CH 22

I will now make an announcement. I’m done being alone! I’m done being alone! I’m done being alooone! I declare that my days of being a solitary player are over.

After helping Alexia level up and seeing her smiling and having fun, I kept on partying up with them.

As I spent more time with them, I found that their roleplaying is relatively realistic. None of Alexia’s mannerisms felt out of place. She might genuinely be an upper-class young lady. Talking to a real upper-class lady, a member of the opposite s*x, was too high of a hurdle for me, but maybe she was being considerate of me, because our conversations are all focused on the game, which is really easy to talk about. I had a lot of fun talking about the game with Liam, too, and since then I’ve been reading up on Another World’s setting, so there was no shortage of conversation topics. So, I was excited to talk to Alexia about the game’s setting and skills before the quest.

Irene, on the other hand, doesn’t participate in our conversations very much. I’d like to talk to her if possible, but I’m not the type to take the initiative with talking to people. She smiles when she looks at Alexia so it doesn’t look like she’s bored, but she doesn’t seem interested in talking about the game, and she often looks bewildered as she watches Alexia and I talk. It’s probably because of how fired up we can get sometimes. That’s sort of embarrassing.

Thanks to those two, I can have fun playing every day. I hope I can find more new party members this easily, too.

Today, I’m waiting for them in our meeting place at the Adventurer’s Guild as usual, but… For some reason, there are three bad-looking muscular guys surrounding me. I wonder what that’s about. It doesn’t seem to be an event. If this were real life, I’d be running away right about now.

“Hey, you.”

I make eye contact with the man as if to say, ‘Yes, what is it?’

“You’re… the one that was with that noble girl duo, right?”

“Yeah.” Alexia and Irene’s faces come to mind. I wonder why these guys are asking about them?

“Then, don’t get involved with those two anymore.”

…Huh?

“Don’t you get it, a*****e? We’re telling you to stay out of the way.”

…Why do I have to hear something like that from someone I’ve never met before? I’m getting kind of ticked off.

And why the heck are they even trying to separate us in the first place? …Aha, I’ve figured them out. These guys want to hit on them! Among all the women I’ve met in Another World, their appearances definitely stand out. So, I can understand why guys would want to get close to them. …Even so, to go after Alexia who’s around grade school or middle school age, they’re lolicons no matter how I look at it.

However, this is only a game. Moreover, you can freely customize your character’s appearance. In other words, in extreme cases, it’s possible that a beautiful girl character might be a middle-aged man in real life. I can’t understand why anyone would want to pick up girls in a game as if this is a dating site even despite this.

Well, even if they don’t go as far as hitting on them, it’s true that people tend to fawn over female characters. They put on a really cute persona (though there are probably also people who are like that naturally) and become something like a mascot or an idol. People call them princesses, and apparently there are quite a few guys who give those “princesses” items as gifts. Well, if they go too far and start thinking that it’s a given that they’ll get support from others, people are likely to mock those annoying princesses as “drag princesses” and start avoiding them, though.

That aside, I feel like Alexia and Irene are girls in real life too. But before that, they’re people that truly enjoy playing games and like them enough to talk about the game’s setting. That’s why I don’t want them to be approached by guys who want to hit on them, and I don’t like these guys whose personalities are twisted enough that they’ll even threaten others just to approach girls.

Letting the anger flow through me, I glare at them as I reply, “I refuse. It’s none of your business who they associate with.”

“What was that, you brat?!” the men suddenly stand up. Urgh, these guys really do look tough, so they’re really intense. But I can’t back down now.

“Hey, they’re here,” one of the men warns the others as he notices something. When I follow his line of sight, I see that Alexia and Irene just entered the Adventurer’s Guild.

“Tch. You better remember this, brat.”

The men click their tongues as they leave the Adventurer’s Guild. Maybe because all the tension left me, all that comes to mind is nonsense like ‘This might be the first time I’ve heard such a small fry-esque line.’

“Good morning, Teacher.”

Anway, pick-up artists, huh? I guess having a character that’s too cute can also be pretty tough. These sorts of issues might be even worse for VRMMORPGs. Though, since my character looks almost exactly the same as how I do in real life, I don’t have anything in particular to say about that.

“Teacher? Is something the matter?”

Oh man, I gotta snap out of it. While I was lost in thought, Alexia and Irene already made it all the way here in front of me. I was so distracted that they saw that I seemed different from usual and asked about it.

“No, it’s nothing.”

I should just forget about that unpleasant stuff and enjoy the game.

The leveling up is going smoothly. Thanks to the increased efficiency of party play, the information from the wiki, and the experience point increase from the Book of Blessings, my level is now higher than it was in the closed beta. Since the amount of EXP you need to level up increases the more you level up, we’ll have to fight strong monsters that give a lot of EXP. However, since stronger monsters tend to be further away from cities, the travel time has been steadily increasing. That leaves us with less time for hunting, and just when I was wondering what to do about it, I learned a skill that would solve this problem. Warp Portal, the so-called teleportation spell. It lets you teleport to the Portals that are near big cities and ruins. However, you can only use the Portals that teleport you to places you’ve visited at least once, but since you can teleport with your party, it greatly increases your movement range. Right now, I’m still going to places on foot and coming back with Warp Portal, but from now on, I’m planning on searching for Portals while we’re out hunting.

The only ones who can learn this skill are Magicians and Healers (Healers can learn the same skill), so travelling is easy for them, but other classes can’t learn it, so parties are recommended. Damn it, this system isn’t nice to solitary players at all! …Well, I guess you could stay at the hunting zone and spend several days fighting there.

Anyway, there’s an excessively high number of monsters today. The trick to efficiently levelling up in MMOs is to hunt a lot of monsters that are 2-5 levels lower than yours, so I’m hunting with that in mind, but there are even more monsters than usual, I wonder why. Well, whatever. This is more convenient anyway.

“Chaos! Lady Alexia!” Irene shouts as she draws the monsters towards her. Irene’s role is to act as a wall against the monsters as a so-called “evasive tank” by making use of her natural speed to evade the enemy’s attacks while drawing aggro.

“Sleep Cloud.”

Then, Alexia puts the group of monsters to sleep, and for the monsters Alexia couldn’t catch…

“Mana Explosion.”

I explode them to death. Meanwhile, Alexia moves to the center of the group of sleeping monsters, and…

“Wisdom Burst.”

A torrent of light centered around Alexia swallows up the monsters and takes them out. The monsters that escaped even this get stabbed to death by Irene. Irene, do you take fencing lessons or something? She’s such an expert at it that even an amateur can understand how amazing she is.

As a matter of fact, since we have two DPS classes, after learning wide-range attacks, I feel like we’re almost dealing too much damage. That’s why I’m in charge of being the “puller” who draws faraway enemies towards us as well as the item collector, but today there were so many enemies that I didn’t need to be the puller. It won’t be long until I reach Rank 2.

‘What the heck is up with that guy?!’ Karl Friedrich von Neurat stares at the scene before him in resentment.

It all started when he saw her at the Magic Academy. Marie Alexia von Zavarish. From the moment he saw her, she stole his heart. It was the boy’s second love. He wanted to find some way to make contact with her.

However, the environment surrounding her was almost the worst imaginable. Having fallen so far behind in her magic lessons that she was scorned as “talentless”, she was shunned and gradually stopped attending classes. If he approached her, he would be glared at by other nobles. As a lower class noble from a baronial family, he can’t afford to incur the displeasure of higher class nobles. He spent his days feeling despondent about this situation that he could do nothing about.

Then, an opportunity came to him when she decided to participate in extracurricular training. The “talentless” Alexia, who he’d been sure wouldn’t participate in training, would be participating. She had no friends, and no noble would join her. In that case, no other nobles would look their way during extracurricular training.

Once he thought of it, he was swift to act. He would use money to gently persuade the adventurers not to join Alexia’s party, and then, when Alexia was unable to participate in extracurricular training and didn’t know what to do, he would lend a hand – that’s the scenario he came up with. Up to a certain point, this scenario went well. The adventurers she intended to hire cancelled, leaving her completely helpless. It went so much better than he expected that he couldn’t stop smiling. All he had to do next was call out to her and act like it was a coincidence.

But before he could approach her, he was interrupted by a man’s voice. A boy a bit older than him who looked like a foreign mage was quicker to act.

‘What’s going on here?’ he thought, astonished by this unexpected turn of events, but the situation was already irreparable. They quickly added him to their party and left for the quest.

However, he was a foreign boy, which is uncommon. Rethinking this, he could have simply been temporarily earning travel funds. Fortunately, extracurricular training would be held many more times. He reassured himself that next time, he would succeed where he had previously failed.

But contrary to his expectations, that man was with Alexia. Why was that man at Alexia’s side? How could that dull man approach Alexia? And why was she looking at that man with a smile of admiration which she normally didn’t show anyone…?

His patience was at its limit. From the perspective of Friedrich, who had been raised to be incredibly selfish by nature, he had endured this quite well. And so…

“So, young lord, you want me to get that brat away from the lady?”

“Yes, ensure that he never approaches her again.”

He committed the folly of hiring ruffians to use force.

“Are you sure about this, Lord Friedrich? If Lady Alexia learns of this, she will not stay silent.”

The only one who knew the situation, the chamberlain Reginalt, obeyed his master’s orders, but, naturally, he seemed hesitant. If it was revealed that the son of a baron family interfered with the daughter of a count family, it would turn into a disaster that his family would get dragged into. A wise person would want to avoid this situation.

“Hmph, they’ll be gone before they’re discovered, so it won’t be a problem. Worst case scenario, we can discard them. Nobody will care what happens to one or two commoners.”

“But I am also of common origins…” Reginalt mumbled, but Friedrich didn’t hear him. All he was thinking about now was what he would do after there was no longer anyone in his way.

However, since Alexia arrived, it ended in failure. That man, Chaos, was hardly ever alone. After they met up at the Adventurer’s Guild, they left immediately, and when they returned, they went to the tool shop together to prepare for the next day. After that, the trail of Chaos’s footprints abruptly came to an end. The only time they could do it was before he met up with Alexia.

“Damn him, isn’t there any way to get him away from her?” Friedrich ground his teeth, not even hiding his frustration. However, he couldn’t think of a good plan.

Seeing this, one of the ruffians he hired grinned and suggested to Friedrich, “Heheh. Young lord, I know a good way.”

“What is it? Tell me.”

“It’s simple. While they’re fighting monsters, we sic some more monsters on ‘em.”

“What…? Doing such a thing would put Alexia in danger!”

“That’s when you make your entrance, young lord. When the young lady’s about to get attacked, you’ll coincidentally be passing by and heroically rescue her. The brat will be dismissed for failing to protect the lady. It’s two birds with one stone!”

(If Chaos heard this, he would say that this was an underhanded move known as an MPK, but there was nobody around to point this out.)

‘There’s no way that will go well,’ Reginalt calmly dismissed the ruffian’s proposal. Even if he acted like it was a coincidence, the timing was too unnatural, which would generally seem suspicious. Besides, it was incredibly doubtful that his master, who had bad grades at the academy, would be able to defeat the monsters with the added burden of defending Alexia.

However, if Reginalt was asked whether Alexia would feel affection towards Friedrich with such a straightforward strategy, he would have to deny it. He was overweight and couldn’t be called good-looking even as flattery, and his personality was pure arrogance. Even in terms of family status, between a count family and a baron family, he would lose. In any case, he had no chance of success. If there was any woman who became fond of his master, she would have rather strange taste.

“Hmm, it’s a good plan. Excellent work. If it goes well, I will increase your reward.”

That was the moment that “he’s a complete moron” was added to the list of reasons why his master had no chance of success.

‘If anything happens, I’ll have to step in,’ Reginalt solemnly resolved himself.

They had not yet seen her and her companions outside the city, still only seeing Alexia as “talentless”.

“…What is that?” Friedrich chokes out, stunned. In a sense, it’s amazing, he thinks, half-disgusted and half-impressed.

“Yes, this scene does look like that of H**l or a massacre.”

Surrounding Alexia is a sea of monster corpses. Every so often, that man makes a corpse disappear, but the space is soon filled by a new one. There has to be over a hundred of them. It does indeed look like a hellish scene. With these numbers, it’s like they’re slaughtering all the monsters in the area.

This looks nothing like extracurricular training. They’re supposed to be facing only one or two monsters at a time to make it easier for nobles to kill them, hunting for sport so to speak. This situation is like they’re surrounded by enemies on all sides and desperately struggling to survive and be the last man standing. When he looks at them more closely, that man seems to still have energy to spare.

“Lord Friedrich, doesn’t Lady Alexia have such little talent in magic that she is called ‘talentless’?”

“Yes, Mana Bolt should be the only spell she’s adequately mastered. What in the world is going on here? She’s even using magic that I’ve never heard of.”

She doesn’t look anything like the girl that was called ‘talentless’. Her appearance is that of a full-fledged mage who uses strange magic.

“…Are we still doing this?”

“Tch, obviously! If they’re pushing themselves this far, they’ll eventually run out of stamina. I can just wait until then to save her!”

‘Against this many enemies? There’s no way you could save her.’

In the end, they never ended up being in danger, and after the ruffians who were leading monsters to them collapsed from exhaustion, their efforts came to a close.

“Damn it all! I won’t give up!”

As he looks at his master burning with useless willpower, Reginalt lets out a sigh.