In the real world, I recharged by eating and taking a nap. Then, I logged back on to meet up with Akari at the entrance of Yellow City.
“Hi, over here!” Akari called out to me.
“Hey. Were you waiting long?”
“Mm-mmm!”
“Oh, not at all. I just got here now.”
It felt like we were meeting up for a date, though obviously that wasn’t what we were doing.
“Hello, Olto!”
“Mm-mm!”
“Follow me, we’re meeting up over here.”
We had made plans ahead of time to head to the meeting place for the raid boss battle together. It would have been fine if we had gone separately, but since Akari and I were the ones who discovered the raid boss, we figured it would be more efficient for us to arrive together so we wouldn’t be asked the same questions over and over.
Our rendezvous point was Yellow City’s Adventurers’ Guild. When we walked into the conference room that was booked in advance, we were greeted with Kokuten and his party composed solely of mature men. There was Kokuten, wearing his soldier armor, and Sekisho, looking like a quintessential mage. In addition to those two, there was Todo, the lanky, sardonic scout; Gio, the handsome lancer; Nanzan, the glasses-wearing, kindly older brother-type healer; and Byden, the tall and muscular shield master.
I knew all of Kokuten’s party members by this point. We were familiar enough to give a casual wave to each other, and Sekisho and I had gone to that music convention together. Speaking of Sekisho, I could see he was covertly wearing a Nyamun-chan key chain.
“Hello, Yuto. Everyone’s here,” Kokuten said.
“Hey. I know almost everyone here.”
All the players who would be participating in our first attempt against the raid boss were gathered in the guild’s room chatting excitedly with one another. Some looked to be exchanging friend codes.
“Silver-Haired! Thanks for inviting us!”
“Heh heh... Many thanks.”
“We really appreciate it!”
The first people I turned to talk to were Kurumi, Rikyu, and Filma.
Kurumi, the short cow-human hybrid, was wearing her oversized metal armor and carrying a giant hammer slung on her back. Rikyu, the purple-haired snake-human hybrid who was also known as Pyro, was wearing her courtesan-style kimono. And finally there was Filma, the sea nymph with ears shaped like fish fins. I found myself seeing these three a lot. In fact, they often stopped by my farm to play with my monsters.
“Actually, it was Kokuten who decided to invite you guys.”
“Well, still!”
The girls bowed their heads to me, which started a chain reaction of other players thanking me too. I guessed that even though Kokuten had invited them all, they still wanted to express their appreciation to the ones who had actually discovered the boss.
“I will exert every effort in this fight so I can return to my wife with a good tale to share!”
“Wassup, dude?! I can’t wait to show you my beefed-up yoga skills!”
Murakage, the ninja role-player, and Sakkyun, the outgoing Summoner who knew martial arts, also greeted me. Olto even returned Sakkyun’s salute. For some reason, my monsters liked Sakkyun a lot. And next to him sat two other familiar people.
“We’re also thankful to be invited. We promise we’ll do whatever it takes to defeat the boss.”
“Holland and I won’t let you down. You can count on that.”
I was surprised to see that Murakage, Sakkyun, Holland, and Huey were all friends with one another. They must have known one another from fighting on the front lines together.
In stark contrast with the Murakage and Sakkyun, Holland and Huey sounded a bit overly serious about the fight. They were acting as if they were real inhabitants of this fantasy world, who would actually die if we lost this battle. Though they were probably just being serious about role-playing heroes heading towards the jaws of death.
Their contrast with one another looked really cool too. Holland was wearing silver armor and Huey black mage robes. They looked just like a hero and a sage.
“Aaah! Silver-Haired, meow! We’re going to be fighting together, meow!”
“Nice kitty... Meow.”
Nyamun-chan and KTK were sitting side by side. So they knew each other too, huh? Nyamun-chan was acting her boisterous self, and KTK’s face was deadpan as per usual.
Nyamun-chan and KTK both had Super Dimension Fortress-inspired nicknames, and their playstyle was similar in the way they agilely sidestepped enemy attacks, so maybe they actually found they had a lot in common.
Nyamun was wearing a frilly, gothic lolita idol outfit. I questioned whether that gave her enough defense, but apparently it offered plenty as well as giving a boost to her speed, making it the ideal armor for buffing evasion. KTK wore a black thief outfit that was also made of lightweight material, but someone who could evade as well as she could didn’t need heavy armor.
They were definitely an interesting pair. KTK especially. There seemed to be a subtle intensity in her gaze as she stared at Nyamun-chan. Was she a big fan of cats?
“Hello again, Yuto.”
“Bear Bear’s so cute...”
“Silver-Haired! We have a problem! The poisoned meals were put up for sale at your farm stand!”
“We’ll show everyone what crafters can do!”
The crafters—Sawyer, Ashihana, Fuka, and Sukegawa—were chatting in a corner of the room. They probably found it hard to mingle with the hardcore fighters.
Sawyer was wearing his usual robes, and Ashihana and Sukegawa were clad in light armor. Meanwhile, Fuka’s outfit choice was certainly interesting. She was just wearing the same chef’s coat she wore while we’d been cooking together. Was she seriously going to go onto the battlefield like that? I guess she could get away with that in a game.
Wait...what did Fuka just say?
“Huh? What was that about the poisoned meals?”
“Yes! The poisoned meals we made this morning! I ate one and almost died!”
“You would’ve seen if it was poisoned if you’d appraised it... And we made it together!”
“Well, it just looked so good, I couldn’t help myself...”
Was it her nature as a chef that drove her to do that, or simple gluttony?
“But wait, I didn’t put the poisoned meals up for sale...” I murmured.
“There are a whole bunch at your farm stand!”
“A whole bunch? That can’t be—”
Ahhh! Oh no! I screwed up!
By habit, I had put the poisoned meals away in my storage. At least I had put the finished products I intended to use for the boss fight in my inventory, so those were fine.
Whenever I randomly stashed items I had made while practicing any sort of crafting, Mamori put them up for sale at my unmanned farm stand. Since I couldn’t always tell what items would sell well, I had recently started just putting away as many crafted items I could in my storage that weren’t items I used myself or items I needed to deliver for quests. As a result, I had built up a routine of putting crafted items away in my storage without thinking much about it. Which meant now, my unmanned stand was stocked full with the poisoned meals that we’d made for practice or hadn’t turned out well.
“Wasn’t the meal expensive?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I couldn’t not try one of your new products.”
A new product? It was a meal we cooked together!
“And even though it was poisoned, it tasted very good. I’m sure the boss won’t be able to resist it either!”
“That’s good to know,” I said. I’ll take her word for it.
Siegfried called out to me next. “Yuto, thank you for the invitation.”
“Thank you for coming. You’ll be a big help. So, is this the knight you recommended?”
Standing next to Siegfried was a player who couldn’t have been more different from him. If Siegfried was a paladin or a white knight, then the other guy was a dark knight.
It wasn’t unusual for people to look attractive in this game, but this knight was exceptionally good-looking. He almost looked a little feminine with his long, light purple hair tied back in a loose ponytail. It was the same hairstyle that a female character from the sixth installment of a certain franchise involving dragons and quests had. With his pale skin and red eyes, he came across as trying a little too hard to pull off the reference, but he looked cool, so whatever.
Equipment-wise, he wore pitch-black metal armor. But instead of making him look bulky, the elegant curves of the armor softened his overall impression. Instead of a burly, powerful dark knight, he looked more like a dark knight who could also wield magic.
“Hee hee hee. I am the knight known as Rais. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“O-Oh, yeah. Nice to meet you. I’m Yuto.”
Rais brought a hand exaggeratedly to his chest and bowed gracefully at the waist. He seemed like a dedicated role-player. Role-playing a dark knight? He wasn’t going to betray us, was he? And hold up, a dark knight named Rais... Did he get his name from Gilles de Rais? If he was role-playing close to the origin of his name, it suddenly seemed that we might have a real problem on our hands.