CH 38

You can use the 1st skill by simply holding the weapon. The 2nd, 3rd and the following skills, you have to learn them. When you reach the 8th skill in the Ninja Sword branch, you learn Infinite Mirage Cage.

In this game, a mere bug is shrugged off, but the midair jump that was caused by the Friday Party Skywalker Incident, and this Infinite Mirage Cage were fixed with patches.

This Infinite Mirage Cage was decently difficult to obtain, so there were barely any people who had it, and the impact it created was meager, so it didn’t have much fame on the internet. However, it was a bug that could be considered fatal for the progress of the game. 

This skill would randomly teleport the user at a radius of around 10 meters and slash, which would be repeated countless times. It is an 8th skill, so it should be a decently strong skill, but it was a hard to use skill.

Randomly at a radius of 10 meters? If you don’t use it in a place where enemies are crammed together, it won’t be hitting to begin with.

Well, it could be used as an emergency evasion, but there’s damage registration even at the place you teleport, so you can’t avoid AOEs, and the last teleportation spot will be somewhere in the radius, so there would be cases where you would be skill stunned right in front of enemies. You wouldn’t be able to make an immediate decision, and you would often get hit while standing still. 

It is honestly not that much of a usable skill.

And most of all, there’s a big problem with this skill.

This skill is a repetition of teleporting and slashing in a short span of time, so your vision will be switching every 0.5 seconds. 

It already surpasses the realm of just getting dizzy. 

There’s of course personal differences, but the players that use this skill would have a high chance of feeling unwell after the skill ends. 

This destructive power created many complaints about this skill, and the vision movement at the use of the skill was way too real, almost turning it into a social problem, and it was to the point where even the other skills with intense movements were adjusted. 

But even with that, the weirdos (80% of the hardcore Nekomimi Neko players are weirdos to begin with. Normal people like me were in the minority) who continued using the skill, found out about a serious bug. 

Named: Crossing the Walls of the Mirage Cage.

You probably can pretty much imagine what this is about from that name.

The Infinite Mirage Cage is a skill that randomly teleports you repeatedly, but you end up moving to the last place you were teleported to. 

And the condition of where you will land at the end is ‘somewhere within a radius of 10 meters where the player can exist in’, so even if that place is a locked room that you normally wouldn’t be able to get into, or an open space that has no means of entering, you can teleport there no questions asked.

For example; if you use the Infinite Mirage Cage in front of a locked room endlessly, you will eventually end up inside the room, and you can enter places you normally can’t.

On top of that, it is a space that a player can exist in, so there’s no usual teleportation bug like ‘ending up inside a wall’, moreover, with that same logic, you can continue using the same skill to return to where you were. 

As long as you have the resolve of fighting nausea, it is a really low risk bug technique. 

That said, if you enter places you shouldn’t, you can begin a chain of events that you can’t imagine, and despite this bug being found out at a late stage of the game, it was patched the fastest. 

The skill was fixed in a way so that the player would return to the location where you casted the ability at first, so the exploit of moving with the skill was now gone. 

Because of this patch, the use of this bug waned, but there were a lot of videos recorded with the use of that skill when it was still bugged, and were spread out on the net. 

One of those was the Masked Rihito Royal Family. 

The royal family is normally exclusive for special events, and maybe because they wanted to give out that special feeling for being royalty, or because it was a pain to make companion events, or because it would be bad to bring around royalty as companions, you couldn’t make them your companions or enjoy normal conversations with them. 

However, the protagonism of the royalty is outstanding in events. There would be the Rihito King, Full Fill, who would show his presence in audience events, and then there’s  Queen Meliaruda and Princess Shermia who would stand at the frontlines in the event Attack at the Capital, defeating enemies with inhuman magic abilities. 

The rarity of their appearances would instead increase the mystery in them, and would touch the heartstrings of people, the queen and princess landed at the top of the popularity poll, and there was even an instance where Princess Shermia fought over 1st place with the Helper Cheetah Mitsuki Hisame. 

What was dropped into that vortex was the video of the Masked Rihito Royal Family. 

The royal palace has a lot of places where you can’t enter, and the only place you can enter normally is the audience room, but the Masked Rihito Royal Family was clearly recorded at a place that’s not there. There wasn’t only the king there, but also the queen and princess that wouldn’t show themselves anywhere else aside from events. 

3 of the royal family facing each other at a place that would normally be impossible to find them in.

This was of course a situation that would be impossible to find out without the bug of Crossing the Walls of the Mirage Cage.

But that’s not the only weird thing about that video.

It is the fact that there’s no conversation at all despite there being 4 people in the same space including the player.

The king is sitting all grandiose at a chair of the room like when you have an audience with him, and for some reason there’s the queen standing by his side, and the unblinking princess sitting at an opposing chair. 

What this means is that, since all of them are event exclusive characters, there’s not a single daily life conversation or action set on them, so they are all not doing anything, but the game-like beautiful faces of the characters were just staying at that place the whole time, without twitching, as if soulless, and that is fearsome in its own way. 

Maybe because there would be times when you would speak with the queen at the audiences, she would sometimes move her head matching the movements of the player just like with the LookMari Dojo, but the princess wouldn’t move one bit.

She probably isn’t even breathing. 

I still remember what I thought when I saw this. That no matter how real it looked, Nekomimi Neko is still a game. 

Well, I think the weirdest one is the cameraman that was recording this totally silent and still family for 30 minutes, but this video complicated the talk about the royal family on the internet. 

Princess Shermia got the nickname Doll Princess, and her popularity took a nosedive…is what I thought would happen, but this actually had the opposite effect in certain groups, and she overwhelmed Hisame in the popularity ranking in an instant.

By the way, it was discovered soon after that you can’t marry her, and that popularity was immediately overturned. There was such a drama, but well, that’s fine and all.

What I want to say here is that there’s a clear difference in AI quality between NPCs of Nekomimi Neko.

There would be clearly half-assed settings like the Doll Princess, but there’s also the cases where you would find intelligent characters that would answer you so perfectly you would wonder if there’s actually a person controlling it. 

And then…

“Onii-chan, are you a hero~?” 

This girl that is sticking onto me who is walking the capital is one of the latter cases.

(Why is it that I always get annoying stuff stuck onto me right as I arrive…?) (Souma)

I can’t regret it enough.

Being over the moon from this rare instance of being alone was probably not good.

After getting down from the Magic Airship, I was thinking of exploring the capital for now, and I accidentally ended up passing close to the capital’s main gate. 

I encountered the super famous mob character that’s considered your baptism to the capital, Poison-tan.

“Hey hey, Onii-chan, are you a hero~?” 

There’s a small grade school-looking girl following behind me. 

She isn’t involved in any events at all, and she is a mob character that you can’t see the name of even when you put the cursor on her. She was given the name Poison-tan by the players and is feared by them. 

I say feared, but it is not like she physically harms the player like the event characters of Nekomimi Neko. 

She simply asks you questions. 

“Are you a hero, Onii-chan?” 

She would ask.

This question itself isn’t that rare of a thing, and in most RPGs, the main protagonist = hero is in a sense the template.

However, no matter the answer you give, she would give responses that are more human-like than a human.

For example; if you answer with ‘yeah, I am a hero’:

“Uwah, you are so funny, Onii-chan! Cause you are still level 12, right? You are a weakling that can’t even win against a rural slime on the prairies, and yet, how are you going to defeat the Demon Lord?” 

She would go straight for the HP in the player’s heart. 

If you answer with ‘No, I am unfortunately not a hero’.

“Ah, I see. I am sorry, Onii-chan. Now that I look closely, your face is that of a mob character. If someone that looked like you were to become a hero, everyone would be disappointed. I am really sorry for saying something weird.” 

Is how she would come to break your heart.

Then, if you answer with the best response in a normal game that is ‘it is still unknown whether I can become a hero’.

“Wow, Onii-chan! Even though you are far older than me, you can’t even give answers to a simple question? I am impressed that you can live on shamelessly like that!” 

She would jam a knife in your heart with her words.

There would be many variations from that, with plentiful variety in her vocabulary. If you try to get the better of her, she would beat you in an argument with completely different sentences. 

By the way, if annoyed players end up raising their hand on her here, she would fight back with unbelievable strength, you would get pinned on the ground, and be told: 

“Hey hey, how does it feel to rely on violence when you can’t win in an argument against a little girl, moreover, losing and kissing the ground~? Hey~, how does it feel~? Hey hey, tell me~.” 

The Nekomimi Neko developers really are on a league of their own when it comes to pissing off their players.

Honestly speaking, super honest people like Ina and Hisame are one thing, but it is impossible for me to win against this girl when I am not even good at interacting with humans to begin with.

In the first place, Poison-tan only says some painful stuff, but it is not like she actually does any physical harm.

Insults can be ignored, but being talked down on as if it were for her own enjoyment really isn’t amusing. 

(Fortunately, I have a means of escape right now.) (Souma)

There’s a part that changed the most in the character behavior after becoming reality.

Just like how I didn’t need to go through the usual procedure when obtaining Shiranui, just like how I set up an environment where I can use the confessional by asking Mariel-san at the church, or how I managed to mess with the means of winning a match to avoid the marriage event of Hisame, dealing with a human has infinite possibilities.

Until now, the only means of dealing with her was to talk with her.

Her AI accepted no actions aside from that one. 

However, in this world that’s a game and reality, you can do stuff like this…

“Hey hey, Onii-cha—hm?” 

Her words stopped suddenly. 

That’s because I took out something from my bag and offered it to her. 

And then, I made the friendliest of smiles and said this. 

“W-Want some candy?” (Souma)

That’s right. 

In this world that’s a game and reality at the same time, you can do actions like this that weren’t in the choices. 

If I think of her, not as a game character, but as a precocious brat, the answer naturally shows up. 

Instead of arguing with words, you entice her with something sweet. 

This is the only correct answer I can think of.

Her response was…

“……”

…Silence.

Even though she is the most vocal character, she said nothing, didn’t take my offered candy, and ran off to the gate that’s closeby. 

And then, she spoke to the guard standing by the side of the gate.

I obviously can’t read lips, so I can’t tell what they are saying from afar.

But I wonder why…

I for some reason could tell what she was saying as she pointed at me.

“Officer, that guy.” 

I ran away at full speed.