Hello, Satou here. Like a typical Japanese worker ant, I’ve always spent my days neck-deep in my work, but I don’t think it ever wore me down so much that I wished I could run away to somewhere else. I was busy, but I felt like my work was worth doing. It’s true, I swear!
The pain I felt right before that dust cloud overtook me seemed to have knocked me out for about two hours. The dust had probably been a consequence of all those meteorites hitting the earth, I figured.
The menu displayed the time in a simple format in the corner of my vision. How convenient.
I strained to move my body, which was half-buried in dirt.
Huh? I can’t get up…
It felt sort of like when you can’t get out of bed on a winter morning. I could move my hands a little, but it was difficult to do much more than sluggishly wiggle my fingers.
CLANK.
The metallic sound shook me out of my half-conscious state. “No way…,” I muttered, but deep down I was already sure what it must be. The lizardman who had fired the first arrow before.
As if to confirm my suspicions, a single red dot came into view on my radar. The lizardman on my still-open map screen was the only enemy left alive. How could he have survived all three of those ridiculous meteor attacks? I didn’t think that was possible. Maybe he had avoided the bulk of the strikes by being closer to me than the others?
“I guess I lose this round, huh?” I grumbled. I was somewhat frustrated, but for the most part the lethargic state of my body seemed to have dragged my mind down into resignation as well.
CLANK.
But when I saw the enemy appear at the top of the cliff, that apathy of a player who’d just lost a strategy game vanished completely. The lizardman was bleeding from all over his body, staining the remains of his tattered blue armor red. He spat out a spear he’d had clenched in his teeth onto the cliff and hauled himself forward.
At that moment, his gaze fell on me and refused to break away. My arms and legs shook pathetically. I’ve had dreams before where I wanted to run away and couldn’t move, but I’ve never dreamed anything that made me tremble so much.
Using the spear as a cane, the warrior shambled toward me, dragging along his broken leg. The thing’s body was absolutely covered in wounds. If I’d reacted a little sooner, I might have been able to catch him by surprise with a body slam and knock him off the edge of the cliff—but it was too late for that now.
Despite his battered state, the lizardman’s eyes were still burning for a fight. He definitely wanted to kill me. He pulled a sword from the scabbard at his waist—and tossed it at my feet. The sudden movement knocked off a piece of his armor and sent it clattering to the ground.
Now that he’d gotten this close to me, the smell of blood was so strong that I nearly gagged. It would have been far too realistic, if not for the HP gauge floating to the right of the lizardman’s head. Underneath was the label Lizardman: Level 50.
It seemed to be some kind of augmented reality (AR) feature resembling the ones used nowadays in smartphone games and the like. “Is this supposed to be a game?” I grunted, trying to trick my limbs into moving. For some reason, my body felt a little lighter as I did so.
I had no idea what the lizardman was saying to me, but I could guess. “You want me to take this sword and fight?” Barely recovered, I struggled to get my body to move, reaching for the sword. As silly as it might seem, considering I was dreaming, the fear I felt was completely real.
I gripped the weapon as if grasping at a straw. At that moment, for whatever reason, it didn’t occur to me to beg for my life.
My mind raced. I had never taken any kind of fencing or kendo lessons. I hadn’t even lifted a hoe on a farm or used a mallet to make mochi on New Year’s Eve. So my only experience with a blade was what I’d seen in anime and manga and stuff like that, with no actual bearing in reality.
I grasped the sword tight with both shaking hands and desperately planted my feet. The lizardman sneered as he readied his spear. Unlike my fake swordsmanship, my opponent’s posture showed a high level of mastery.
The word he kept repeating is difficult to describe—I might spell it out as mokuugwa or makueuga. Of course, I had no idea what it meant.
As he shouted, he jabbed the glowing red spear into my shoulder. It hurt—a lot. I’ve heard people say you feel heat more than pain with a stab wound, but no, it was pretty much just pain. It was unbearable. My mind was too focused on my shoulder to come up with any sort of action to take.
Pulling the spear out of me, the lizardman then stabbed at my leg as if toying with me. As the spear pierced my thigh, I was struck with a fresh wave of agony and toppled unceremoniously onto my backside.
Considering how pathetic I was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d passed out from the pain at that point, but instead, for some strange reason I stopped feeling it. Maybe it was my imagination, but my fear seemed to be fading, too. Perhaps I was so scared, my emotional limiter had snapped?
My arms and legs stopped shaking, and I was finally able to think straight. The HP gauge I could see by my opponent’s head was nearly zero, but I doubted I could fight him and win. If I tried coming at him with my sword, surely he’d easily counter my attack and put a quick end to things by slashing my throat.
Luckily, it looked like my enemy’s movements were as pained as mine. I had to create some kind of opening while he was tormenting me and make a break for it.
As I stood up, I grabbed a fistful of the dry soil. Throwing dirt in an opponent’s eyes might be cheap, but I didn’t have the luxury of a fair fight right now. I watched the lizardman carefully and struck his spear with my sword just as he drew back. I must have underestimated my remaining strength, because the shove threw him off-balance.