Leadership came with responsibility.
One evening, Danblf was tasked with wiping out a group of monsters that had appeared near the border of his country. The Wise Men took turns handling these occasional outbreaks, and it was his turn to do the chores.
Leaving his wizard’s tower, Danblf began meandering his way to the border when he heard a tone announcing an incoming message from the real world. It was suppertime, and the high-pitched voice of his younger sister called him downstairs to the dinner table. With a sigh, he logged out and removed his headset before joining his family.
Upon his return, he found an email waiting in his inbox. It was a reminder that he still had a balance of 500 yen in the game’s cash store that was set to expire the following day.
Like most other games, AEO seemed to make most of its money though a premium store where players traded real-world cash for a variety of in-game goods and services. From cosmetic enhancements to indispensable utility items, nearly every player in the game used the cash store sooner or later.
The problem with the cash store was that a player could only deposit money into their accounts in 1,000-yen increments. It usually worked out because most items were sold in 1,000-yen increments. For instance, a Floating Island sold for 2,000 yen. It was a flying piece of land, roughly twenty-five meters on a side. It could be decorated however the player saw fit, and many players used it as a sort of vehicle to cross over impassable terrain with ease. Players could then buy buildings or terrain features for their island, which sold for 1,000 or 2,000 yen each.
But not all items sold in exact multiples of a thousand yen. Somewhere along the line, Kagami had purchased an oddly priced item, leaving him with a dangling balance that would expire if unused.
He had three options. He could add more money to the account and buy something with a nice round price, but that would just kick the can down the road and leave him another 500-yen balance. He could let it expire and write it off as the cost of playing the game. But as much as he loved AEO, he didn’t feel like giving them money for nothing. The only remaining option was to spend some time finding an item that cost exactly 500 yen.
“Well, that’s how they get you,” Kagami muttered, looking over his choices.
There was only one—the Vanity Case.
While the basic character creation system gave a player a thousand ways to modify their character’s look, the Vanity Case gave ten thousand cosmetic options for a measly 500 yen. It was common for most new players to simply choose a default avatar, then spend an entire day tweaking and sculpting their ideal hero with a Vanity Case.
That was how Kagami made Danblf, and it was why there was 500 yen left over in his account to begin with. He sighed, clicked on the item, and watched his balance drop to zero.
Manipulating his armband terminal, he opened the item menu. Inside was a small lacquered box containing the Vanity Case. Four years ago, he’d been so focused on making the ideal distinguished wizard that he couldn’t remember any of the other options offered by the creation system.
He was curious. Despite the pressing matter of monster hunting, he couldn’t help but open the character editing menu.
In addition to the buttons and sliders, there was a drop-down menu with a number of presets categorized by the attitude they conveyed—Lively, Stoic, Cheerful, Mysterious, and so on. As Kagami looked over the list, it reinforced his belief that he’d nailed it on the first try with Danblf. There was simply no way to improve his current avatar.
But as he gazed contentedly at his masterpiece, an option caught his eye: Male.
The avatar’s gender stared back at Kagami from the menu, and the imp of the perverse began to whisper in his ear. Sure, he’d perfectly created his ideal male form…but what about the ideal female form?
He flipped the toggle and Danblf promptly turned into a woman with all of the summoner’s features. It was uncanny and uncomfortable to look at. AEO might just be a game, but it was still embarrassing to find himself confronted with the female version of his grizzled wizard. Shaking off the cringe, he began to pick through the interface for other options. He selected Confident from the presets to see how that looked. Then he kept going.
✦ ✦ ✦
A while later he gazed in satisfaction at his creation, and a smile crept over his face. His ideal female form stood before him, posing in a looping routine of emotes to show off his handiwork.
Then he heard his sister’s voice call him down to breakfast. Checking the clock, he was shocked to see that it was already 9 a.m. Without realizing, he had worked with the Vanity Case all through the night.
A wave of intense drowsiness overcame Kagami. He fumbled for the Log Out button in the main menu before fading out.
The world slipped into darkness.