Chapter 1-27 : Mythical Beast (part 1)
『Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a pleasure to meet you all again. I feel blessed to be able to deliver this livestream to you for the second time. I’m Shinji Todo, the president of Avenir, the game development company of Nostalgia World Online. Before we begin, I want to hear my customers’ voiceー YOUR voices… ARE YOU HAVING FUN~?』(Shinji Todo)
The president was full of spirits. He raised his hands and asked the chat in a loud voice.
Naturally, the viewers then flooded the chat box with comments.
“The game’s super fun!”
“It feels so real! I’m shocked!”
“It has become my second home!”
“The best VRMMORPG ever!”
“I found my destined woman in this game. She’s an NPC.”
I saw some funny and interesting comments, but not just reading them, I also wrote a comment. I said, “The residents are friendly and good people.”
The super artificial intelligence developed by this company was top-notch. The NPCs in this game, the residents, are no different from us humans. They are kind to me and I made friends with some of them.
I even made friends with a Squidspider yesterday. Well, I don’t think it considers me a friend, though, but I promised that little fella I would return and do something about the invaders in their lake.
『I see, I see. I’m very happy to hear that you’re enjoying our game! If I may confess, before the game was released, I almost cried that many people didn’t believe what I said on the first livestream. “No NPCs can think like humans”, “There’s no way monsters have an instinct like real wild animals!”, “I doubt a game would feel as real as the real world”, they said, but now, I can finally tell them this… See? I told you~』(Shinji Todo)
Saying that, the president showed his smug smile closely to the camera.
The chat then reacted to him.
“LOL, this guy’s so funny!”
“He’s kinda annoying, but I like him.”
“Looks like we have a great leader.”
“This game’s future is secured!”
『Well, put the doubters aside, let’s talk about the game. It hasn’t been a month since this game was released, but a lot happened. You know what, I was really surprised when I heard that you, players, managed to get access to the northern and the southern areas the other day. Honestly, I was expecting it would take much longer. Gaining access to the north was not that hard since there were barely strong monsters on the road there, the problem was the south. As you might have known there was a raid boss with hundreds of its minions blocking the road to the port town in the south, but they have been taken care of. Seems like we have a lot of talented players in this game.』(Shinji Todo)
After he said that, some questions regarding the raid boss started appearing in the chat.
“Was that thing in the south the work of the management team?”
“Did you people plan that!?”
I have the same question in my head.
『Haha! Yeah, we did tweak those monsters’ thinking a little so that they blocked the road to the south. You know, to give players a little bit of a challenge.』(Shinji Todo)
So, that giant wolf boss we fought in the raid the other day was all the management team’s doing?
No wonder it was very strong. My『Sever』attacks barely even scratched it. If it wasn’t for the Silver Wing Brigade who led the raid, we might never be able to defeat it.
The chat reacted.
“So it was YOU who made those troublesome monsters block the road!”
“Dammit! I remember I tried to go to the south with my small party and got killed by those wolves”
“I was in the raid and I must say that the boss was powerful.”
“We managed to defeat them. It was fun.”
“More challenges like this, please!”
Some people cursed the devs for doing that, but some others thanked them for the fun experience.
Me? Of course, I’m the latter. I almost got killed, but it was a fun raid.
「Gaah! I wish I could fight those monsters in the raid, but I had a class that day! I should have just skipped that damn class! I hate college!」(Shougo)
And there’s Shougo who’s still regretting not joining the raid…
「Shougo, I understand your feelings, but you didn’t want to skip the class. You know how scary that professor is, right?」(Rin)
「Ugh… You’re right…」(Shougo)
「Bwahaha! The fearless Shougo is afraid of a college professor? That’s funny!」(Shuu)
「Shut up! You would say the same if you knew him!」(Shougo)
Our campus indeed has many strict and scary professors. I was lucky I didn’t have any class that day so I was able to join the raid.
『Hmm… Looks like we made some people mad, but this game would be boring if there were no challenges, right? For those who missed it, don’t worry, we have prepared similar challenges for you. All you have to do is to keep exploring the beautiful continent of Proelesfi! Alright, let’s get to the main topic. Today, I’m going to answer the most asked question and explain the feature you might have not been aware of.』(Shinji Todo)
While talking, the president swiped the screen of the tablet in his hand and read something.
『The most asked question is… “Are there laws in the game world?” ーThe answer is, yes. There are laws in Proelesfi that apply to all the players and the NPCs living there. The laws are not that different from our world, so you don’t need to worry too much. For example, stealing someone’s stuff, robbing shops, assaulting and murdering people are crimes. It’s common sense.』(Shinji Todo)
It’s not weird that laws exist even in a game world. I wonder if there’s a jail too.
I wanted to ask, “What happens if you commit a crime?”, but someone beat me to it in the chat.
The president read it and answered the question.
『I think the players who have committed crimes are aware of this, but those who haven’t, I’ll tell you so you won’t commit any crimes. First, if you commit a crime, a small icon with the picture of 犯 (han) word in a circle will appear next to your status interface. We call it a ‘crime icon’. This icon will have one of three colors: yellow, orange, or red depending on how severe the crime you have committed is. If you are caught, you will be put in jail and you have to serve your time there for a certain duration depending on the color of your crime icon. Of course, you can log out while in jail. People need to go back to the real world, after all. However, if you log in before your prison term is up, you will end up having nothing to do but stare at the iron bar of your cell. That would be so boring, right? You better do something else in the real world. Well, you can consider serving your time in jail in the game as a temporary ban, and I’m sure you don’t want that.』(Shinji Todo)
*/TL : The character 犯 (han) means ‘commit’, but in Japanese, it doesn’t really mean anything unless you combine it with other characters. For example, 犯罪 (hanzai) means ‘crime’, and 犯人 (hannin) means ‘culprit’.
I see. So there’s jail in this game and you have to serve your real time in jail if you commit a crime. You won’t be able to do anything even if you log in until you are released.
Some people agree with it in the chat, and some others think that this punishment is too harsh.
Personally, I think it’s too light, especially for murder. Murdering innocent people should be punished much more severely even though this is just a game.
I can no longer think the NPCs in this game are just robots or programmed characters. They are alive.
I think people who murder the residents should be banned permanently. We don’t need evil criminals in this game.
If you want to murder NPCs, then play offline games. Killing NPCs in a VRMMORPG will only cause a nuisance for other players.
That’s my opinion.
『Alright, let’s move on to the next topic. Some of you have encountered ‘them’ in the game, but you might think they’re just a boss or an extraordinarily powerful monster, or something like that. No, they’re different. What are you talking about, you say? Well, by ‘them’ I mean… Mythical Beasts.』(Shinji Todo)
Mythical beasts…?
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