“Ta-daaa! What d’you think? Do I look good, or what?”
Akira exited the walk-in closet with a big smile on her face. She had changed out of her uniform and into one of the yukatas.
Ooh, now this is a great view. I’m glad I suggested it to her.
“Very cute, plain and simple!”
“Chirp! Akira pretty, Akira pretty!”
Draco was into it too. The pattern and everything certainly looked lovely.
“Thanks! You’re looking good too, Ren.”
“You think so? Thank you, ma’am.”
There were men’s yukatas, as well, so I’d changed to match her.
“Game or not, I haven’t worn a yukata in a good while.”
“I feel you there. Summer’s all about staying inside gaming, right?”
“Darn straight! Having off from school makes raiding and experimenting way easier.”
“Yep. Thinking back, we spent all of last summer... and the summer before that... and the summer before that gaming together.”
“Yeah! Wasn’t middle school the best?”
“Ahem. Did you, uh, play with Emily back in elementary school?”
“Until fourth grade, yeah. After that year, she went home to America.”
“I see. And did you have fun?”
“Yeah, duh! Why— Ouch!”
Something crushed my foot!
“Oops, sorry. It’s so hard to walk in geta sandals.”
Akira’s expression was mischievous, but I was starting to feel that dark aura rising up again.
“Uhh... Nah, it’s cool. No problem. Anyway, let’s get going.”
“Sure. This yukata’s actually good gear too!”
“Oh? Yours too?”
Our yukatas had garbage defenses but came with great special effects. Mine was as follows:
Pricey Yukata (M)
Type: Armor
Level: 1
DEF: 1
Wearable by all classes.
Effect: Max HP +100 and automatic HP recovery (10 HP/sec).
“It comes with HP regen for some reason.”
“Huh, yours is HP?” Akira asked. “Mine’s MP.”
“Wha?! Do men’s and women’s have different effects?”
“Yeah, see? Look.”
Pricey Yukata (F)
Type: Armor
Level: 1
DEF: 1
Wearable by all classes.
Effect: Max MP +50 and automatic MP recovery (5 MP/sec).
“No kidding.”
“As long as you don’t get hit, this is pretty good MP recovery.”
“Yeah, I’d say so. Shame we can’t leave Summertide with it.”
“Aww, we can’t? Maybe that’s why it’s so good. Not that I use MP, though.”
Sword dancers’ moves, including healing dances, all relied on their AP.
Hey, wait a second. If she has a pointless MP overflow, isn’t she the perfect target for my Elemental Circle?! As long as she isn’t targeted by enemies, it won’t matter if she has weak defenses! We might’ve just found something incredible!
I get it now! Elemental Circle is meant for supporting girls in yukatas!
“Actually, this might be really good because you don’t use MP. Gah, I really wanna experiment! Are there any monsters around?!”
“Whaaat?! No, I wanna check out the festival first!”
“Aah, fine. But if we find any on the way, I wanna try it! Just a little!”
“Sure, I guess. Can we go now?”
With that, we left the ocean cottage—and bumped into two visitors.
“Oh, hey, it’s Takashiro and Akki! Hiii!”
“We saw your message and came to check on you.”
It was Yano and Maeda. They must have been intrigued by the message too.
“Hi, Kotomi! Hey, Yuuna!”
“Feast your eyes on this, girls. This is the VIP room that Kokoru won for us!”
“Wow, cool! We can use this all summer too?”
“We’ll have to thank him for that. It’s just lovely!”
“Doubt we’d ever get to come to a place like this IRL. But now that we’re here, I’m gonna kick back and enjoy it to the fullest!”
The cottage’s location seemed to capture the girls’ interest, as Maeda and Yano were more fired up than ever.
“Check this out too!” Akira chirped, spinning around in her yukata. “The cottage is full of these.”
“Ooh, sick!”
“It’s very cute.”
“They’re having a festival in the middle of the island. You two should get changed and come with us!”
“Sounds good. I’ll go!”
“Yes, of course. Let’s hurry and get changed.”
We waited for a moment, and then two more yukata-clad girls joined the party! They were all so gorgeous; I was once again reminded that our guild was full of cute girls.
I grinned. “Awesome. Ready to go, gals?”
“Yeah!”
We grabbed a Gryphon Taxi and headed to the venue. Upon our arrival, we saw that the area was like a shrine, but with stalls lining the road. It was a very standard Japanese festival, but it would be a fresh experience for all the foreign attendees like Emily. I wondered if this event was made so they could really soak up Japanese culture.
“Wow! My first festival... I’m so excited!”
Meanwhile, one natural-born Japanese girl among us was ridiculously hyped! Akira’s eyes were shining like the sun, and she was running all around between the stalls.
“Hahaha... Akki’s sure having fun.”
“Yeah, she says she’s never been to a festival.”
“Having no freedom must be a tad grating on the nerves.”
“Hey, everyone, look!” Akira waved to us from in front of a cotton candy vendor. “Let’s get some!”
Playing along, we all got some cotton candy to eat.
“Ooohhhh!”
From a nearby stall, we heard some strangely excited voices. Upon closer inspection, it seemed to be some sort of shooting gallery... but different. Instead of a normal shooting gallery, it was more of an FPS arcade machine. Throngs of people had gathered around it, and a little old man NPC was yelling to everyone.
“Come one, come all! Step right up and take a gander! Today’s score to beat is fifty thousand points! Anyone who hits it gets a free Warp Stone! Score a hundred thousand, and you get a Special Warp Stone!”
“Whaaat?!”
Those were items used to enter Aswarth’s Undersea Ruins. Normal Warp Stones were 50,000 Mira! I was baffled. That meant this festival was no festival at all—it was actually a set of minigames to farm Warp Stones! As I took another look around, I saw that multiple stands here were blazing with gamer spirit.
Well, now I just have to get in on the action!
“Ooh! Girls, let’s do that! I wanna get Warp Stones!”
I pointed at the FPS machine disguised as a shooting game stall.
“Ren, what’s a Warp Stone?”
“We dunno either, since we just got here.”
“Right. The people over there seem rather... enthusiastic.”
“Aah, so Warp Stones are basically...”
I explained what I knew about Aswarth’s Undersea Ruins, Rainbow Guard, and about the Warp Stones we needed to enter the dungeon. If this could be a stable source of Warp Stones, then the problem of “how do we secure funds to keep going into the dungeon” would be solved. Frankly, if we kept up the five-runs-a-day pace, we would be bankrupt long before the end of summer vacation.
This is great! Not only do I get to see my girls in yukatas, but we’ve found a Warp Stone supply as an added bonus! Good thing we came.
“Sounds fun. I’ll go get us some Warp Stones!”
“You sound confident, Yuuna.”
“I always fight with a gun, anyway!”
Yano had a point there; her main weapon in this game was a gun. If anyone could do it, she could.
“Shooting, huh?” Akira said uneasily. “I’m not super confident in my skills. How about you, Ren?”
“Eh, maybe a little.”
“I’m not especially used to guns either. Though I am confident in my racing skills.”
“After this, we can see if they have any racing games.”
“Ooh. I wanna find a fighting game stand, then! I’ll kick some serious butt!”
“Okay, here goes. Old guy, lemme at ’em!”
“Hello, miss! You only get one try a day, so make sure you aim well!”
Only once a day? Hmm, fair enough. If you got unlimited tries, then you could just get all the Warp Stones you wanted. Are the other games like that too?
It felt like UW was saying, Don’t think it’ll be that easy. Still, the NPC didn’t ask for any money, so one free attempt per day seemed reasonable.
He handed over the rifle-shaped controller, which resembled an old popgun. Instead of a target, the game’s screen turned on to signal the start of the game. Pretty standard shooting game, like you’d find if you went out to an arcade.
A fantasy world like UW was displayed as the backdrop. An evil necromancer appeared and created massive quantities of zombies, and it was up to the player to mow them all down with their gun. A fantasy zombie flick sort of thing, you could say.
Anyway, Yano was doing a good job of shooting down zombies. There were a lot of enemies, but she didn’t miss a single one. Not bad!
“Wow, Yuuna. You’re really good!”
“Heh! Ever since I started using a gun here, I’ve kinda started to like them. Now I play shooting games at home!”
Oh, I see. While I was at home analyzing data, Yano was diving into shooting games. I think she’s been working on new designs for Libra’s Brush too.
As she progressed, Yano’s score continued to pile up until she had nearly hit 50,000!
“Yano, you’re almost at fifty grand!”
“Gotcha!”
Suddenly, an old man who looked to be a boss appeared on-screen and yelled in anger. Then, the game screen spread even wider.
Oh, so that’s what they’re doing!
When the screen got bigger in shooting games, that meant loads more enemies were coming. No doubt it would interrupt Yano’s insane pace.
“Whoa, whoa! That’s a lot!”
The huge quantity of zombies pushed her back, cutting down her life bar! They were really out for blood now.
“Wagh! Aww, I died! What was my score?!”
Upon Yano’s tragic defeat, she yelled in irritation.
“Aww, what a shame, miss! Your score was 46,000!”
“Dang it! This sucks! Grrrr!”
“Worry not, for I will avenge you! I memorized their positioning.”
“Ooh. Good luck, Ren!”
I tried my hand at the machine, and made it to the part where Yano had died. Once again, the screen widened and enemies started flooding in. Everything was going smoothly!
“Now you gotta watch out!”
“No prob. I saw how yours went, but I’m gonna hit fifty k!”
However...