I TRIED OUT THE GODDESS’S TRAINING PROGRAM
It was nighttime.
After a day of leisurely killing slimes, I crawled into bed and heard someone speak in my head.
Hello there, Azusa!
This was definitely Godly Godness’s voice. Well, to be precise, she wasn’t speaking, so it wasn’t her voice. It was like she was telepathically projecting into my mind.
And things never ended well whenever she started a conversation with me…
“Don’t tell me you had another fight with one of the gods in this world. I’m not mediating for you. You know Nintan. Ask her for help.”
I still hadn’t fallen asleep, so I replied to her out loud. I could probably have conveyed my thoughts to her mentally, but this was easier for me to grasp.
Oh, no, no! I come to you for respectable reasons this time! …Well, they might not be entirely respectable. What do you think?
“You’re asking me…? I don’t even know what your reasons are, so I can’t answer that. You’re a goddess; can’t you speak with a little more gravitas?”
It is thanks to you that my teachings to perform virtuous acts are spreading throughout this world. By my estimation, I have around fifteen thousand people who have three or more stamps on their virtue stamp card.
“That’s a big number. Well done.”
And so getting to the point, I was hoping to build a training program for my most fervent believers. I need a program that truly tempers the spirit, otherwise my believers might grow bored of me.
Hey, she was actually sounding like a deity for once. I really wished she would contact me in the morning or something, though… Why did she always try to contact me when I was about to go to sleep…?
And so I worked with this world’s renowned game designer Pondeli to create a video game for my training program!
Okay… Now this was getting weird…
When I spoke to Pondeli, she was surprised at first, of course, but she understood me in only five minutes once I explained the situation.
That was pretty fast. But I guess spirits were a normal thing in this world, so maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to believe a god was talking to you.
So did this mean they were having trouble with the game development?
We successfully created the game! My believers can now train as much as they like!
“That’s wonderful. It doesn’t sound like there’s much of a problem, then…”
No, there is. Though it’s finished now, I still need to play-test it. I thought you might be able to help in that regard. You strike me as the type to have had gaming experience in your past life.
Gah! So I was going to be roped into this anyway.
But there was still one big thing holding me back.
“You’ve been calling it a game this whole time… Isn’t it a training program…?”
Ostensibly? Yes.
“A god cannot say things like that!”
I simply added some game elements to my training program so that anyone can enjoy it. I am hoping my training will be popular with as many people as possible. That is all.
It was better for something to be fun than not fun, sure, but was training supposed to be fun?
Well then, I look forward to your help, Azusa!
Before I knew it, I’d been transported to a strange otherworld.
I could tell it was a “strange otherworld” because the ground, the trees, and even the clouds in the sky had hard, jagged edges. It was like they’d been made up of tiny squares…
“It’s like a retro game in here. Also, I technically never agreed to help…”
“This is the spiritual world I will use for my training program! Try to clear every stage! Ready, start!”
I blinked and found Godly Godness standing in front of me.
Since she was a god, she could appear and disappear as she pleased.
“Um, I kind of want to sleep… People shouldn’t be working at bedtime. People need to sleep at night.”
I liked getting my full seven hours of sleep if at all possible.
“It’ll be fine. You can train here in the spiritual realm while your physical body remains asleep. This is not your corporeal form—this is your spiritual form. To put it simply, this is a dream world. This is not a sleep study, but rather sleep training.”
“Okay, if you say so… No harm done if I can still recover energy, I guess.”
“Yes, precisely! The controls are easy, so try to learn as you play.”
Yet another gamelike element, I see.
“This is your spiritual form, Azusa, which means you will have to grow accustomed to controlling your spirit instead of a physical body. Oh! Perfect timing—there’s a slime. Test yourself with that.”
Just as she had said, a slime was hopping in my direction.
The slime appeared to be made from coarse pixels, like in older video games.
“I could kill a slime with a flick of my finger.”
“Oh, in reality, yes! But this training program has certain rules. You cannot use any punches or kicks that are not included in the rules. Though it’s just a little slime, you will still take damage if you run into it, so be careful.”
I guess she wanted me to play this like an action game…
“Now, as for how to defeat it—Azusa, try attacking.”
“It’s still far away from me, but I’ll give it a shot.”
I turned to attack the distant slime.
Nyoom!
A staff flew out of my body.
It traveled a couple of feet in front of me and then…vanished.
“What was that? Vanishing staves…?”
“Whenever you try to attack, you will shoot staves—the basic witch weapon. You can use them to damage the slime.”
“Wait, you know staves aren’t weapons you throw, right?! And picking them up afterward would be a pain.”
“That won’t be a problem. You can throw an infinite number.”
She was right—when I tried it again, sure enough, a staff shot out from me before disappearing.
“How does this even work? Do I even want to know where those staves are being kept?!”
“Do not mind the details~ It’s just a game!”
It didn’t seem right for a god to be treating her training program as “just a game.”
“Now, try to tackle the first stage. Onward, Azusa!”
The slime from earlier was slowly approaching me.
“Take this!” I shot a staff at the slime.
The slime vanished, and a coin floated in the air. Maybe I was supposed to collect these. Once I touched it…
Da-ding!
That sound probably meant that I’d gotten it.
“Oh! So you do have experience, Azusa! You have a complete understanding of the principles!”
“Sure, but isn’t this just a retro action game?”
“By the way, you should be aware that this stage has a time limit of five minutes. You will run out of time if you take too long.”
There was no reason to re-create the genre that faithfully…
After defeating the first slime, I pressed onward.
There was a weird blip, blip noise. Oh, that was me when I moved…
Next, I was approached by a similar-looking slime as well as a bat flying overhead. The bat was all jagged, too.
I shot the slime with my infinite supply of staves and got my coin.
The bat, however, was zipping around erratically. It was hard to hit!
“Argh! I’ll just go up to it!”
I slammed into the bat, and my body started blinking. Very gamelike.
I had a general guess as to what was going to happen.
“Once I stop blinking, I’m going to become small Azusa, aren’t I?”
I’d played that game where mushrooms made you big and flowers let you shoot fire before.
But once I stopped blinking…I was in my underwear.
“Hey! Why did my clothes come off?!”
Godly Godness appeared again. “You lose your equipment when you take damage. If you touch an enemy without any of your armor on, you will lose remaining lives, so be careful. Your clothes will come back when you obtain an armor item~”
“It’s still embarrassing, even though I’m just up against slimes and bats!”
I threw a staff at the annoying bat mid-jump and finished it off. I wasn’t able to do it in with one hit, incidentally—it took two. So not all enemies were created equal.
I thought a coin might appear like when I killed the slime…but it was a sword instead.
I concluded that this was another item for me to collect, so I touched it.
“I knew it! You’re a gaming veteran, Azusa! That is a sword, an upgrade weapon! It has a longer range than a staff, and it deals more damage as well!”
I tried another attack, and the sword went sailing much farther.
It collided with a bat I couldn’t reach when I was using the staff. The bat went down in one hit and turned into a coin. I’d had to hit the thing twice when I was using the staff, so it definitely dealt more damage.
I understood all that, but—
“Come on, swords aren’t throwing weapons! You’d run out of swords if you tried this for real!”
“This is a game, so just go along with it!”
“You’re going to keep dismissing everything I say with ‘This is just a game,’ aren’t you…?”
As we talked, the ground behind me swelled.
Zombies had leaped up from the earth!
“Enemies spawn behind you in this game?!”
I could have easily avoided them in real life, but in this (game that took place in the) spiritual realm, my movements were a lot slower. I just barely managed to get out of their way.
Okay, if I can jump right before they touch me—
Cha-cha-chaka, chaka, cha-cha-cha~!
I heard an odd noise, and my vision went black.
The next thing I knew, I was back where I had started, with the first slime bouncing toward me.
I’d even changed back from my underwear into my witch clothes.
“Huh…? What happened…? I don’t really understand…”
“Aw~ You died~ Unfortunately, you have lost a life. You start with three lives, but you can play with zero lives remaining in this game, so you essentially have four.”
“Wait, wait, hold on! I dodged that! That zombie didn’t touch me!”
I didn’t remember feeling the sticky zombie skin.
“That depends on the collision detection. Please keep that in mind.”
“So it’s a coding issue… I hope you fix that once I’m done with this play-test…”
“Understanding the world’s providence is part of training! Learn the mechanics!”
She was just saying whatever suited her, but I had made up my mind.
If this was how it was going to be, I would beat this game, crappy Godly Godness shovelware or not!
I proceeded further and further into the game.
I learned where the enemies spawned and got the hang of dealing with them.
I ended up hearing that cha-cha-chaka, chaka, cha-cha-cha~! tune and seeing the YOU NEED MORE TRAINING! TRY AGAIN! game over message (also written in pixelated letters) countless times, but I only pressed further into the stage.
Godly Godness would also appear suddenly whenever I wanted her to. Maybe she was like one of those helper characters…
Then—
The background music abruptly became very intense.
You know, I’d barely noticed it before, but there had been weird melodies playing the entire time… It’d be utterly impossible in real life, but it was normal for music to be playing like this in games.
This music told me a boss was coming.
Approaching me from a distance was a strangely pixelated version of Fighsly.
“You made Fighsly into an enemy…”
“There she is. The boss of stage one is Fighslysly. I have not received her permission to use her likeness, so I have changed her name.”
Oh, so now she was being careful! And this didn’t even matter!
This training was taking place inside the mind, so it wasn’t like Fighsly could sue Godly Godness over it.
But considering how this was supposed to be “training,” it made perfect sense for a fighter like Fighsly to appear here.
What kind of attacks was she going to use against me…?
“Do you happen to have any coins on you?” the “Fighsly” character asked. A very un-boss-like question.
“Yeah, I think I managed to get about fifty coins from stage one alone.”
“That is proof of your training! You can proceed onward by paying me twenty coins!”
“You unlock things with money here?!”
But if I could avoid the boss fight, then I was perfectly happy to.
A selection appeared: GIVE COINS? >YES >NO. I chose YES, and “Fighsly” vanished.
“Congratulations, Azusa! Your training is steadily bearing fruit!”
Godly Godness appeared, probably because my boss fight was over. Convenient, because I had a question…
“Godly Godness, if I get a game over in the second stage, do I have to start over from stage one?”
“No, you will start from stage two.”
Oh good; this was a comparatively kind system.
Stage two took place over water, which was also pixelated.
There were no waves or currents. The water was still.
If I paid attention, I could tell that the music had changed. It sounded like each stage had its own music.
I didn’t die immediately when I touched the water, but I would sink if I didn’t keep jumping. And if my legs became completely submerged, I died.
In reality, I could breathe just fine so long as my nose and mouth were above water. It was kind of ridiculous to think you’d suddenly die once the water reached your waist, but I could understand it as an action game mechanic.
Fish enemies would come swarm me in spots where I couldn’t move very fast, which made it tricky.
I had to jump from platform to platform, avoiding the water as much as possible.
I slowly started memorizing where the enemies spawned and how to time my dodges, and I made steady progress.
“Incredible, Azusa. No matter how many times you die, it never gets you down. You are slowly clearing the stage…” Godly Godness was genuinely impressed.
“I mean, this is the kind of game where you just have to remember what to do, so I’m using my head. For example, if you try to hop onto that platform over there, an enemy’ll jump out at you, so you have to wait a second for it to go away. You can’t know things like that on your first playthrough.”
Platforming wasn’t about being good or bad, it was about remembering how to move in certain spots.
That was why there was no need to be embarrassed about dying over and over. I just needed to learn from my mistakes!
Then the background music switched to something more intense.
“The boss of stage two is coming, I see. Who’s next?”
And once again, a pixelated “Fighsly” appeared.
“The same character again?! At least pick someone related to water!”
Just as that thought crossed my mind, another “Fighsly” appeared.
“There’s two of them! Is that not against the rules?!”
Tutorial Godly Godness appeared again.
“For reasons related to the spiritual realm’s capacity, I have reused the boss from stage one.”
“This spiritual realm sure has limited resources!”
Each “Fighslys” wanted twenty coins in order to let me pass. Which meant a total of forty coins…
I had enough saved up, so I paid it all and avoided the boss fight.
I guess the lesson was that some conflicts in this world could be solved with money…
I steadily progressed through stage three, the cave.
This one felt more on the difficult side for a platforming game, but I had to do it. It wasn’t like I could just quit and go to bed. After all, I was already sleeping, apparently.
Finally, that intense boss music started playing.
I really hoped I wasn’t going to come face-to-face with three “Fighslys” this time…
The stage-three boss was a pixelated Witch of the Grotto, Eno.
“I have seen the breadth of your skill, trainee. I am the Witch of the Grotto, Enono.”
“I’m almost certain you didn’t get permission to mess with their names.”
“I have a special deal for you. I will allow you to pass if you purchase my poultice for fifty coins.”
“You don’t need bosses if they’re all going to be like this!”
Skipping the bosses by paying money was a unique feature in this platformer…
Stage four was the kind where you had to keep moving.
The ground slowly vanished below. It was like the world was gradually rising…
It was hard to verbally describe this, but I could understand it in game terms. There were platforms above me, so all I had to do was keep jumping upward.
“If you fall where a platform has already disappeared, then you will lose lives. Please be careful~” Godly Godness said to me, floating to my side.
I wanted to fly, but I couldn’t use that kind of magic in the game.
Standing on ground that would eventually disappear and send you plummeting to an abrupt death was very obviously a strange concept, but that’s games for you.
There were a lot of unnatural things about platformers. Like how an enemy touching your foot counted as damage. I mean, stepping on a bat would kill it, and the human would be basically unharmed. There were even some action games where stepping on an enemy would defeat it.
“I’ve started to get the hang of this, so I’m gonna go for it!”
I deftly dodged all the enemies on the ground, throwing my sword to kill them as I made my way up to the platforms I saw above me. Yeah, stage four was kind of easy!
But as I kept going…
My head suddenly caught on something, and I was pushed back.
“Oh, Azusa, you are rushing! You cannot reach places the scroll hasn’t gotten to yet because nothing exists there. Please jump once you see the platform has been created for you.”
“Some of these concepts really are hard to accept.”
There wasn’t a lot of room between the top and bottom of this world, and I really didn’t understand what kind of power was causing the forced scroll!
“Do not doubt your faith. Believe! These are necessities for our training~”
“Sorry, Godly Godness, but this all sounds like a bunch of meaningless clichés…”
Regardless, I eventually reached what I assumed was the top floor of the fourth stage.
And once again, I heard the boss battle (even though I hadn’t actually battled yet) music.
Two “Enos” appeared, just as I had expected.
“You can’t just add more to increase the difficulty!”
After I said that, Godly Godness seemed a little apologetic and said, “I will change this once I solve the spiritual realm’s storage capacity problems.”
Next was stage five. Platformers like this usually didn’t go beyond ten stages, so I knew I was nearing the interesting part.
The floor on the fifth stage was made of ice. I knew what was going to happen the moment I saw it, but I still found myself slipping everywhere.
I’d end up running into baby enemies like slimes if I wasn’t careful controlling my movements.
But then I encountered a problem even more awful than that.
I leaped from the sea of ice aiming for the cliff on the other side of a gap, only to land right on top of a penguin! That was sneaky enemy placement!
I ran right into it and took damage.
As a result, my robe disappeared, and I was back in my underwear. Goose bumps immediately covered my whole body.
“Brrr! It’s so cold! I didn’t know I could feel cold in the spiritual realm!” I wrapped my arms around myself. This was actually pretty bad.
“Don’t worry, Azusa! The cold will not damage you~”
“That’s not the problem here, Godly Godness!”
I needed to get an armor item—and fast. I needed to kill every enemy who dropped items.
Of course, this was when they started dropping only weapons…
“Come on, give me armor!”
I was practically praying as I threw my sword at penguins (not that I would ever hurt animals; I was just killing enemies).
One penguin I killed dropped a smaller, pixelated version of me.
That would give me more lives. Don’t get me wrong, I was happy about it, but I really wanted clothes…
“It sure is strange to watch a penguin drop a small me…”
Godly Godness appeared again (wearing what looked like a scarf and a coat), probably because I’d commented out loud.
“That is a visual representation of you facing yourself. It is a part of your training.”
“You don’t need to explain every detail. It’s actually making me trust you less. And can’t you do anything about this cold…?”
“The cold is also a part of your training. See, an ascetic wouldn’t wear a warm, comfortable coat during training, would they? It is more appropriate to wear less.”
Well, I could have lost a life somewhere and started over with my robe back on, but of course, I ended up skillfully making my way through the level. The game was old hat for me now.
“There’s a big hole here, so I need to jump as far as I can to make it to the other side. And I know an enemy will appear right after I land, so I just have to remember to add another little jump right afterward.”
“You’ve seen right through my hidden design, Azusa.”
“This is the kind of game that you can only complete by memorizing where the enemies are, so I know I can manage if I just keep trying!”
At this rate, I had a feeling I might reach the boss while still in my underwear. It would be embarrassing to be in my underwear in front of a real person, but all these bosses were fake, so it was fine.
But when the boss music started playing…
The real Beelzebub appeared instead of a pixelated one.
“Why are you in your underwear…? Is this some kind of special training?”
“Why is she real?!”
“As I was falling asleep, this Godly Godness person spoke to me.”
So Beelzebub was a victim, too.
“She informed me that a boss with my image is supposed to appear here.”
Beelzebub pointed to a pixelated version of herself.
But if I was up against the real Beelzebub, this would be a tough battle.
She saw me as a rival. I couldn’t believe we’d be having our fighting tournament rematch here and now. This would certainly count as training.
“Hey, Beelzebub. I have a question for you. You won’t let me through if I paid you in coins, will you?”
“What do you take me for? What sort of boss would that be? Fight me like you are supposed to.”
As it happened, a majority of the bosses I’d met so far had taken the coins…
Well, I guess I had no choice.
It was still weird that my battle strategy was to throw swords, but I was going to give it my all!
I’d gotten a good handle on controlling myself (I know that sounds strange, but work with me) after playing so much of this game.
If Beelzebub hadn’t, then I’d beat her with flying colors!
But for some reason, she started lining up cards on a table sitting out in the open.
“What? Are you the kind of person who makes decisions based on tarot cards…?”
“No, you shall play a game of memory with me.”
“Isn’t this an action game?!”
Wasn’t it a little weird that the scrolling part of the game had a boss who played memory with you?!
“And what else should we do? These are the rules. I shall begin.”
The first one was a picture of a tiger.
It wasn’t a scary tiger, by the way; it was a cute, cartoonish illustration.
“Tiger. And this one is…a rabbit. My miss. Your turn.”
“We’re actually playing memory…”
“Also, Godly Godness told me that this is a fair activity for spiritual training.”
“Then when Falfa and Shalsha do this at home, are their spirits getting stronger?”
We played the game, and I won without any major incident.
Stage six felt very different from the previous stages.
This time, the setting was a castle, and the music was more intense than it had been before.
That was proof I was getting closer to the final boss.
The enemies attacked me relentlessly, and there were mysterious thorns and traps littered throughout the castle; I had to hit the continue button over and over again. This sure was difficult for a platformer, but perhaps that was part of the training…
Games that came out around when I was born in Japan were supposedly made less for the enjoyment of the player and more as a kind of challenge, like they were daring players to complete them. This felt similar.
Regardless, I eventually came to stand before the door that probably led to the boss.
I stepped inside to find…“Fighsly.”
“Is this going to be a boss rush?! An action game staple!”
But if they were the same bosses, then the way to beat them would be the same, too, which meant I could avoid the fight by paying coins. Paying the bosses to avoid fighting was the only use for coins in this game…
“Fighsly” stared at my coins and said, “Oh, these coins do shine so nicely. But you cannot use money to buy another’s heart. I hope you will learn that as part of your training.”
“That’s rich, coming from the one who just took my money!”
“You may proceed to the next boss room.”
A door appeared at the far end of “Fighsly’s” room.
I expected it to be “Eno,” and it was, so I paid her in coins again and avoided the fight.
There was definitely room for improvement in this department…
Just as I predicted, Beelzebub was in the next room.
“There you are. Stage six was quite difficult, no?”
“Are we playing memory again? I’ll give you everything I’ve got.”
“No. This time we shall be playing word chain.”
“Isn’t that the game you play when you’re bored and only have two people?”
Just as I was worried about word chain going on forever, I saw panels with different pictures on them lined up on the wall. Apparently, our answers were limited to what was shown.
This struck me as a proper game, but what made it difficult was how abstract the pictures were.
“The pixels make the pictures so crude that it’s hard to tell what a lot of them are at first glance! I was wondering what this chimney thing was initially, but it’s a lighthouse… And I thought this one was a carriage wheel, but it’s a waterwheel…”
“Your comments will be taken into consideration as a play tester. There are still many things to improve.”
For a while, Beelzebub and I played what felt like an endless game of word chain, but—
“I believe it is safe to call this your victory.”
All of a sudden, she ended the match.
“Isn’t it a problem for the boss to suddenly lose interest in the game?”
“No, I was assigned a point threshold that you must meet. However, I believe it would be best if the player is also able to see this.”
Beelzebub was making note of the problems. She looked very bureaucratic.
“You mustn’t keep the final boss waiting. Azusa, if there is any one person who would come after me as the final boss…you can guess who it is, yes?” Beelzebub said meaningfully, sounding tired.
“I see… So the next boss is…”
Just as I thought, I found Pecora waiting for me in the throne room.
“I have been waiting for you, Elder Sister~ ”
“I knew it.”
This was still training, so of course the boss had to be someone I found troublesome.
And that meant Pecora.
“I will not go easy on you.”
“I know. I wouldn’t learn anything if you did. I’m coming at you with all I’ve got, so no hard feelings.”
“You will have to take me down if you want your princess back!”
“What? Wait, no! This game didn’t have any story line about saving a princess!”
I had only been told this was training!
“I will not waste another breath! Fight me, Hero Azusa!”
Suddenly, I was being called a hero… Apparently, the hero was here to save the princess from the demon king now.
Pecora was powerful. She was the final boss, after all.
Not only that, I could still only make the awkward, clunky movements that came with being in a platformer. On the other hand, Pecora wasn’t a facsimile; she was moving around like normal. This was brutal!
I took damage, and whenever I found myself backed into a corner, she would continue with a follow-up blow.
“You are just full of openings, Elder Sister~!”
She swooped in behind me and pulled me into a hug; the moment she did, my screen went black, and I heard the music that played when I died.
Cha-cha-chaka, chaka, cha-cha-cha~!
The next thing I knew, I was in Beelzebub’s room.
“This place serves as your checkpoint. You will start over here when you die.”
“That’s a relief… I wouldn’t have the coins to pay ‘Fighsly’ and ‘Eno’ if I had to go back to the beginning.”
“Well, under the current system, you can also put the payment on your tab.”
“Is there any point to the bosses at all…?”
After another a leisurely game of word chain with Beelzebub, she let me through to Pecora’s room.
Afterward, Pecora gave me another good beating.
I had no other attacks besides throwing my sword in front of me, so I couldn’t really do anything when she attacked me from above.
Pecora, on the other hand, damaged me the second she so much as brushed against me. This was extremely difficult.
Despite that, however, I was starting to remember her attack patterns better with each battle.
Even though she wasn’t a game character, she still had habits and unique peculiarities.
I could manage if I could just learn them!
I stepped into Pecora’s room for the fifteenth time.
“I think I’ve finally gotten a hang of your attack patterns. I’m going to finish this.”
“Is that so? I hope your bite is more impressive than your bark!” Pecora dashed straight at me.
At that speed, she managed to touch me without much of a struggle, and my witch robe vanished to reveal my underwear. I’d have to try again if she did any more damage.
“Aww, Elder Sister, you are not doing well at all!”
Wrong. The real fight was just about to begin.
Afterward, I deftly dodged Pecora’s attacks while steadily hitting her with my swords.
I wasn’t very accurate, mind you, so I missed a lot, but as long as I was landing hits and she wasn’t, the battle was progressing.
It was taking a while, but I was doing damage!
“Rrrgh… You fight better when you find yourself backed into a corner, don’t you…?”
“You have a weak point, Pecora!” I said, pointing at her.
“When I take damage and end up in my underwear, your attacks lose strength!”
Yes! Once I was one hit away from losing, the difficulty went down a little bit!
“You found me out… It’s so much fun to watch you fight while you’re embarrassed, Elder Sister…”
“Come on, you’re just picking on me!”
But either way, it was creating openings for me. I threw my swords as hard as I could at her.
Then, after hitting Pecora more than ten times…
It was finally over.
“Ooh… To think, I, the demon king, would face defeat…”
The image of Pecora began to blink as she uttered her dramatic line. I had defeated the final boss!
“The captured princess is waiting for you just ahead. You win, Hero Azusa…”
Then Pecora vanished. Well, this was just the spiritual realm, so she was probably fine.
Just as she had said, a new door appeared on the far side of the room.
I wasn’t totally sure if there was a princess back there, but either way, I had cleared my training program. Godly Godness was probably going to come give me her blessing.
I earnestly threw open the door.
All of a sudden, someone rushed at me to give me a forceful hug.
Was this the princess?! Had Godly Godness dressed up and latched onto me like a koala?
Maybe she was going to say something like, Now you are closer than ever to the goddess.
“I’m so happy you came for me, Elder Sister~! ”
It was Pecora!
“Wait, hold on! Why are you here again, Pecora? I just defeated you!”
“I was so close to giving up hope after the demon king kidnapped me. I am so glad I trusted in you, Hero Elder Sister Azusa!”
“You’re playing two roles!”
And she was mixing together my hero role with my role as her elder sister.
“I guess you are both the actual demon king and kind of like a princess, so maybe this casting works? No, I think it’s still a stretch…”
As Pecora clung to me and refused to let go, Godly Godness appeared.
“Wow, Azusa, you are very good at games. I did not think you would defeat the final boss on day one.”
“Please don’t forget this is supposed to be training! This isn’t a game; it’s training!”
“Thanks to you, the demon king has been felled and the princess freed. Peace will once again return to this world.”
“I feel like I’m hearing about this story very, very late in the game…”
“To be honest, I came up with it while you were making your way through the stages, so I hastily threw it in.”
She’d updated the game in real time.
Pecora finally let me go, and I got to bask in the afterglow of beating the training.
“I saw a lot of room for improvement, but I feel accomplished having beaten it,” I said. Completing any training course was indeed an accomplishment.
“Well done, Azusa. As the one who decided to create this game, I, too, can proudly say that it was time and effort well spent. A game is something created for other people to enjoy, after all.”
“I’m still not sure why you’re not even pretending it’s training anymore, but I’m happy for you.”
I had a feeling I would sleep soundly and be able to face the next day with lots of energy.
“Now keep it up and try to clear the secret mode!”
I wasn’t about to let that phrase slip by.
“…Uh, sorry. What do you mean by secret mode?”
“By finishing the secret mode, where I have included more enemies and traps and increased the overall difficulty, you will have cleared my training for the first time! I am looking forward to your further endeav— My, Azusa, that is a terrifying look in your eyes…”
I think my anger was justified.
Pecora, who was still in the room, was having fun performing an eccentric one-woman show.
“Heh-heh, I will capture you again, Princess. Please save me, Hero!
Post as many guards as you like, you will never be safe from me! Kidnap me as many times as you want, but the hero will always save me! I am waiting for you in my castle, Hero. I’m waiting for you in the demon king’s castle, Hero!”
“I’m the one who needs saving from your dang secret mode!”
Godly Godness came to stand before me and shook her head. “Azusa, what this signifies is that good and evil are simply two sides of the same coin.”
“That’s a stretch.”
“I am serious. I did just come up with it, though.”
A mixed feeling bubbled in my chest when I considered how this irresponsible goddess had first set me on the path to my current life.
It wasn’t like I had any other choice, so I gave my all to beating the even more difficult version of the game.
I defeated the demon king (played by Pecora) and was then hugged by the princess (played by Pecora) twenty seconds later.
And finally, I beat the game.
Afterward, the end credits started scrolling through the sky.
“You sure were worried about litigation!”
The next morning, my head felt rather heavy. So much for getting a full night’s sleep.
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