Just then, the word “Warrior” appeared above Laika’s head.
“Looks like you’re playing a warrior, Laika. Counting on you to hold down the front line!” I said.
“Of course!” Laika agreed. “And incidentally, the word ‘Hero’ is currently displayed above your head, Lady Azusa.”
Oh, so I’m a hero, huh? Looks like I’m getting the real protagonist treatment.
“All right! I have a feeling the two of us aren’t going to be traveling as a duo for very long—I’d bet there are a few other party members somewhere out there for us to find. I’d like to track them down quickly, if we can,” I said.
Considering this game had character classes, it would feel very odd for us to be forced to go through the whole thing with only a hero and a warrior. Generally speaking, games like this would have other recruitable party members with other classes available somewhere.
It turned out, though, we didn’t have to go searching for familiar faces at all. A pair of them found us before we had the chance.
“Aha! I knew I’d find you here, Elder Sister!”
“T’would seem the two of you are unusually angular today, I see.”
Pecora and Beelzebub came strolling up to us, just like that.
“Huh?!” I gasped. “Wait, the demon king’s showing up already?! Isn’t that a huge problem for us?!”
If this game’s working on RPG mechanics, there’s no way we could win that fight right now! We’re still level 1, for crying out loud…
“No need to worry, Elder Sister. Look, look!” Pecora said as she pointed above her head. The word “Wizard” was floating up above her.
Oh, so they’re party members? Beelzebub had the word “Cleric” floating above her, as well. It seemed the four of us were this game’s starting party.
“So you’re telling me the real-world demon king is going on a quest to slay the in-game demon king…? Talk about confusing.”
This seems like a pretty obvious miscasting, if you ask me.
“Please try to play the character you’ve been assigned, Elder Sister!” said Pecora. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m just Pecora the wizard right now. My dearly beloved elder brother was taken away by the demon king’s army, so I became a wizard and set out on a journey with the hero to search for him! That’s my backstory right now.”
“I guess you’re one of those types that goes all-in on the RP, huh?” Though the fact that the in-game demon king is deeply involved in her character’s history just makes this more confusing than ever.
“I, meanwhile, was born into a noble house,” said Beelzebub. “Being the youngest child, however, I was sent off to a monastery and forced to become a cleric. ’Tis an almost upsettingly grounded backstory, I must say…”
Yeah, she’s not wrong about that. It totally seems like something that could’ve happened to her in real life.
“If we’re sharing our backstories, I lost everything after a dragon attacked my village and burned it to the ground,” said Laika.
“Okay, again: That’s a serious miscasting! You couldn’t possibly have less in common with the character you’re playing!”
“Nor would I ever be so villainous as to burn down a village. I know very well those who commit such misdeeds will never amount to anything in life…”
“Ah, yeah, don’t worry. Of course I believe you, Laika…”
Part of me wanted to question whether having people from a world with actual dragons and demon kings play an RPG was a good idea, but on the other hand, there were plenty of TV dramas set in modern Japan back in modern Japan. Maybe it wasn’t that strange after all.
“What’s your backstory, Lady Azusa?” asked Laika.
As I considered the question, a backstory seemed to pop into my mind out of nowhere. “Um… Apparently I had absolute faith starting from a young age I was the hero. That’s…all? I guess…? I, um… I think I might just be some delusional weirdo who’s convinced herself she’s a hero?” Isn’t that a pretty weak backstory compared to the other three?
“Well, ’tis simply how these matters go. Becoming a hero is as simple as declaring yourself to be one before anyone else beats you to it,” said Beelzebub.
“That’s right,” said Pecora. “Plus, giving the protagonist too complicated of a backstory makes it harder for the player to self-insert! It’s possible the developers made your history deliberately simplistic.”
“I guess you have a point…”
Being consoled by two demons felt like it flew in the face of RPG storytelling as well, but it was high time I stopped applying real-world logic to this experience. And so our four-person party set off on our RPG adventure!
“I mean, I’d like to set off, but where are we supposed to go first?” I wondered out loud. We hadn’t been given any sort of immediate objective.
“T’would behoove us to start by gathering information,” said Beelzebub. “Let us ask one of the townsfolk over there for advice.”
That seemed like a solid enough plan to me. In games like these, progression always seemed to involve talking to NPCs for info about the plot. Once we knew enough about what was going on, we’d be better equipped to do something about it.
Beelzebub approached a townsperson who was walking nearby and struck up a conversation.
“Pardon me, good citizen. Might you share with us any information you have pertaining to these lands?”
“This is the town of Stahrt!”
“I see, I see. And what, pray tell, can we find in the town of Stahrt?”
“This is the town of Stahrt!”
Suddenly, I had a bad feeling about where this was going.
“Yes, I’m aware. You already told me its name.”
“This is the town of Stahrt!”
“Are you mocking me, you miserable wretch?! Give me an actual answer! Or perhaps you’re looking for a fight? Know that you trifle with a cleric! I have the might of the gods on my side!”
Beelzebub had only met one person so far and already looked ready to snap, so I decided it was my moment to intervene.
“Wait, wait!” I shouted. “I’m pretty sure this is just one of those things where they can’t say anything else!”
“Huh?” grunted Beelzebub. “You think someone who can only say the name of their town is ‘one of those things’? Hell’s bells, I’ve seen bottom-shelf artifacts with more functions than that! Has the elder god or the demon king already afflicted this town with a curse?”
“No, no, not one of those things!”
This might be really hard to explain to someone who’s never played an RPG, actually…
In the end, I just glossed over the matter and explained the people in these games were designed to only say the same dialogue on loop.
“Hmm… ’Tis a strange world we’ve found ourselves in. Well then—if the townsfolk will offer no advice, let us forge an alliance with a country with a mighty military and lead them into battle against the demon king’s forces. Or perhaps we could send an assassin to dispatch the enemy’s top-ranking generals, seeding chaos and confusion among their men?”
“That’s not how this works, either. Generally speaking, games like these have a small party—that’s us—go out and do all the work.”
Come on, Beelzebub! You’re basically an RPG mini-boss yourself, so you’d think you’d understand how this works. Plus, the enemy’s generals are all going to be as tough as you are, so sending in an assassin wouldn’t work in the first place.
“I am well aware that when attacking a foe as mighty as a demonic minister, there is a clear possibility they will turn the tables and slay our agent. However, our foes are an elder god and a demon king. To them, we are but a trifling threat from a remote region. They would not send their best to deal with a foe such as us, and so a well-placed assassin could likely dismantle the upper ranks of the force they do deign to commit to this region. Don’t you think?”
“No, as a matter of fact, I don’t think that.”
Ugh, this is exhausting… Game logic and Beelzebub’s common sense are just too far separated. Though then again, it’s not like I spent all my time playing games, either. The fact that I have their logic so internalized is proof of just how much of an influence they can have on you, I guess.
“Well, then have it your way,” said Beelzebub. “Our only option is to grow mighty ourselves. We may be of poor standing now, but in time, we’ll have climbed the social ladder far enough to lead a force numbering in the tens of thousands. Our ascent begins here and now!”
“You’re still not quite on the right track there, but you’re right that we have to get more powerful, so close enough for now!”
We took some time to ask around and gather information. The more people I talked to, however, the more I started to realize Beelzebub had a point.
“So it turns out living in a world where people can only repeat set phrases is actually really creepy when you’re experiencing it up close and personal…”
It didn’t help that a lot of people’s dialogue consisted of phrases like “We’re all doomed if the demon king attacks!” It was starting to feel like the townspeople were being controlled by an evil force of a far scarier, far higher order than an elder god or a demon king.
“Lady Azusa… I’m sorry, but dealing with horror is beyond me. I’ve already reached my limits,” moaned Laika. It hadn’t taken her long at all to tap out.
It seemed to people who weren’t familiar with RPG conventions, living through an RPG was its own brand of horror game. There was, I had to admit, a certain uncanny creepiness about it all. It made you wonder if we were the only genuine, flesh-and-blood humans present in this world.
“You’ll get used to it, Laika! It’s just one of this world’s rules, that’s all!” I said. I had a feeling if I didn’t make like a real hero and encourage my party, this was going to end very poorly…
In any case, one info-gathering session later, we’d figured out our next objective.
The four of us gathered around a table at the town’s inn to conduct a strategy meeting.
“So we know if we can find the item a certain townsperson wants, they’ll trade us a small boat for it. The item that person wants is somewhere in a cave, so for the time being, exploring the cave and finding that item’s our objective. Having a boat will expand our range of movement dramatically, so it’s worth the effort.”
“What sort of person so desperately wishes for an item hidden in a cave? Their tastes must be peculiar indeed,” Beelzebub said with a rather skeptical look on her face.
“I get how you feel, but it’s one of those things. You’ll just have to accept it.” But yeah, honestly, no real person would ever be that desperate for some random cave item.
“Moreover, is this town not under the looming threat of monster invasion?” Beelzebub continued. “The way I see it, t’would be in their best interests to provide us with all the resources they can, with all expedience! Forget small ships—this nation’s rulers should be presenting us with a galleon! If we try crossing the sea in some rotted-out dinghy and sink halfway there, our quest will be over in an instant!”
“Look, I really need you to stop trying to logic your way through this! Also, our boat’s not going to sink halfway across the ocean! It’ll be fine!”
“No, I think not! I’ve grown tired of this nonsense, and I shan’t miss this chance to air all my grievances! What of the townsperson who asked us to gather precious herbs, or the one who wanted a malformed chicken? What possible relevance could they have to the so-called ‘events’ we’re meant to be seeking? The scale of the tasks asked of us is entirely out of proportion with the scale of our quest! We seek to save the world from destruction, so why should we have to listen to the petty desires of every random plebeian we cross paths with?! Does a wise monarch sequentially ask each citizen how they think the country should be run? No, because nothing would ever get done, and this is no different!”
“It’s just how it works! Let it go!”
I had no idea how trends in modern RPGs had developed since I died, but in the ones I’d played back when I was a kid, you always progressed the plot by solving problems that seemed totally unrelated to the ultimate goal of world peace. Looking back on it, though, I had to admit Beelzebub really did have a point about that not making sense… The NPCs who wouldn’t give us important items unless we found something for them were one thing, but you’d think the kingdom we were trying to save would at least pony up some funds for us to buy items with.
Just as I was thinking bringing Beelzebub on board with the game was going to be a nightmare on its own, Pecora shot to her feet.
“You’re far too uncultured for your own good, Beelzebub! You’ve failed!”
“I-I’ve failed…?” Beelzebub repeated, somewhat bewildered by Pecora’s scolding. She was getting told off by her boss, technically, so of course she wouldn’t know how to react.
“Think of the scenes in plays where the characters disguise themselves. The actors don’t actually wear convincing enough disguises to fool the audience, of course—anyone watching can easily tell who’s who. Would you, when watching a play like that, gripe about how unconvincing the disguises are, and how little sense it makes that they would fool anyone? No—that would be boorish! Downright uncultured! And that, Beelzebub, is precisely what you’re doing at this exact moment!”
Sh-she’s right! Plays have their own set of narrative shorthands and conveniences, but nobody has any trouble separating them from reality!
“Plays exist within a reality of their own. This game, meanwhile, exists in a reality of its own as well! You have no choice but to accept that!” Pecora concluded. Even I found myself nodding along in agreement with her explanation.
“Y-yes, ’tis a fair point… I understand… I swear I’ll stop nitpicking the finer details of the story,” Beelzebub said with a meek nod.
“Good, good! So long as you understand! ” Pecora said happily. “At times like these, you always have to start by accepting the rules of the world you find yourself in and engaging with it on its terms! ”
“I guess all the weird schemes you’ve cooked up over the years have made it pretty easy for you to understand these things, huh…?” I said. If anything, it felt like she’d accepted the game’s logic even faster than I had.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say I understand them! I’m just paying the creators the respect they’re due,” said Pecora.
Talk about broad-minded! That’s a demon king for you!
“Um, Lazy Azusa? I believe it would be best for us to return to the matter at hand soon,” said Laika. I hadn’t realized just how much time we’d spent on our little digression until she pointed it out.
“Right, yeah!” I said. “So, um, our next objective’s in a cave, but considering we haven’t had a single fight so far, I was thinking we should go out into the overworld and do some leveling up before anything else.”
“Oh? Perhaps you’d have us defeat nothing but slimes to accumulate experience points?” asked Beelzebub.
I gave her a nod. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. If we go into the cave at level one, we’ll get wiped out. We might even have to fight an early-game boss to get at the item we want, so we need to level up and make sure we’re ready for it.”
“I see! So we’re training, then! I shall dedicate myself to self-improvement in this world as well!”
You’re really into this all of a sudden, huh, Laika…?
“I don’t think we need to go quite that intense to win this, honestly. We don’t know anything about this game’s battle system for now, so let’s start by heading out into the overworld and finding something to fight.”
We left town, stepped out into the overworld, and were immediately confronted by a group of doglike creatures that started gradually closing in on us.
“Hmm. Is this one of those games where we have to actually bump into an enemy sprite to make a battle start?”
“Do you mean to say there are other sorts of games, Lady Azusa?” asked Laika.
“Yeah. Sometimes you can’t see the enemies at all, and you end up getting taken to the battle screen randomly as you walk around. Then there are games where the fights happen on the actual map itself, without any battle screens. That’s particularly common in games with action-RPG elements. Then there are games where you move your characters around individually on a bigger battle map to fight—sorta like chess, basically. Those tend to be more tactical type games.”
I wasn’t much of a gamer, but I could still come up with a handful of examples right off the top of my head. Video game logic had clearly firmly taken root in my mind.
“This is all very fascinating! In that case, let us make contact with that oddly angular dog creature!” Laika said. She stepped forward to touch the dog, and the screen instantly shifted into battle mode.
Okay, that was some pretty authentic RPG stuff, all right!
A trio of zombies was now standing in front of us.
“Hell’s bells! What is the meaning of this?! That was a dog moments ago, wasn’t it?! Why are there zombies now?! And there was only one of them before—why three?!”
Beelzebub’s calling out the game logic again!
“I mean, it’s just one of those things again… Probably…,” I stammered. Before I could say anything more, however, a voice rang out in our minds.
Hello hello, Godly Godness speaking! As you’ve seen, we decided to go with a non-random, contact-based encounter system for this game. We didn’t have the resources to make individual sprites for every monster in the game, though, so all monsters ended up being represented by dog sprites on the overworld!
Surely that’s just too much of a cop-out by anyone’s standards…?
By the way, I should note there’s no real point to grinding levels in this game! In order to make sure battles stay tense and exciting, the enemies are designed to scale in strength based on how many battles you’ve fought so far up until around halfway through the game or so. You’ll get some powerful spells in the second half that’ll make everything pretty easy, but grinding levels outside of town won’t have any impact, so there’s not much of a point to it at all.
That’s a pretty meta thing to straight-up tell your players, but considering how much of a pain beating the game would be without knowing that, probably better to just come out and say it.
As such, beating slimes over and over and over again until you’re gone up to an outrageously high level isn’t going to work in this game!
Well, it’s pretty obvious that statement was laser-targeted at me… It’s not like I spent all that time killing slimes because I was trying to level up, for the record…
“Hmm. Sorry, Laika, but it sounds like leveling up by fighting a ton of enemies over and over isn’t an option this time. We’ll have to try something else,” I said. I had a feeling she’d been looking forward to a very lengthy stretch of combat, so I thought I should say something to console her.
“To the contrary, Lady Azusa—our foes growing stronger as we level up will just make for better practice! This system makes me feel a greater need to devote myself to my training than ever!”
“Diligent as always, I see!”
I guess this won’t be a problem, then. Judging by how Godly Godness described the system, there’s nothing stopping us from just leveling up until we get bored and moving along.
The fact that I didn’t want to get anywhere near the zombies was still a bit of a problem, but I decided to just suck it up and move along with the encounter. I made like a hero and swung my sword at one of the monsters.
[Zombie took 8 damage!]
A window appeared in my field of vision. The game had a system to tell me how much damage I’d done through text—obviously, I guess.
A moment later, the zombie next to the one I’d attacked was consumed by a ball of fire that flew from somewhere behind me.
[Pecora cast Fire! Zombie took 30 damage!]
With just one spell, the zombie collapsed.
“Ooh, that was one powerful spell! Looks like wizards are pretty tough!” I said.
“It’s not every day I get to use magic as weak as this! It’s a little refreshing! ” said Pecora.
“I guess for a demon king, that was nothing.”
The zombies proved to be the early-game enemies I’d expected them to be, and between Laika’s and Beelzebub’s attacks, we finished off the whole pack with ease. They each took about two hits to take down, on average.
[You defeated the zombies! Obtained 6 TP and 9 Genni!]
Once again, a window appeared to inform us of our spoils. I didn’t know with total certainty what TP was, but I figured it was probably some sort of point system that would let us learn skills. Genni, meanwhile, was probably money we got from killing monsters.
“But, wait… Where’d the nine Genni we got go…?”
Money wasn’t abstract like experience points were, so not being able to see the money I’d obtained made me feel vaguely anxious. Fortunately, Godly Godness the developer herself was ready to step in and explain.
After you’ve beaten a group of monsters, you have to search their bodies to get their money!
That’s the worst system you could’ve possibly gone with! “Are you trying to make your players feel like muggers?! This is criminal! Come up with a better system, please!”
We added this system in for the sake of realism! The idea was that money spontaneously appearing in your wallet was too unnatural.
Of everything, that’s where you chose to be realistic?
Pecora, meanwhile, was rifling through the fallen zombies’ belongings.
“Ah, they had money on them! Look—it was in their pockets!”
Honestly, the way you sound so cheerful about it just makes it harder to come up with a response.
Laika seemed to feel just as conflicted about this development as I did.
“Are you certain this is all right, Lady Azusa? Even if our foes were monsters, this feels rather, well…”
“I know what you mean, and no, I’m not certain it’s fine. This is definitely a don’t-try-this-at-home scenario. It’ll be hard to beat the game if we don’t have a good way to make money, though…”
I’d never stopped to consider it before, but imagining the protagonists of all the RPGs I’d played in the past rifling through their enemies’ pockets for spare change made it suddenly feel a lot harder to root for them… This was raising a major ethical dilemma about the nature of justice in my mind. In the end, though, I decided to compromise by just blaming it all on Godly Godness and calling it a day.
Our party gradually grew more and more used to the RPG world as we progressed through its story. We found a key item in the cave, traded it for the boat, and explored the new lands it opened up for us. We also ran into enemies out on the sea that looked an awful lot like palette-swapped versions of Curalina the jellyfish spirit and Captain Imremico. Apparently, going out of the way to make unique, ocean-themed enemies was too much of a bother for Godly Godness…
Needless to say, we made sure to complete all the quests we encountered in the new lands we traveled to. Also needless to say, we encountered some slight issues every once in a while when our party members’ perspectives clashed with the game’s.
“’Tis a crime to walk into someone’s house and make off with the belongings stored in their treasure chest, Azusa. Are you not supposed to be a hero?” Beelzebub jabbed as I opened up a chest I’d found on the second floor of a random home.
“Ugh… No, this isn’t what it looks like! I mean, it kind of is, but that’s not how it works! Heroes are allowed to do this, okay?!”
The fact that searching through someone’s belongings for loot was an unambiguous crime according to usual logic made it really hard for me to explain myself. That wasn’t the only bump in the road we encountered, either—Laika ended up getting very suspicious at one point while we were gathering information. It happened when we were talking to each random townsperson who happened to be walking around a city in a particular kingdom.
“Outsiders aren’t allowed into the castle, but there’s a secret entrance in the waterway out back!” an old man told us.
“This, um, may not be my place to say…but it might be dangerous to share a secret of that gravity with someone you’ve only just met,” said Laika.
“Rumor has it the minister’s secretly a monster in disguise! He’s pulling the strings behind the scenes!” said another old man.
“That…is most definitely not a safe rumor to be spreading carelessly,” said Laika.
After we’d finished gathering information, Laika crossed her arms and walked over to speak with me.
“This is strange—too strange,” she said. “If a perfectly ordinary townsperson is aware the kingdom’s minister is a monster in disguise, then surely the minister’s identity is an open secret at best? I can’t understand why nobody’s done anything about it! Surely this must be a trap? We should look into the background of the old man who told us about it!”
“I understand how you feel, but it’s just one of those things! Tell yourself he’s just surprisingly well-informed and move on!”
“The man who told us about the secret waterway passage into the castle was suspicious, as well. We’d only just met him! For all we know, the enemy will be lying in wait to ambush us if we take his word for it and try to sneak in…”
“It’s fine, really! We can trust him! And even if it does turn out to be a trap, we still have to fall for it!” I said, realizing how ridiculous I sounded halfway through my own sentence. Unsurprisingly, the rest of my party wasn’t just going to sit back and accept that.
“’Tis madness to march into what you know full well could be a trap,” Beelzebub said, just like I’d known she would. “And that’s not even taking into consideration our lack of numbers. If the enemy is lying in wait for us, they could easily wipe us out. Walking headfirst into such danger would be foolhardy beyond all reason.”
“Right, but, um… The thing is, if we don’t walk into it, then the plot won’t progress… The worst that’ll happen is us getting locked up in jail, I promise…”
“How would the prospect of being thrown in jail ever serve as consolation? If that’s the consequence on the table, t’would behoove us to come up with a better option.”
Boy, I sure do wish I could force her to play through three classic RPGs or so before we carried on with this!
I somehow managed to make Beelzebub see reason, and the four of us slipped into the castle through the secret passage in the waterways. As it turned out, the information wasn’t a trap in and of itself, but the secret passage was strictly guarded. We ended up getting cornered by a hoard of monsters under the minister’s command, and ultimately got thrown into the castle’s dungeon.
“Oh nooo, how terrible! Why, there’s just no way we could ever resist that many monsters at once! ” Pecora said as she sat down in the middle of our cell. She’d grown completely accustomed to the RPG world, and I was sort of impressed by the sheer adaptability she’d displayed.
“Hell’s bells! If I could only return to my true self, I could shred these bars like tissue paper!” Beelzebub growled, shaking our cell’s bars back and forth to no particular effect. She was actually acting out a very typical RPG response to getting locked up, if you ignored the finer details of what she was saying.
“We’ve certainly found ourselves in a difficult situation, Lady Azusa. If we don’t escape soon, we’ll be executed,” Laika said nervously. And, I mean, of course she’d be worried, considering.
“Yeah, we’re in trouble all right, but I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to get out of it pretty easily,” I said. “We were basically forced into it, after all.”
Since the story had railroaded us into this, it would also surely give us an opportunity to escape. Only an irredeemable piece of shovelware would compel you to get yourself arrested and not let you break out of jail.
“And hey, if you’re still worried, just try following Pecora’s example,” I said as I glanced over at the party wizard.
“Oh nooo, we’re doomed! Oh, if only someone would come along and save us! Oh, what mortal peril we’ve found ourselves in! Whatever shall we do, whatever shall we do?!”
“She…could use acting lessons,” Laika said with a slightly chilly stare.
“Right? That’s about how seriously you should be taking this.”
I figured someone would be showing up to save us before we knew it. It wouldn’t be much of a game if they kept us locked up in jail forever.
Lo and behold, a moment later, a series of screams rang out from down the hallway.
“Who is this girl?!”
“Blaaargh!”
Judging by the tone of the screams, I’d just heard a pair of monsters get taken down. Shortly afterward, a girl who looked distinctly like an adventurer arrived at the door to our cell.
“I take it you were imprisoned by the monstrous minister?” said a pixelated version of…Wynona!
“Wynona!” I exclaimed. “You came to save us!”
“I don’t know how or why you know my name, but yes, I did,” said Wynona. “I understand you’re on a quest to defeat the elder god, so I thought it would be for the best to offer you what aid I can.”
“Oh, that’s great! Always glad to see a friendly face! So what class did you end up getting?”
“To reiterate: Stop acting so overfamiliar, Stepmother! It doesn’t make sense! This is supposed to be the scene where we meet for the first time!”
Oh! Right… I guess I was ignoring the plot, wasn’t I?
“Well, uhhh, you’re a famous adventurer, right? I must know you by your reputation!” I said. “Oh wow, this is amazing! Won’t you save us, O mighty adventurer? And I beg of you, please fight the minister with us while you’re at it! Having a fifth party member would make such a big difference! Please, and thank you!”
“That was pathetic! If that’s the best you can do, just talk to me normally! You dropped out of character partway through your line, and you didn’t even sound like an adventurer to begin with!”
I’m sorry, okay? It feels like the more I try to role-play the hero I’m supposed to be, the weirder my adventurer-speak feels…
While I moped about my failed line delivery, the other members of my party started introducing themselves. Personally, I felt it would’ve been nicer to save that for after she’d freed us from our cell, but whatever.
“I’m Pecora the wizard, and I’m going to defeat the demon king! Oh, and find my missing brother, too!”
“You may call me Beelzebub the cleric.”
“And I am Laika, a warrior. Your aid is most appreciated.”
The whereabouts of Pecora’s brother were still a complete unknown, but considering how these things went, I figured it was only a matter of time before he turned up somehow. There was no way they’d establish she was searching for someone and not have that person show up at all in the end.
“It seems you really are adventurers, as I expected. You may call me Wynona the hero.”
“Wha— You’re a hero?!” I yelped.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand why you seem so astonished. Is there some reason why I shouldn’t be a hero? Seeing as I’m an adventurer in real life, I believe it’s a very appropriate class for me to be given,” Wynona huffed. It seemed she wasn’t very pleased with my reaction—most likely, she’d taken my surprise to mean I didn’t think she was heroic enough for the job.
No, that’s not it! “It’s just that I’m a hero, too,” I said as I pointed at myself. “I’ve been fighting as the hero this whole time!”
For a moment, Wynona just glared at me.
“Well then, I’ll be taking my leave now.”
She’s just leaving?! “Wait a minute! At least open the cell before you go! This is the weirdest possible time for you to say your goodbyes!”
“Well, I hardly think multiple heroes are called for in this scenario. If you’re a hero, too, then it’d be best for everyone if you made an early exit—specifically, right now.”
Now that’s an unheroic comment if I’ve ever heard one! “Come on! This must be one of those stories where a pair of heroes save the world together! Help us, please!”
“Oh, for the… Fine, fine! One of the guards I just defeated dropped the key to the cell, in any case, so it’d be a shame not to use it…,” Wynona muttered irritably as she unlocked the door.
Breaking out of prison sure is easy in RPGs, huh?
With that, Wynona joined our party, bringing us up to five members in total! We wiped the floor with the boss monster that had taken the minister’s place, and peace returned to the kingdom at last.
“If he was that much of a weakling, we should have just marched up and fought him instead of getting locked up and going through all that trouble.”
And there’s Beelzebub, picking another classic nit with RPG storytelling.
All right! Now that all five of us are together, it should finally be time for the story to begin in earnest.
Our party headed for a nearby tavern to plan our next move.
“So where should we go next?” I mused. “I think we’ve already been pretty much everywhere we can go, with our current means of travel.”
“When you put it that way, it does seem like we’ve encountered a large number of obstacles on our boat,” noted Laika. “There were strong winds that pushed us backward, shallows we couldn’t sail through, and even whirlpools that turned us right around. It would be so easy to ignore them if I could only turn into a dragon…”
Eh, all that stuff’s pretty typical in RPGs. The boat’s never enough to get you access to the whole world map. And you’re just a warrior in this world, not a dragon, so it’s not your fault you can’t help as much as you’d like to.
“While I was traveling on my own, I heard rumors about a hidden village where dragons live in human form,” said Wynona.
That rumor was music to my ears. I was positive it was leading us toward a new party member, or something along those lines.
“That’s perfect!” I exclaimed. “I think that should be our next big objective, actually: getting a dragon or an airship or something that’ll let us travel to new places!”
Getting a new method of transportation that could take you to previously inaccessible locales was a key component of classical RPG progression, and I was all for it. Laika, however, had started scowling the second the word “dragon” was mentioned.
“I suppose this means that Flatorte will be making an appearance after all. How unfortunate…”
Oh. I guess that is on the table, yeah.
“There, there,” I said. “We don’t know for sure she’ll be there yet! Maybe the dragons will all be regular people in this world who can only say a couple set phrases.”
It seemed like this dragon excursion might end up being trouble after all, but our only choice was to go and check it out.
“So then, Wynona the hero, where is this so-called hidden village said to lie? One would assume its location is not common knowledge, considering they call it ‘hidden.’ We’ll have to find it before anything else,” said Beelzebub. She seemed to be getting more and more comfortable with RPG logic as time went on. She was clearly thinking along the lines the developers had hoped she would now.
“I was told it’s supposed to lie somewhere in a forest to the north of this nation,” said Wynona. “At least, according to the drunkard in a pub who told me the story.”
“Why would a drunkard in a pub have that kind of information in the first place? This must be a trap, surely… Or perhaps it’s nothing more than a groundless rumor…?”
Sorry, Laika, but it’s definitely true! No decent game would throw a bunch of totally baseless information at you for no good reason!
Needless to say, we soon set out on our quest to track down the hidden village. The pace of our expedition, however, ended up being painfully slow. The problem at hand was that our cleric, Beelzebub, would heal us the moment we took the slightest bit of damage. All that indiscriminate healing meant she’d run out of MP in no time, and we’d have to turn back before we made any real progress…
“Hmm? I see Laika’s lost a quarter of her health. ’Tis time for healing, just to be safe.”
“No, it isn’t! It’s way too soon to heal her! Why not let her take a little more damage before you pull out the healing magic?” I protested.
“Nay, I think not! There’s no such thing as too soon when it comes to healing—the sooner, the better! I shan’t force any of us to face the fear of entering into combat at less than our full strength.”
She really doesn’t like taking risks, does she…? I never expected to learn something new about Beelzebub’s character here, of all places.
There were two types of RPG players: the ones who deliberately rushed into danger under-leveled so they could enjoy the challenge of forcing their way forward unprepared, and the ones who made sure their preparations were all completely airtight before they so much as set foot in a dungeon. Beelzebub, it seemed, was the latter type. There was no way she’d even consider taking on a boss under-leveled. No, she was the sort of person who would train her characters up until she was certain they could handle any enemy.
Of course, unlike playing an RPG, we were more or less fighting our enemies in person in this dream. Considering that, I could understand why she’d go to some pretty great lengths to make sure we didn’t put ourselves in danger. Then again, even if you ran out of HP in a fight in this world, you’d be left just barely alive after the fight was over. Actually dying after getting knocked out in a fight was apparently just not a thing.
Good thing, too. I’d rather not die if I can help it, even in a dream…
It took quite some time, but in the end, we finally managed to find the hidden village where the dragons lived. Considering the people walking around in it had horns, I was positive we were in the right place.
“All right! Now we just have to find a dragon who’ll fly us around,” I said.
“It’s very inconvenient that there isn’t an adventurers’ guild in this world,” said Wynona. “If there was, we could simply put out a recruitment notice saying we’re looking for a dragon to transport our party.”
“That wouldn’t make for a very interesting game, though, would it…?” You can’t just let the player buy their way out of all their problems if they have the money to hire someone!
According to the pixelated townsfolk, there was a very unreasonable but mighty dragon living in the center of the village.
“Isn’t it somewhat illogical to specifically seek out an individual who’s been described to us as difficult to deal with…? I’d think we’d be better off seeking someone a little friendlier…”
Laika, no! You’re trying to apply real-world logic to the game’s story again!
“Sorry, but nope! Whenever you hear about a character like that, you can be sure they won’t just be unreasonable when you actually meet them! That’s gonna be the dragon that helps us out!”
Though of course, now that I’m saying it out loud, I’m starting to realize if someone actually went out looking for a person rumored to be a pain, I’d have to assume they weren’t listening to anyone’s advice to begin with…
“If I may be frank,” said Laika, “the truth is, I’m not so much disinterested in meeting with an unreasonable person as I am disinterested in meeting with Flatorte.”
“Oh, is that where this is coming from?!”
“I’ve reached an understanding of this game’s driving mechanisms, and I’m very certain if we do meet her, she’ll send us on another irrational and time-consuming fool’s errand. I have to assume the goal of those digressions is to artificially inflate the amount of time it takes for us to finish the game.”
That’s actually a pretty insightful observation on her part, but I think I’ll just keep quiet about that for now…
In spite of Laika’s apprehensions, the story wasn’t going to move forward if we didn’t visit the unreasonable dragon, so we made for the center of town. When we got there, however, we found not Flatorte…
“Oh my, oh my! It’s so nice to see all of you! Please, come in and have some tea with me! I’ll bring out snacks as well, if you give me just a moment.”
…but a pixelated version of Momma Yufufu!
Unreasonable, my foot! She’s as reasonable and approachable as could be! She’s offering us tea, even though we showed up totally uninvited!
“I’m known as the unreasonable dragon,” said Momma Yufufu. “Oh! Do you have an inn to stay at tonight? If not, you’re welcome to spend the night here!”
This is the worst miscasting ever!
“We’ve need of a dragon’s power, and that need has brought us to you. Would you be willing to fly us wherever our quest compels us to go?” asked Beelzebub, moving the conversation right along.
“I’d love to, really, but the monsters have built a tower on the mountain just beyond this hidden village, and my draconic power has grown weak ever since. It seems they’re using some sort of magic.”
Oh, I know what that means. We have to beat a boss in the tower before she’ll fly us places.
“But as it happens, I have just enough power left to carry you around! So certainly, I’d be happy to help!”
“No! Miss Yufufu, you mustn’t!”
What?! Pecora jumped in before I even had the chance!
“We’ll resolve your issue with the tower, and you can fly us around afterward! It would be unacceptable for you to transport us before we go through the proper steps!” said Pecora.
“Oh, really? In that case, I’d be most obliged if you’d help,” said Momma Yufufu.
Pecora heaved a sigh of relief. Apparently, she was even more dedicated to making sure we didn’t break the game’s story than I was.
Momma Yufufu treated us to dinner that night, and we stayed at her place before setting out to deal with the tower the next morning.
“Take care storming the tower! Oh, and please take this with you! It’s an item that will fully restore the health of you and all your friends. Also, take this plant—if you eat it, it will let you see the weak points and current HP of all the enemies you encounter between here and the end of the tower!”
“I’d really appreciate if you’d stop lowering the difficulty level for us, Momma Yufufu…”
This game’s a challenge in so many ways I wasn’t expecting it to be.
The tower’s boss turned out to be Nosonia the butterfly demon, who we beat with ease in about five turns total…or so I thought, right up until the post-battle twist.
“Ugh! Well played! It looks like it’s time for me to reveal my true form!”
She’s a multi-stage boss?!
With a brilliant flash of light, Nosonia changed from her butterfly form…into an enormous caterpillar.
“Pretty sure you have that backwards! Why would you turn back into your childhood form?!”
“Well, because doing it the other way around would’ve meant waiting here as a worm for ages. That would’ve been awful, right?”
Then ask the devs! It’s their job to take care of that!
“You’re my savior, Miss Azusa, and it pains me to have to fight you like this, but I’m going to have to ask you to please die now, thank you very much!”
“Please don’t bring our real-world relationship into this! The story is making no sense!”
Anyway, we beat the caterpillar in two turns.
“Why are you weaker after you transform?!” Beelzebub roared. I, on the other hand, was more or less used to this game’s crappy design by that point…
With the tower’s boss defeated, Momma Yufufu and the other dragons regained their power. That meant she could transform into a fully draconic form and carry us wherever we needed to go.
“If we have a way of flying, we’re probably pretty far along in the story now,” I said as we soared through the skies. Flying on a pixelated dragon was a new and weird experience.
“Hmph. Is that just how it goes, then?” asked Beelzebub.
“Yeah, exactly. There’ll be places all over the world we can only get to via dragon, and our next step’s to visit them all. We’ll solve problems in all those remote areas, and that should gradually get us closer to fighting the demon king.”
“‘Gradually’? ’Tis remarkable we’d have the time, considering we brought down the demon king’s tower stronghold. What sort of ruler would be so lax with their response to a loss like that? I see no evidence their forces have any sort of plan at all.”
“That’s just another of those things… But, I mean, think about Pecora. She’s so crazy strong, she could more or less handle everything on her own, right? That’s just how it works sometimes…”
Eventually, we found a village located in a field surrounded by an almost unnaturally tall and perfectly formed circle of mountains. We asked around for information there and received a few tidbits:
• There was a lake to the south of the village, and a group of sages lived on an island located at the very center of said lake.
• Those sages had the ability to draw out a truly incredible power in heroes like us unlike anything we’d ever seen before.
• There was also a barrier set up around that lake, and we’d need to obtain a Crest of Courage from a nearby cave in order to get through it. Without one, there’d be no way to bring down the barrier.
• We’d also need to get ahold of a small boat to cross the lake in.
• The monstrous armies were drawing closer and closer to the village by the day. Time was of the essence.
“Well, this is a complicated state of affairs… It seems we’ll have to go through an extended process this time,” Laika said as she took the time to note down everything we’d learned. Her conscientious nature really shined through at times like these.
“Well, that’s pretty normal, really. Having to go through a whole process and solve a few problems to reach your next destination is standard fare. It’d be pretty boring, otherwise,” I said.
“I suppose I can see that. More importantly, though, we should take this chance to search for treasure chests and hidden items in the village,” Wynona declared.
“My instincts are telling me this village will be destroyed before long. A number of the villagers dropped hints to that effect, and it seems likely at some point, any action we take will trigger an army of monsters rolling in and razing the place. We should collect everything we can before that happens.”
I think you’re totally right about that, Wynona, but it sure does feel weird to hear from a role-playing perspective!
“Wait just a moment, please. Are you not supposed to be a hero, Miss Wynona? I believe it would be very odd for a hero to abandon a village in peril in the manner you’re describing.”
Looks like Laika the pure-hearted isn’t going to let her get away with it.
“I would save the village if that were an option, certainly. That said, this village’s destruction has already been written into the story. It’s unavoidable. Just one of those things, if you will. The intent, I imagine, is to make our party feel a sense of helplessness in the face of overwhelming odds. A story in which the world is saved without any sacrifice would hardly be exciting. In any case, I would recommend you address any complaints you might have to the developer, not me.”
I get where you’re coming from, Wynona, I really do! Pecora was nodding along as well, which told me this really was the natural decision from an advancing-the-story perspective. This sort of thing’s just so hard to accept sometimes…
A town or city you’d visited previously being destroyed by monsters was a pretty stock development, as far as RPGs went. You have to put the protagonist in trouble eventually, or the story would get stale. That said, actually killing the protagonist would bring the story to an early end, so that was off the table. Having a place you’d already visited get destroyed was a more practical option, so it tended to get used rather often.
That being said, writing off a village that seemed likely to get attacked by monsters still struck me as a sort of weird decision to make. What sort of hero abandons a whole village just because it seems likely to get destroyed?
We’d already figured out the village was at risk of destruction, and we couldn’t get rid of that knowledge. We could technically have asked Godly Godness for more information, but that would’ve felt like cheating. Ordinary players wouldn’t have the option of consulting with the devs whenever they wanted, after all.
All right! I don’t know what we’ll actually be able to accomplish, but we’ll do what we can, anyway!
“Okay then—let’s split up into two teams! One team will go out to deal with our quests, and the other team will stay in the village and prepare to fend off a monster attack. What do you think?”
I asked everyone for input on my plan. “We have two heroes, after all!” I added as a natural afterthought.
That’s right—we have two heroes in this party! If this is a story about a hero saving the world, then why can’t there be a sub-story about a hero saving a village packed in there somewhere?
I’d really only brought up the hero thing to try and support my proposal, but I was starting to feel like it actually made some legitimate sense.
Wynona cracked a smile. She usually kept up a pretty strict deadpan expression, so when she actually smiled, I could be confident she was in a good mood.
“That’s not a bad idea at all, Sub-Hero,” said Wynona.
“Wow—that’s actually even more irritating than hearing you call me Stepmother!”
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login