Shuutarou opened his eyes, but all he could see was darkness, as if night had fallen. Being knocked out was supposed to trigger a warning with a sixty-second-second countdown followed by a forced log-out, but Shuutarou didn’t know that, so he didn’t realize that what had happened to him was in any way unusual.
He got up from the ground.
Right, so the last thing I did was use the dungeon creation skill…
He couldn’t remember anything since then. He seemed to be inside a building of some sort, one with very thick walls. He looked up but couldn’t see anything except the tiny moon in the distance.
So my skill builds an actual dungeon? I don’t have to dig tunnels or anything?
It seemed so banal. He was expecting he’d make the dungeon from scratch, with a shovel and all that.
He thought about checking the skill description again, but when he opened the menu screen, he saw a flashing message notification.
Its contents hit him like a ton of bricks.
His first instinct was to try logging out, but the button, which he remembered from the character creator, was blacked out.
“This can’t be for real…”
No logging out? Pain settings? No revival?
It took a few seconds before the implications really sank in. His mind raced until it settled on one emotion—utter and shattering despair. He felt as if all the blood had drained from his body.
I can’t leave? If I die here, I die for real? I could die here, in this empty dungeon?
There was nobody to keep him company—no friends, no family, not even strangers—which amplified his fear.
I’m scared! I’m scared! I’m scared!
“You there.” A girl’s voice interrupted his internal screaming.
Shuutarou almost choked, and he erupted in a fit of coughing. He turned toward where the voice came from and saw a deathly pale girl who was maybe thirteen years old. Her long hair, large eyes, and the dress she was wearing were all white. That made her look more like a doll than a real person, but Shuutarou wasn’t creeped out—he thought she was fascinatingly adorable down the horns on her head, which looked like a crown.
“How did you get here—?” she started to ask.
“Oh… What are we going to do?! We can’t— We can’t log out!”
It was only when he put his hands on her shoulders that he took note of how, unlike him, she wasn’t freaking out, which meant she wasn’t yet aware of their predicament. Should he explain it to her? She’d probably break down crying. He already had, and he was a boy. She might take it much worse, especially if she really was younger than him.
The girl reacted with shock when he touched her, swiftly backing away from him.
I frightened her…
He chided himself for not having gotten a grip sooner.
“…”
“…”
They stood there in awkward silence. The girl defensively wrapped her arms around her chest, looking at him with fear and suspicion. She eventually spoke, her voice strained.
“Who are you…?”
A door creaked open, and multiple pairs of footsteps followed. Several people approached the girl from behind.
One was a handsome man dressed like a butler. Then there was another man so big, Shuutarou had to crane his head up to look at his face. The third was a fierce-looking silver-haired woman, while the last two seemed to be knights.
“Vampy, who is this?” the butler asked, his gaze fixed on Shuutarou and his eyebrows knit.
“I don’t know…,” the white-haired girl muttered.
From the particular way these people were dressed and from their unusual physical appearance, Shuutarou guessed they were NPCs—nonplayable characters generated by the Mother, acting according to their own AIs. When he was researching the game by watching videos and reading walkthroughs, he noted that the beta players praised the NPCs for their convincingly humanlike dialogue.
The town blacksmiths, shopkeepers, and Adventurers Guild staff were all NPCs, as well as the town guards. Their AIs were so advanced that they could chat just like humans, and they also displayed a variety of facial expressions. They even slept and ate.
What set them apart from players was that they could only discuss what was within the scope of their role. If you asked them what their favorite food was, for example, they wouldn’t be able to answer. But there was an even simpler way to tell if someone was a real human—NPCs had tags over their heads with NPC displayed next to their name. Players, meanwhile, had only their names shown. Shuutarou knew this from one of the game’s wikis.
“So you guys are…”
He glanced up to check their tags…and fell speechless.
There was one more special tag in the game: MOB (short for mobile object), which denoted enemy characters.
The butler, the giant man, the silver-haired woman, the two knights, and the young girl all had that tag. But they weren’t regular mobs. Their tags read BOSS MOB.