Chapter 1:
An Amazing Game; an Undeserving Man
“YOU NEED TO GET A JOB. Your father can’t work forever, you know! Things are fine right now, but what about the future? What will you do once we’re gone?”
“Come on, Mom, you’ve told me this a million times! I know!”
Why couldn’t she just let me eat my lunch in peace? I should have slept in, as usual.
Still, she was right. I was the worst. I somehow graduated high school and college without ever putting in much effort, but I just couldn’t seem to find a job, no matter how many great companies I applied to. A year passed…then another…and a decade later, I was still unemployed.
“You’re thirty years old! Thirty! Our neighbor Masashi-kun is thirty, and he has a decent full-time job and an adorable kid!”
This wasn’t the first time she’d brought up Masashi-kun. It was always either him or my classmates, all working hard, and some with their own families already. Compared to them, I’d achieved nothing.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
I got up from my chair, wanting out of this conversation. But just as I was about to return to my room, my one safe haven in the whole world, the doorbell rang. I checked the intercom. It looked like a package.
“Delivery!” called the man.
I was about to let someone else get it when I noticed the familiar logo on the side of the box: it was from a shopping website.
“I’ll be right there!” I called.
“Don’t tell me you’ve bought something with all that money you don’t have,” snarked my mom.
“No. I must’ve won another contest.”
I liked to enter online contests. I’d won a few times. Sometimes the prizes were items of an adult nature, so I decided it was safer to go down myself. It might be something I wouldn’t want my parents to see.
I opened the door. The deliveryman stared at me for a second. I knew exactly why. Here was a guy who should be out working…but instead, he was at home, looking like a slob. I was used to it. Honestly, most of my neighbors were less subtle about staring than this guy.
“Please sign or stamp.”
“I’ll sign.” I took the small, lightweight box from him.
“It’s not food, is it?” Mom asked, peering at my package, but when she saw how small it was she lost interest and shuffled back into the kitchen. I took the package upstairs to my room and locked the door behind me.
I opened it up to find…
“Huh, a game.”
Inside the box was a CD-ROM and a single sheet of paper. All the disk had on it was the name of the game, and the paper had no images or screenshots, or even the name of the publisher. I’d entered a few competitions with games as prizes and also applied to test some games—maybe that’s what this was? I didn’t remember anything about this game in particular, though.
“The Village of Fate,” I read. “What is this, a beta copy or somethin’?”
I couldn’t remember entering to win this game, so I decided to read the letter.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Dear Yoshio-sama,
“Congratulations! We’re pleased to inform you that you’ve been selected to alpha-test our new game.
“You play the role of a deity who governs the fate of the villagers who worship you. Once a day, you prophesize, giving them instruction to help develop their village. Our groundbreaking A.I. gives our characters the capacity to speak and act just like real humans!”
Groundbreaking… That was a bold claim, even for advertising copy. We’d just have to see about that.
“That’s all we’ll tell you for now. The rest, you’ll learn as you play!”
The game looked like some kind of village sim. I was already familiar with city sim games, but villages were a first for me.
“Please promise to keep the contents of the game confidential, and please don’t say anything about it online. If you do, the game will have to be returned to us.”
Promise? Wouldn’t they usually call it a condition and have me sign an NDA or something? Besides, even if I did leak anything online, it’s not like they’d know who did it. I couldn’t be the only alpha tester, after all.
“Two more things. First, this game requires an Internet connection. Second, if your villagers are wiped out, the game ends permanently. The game uses autosave, so you won’t be able to reload from a previous save file.”
Now that was just mean. Plus, it made no sense. I was supposed to be alpha-testing for them, right? What if the difficulty levels needed to be tweaked? I made a mental note to complain about it.
Honestly, it felt a bit fishy to me. I searched the title online but nothing came up. I didn’t have the name of the development company, so there wasn’t much else I could do. The whole thing was starting to seem really suspicious.
I don’t wanna risk getting a virus…
I’d won my main PC as a prize, but I’d never gotten rid of my older one. I decided to try the disk on that one first—if it got nuked, no big deal. I was sure at this point that the whole thing was some kind of prank, but it wasn’t like I had anything important to do. And hey, if I got tricked, at least it’d make a good story to post online.
I set up my old PC and put the disk in the drive. It didn’t even list the required specs, so the only way to find out if it’d run was to try it. The title The Village of Fate appeared on my screen in big letters, the word “enter” flashing underneath.
Minimalist, or just lazy?
I pressed the enter key.
“No way…”
The graphics on my monitor were gorgeous, a far cry from the pathetic title screen. I watched as a cart rattled along through a forest, drawn by a pair of chestnut horses. I could see every last hair and drop of sweat on the horses’ hides as they galloped.
Sure, graphics have been getting better and better, but these are the most realistic graphics I’ve ever seen…
I watched in awe as the opening cutscene continued. The horses galloped ahead through the forest. The driver gripped the reins, looking back in panic now and then. He had handsome, chiseled features marred by a large scar on his face. His clothes interested me more than his face, though—at first glance, his clothes just looked like dirty, brownish rags, but on closer inspection he was wearing leather armor. He had a longsword on his back and a dagger at his waist.
“So, a sim game…just set in the middle ages. Hm.”
The camera panned up from the thundering cart, revealing what was chasing it: a pack of boar-like creatures ridden by green-skinned humanoids with blood-red eyes and sharp fangs poking out of their mouths, making it clear they weren’t human. Okay, not truly historical, then—this was a fantasy game with monsters.
Next, the camera panned up from the beasts, dipped past the horses’ noses, and entered the cart itself. Inside was a family of three: a timid, middle-aged man holding his wife and daughter close to him with trembling arms. Across from them sat a young girl in religious clothing. Her hands were clasped as she called on the “God of Fate.”
The camera switched back to an overhead view. As the monsters closed in, they struck at the cart with rusted swords and axes. With each strike, the screen shook and the people inside screamed.
I knew it was a game, but the distress on their faces and the fear in their screams were so real! Suddenly, the cart was enveloped in a golden light, and I exhaled—I’d been holding my breath.
The praying girl’s book was the source of the light. Blinded, the monsters shielded their eyes and began to scream. Many fell off their boar mounts as the horses finally pulled the cart to safety.