Well, I was no stranger to how unreasonable these events could be. I was the one who’d dragged my party members into my own mess.
Let’s just say it’s my turn and accept it.
“I take it you’re the lord of this island...err, desert?”
“Aye. I was the one who summoned you. I do feel bad about it, but won’t you lend me a hand?”
“I understand the situation. So, umm...”
I paused to check the name of the person in front of me.
My own name—Kizuna†Exceed—was embarrassing enough, and everyone just called me Kizuna. But the fox girl before me... I knew her. No, it wasn’t like we’d ever spoken before, but I just kinda knew her.
With her voice and manner of speaking, she had to be the same person who’d been in command of the waves from the first wave up to the one on Cal Mira.
I see...that’s why Romina said I’d know her voice. It was her.
And, though this was our first direct conversation, her name was...pretty out there.
Player Name: m9(^Д^)
It was...that. You know. An emoji of her pointing a finger at the screen and laughing. An old ASCII used on certain anonymous image boards, also known as a kaomoji or emoticon.
As for what “m9(^Д^)” meant, well, it was basically a way of saying, “Look at that guy and laugh.”
How...am I supposed to pronounce that?
It was a joke name, and I really didn’t know what to say. It was the first time I’d seen anything like it in Dimension Wave.
“What is it?” the girl asked.
“The name, right?” said Kanade. “Everyone’s like that when they meet you for the first time.”
My sister gave a few sympathetic nods.
If you get it, then throw me a bone here!
“Oh... Is that so?”
“Umm...”
“There is a very deep reason behind this.”
“A reason? Is it like mine?”
What? Did someone pull some mean stunt like when a certain pair of sisters swapped my avatar and I logged into something completely different from what I’d made?
“You don’t have it that bad, Kizuna. This girl here has to explain herself every single time.”
“It’s not like I’m happy with the name either!”
“What? Is this your doing again, sis?”
You couldn’t be satisfied with just me? You had to sink your claws into the other players too?! Is she some kind of IRL friend?
“Of course not! I don’t know her in real life either. I just know the story behind that strange name of hers.”
Okay, maybe my sister isn’t that bad.
“So, what’s up with the name?”
“Aye...well, the truth is... I poured my heart into making this avatar.”
And so, m9(^Д^) went into her tale.
Apparently, she spent night after night painstakingly crafting her avatar and getting it up to the same unnecessarily high level of detail as my own. And, once she was finally finished and satisfied...it was long past midnight. In a delirious state of exhaustion and accomplishment, she kept entering and erasing potential names while building up her profile.
Dimension Wave required players to submit multiple potential names on registration. You’d think it’d manage duplicates by ID, but no. Every name had to be unique.
For me, Kanade, and Tsumugi, the † and the Exceed slapped on the end let us avoid any overlaps, so we got through easily enough. But simpler names were far more easily taken.
Especially when they were names from famous games and anime.
And as it turned out, m9(^Д^) had been among the list of her potential names.
“And you ended up with that?”
“I want to go back and smack the me of back then for not checking properly.”
She’d put in joke names, had a laugh about them, and erased them soon after. Then came the hesitating, mulling...and finally entering something cool. Unfortunately, at least one of them had slipped through the cracks.
“‘Yeah, no way, no how! Ah ha ha ha ha! Look at him and laugh! Ah ha ha ha!’ and that should have been the end of it. And in my sleep-deprived delirium, I swear I deleted it and input something proper... I never could have imagined that I’d forget to hit save!”
Meaning...she self-destructed. Always save before you exit a program. Unlike me, a clear victim of sabotage, she’d completely brought this on herself.
The real enemy here was the mix of accomplishment and exhaustion. And the reckless bravado that came with the midnight hours.
“Most people call her LOLey or LAHAL.”
Yeah, that emoji was usually associated with mocking laughter: “Look at him and laugh.” Shortening it to Lahal made it more name-like. And, using the standard LOL, adapting it to Loley for a little girl character was a bit on the nose.
“Do you know how much they’ve teased me since I logged in with this name?! It’s been downright miserable!”
You kinda made your own bed here... I thought. But if I said that, I knew it’d sour our working relationship, so I chose to keep quiet.
Everyone made dumb mistakes.
Still, what should I call her, then? I think I could get away with Em-Nine, but that doesn’t sound right.
“Uh...well, I guess I’ll go with Emoji.”
If Shouko was here, I could see her going with a more tactful name like that.
“Hmm...you’ve got a decent personality after all. I can see why you’re the lord of Cal Mira Island.”
“Right...”
Not that being the island lord had anything to do with personality.
“Anyway, we should introduce ourselves properly. I’m Kizuna. IRL little brother of that girl over there and, as you know, the lord of Cal Mira.”
“Aye. And I, as you prefer to call me, am Emoji. I am recognized as the lord of the Prado Desert and, once upon a time, I led a guild as its master.”
“Right, from what I’ve heard from Kanade, it was one of the top guilds. I remember hearing your voice during the wave events.”
At least, I was pretty sure I’d heard something like that. She was apparently leading the top-rankers while we were busy developing the island.
“I’m sure my guild members thought so. We would challenge high-level hunting grounds together and bring down powerful bosses.”
Yeah...considering the way she handled command and coordination during the waves, she definitely struck me as a serious person. People with charisma were already powerful in real life, but in an MMO where numbers meant everything, they were absolutely unstoppable.
And with that in mind...a supposedly horrible name that became a joke and conversation starter for everyone she came across... Maybe it wasn’t such a bad name after all. It served to smooth out communication, at least.
“I have the build of your quintessential support healer—specializing in healing and buffs.”
So she’s the highly skilled healer that Kanade told us about.
That was something we severely lacked in our own party and an indispensable role in any online game. Spirits could only heal the Shield Energy of their Intermediary Stones, but it was still way better than nothing.
She’s probably one of those hardcore combat types.
“But with that said, what I truly wanted to do before launch was farming. A little building here and there too.”
What’s this? She’s got a hobbyist side as well?
On closer inspection, although her overall impression was “kitsune mage with a Japanese theme,” her actual equipment leaned more toward farming.
I was surprised to hear that from the leader of a first-rate guild.
No, perhaps that meant she had a deeper understanding of how the game system worked. After all, there were hidden stats and proficiencies beyond what was displayed on the stat screen.
I glanced at my sister...
“Not everyone can dive straight into their gimmick from the get-go like you. Most people fight and earn and make sure they’ve got a stable life going before they spec into side content.”
She had a point. Who in their right mind would roll into this kind of game playing “full-time fisherman” from the start? I could see why it was preferable to build strength and gather resources before trying out hobbies.
My plan was to have Kanade and Tsumugi carry me after they got strong, so it was less important for me. They’d expected it to go that way too.
“It was my dream to cultivate the wilderness from scratch...but alas, I’ve been kept too busy for that.”
Apparently, she was in it to have fun. But she had to build her war chest if she wanted to live her life in peace, and so battle became the priority. A party grew into a guild and grew even beyond that, swallowing up all the time she’d saved for farming.
“Then this cultivation event’s got to be right up your alley.”
“Aye. When I discovered this hidden event and earned this frontier, I was jumping for joy.”
Emoji gestured behind herself...at a desert oasis and the buildings scattered around it. There were rows of farms stretching out from the water.
“So what’s someone like you need from me? I get that Kanade recommended me, but...wouldn’t you usually start with close friends?”
Don’t tell me that she prioritized efficiency and that ended up with Kanade being summoned last?
“I mean...even Tsumugi was saying that you were the Yamikage of your group, sis...”
“Hey, Kizuna! I know about Yammy’s reputation, but don’t you dare put me in that category!”
Honestly, in a settlement full of strangers, fishing was about the only thing I had to offer. No, wait, am I actually being seen as a useful person for development...? But if my sister’s here...did she call Alto too?
“Oh, right. Have you seen my little Alto anywhere?”
“Your guild’s exclusive merchant, yes? I did not call for him. Kanade asked me the same question.”
“Yeah, he’s not here.”
“Huh? He’s not?”
Emoji and Kanade both shook their heads.
Then he’s at a different settlement?
I didn’t know how many there were...but thinking back to the chest at the start of my development event, the chest had four buttons on it. It was safe to say there were four areas in total, though this was pure speculation.
“I had a different candidate to fulfill the merchant role here...”
Regardless, it seemed I wouldn’t be having a tearful reunion with Alto.
“Food supplies are running low, bun! If we don’t plant soon, we’ll all collapse, bun.”
As we were talking...a rabbit in a Santa hat hopped up to Emoji. I stared, then shifted my eyes back to Emoji who, after a moment, realized an explanation was in order.
“That’s Bunowny—the helper character for this settlement. They’re like the Pekkle from Cal Mira.”
“I figured...”
He was just whining about hunger. Is this place going to be okay?
“‘When a bunny and a brownie put their strength together, you get a Bunowny, bun!’ At least, that’s what he said at the start.”