passing out. I suspected that Piggy’s Glutton skill was responsible for this abnormal hunger. And, in turn, my obesity. I couldn’t trust Piggy’s fat body to cope with deep dives in the dungeon, so dieting was a must, and I needed to keep my meals small. But...

This is way too much, I thought, looking down at the mountain of food on the plate in front of me. There must’ve been at least two thousand kilocalories. Worse, everything on the plate was either deep-fried or high in carbs, with hardly any vegetables. Somebody was trying to fatten me up.

“Sorry about this, but could you cut down on how much you give me from now on?” I asked. I felt rude requesting this after my mother had gone to the trouble of making my lunch. Still, I’d never get my weight under control with meals like this every day.

“But, Souta, fried chicken with korokke is your favorite!” my mother exclaimed, placing her hands on her cheeks in concern. “Have you come down with a cold?”

My eyes were watering at the sight of the meal, and my stomach screamed at me to empty the plate. It took all my mental fortitude to resist.

“The thing is,” I said, “I want to go on a diet. I want my meals to be mostly vegetables.”

“You can eat vegetables now?” my sister asked, her naturally arched eyebrows arching further. “When did that happen?”

Worried that I’d tripped up, I hurriedly rummaged through Piggy’s memories. It turned out that he had an aversion to vegetables. He wouldn’t even touch fruit! I’d have to make something up to explain the inconsistency.

“Now that I’m at Adventurers’ High,” I said, “I figured that I should make some changes.”

“You are a bit chubby,” my mother said, “so I suppose that makes sense.”

I smiled agreeably, straining to hold my tongue. Despite my height of a hundred and seventy centimeters, I easily weighed over a hundred kilograms. I was probably closer to a hundred and twenty. I wanted to shout that I was well past the point of “a bit chubby.”

“I think bro looks perfect the way he is!” my sister said. She then looked at me and asked, “Are you really going to the dungeon already?”

I nodded and said, “I’m itching to level up.”

“Hmmm,” the girl hummed. She was a youthful girl with short bangs who wore her emotions openly and was so damn cute that I had to question Piggy’s parentage. Her name was Kano Narumi, a third-year middle school student aspiring to attend Adventurers’ High with me, her brother. To that end, she assisted at a martial arts school and worked hard at her exam prep.

She was muttering something under her breath, her head lowered. Did she suspect me?

“Bro, take me along with you.”

“What?” I said. “I can’t. You’re still in middle school.”

“Don’t be selfish, Kano,” our mother chimed in.

“But I wanna go!” she whined.

Children under fifteen couldn’t dive into the dungeon, and the law forbade middle schoolers from entering. The government had restricted entry based on age to prevent unnecessary harm. The monsters in the first two levels of the dungeon were weak enough that middle schoolers could probably win the fight, but that didn’t guarantee they’d be safe.

The minimum age requirement had previously been eighteen instead of fifteen, but that changed after the invention of AMFs, artificial magic fields. Seeing that criminals abused this invention and destabilized the country, the government passed reforms to lower the age requirement. They hoped to raise the number of well-trained adventurers and expand their skill sets.

Even so, Kano was under fifteen and still in middle school, so it was doubtful that she’d get permission to enter the dungeon.

I watched the scolding mother and the daughter trying to get her own way. The scene was touching and distant for someone like me who had no family. Of course, I had one when I was very young but could barely recall them. As I watched Piggy’s mother and sister, I tried to remember whether my own family had behaved the same way together.

So I wanted to keep these two safe no matter the cost to help them get what they wanted, for Piggy’s sake. He loved them dearly, and I felt that might make up for my taking over his life. Kano wouldn’t ordinarily be able to enter the dungeon, but a few secret passages leading inside existed. As long as I gave her an escape item to use if things got bad, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about.

“You can’t come right now. If you’re a good girl, I’ll take you along with me someday.”

“Yippee! It’s a promise, okay?” Once she’d heard the promise, Kano skipped to her room, humming as she went, her excitement palpable.

Then Piggy’s mother left to tend to the store.

I breathed a sigh of relief as I watched them leave, believing they hadn’t suspected I was an impostor. They must have noticed that Piggy was acting out of character. I couldn’t admit I’d switched places with their son and brother. They’d think I’d gone mad, so I planned on keeping it a secret. To keep up my life and avoid undue stress on Piggy’s family, I needed to meticulously familiarize myself with who he was, how he acted, how he sounded, and all his little quirks and ticks.

But I’d spent so much of my life alone that I’d tripped up, missing the social cues and people skills from being with others. I was still partly Piggy. His memories and feelings rose to the surface sometimes, whether I summoned them or not. I was Piggy 2.0, and it was a strange state of affairs.

His family life did raise questions for me. As far as I saw, Piggy had gotten along with them, and they didn’t appear to have any concerns about his well-being. Why had he started school so insecure? What had caused his personality to become so self-destructive? His obsession with Kaoru Hayase was clearly the root cause, but there was more. The devs had put Piggy in the game for fans to hate, so his backstory was too minimal to draw any conclusions. My best plan was to tread lightly. I wouldn’t stand out in school or interact with Kaoru Hayase more than necessary.

I finished my small lunch, too modest to be fit for a beggar let alone a king. Then, I fetched Piggy’s middle-school tracksuit from a drawer, got changed, and began gathering the supplies for my dungeon raid. The tracksuit was tight around my chest and thighs, so I concluded that Piggy had put on more weight since middle school. Honestly, that boy.

I picked up my rucksack, where I’d stored some magic gems. As I descended the stairs, I saw my mother rummaging around in front of the store’s register.

“I’m off to the dungeon,” I told her. “I’ll be back later.”

“Aren’t you going to take anything with you?” she asked. “You can’t go empty-handed.”

“I’m taking a bat I found in my room. That’ll do for today since I’m only going to the first level.”

The bat would be all I’d need. Other than an occasional hidden monster, which could spawn under certain conditions, the only monsters in the dungeon’s first floor were slimes.

I’d be able to access the school’s weapon rental program once I’d completed an orientation session, so I’d book one out after if any struck my fancy. My priority had to be getting strong enough to protect myself and Piggy’s family from the crises that awaited in the future. I had a long road ahead but was willing to walk it.

***

I left my house and headed for the school and the dungeon beneath it. I decided to jog there, fitting the journey into my exercise plan. My rolls of fat heaved from side to side as I spurred my legs on, but my pace was barely faster than the pedestrians walking along the street. The school was only a few minutes’ walk from my house, but my lungs gave out in half that time, and sweat drenched my skin. I opted to walk the remaining distance, fearing I’d pass out from exhaustion inside the dungeon. My body probably wasn’t accustomed to sudden bursts of activity.

The many people milling around as I looked at my surroundings struck me. I remembered this place being a peaceful garden city in my old world, full of residential areas and parks. Here, adventurers and workers involved in the various dungeon industries swelled the population to over eight hundred thousand, transforming the city into a giant economic center. They had nowhere else to go; this was Japan’s only dungeon.

Property prices had skyrocketed in this city as well. A renter could find a one-bedroom apartment in the heart of Tokyo at cheaper rates than here. Even a small house in a back alley like the Narumis’ home fetched a large sum.

Everywhere I look, there’s a vendor selling food or snacks, I mused, scanning the nearby stores. I’m gonna have to fight the temptation.

I tried remembering how to get inside the dungeon as the standard process was laborious and took months. Prospective entrants had to register, attend an interview, undergo a course, and finally do a written exam. Adventurers’ High students, however, had already passed the government’s strict vetting process. We could get our Adventurers’ Passes printed on the spot by showing our terminals to the staff.

Thus, I stopped off at the Adventurers’ Guild first.

***

Adventurers’ Guilds were commonplace in fantasy fiction, and this world’s guild fulfilled most of the familiar functions. People could come here to register as adventurers; buy, sell, and store items; and accept quests or submit new ones.

There were some noteworthy differences, though. For starters, the guild was an enormous organization with over ten million registered adventurers worldwide. Footfall in the guild building surpassed ten thousand people every day. Their office also housed shops run by private businesses and public facilities, so many ordinary people used the services provided. Another difference was that this world’s guild managed the care and treatment of wounded adventurers, regardless of whether they had sustained their injuries in the dungeon. The guild also functioned as a sort of police or military force, and they dispatched high-ranking guild-sanctioned adventurers to settle disputes between adventurers. To house all these additional services, the Adventurers’ Guild occupied a modern high-rise building with over forty floors.

When I reached the guild’s entrance, I stood frozen and looked up in awe at the building’s towering height.

“It looked massive from the classroom’s window, but to see it up close...” I said to myself. Realizing I was blocking traffic, I got moving again and went in.

The interior space was large enough for hundreds of people to walk around without being crowded. The floor was marble, and there was a modern brick-effect wallpaper. On the left was a line of customer service booths like in a bank; on the right, busy passengers bustled on the many escalators and elevators. In the game, NPCs occasionally picked a fight with the protagonist. Luckily, the guild was comparatively empty at this time of day, and I couldn’t see any nasty-looking adventurers. I scanned the booths, looking for the one handling new registrations. After finding the right one, I walked over.

“Good evening,” said the woman behind the desk, smiling brightly. “How can I help you?” She displayed perfect professional courtesy too. I’d been worried that the staff here would abide by the fantasy stereotype of snubbing adventurers based on their appearance or rank.

“I’d like to register as an adventurer, please.”

“I can see that you’re a student of Adventurers’ High,” she said after a glance at the terminal on my arm. “Would you kindly write your name and your terminal ID code here?”

She passed me a form, and I adjusted the terminal on my arm to find the ID code.

“Here is your Adventurers’ Pass,” she explained. “The registration fee has been waived as you are a student at Adventurers’ High. You will have an adventurer class of nine, to begin with. You can refer to this manual for any questions about adventurers. But please come back here if there’s anything you don’t understand.”

I could now enter the dungeon by scanning my Adventurer’s Pass or my terminal in a machine by the dungeon portal. The pass was accepted as a personal ID as well, so I stored it safely in my rucksack with the manual for later reading.

With this, I was ready to head to the dungeon portal, and I could barely contain my excitement.