Shortly after I met Liliana and received my first quest, I arrived at the large water fountain on the central street where I was to meet my brother. On the way there, I had a look at the help information, and apparently difficulty level 5 quests were supposed to be undertaken by a party of advanced players. So without a doubt, it wasn’t something I could partake in.
Why would a quest like this be given to a beginner, anyway? I wondered. I should just ask Bro about it for now.
Thinking about this, I had hurried my way to the water fountain, and...
The scene that greeted me left me speechless.
There was a nearly two-meter-tall bear costume with a sign reading “Welcome little brother” parked in front of the water fountain.
“...What in the world is that?” I managed.
There’s no way... But... No, no way... But then again...
This is where we’re supposed to meet.
There likely aren’t that many people out there waiting for their younger brother.
He wouldn’t know my character name, and it’s not like he can use my real one, so it makes sense to write “little brother” on the sign. I get that part.
But...
“Why the costume?” I asked aloud.
It’s going to take some guts to talk to that thing.
For a little while now, children had been gathering around the bear. I couldn’t tell if they were NPCs or players, but they seemed to be very attached to the bear. They were climbing onto its head and lap, as well as hanging from its arms.
I wasn’t getting anywhere at this rate, so I steeled my nerves, and decided to talk to it. “Excuse me. I would like to ask you something...”
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“Yes, yes, just bear with me for a moment.”
Was that a pun...? I thought. I get that it you’re a bear, but still...
“Are you Shuichi Mukudori... Forget it, is that you, Bro?” I asked.
“Indeed it is,” he said. “Hey, Reiji.”
...I so wanted to be wrong.
“I’m glad we were able to meet up.” The bear — I mean, my brother, Shuichi Mukudori — stood up and said, “Shall we go, then?”
He then pulled out some candy from his storage bag — or rather, a pocket attached to his stomach — and passed them out to the children gathered around him.
Is he pretending to be that famous character? I thought. In that case, he should be a cat, or at least a raccoon.
“Yay!”
“Thanks, Mr. Bear!”
The children received their candy and then headed off in cheerful spirits. Before long, only my brother and I were left remaining.
“I guess first up should be introductions,” my brother said. “My name here is Shu Starling.”
“I’m Ray Starling,” I said. “So like I thought, we did end up with the same name.”
Since it was so easy to use the English translation of our last name, Mukudori, whenever someone in my family made a character, eight out of ten times we’d end up with the name Starling.
“So, what should we do?” my brother asked. “It looks like your Embryo hasn’t hatched yet, so should I show you around the town? While we’re at it, if you want to pick up some equipment, I can lend you some money at no interest.”
“Oh, well, actually...” I explained to him about the quest I had just received.
“Really... A quest from Liliana,” he said. “I’ve never received one before.”
“Really, though, why would I get a quest like this when I’m at level 0?” I asked.
“That’s because this world is realistic, and a lot of quests are triggered by coincidence,” he said. “Incidents don’t occur in order to create a quest, but quests arise when there happens to be an incident. There are many quests you won’t be able to trigger intentionally, and there’ll be a lot of cases where you end up going on one you didn’t intend to. Well, consider it a good baptism... you were able to get a sense for how realistic the people of this world are, right?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It was so realistic, in fact, I’m a bit suspicious as to whether I’m talking to the real you, or just an NPC pretending to be you.”
“Of course it’s me,” he said. “You better bear-lieve it.”
“Stop it with the bear stuff!” It made me feel weird because I knew the person inside and could picture him.
“Ha ha ha. By the way, Liliana is a contender for the first or second most popular person in this kingdom. She even has a fan club made up of both players and tians.”
“There’s a fan club... Oh, and what’s a ‘tian’?” I asked.
“A person that isn’t a player,” he said. “Well, you can just think of it as the general term for NPCs.”
“Interesting... so that means even NPCs participate in fan clubs,” I said.
“According to the developers, ‘their personalities and ability to think are on the same level as humans.’ So that kind of thing is the bear minimum of their capabilities.”
Really, this game is so sophisticated, it’s almost alarming.
“By the way, did it say anywhere in the quest information about where to search?” my brother asked.
“No, nothing,” I said. “They’re telling me to search for someone without any hints. That’s why I don’t know where or how I should start.”
Although to be accurate, this memo would count as a hint, I figured.
“Hmm,” he said. “Can you hand me that memo for a sec?”
“Here you go.”
My brother took the memo, but instead of reading its contents, he flipped it over and showed its back to me.
Dear Sister,
The shops were all out of remberries, so I’m going to go get some. I’m bringing bug-repellent incense, so I’ll be okay. Please look forward to it and wait for me.
From Milia.
“Isn’t this...” I said slowly.
“She must have been in a real hurry,” said my brother. “She wrote her contact information on the back of the memo her sister left and gave it to you.”
I didn’t notice it either. Since the memo had been written on parchment paper, I hadn’t been able to see through it.
“What are these remberries?” I asked.
“Remberries are one of the high-grade specialties from around here,” he said. “Just think of them as really delicious fruit.”
“‘Go get’ must mean that she went to go search for them,” I said. Milianne seems to be quite the proactive kid.
“There are two places around here where you can get remberries,” said my brother. “The first is an orchard within the capital. You can harvest there if you pay the fee of 5,000 lir per basket.”
Isn’t that the entire amount you get at the beginning of the game? I thought. That’s expensive!
“The other one is just outside the South Gate. It’s called Old Reve Orchard.”
“Old Reve Orchard?” I asked.
“Some things happened, and insect-type monsters have taken up living there. So it’s an abandoned orchard,” he said. “Even now, there are a lot of fruit trees growing wild there, but at the same time, it’s become a nest for monsters.”
“So the stuff about bug-repellent incense must mean...” I said slowly.
“Probably so.”
That’s way too proactive!
“Go to the safer orchard!” I shouted.
“5,000 lir is asking a bit much from a child,” said my brother. “Even the market value of 50 lir for one would be tough.”
“But still, that doesn’t mean...”
“Old Reve Orchard, by the way, is a place players usually mistake for being beginner-friendly due to how close it is to the starting point,” he said. “However, it’s a dungeon where beginners enter and then get killed right off the bat. It’s also known as the ‘newbie killer.’”
This couldn’t be any worse.
I’d just realized this now, but when I’d met Liliana, she had probably been headed toward the old orchard. When Liliana had said, “Then she might already be inside,” she must have been convinced that Milianne had already entered the orchard because I hadn’t seen her after passing through the South Gate.
“Well,” my brother continued, “in any case, it’d be best to clear this one quickly. It’s probably the type where you’ll fail if time elapses.”
“What?” I asked.
“I told you, right?” he said. “In this world, incidents are realistic and occur spontaneously. That’s why there are no guarantees that things will be fine until the player clears the quest, unlike in older games.”
“Yeah, but...”
“Let me tell you this from my experience as one of the starting players,” he said. “There have been examples in the past of people dying. A sage revered as a hero, the commander of the knights, and even the king of this nation — they all died.”
“......” I didn’t know what to say.
“Despite that, the world of Infinite Dendrogram carries on without a hitch,” he said. “That’s because it’s real.”
I began to imagine...
What if the girl in the picture gets attacked by monsters and tragically dies? Imagining it gave me an unpleasant feeling. Thinking about Liliana caused those feelings to sink even further. I know that they’re NPCs, but...
“That’d leave a bad taste in my mouth,” I said.
“Wouldn’t it?” my brother agreed. “So let’s clear it and shoot for a happy ending.”
I couldn’t see my brother’s face because of the bear costume, but I had the feeling that he was smiling on the inside.
Thus, my brother and my newbie self formed a party, and we set off to tackle my first quest.
The quest to clear was “Search for Milianne Grandria.”
The difficulty level, 5.
The location was the trap dungeon “newbie killer,” Old Reve Orchard.
The goal... was a happy ending.
Start quest.