Chapter Three: A Heroic Discussion
There were ornate beds prepared for us in the provided chamber. Everyone was sitting on them, closely inspecting their weapons and letting their vision drift absentmindedly to check on their status screens.
I glanced at the window, only to find that the sun had set long ago, which just goes to show how much time we had spent reading the instructions.
Okay, so let’s see here. The legendary weapons required no maintenance at all. They were powerful and sturdy enough on their own. The material the weapons were constructed of reacted to the level of the hero who wielded them, and any slain monsters were recorded in something called a weapon book.
The weapon book was something that apparently kept a list of all the forms the legendary weapons were capable of transforming into. There was a weapon book for my own shield that could be viewed from the weapon icon. I opened it.
Fwip!
The border of the window quickly expanded to fill my field of vision, and it was filled with rows of weapon icons. It appeared as though none of them were currently available for upgrades. Huh, would you believe it? It looked like certain weapons could be set and improved upon and would grow more powerful with time.
Got it. It was just like the way that skills and weapons are leveled up in online games. It said that in order to learn skills, the powers hidden in our weapons would have to be set loose. It really did seem exactly like a game of some sort.
“Hey, this is just like a game, don’t you think?”
It looked like the other guys were reading over the help menus, too. One of them responded to my question.
“Like a game? I think it actually might be a game. I know games that are just like this,” said Motoyasu, bristling with an air of conceit.
“Huh?”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty famous online game. Haven’t you heard of it?”
“Uh, no. And I’m a pretty hardcore otaku.”
“You’ve never heard of it, Naofumi? It’s called Emerald Online.”
“Never heard of it. What is it?”
“Naofumi, have you even played an online game before? It’s famous!”
“I’ve only played stuff like Odin Online, or Fantasy Moon Online. Those are pretty famous, too.”
“I’ve never heard of them before. Must be minor titles or something.”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t know what any of you are referring to. This is nothing like an online game. It’s more like a console game.”
“Motoyasu, Itsuki, you’re both wrong on this one. If anything, it’s a VRMMO.”
“No way. Even if we suppose, for the moment, that we are in an online game, it still must be the sort that you control by a mouse or with a controller.”
Ren looked confused by Motoyasu’s theory, and he jumped into the conversation. “A mouse? A controller? What kind of antique games are you guys talking about? These days, aren’t all online games VRMMO?”
“VRMMO? I guess you mean a virtual reality MMO? Cut the sci-fi crap. You know the tech isn’t ready for stuff like that yet.”
“Huh?!” Ren nearly shouted in surprise.
Thinking back on it, he was the first of us to figure out how to use the status magic. It kind of seemed like he knew what he was doing. He might have known more than he was letting on.
“Um, excuse me? You all seem to think this is like a game you know. Can I ask what the names of those games are?”
Itsuki raised his hand and answered quickly. “Brave Star Online.”
“Emerald Online.”
I spoke up next. “I dunno. I mean, are we even in a game world?” I also thought it seemed a bit like a game, but could we really have arrived in a game that I had never even heard of?
“I see. As for my opinion, this reminds me of a console game called Dimension Wave.”
And so we all seemed to think the world represented a different game.
“Wait a second. Let’s try to collect what we know for sure.” Motoyasu rested his head on his hands and tried to calm us down. “Ren, this VRMMO you speak of means exactly what we said, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“Itsuki, Naofumi, you guys understand what he means, right?”
“I think it sounds like a game from science fiction, but yes.”
“I think I read about something like it in a light novel once.”
“Fair enough. That’s about all I can think of, too. Okay then, Ren. The game you mentioned, Brave Star Online. Is that a VRMMO, too?”
“Ah, right. The VRMMO I played was called Brave Star Online. The world felt very, very similar to this one.”
Considering the way Ren spoke of it, it seemed like this VRMMO thing was ordinary technology for him. It sounded like computers could read the user’s brain waves and allow the user to dive into the computer world directly.
“Okay, fine. Well, if that’s true, Ren, in the world you come from, do they have any games similar to the things we have mentioned? Like maybe in the past?”
Ren shook his head. “And just so you know, I consider myself pretty well-versed in the history of games where I’m from. I’ve never heard of anything like what you are all talking about. But the games you guys are talking about . . . You all consider them relatively well-known titles, right?”
Motoyasu and I nodded in agreement.
If we knew anything about online games, which we all thought we did, it seemed impossible that we wouldn’t know anything about the games we were all mentioning. Even if, for the time being, we accepted that we were not as well-versed in online games as we all assumed we were, we all thought we were mentioning famous games. How could we be so wrong?
“Okay then, let’s start with some common-sense questions. You can all name the current prime minister, right?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, let’s all say it at the same time.”
Gulp.
“Masato Yuda.”
“Gotaro Yawahara.”
“Enichi Kodaka.”
“Shigeno Ichifuji.”
We all fell silent.
I had never heard of the other names, not even in the history books.
We went on to compare our knowledge of Internet terms, famous Internet sites, and famous games. None of our examples matched up. In the end, we didn’t seem to share any references at all.
“It kind of seems like we all came from different Japans.”
“It does seem that way. I certainly can’t imagine how we could be from the same place.”
“I guess that means that there is a Japan in all our parallel worlds?”
“I thought at first that we could just be from different time periods. But none of our experiences match up, so that can’t be it.”
Even at that, we all had one thing in common: we were otaku. That had to mean something.
“If that’s the case, it seems like we were all brought here for different reasons and in different ways.”
“I’m not really into having useless conversations. Do we really need to have these things in common anyway?”
Ren spoke up as if he was the coolest person in the room and he wanted everyone to know it.
“I was on my way home from school when I hit a spot of bad luck and got caught up in a murder case. It was the talk of the town at the time.”
“Uh huh.”
“I was with a good friend. I remember saving him, and I remember the criminal getting arrested . . .”
Ren was rubbing his side softly as he spoke.
I wanted to poke fun at him. What kind of hero did he think he was with all this talk of saving his best friend and all that? I managed to keep my thoughts to myself.
I suppose he was saying that he caught the bad guy but then was stabbed in the side during the struggle.
He looked like the kind of guy to boast about things that never happened. I instantly wanted to file him away as untrustworthy . . . and yet, he was one of the heroes summoned here. The least I could do was hear him out.
“Anyway, so then, before I knew it, I woke up here.”
“Makes sense. Pretty cool of you, though, isn’t it? Saving your best friend and all?”
He responded to my compliment with even more aloofness. Fine then.
“Okay, I guess I’m next,” said Motoyasu, lightly pointing at himself.
“I have . . . Well, to put it simply . . . I have quite a few girlfriends.”
“I’m sure you do.”