Evil Avalon - Volume 2 - Chapter 14

Chapter 14: The Third Player

Nitta and I pointed our swords at each other, standing two meters apart. If we’d been playing DEC, that would’ve been more than close enough to exchange countless slashes and weapon skills within a fraction of a second. Despite that, Nitta was perfectly calm, wholly comfortable to throw a horrible question my way in her dreamy voice. “I hope you’re not planning to keep up your PKing in this world, are you?”

“God, no! Do you really think I’d kill people in the real world?”

“Maybe I’ll become this world’s Mav, then...”

Had she gone crazy? I stopped using my sword for a moment as her statement stunned me until I recalled we were in class. As such, I carried out half-hearted thrusts with my sword to disguise our whispered conversation so the instructors didn’t think we were messing around. I tensed up every time Nitta attacked with her sword, even though I knew she wouldn’t hurt me.

“I was joking, god!” she snorted. “I know this world and DEC are different, like in how its people think, how their lives actually matter, you know. So, maybe we could share our thoughts.”

Life at high school here made me forget that I’d come to a new world. Unlike my old world, some clans had no qualms spilling each other’s blood in their pursuit for power. And nobles tended to abuse commoners without fear of reproach from the law. The dungeon was the worst place of all, showing how you’d be safer in the worst gang-ridden slum of my world.

But just because we lived here now didn’t mean we had abandoned the morals of our previous world. It was inevitable to want to rid this new world of its discrimination and punish those who abused human rights and caused mayhem. We’d need to research and adapt to this world if we wanted to carve out peaceful lives, remembering the different laws and standards of order as well as the value of human lives.

Nitta wanted us to share our thoughts about these matters, but...

“But I barely know you,” I said. “We hardly ever spoke in the game and spent more time killing each other. We’ll have to learn to trust each other before we can share our thoughts, don’t you think?”

“Oh my God, are you hitting on me?” Nitta clapped her hands to her cheeks, pretending to be embarrassed.

Her reaction felt out of place given our history, as my strongest memory of her was that she’d always swoop in to kill me as soon as our eyes met. Embarrassing as it was to admit, Nitta was beautiful enough to turn heads wherever she went that I would’ve fallen head over heels for her gentle smile if I had never found out who she was. That was a moot point now. I had found out, and I wouldn’t catch feelings for her. Not positive ones, anyway.

With that said, I wanted to check a few things with her since it wouldn’t be fair for me to judge her. I’d been a force for evil in the game, murdering and pillaging wherever I’d gone, and she’d been a force for justice. Nitta had all the right to judge me.

“So, Nitta, are we the only players you know about?” I asked.

“Don’t be so cold. Call me by my first name! Risa. Ri! Sa!”

I could see her body writhing for some reason, which I found strange. And I wasn’t sure why she was acting so friendly either.

“I’m gonna cast Basic Appraisal on you, if you don’t mind?” I asked.

“I’d rather you didn’t ignore me,” insisted Nitta. “But okay, go ahead.”

Name: Risa Nitta

Job: Newbie

Strength: Pathetically Weak

Available skills: 2

Those were the results of Basic Appraisal, but I could not tell whether she’d used Fake to alter her information. Basic Appraisal was less reliable when used on players and spies who would more likely manipulate their stats than the average adventurer.

“Are you using Fake?” I asked.

“No,” she answered. “I’ve been trying to sneak into the dungeon, but I’m still just level 5.”

“Level 5?” I repeated.

In that case, she probably hadn’t visited Granny’s Goods yet. You could technically reach the shop at level 5, but the journey would be too dangerous to be worth the trouble. To be extra safe, I asked if she’d been to the tenth floor, to which she responded with no. I believed her because it wouldn’t make sense for her to cover this up when she’d voluntarily revealed herself as a player.

She was taking her sweet time to level up if she was only at level 5, though. What was taking her so long? She had game knowledge to help her level up and knew other players were probably here... Maybe she had her own reasons for taking it slow? Perhaps she was stuck with a debuff starter skill like me.

While I was thinking, Nitta suddenly switched from her stance, known in kendo as chudan no kamae, to unleash an attack while mixing in several feints. Instead of the Japanese style of sword fighting intended for use with katanas, she used the Western style meant for longswords. This indicated she had a long reach with her weapon and would mix in punches if our swords clashed. I retreated a few paces to avoid getting dragged into a fistfight.

“How about a little warning next time?!” I said, annoyed.

“Ha ha! Looks like I’ll need to try harder to land a hit. We need the instructors to think we’re taking this seriously, or they’ll start lecturing us.”

I glanced around and saw the instructors shouting at pairs that were slacking off, so she was right. We’d need to pretend to attack each other again.

Our swords clashed together a few times, then I let Nitta in on some of what I’d learned. I told her that while nobody seemed to know about Granny’s Goods, Furufuru had shared with me that someone had visited the store recently.

“Furufuru said that?” asked Nitta. “That wasn’t me.”

If the person who’d visited the tenth floor wasn’t Nitta, it had to be another player. And that player would also be part of Class E somewhere in this sword fighting lesson.

I sneakily scanned across my sparring classmates, searching for signs distinguishing one of them as a player. However, the third player would probably hide their true strength during the lesson.

While exchanging attacks with Nitta, I continued looking at my classmates for anyone I might recognize. I noticed DEC’s protagonist, toward the edge of the group, knock the sword out of his opponent’s hands. That confirmed my suspicions about Akagi: he had fallen to the dark side. His eyes were glazed over.

Akagi tried to join the First Swordcraft Club in the game, but the Class A students who made up the club just laughed in his face. He’d pleaded with them to let him join until they punched him away, which had led to a change in his heart. The next step in the game was for the subheroine Cuddles, aka Yuna Matsuzaka, to offer him a place in the Fourth Swordcraft Club she’d founded. This world’s Akagi appeared to follow that same path.

The boy that Akagi had struck trembled at the intimidating glare he received from his opponent. Trying to talk to Akagi would only make things worse, I thought. Sorry, kid, whatever your name is.

Kaoru and Pinky were sparring together, also near the edge of the group. Their speed suggested they were around level 5, though I felt they could go harder. Sanjou possessed a latent capacity for power in her position as the protagonist of DEC’s BL mode, and she had a fantastic but turbulent future ahead of her if the game was anything to go by. Her story featured a multitude of ridiculous game scenarios.

I could only wish that Akagi or another player had a handle on events to prevent the worst scenarios from occurring. Otherwise, nation-states and organizations might start wars to get their hands on Pinky, tangling us all. If nothing else worked, Nitta or I would slam the brakes on it.

The other student on my mind at the moment was Kuga, the spy who’d infiltrated the school on behalf of an American intelligence agency. Kuga was already over level 20 and possessed various skills to spy and gather intelligence. She was harmless as long as her cover wasn’t blown, and I wanted to stay away from her because her appraisal skills could see through my faked stats.

Oomiya, Kuga’s partner, was diligently swinging her sword. The sight of her braids bouncing with each thrust was adorable. Kuga’s original partner was a long-haired, shy girl that I knew nothing about.

“Kuga was supposed to be partners with her roommate,” remarked Nitta when she saw where I was looking. “A level 3 girl, I think. I did some digging, but she doesn’t smell like another player to me.”

Apparently, Nitta had watched the roommate during combat and hadn’t believed it was how a hardened DEC player would fight. Her theory was that long hours spent wielding clubs or swords as a player with an enormous strength stat led to signs emerging in how you attacked. I couldn’t discern anything that deep in other people’s attacks, but I didn’t doubt her. Most of our classmates looked like they were around level 3 or 4, just as their figures in the school database stated. Nitta was better suited to sniff out players from the class than I was.

I wondered how many other players could have survived the game event that was the catalyst for us coming here. The game world got carpet-bombed, and all those caught in the huge radius of the attacks had died. Even if you’d escaped, innumerable traps would kill you instantly. I couldn’t see many people surviving those cruelly unfair odds. A handful could’ve made it through based on the difficulty.

At the moment, I knew of three players: the person who’d visited Granny’s Goods, Nitta, and me. I was a little shocked that three of us had completed the event, as I thought it’d been just me.

“I’m amazed you managed to complete that rotten game event,” I commented. “I only survived because I got lucky.”

The instadeath attacks just happened to miss me. The path I had chosen had been clear of instadeath traps, or the people ahead of me had already sprung them. My survival was due to a string of coincidences rather than any skill...

Although that wasn’t quite right, and skill did play a part. The instincts I’d built up through many long hours playing DEC had saved me at several spots, including dodging attacks. From that perspective, luck alone wouldn’t have saved you if you lacked skill.

“My darling clan members helped me out,” said Nitta, clutching at her chest as she stared into the distance as if eulogizing them. “I’ll miss them dearly...”

Her clan members had walked into the path of the instadeath attacks and traps to keep Nitta safe at the cost of their lives. I hadn’t thought of that tactic, but it seemed like it would work. Maybe there’d been other players that had used group tactics to complete the challenge.

“Yeah, I think some big Assault Clans took part,” continued Nitta. “They didn’t look like they were working together, though.”

Nitta was the centerpiece of her clan, and its members had become utterly devoted to her. It made sense they’d sacrifice themselves to get her through. The big clans that made their names raiding the front lines and hunting bosses had some of the best players in the game, but those players were all in it for themselves and eager for glory. It was unlikely that any would forsake their chance to win to help a competitor survive the event. In that sense, using Nitta as an example of what the average player might do was a bad idea.

“We’ve got a lot to talk about,” I said, “and I can’t say much out in the open in the middle of class.”

“Let’s talk later,” uttered Nitta.

We agreed to take it easy for the rest of the lesson and spar in a way that made us look like level 3s.

Even so, Nitta still mixed in the occasional feint.

I wish she’d stop that.