| Author: Starving Wind | Original Source: Joara | Word Count: 0 characters |
| Translator: Anonymouss | English Source: Re:Library | Word Count: 2965 words |
| Editor(s): Silva | ||
“Heh heh…”
In Portsmouth1, located within Hampshire state in the southern part of England. A young man stepping inside the Capsule cafe in the suburban area let out a sly laugh.
It was because the incident that happened yesterday night kept repeatedly popping up in his head. Usually he would log into Blue Sky and chat with the two users who he had become friends with, talking about things they usually experienced, but yesterday an unexpected guest arrived to chat.
“Her username was Artoria486 or something, right? Even if she is just another Artoria, they aren’t all the same anyways.”
Information about her gender or her age was completely unknown. But she still argued that she was definitely Artoria. Just how many players did he see since he began playing Blue Sky claiming to be Artoria? If it wasn’t for the fact that Artoria’s identity had been revealed recently, that kind of scamming would have only gotten worse over time.
In anycase, for that reason, whenever someone says such a thing, most people in chats or places like that don’t really believe it. Only if they produce some kind of proof or an identification of themselves, will their claim be accepted.
“Well I did ask her for proof, but seeing as how she went into AFK mode right away, she’s just another one of those people claiming to be her. Ah well, it’s not like this happens once or twice anyways… But I guess it’s the first time that they gave out her 3 size proportions? Heh.”
Though it wasn’t a particularly useful experience, it still kept popping up in his head and making him smile, so he was definitely sure it was still worth it.
Creak.
He opened the Capsule cafe door and familiarly went towards the counter.
“Yo, Sera! I’m sure you kept my reserved capsule empty for me, right?”
“Oh my, Claus, welcome. Of course I left it empty for you. You’re our number 1 customer who’s best at wasting life after all.”
The man, I mean, Claus replied to the woman smiling cheekily who looked to be the owner of the establishment and in her mid to late 30s.
“Hey! I’m your number 1 customer, there’s no need to add that last part to it!”
Though he knew she didn’t have ill will towards him, he still complained as if it had hurt his feelings. It’s understandable since one of the reasons why he kept visiting this specific Capsule cafe was to see this woman named Sera, so he was disappointed that she wasn’t willing to treat him nicely.
“But it’s true, after all.”
Sera just ignored his complaint indifferently as she was unaware of his feelings for her.
“Tsk, fine, whatever. Just give me my card.”
Disappointed yet again by her actions, Claus decided to give up on the conversation. He felt that he was out of luck today as well.
“Don’t be so whiny, you’re a man after all…”
Sera thought this timid and narrow minded man was way too inconsiderate as she handed the card to him. Seriously, if she really didn’t have any feelings for him, would she have gone out of her way to tell him that kind of dull joke? She knew she had a problem of not being appealing to everyone due to her easygoing attitude, but she also thought this narrow minded guy was somewhat at fault too.
“Just as I thought, the only thing that brings happiness to my heart is Blue Sky.”
The pathetic man who didn’t even realize her mutual feelings for him, just reassured himself with those words as he opened the room that had the capsule with his card.
The room was mostly dominated by the A tier capsule, which had been painted blue. There was a door behind the capsule, which was a shower room where one could change clothes and have a shower.
It was built in there due to the fact that most people who played Blue Sky would come out of the capsule drenched in sweat, and it was common in Capsule cafes.
Just like usual, Claus changed into a tracksuit inside the changing room and opened the capsule. Then he checked whether the seat of the capsule was clean or not.
Sometimes there were cases where the capsule wasn’t cleaned or had a ripped fabric on the seat, and if he didn’t notice it and just stepped inside, he’ll have to deal with an extremely nagging feeling the whole time he played.
Thankfully the seat was cleaned properly, and only then did Claus have a satisfied look on his face as he stepped inside of the capsule directly.
A scanning procedure took place to recognise a new user, and he felt as if his body was being scanned for a CAT scan. After a short moment of the scanning process, Claus successfully logged into the game and started playing the game inside the body of Knuckle, his avatar in the game.
“Jeez, it would be great if I could improve the look of my personal abode as well. But earning gold is like walking on a treadmill after all…”
Knuckle grumbled quietly to himself as the same thing he saw every time was the rundown ceiling of an inn room. Even if he earned as much gold as he could, it was all used for the payment of the Capsule room and his living expenses, so there was no hope in being able to save very much.
“Whatever. There are people out there who invest all the money they have as they play the game, so I’m doing better since I earn my living through the game.”
He felt that living like this wasn’t all that bad since he was high enough in terms of levels that he could afford to earn his living expenses through the game. Among the people in this tier were people who invested huge amounts of money to live their lives in the game in luxury, but there weren’t that many of them.
Knowing that he would feel a sense of shame if he were to compare himself to those that are able to freely play their game much more than he did, he decided to stop his train of thoughts right there.
“I’ll have to get out of here before they charge me extra.”
It was already close to the checkout time and Knuckle realized that he didn’t have time to waste and left the inn.
“Thank you very much, come again.”
The female innkeeper who had quite a voluptuous body spoke in a very business-like tone towards him. Though Knuckle knew that inns run by actual users had better room quality, better humane treatment and services, it always came down to the problem of gold.
“Damn this crazy world that only works for you if you have money!”
“Who is that guy?”
“I think he’s crazy.”
He had yelled out loud in the streets of London which was always filled with large crowds walking about, so he felt stinging glares from numerous people because of his sudden outburst. On top of that, there were several people who were whispering to themselves while pointing their fingers at him.
“Ahem…”
Even someone with the thickest hide would feel embarrassed from all the whisperings, so for Knuckle who was timid, it was even harder on him. In the end, he scurried away and escaped the street.
“Because of this damn war going so long, all the dungeon hunts are filled with terrible party members and hunting alone isn’t worth anything at all. There’s really nothing for me to do.”
He knew that since he had entered the game, he should be immediately working hard to earn as much gold as he could. Yet there was no work to do and the people who only dealt with business and commercial activities had only increased since the war. Of course users who were proficient in production and creation would earn much more profit from their craft but for users like Knuckle who was purely focused on hunting monsters, it was very hard on him these days.
“Should I just go and carry noobs for money?”
He thought about going to low level areas and accompanying users who are low leveled but have a lot of money to help them boost their level much faster.
Of course there’s a lot of gold in doing so but it consumed a lot of fatigue and didn’t help at all in how much experience he himself got, so even though it may be fine in the short term, it was definitely not a good long term job.
“But then again, it’s already so difficult to raise my experience… I’ll have to go through hell just to recover the amount of ranking positions I have lost.”
On top of that, he was right at the cusp of becoming the top 10,000 leveled users of the server with not many levels to go. Considering there were millions of users in Blue Sky, he would be reaching the 1% tier of all those players.
He was thinking about going to join a guild as soon as he reached the top 10,000 in rank. If he were to join a guild, not only will he receive a steady profit, but he will also acquire a room within a castle. That’s far cry from the terrible inn room that he used to live in. That means that he can save on lodging and also buy consumables within the city that the guild owns at a discounted price, so for many reasons it was great to join a guild.
Though it’s true that it was difficult to leave once you join one, but lately the situation of the Camelot alliance guild was of great interest to him.
Not only was the ‘Artoria’ user who’s the pinnacle of all users in the game there, there were also numerous high ranked users included in the guild and their morale was very high as well. On top of that, the alliance guild was famous for having ‘The Three Goddesses’.
“Heheh… If I’m going to work under someone, then working under a beautiful lady is what I prefer.”
It certainly wasn’t a healthy thought to have, but he believed that he was happy just to look at what he can never hope to get from afar, so he thought that it wouldn’t be much of a problem for him to serve her.
On top of that, he was one of the invited members to the recently established fan club called ‘Those Who Follow Artoria The Goddess’.
“Wait, since it ended up like this, should I register myself as a quasi member of the guild since you never know?”
Being a quasi member of the guild meant that while you are definitely registered into the guild, you’d have severely limited functionalities. You cannot join a guild war but you can join as a mercenary, and these quasi members who joined to become mercenaries cannot change their status temporarily for 3 months after joining.
They would eventually join the guild officially through doing activities related to the guild, and the bigger the guild was, the more thorough this system was.
But there were exceptions. Among the exceptions, the most represented one was that any user within the top 10,000 is registered to become an official member right away after checking their previous history, and as someone who had never joined any guild previously, if he were to enter the top 10,000 users ranking, he was sure to be registered as an official guild member.
“In any case if I register right now and fight as a mercenary, it would be faster since I’ll get into the top 10,000 users in ranking and join them as an official guild member. They’ll treat me better as a quasi member of the guild than just a random mercenary, I hope.”
Thinking that far, he decided to go to Liverpool where the base of operations for Camelot was. To register into a guild you needed to either go directly to the guild’s location and register yourself or receive approval from a high ranking officer or the guild leader, but that was way too difficult to achieve so it was faster for him to just go straight to their base and register into the guild himself.
“They say you should strike while the iron is hot after all… Let’s go right away. There’s nothing else for me to do anyways.”
That’s how he rationalized to himself as he moved towards Liverpool.
As there was no siege battle currently happening, it meant that the front of the Liverpool castle was quiet and calm. Thinking that this was his chance, he went towards the Camelot guild member who was standing in front of the castle gates to try and get into the castle.
“Hey there.”
“And what do you want?”
Usually the people that guard castles on the outside were NPCs but all the officers that commanded those NPCs were the guild members so the members of the Camelot alliance guild reacted to Claus’s words.
“I’ve come to register myself into the guild. Where can I go to do that?”
“There’s been too many people trying to register into the guild… so even if you go there and directly apply, it won’t be approved right away. If you don’t like waiting, then you should just leave.”
As a highly valued user, to be treated like trash by him made Claus feel mad especially since he had personally come here to apply directly, but he was the only one getting angry.
“Don’t be like that. If there’s someone you know, please ask them to help me register directly. I may look like this but I’m a user that’s going to break into the top 10,000 ranked users very soon.”
“Hmm? Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? Please wait here a moment. I’ll go ask some people through whisper messages.”
“Thank you very much.”
His appeal to the guild member worked well, and soon the guard commander started whispering to someone. But after talking a bit, his relaxed expression suddenly turned stiff and serious.
Seeing his expression, Knuckle felt that something may have gone wrong and started worrying as his imagination began to run wild with bad thoughts.
“Excuse me, but are you perhaps active on the Blue Sky official fansite using the ID ‘Knuckle’?”
The guard commander who was talking to him with equal respect suddenly spoke with courtesy and respect towards him. Realizing that they finally realized just what a highly valued user he was, Claus felt much more elated as he answered the commander with glee.
“That’s right, good sir.”
Still, he didn’t want to act all high and mighty right away so he spoke while imitating an old gentleman.
“There’s someone that wishes to see you right now, so please step inside of the castle.”
“Hm? Does that mean I’ll be registered as an official guild member?”
It was impossible to go inside of the castle grounds unless you were an honored guest or an official guild member. As it obviously not possible for him to enter the castle grounds as a quasi member, Claus looked surprised as he questioned the commander.
“That’s correct.”
Not long after the guard commander replied, he received an invitation to join the guild officially from someone named Colin who looked to be a high ranking officer, to which Claus accepted the invitation without a second thought.
With him registered as an official guild member, the castle gates that were closed tight slowly opened.
“Now then, please step inside.”
Though he was slightly worried, knowing that he was able to achieve the goal he was aiming for much earlier than he expected, he felt so elated that he pushed all the worries aside as he went into the castle grounds.
“Mr Knuckle?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
As soon as he stepped inside of the castle grounds, a beautiful woman that nearly knocked him out with her beauty was waiting for him.
“A… are you perhaps Miss Eva?”
“Oh, I see you recognised me. That’s right.”
Since she’s a Real Mode user, he had to recognise her by her appearance alone but Knuckle was able to remember her. Anyone who’s played Blue Sky quite a bit was obviously never going to forget the face of such beauty after all.
“But for what reason were waiting for me…?”
Having an over dramatic imagination that she may have had a crush on him, Claus cautiously asked.
“Ah well there’s someone that wished to meet you so I came personally to guide you to them. I was just too curious to see what kind of person you could be after all. Hmm, you have fine looks, and your physique is quite excellent as well.”
“Ah, yes, yes.”
He was so elated from hearing that she came personally to guide him that he couldn’t hear the following words out of her mouth. His imaginationsl had already taken over every capacity of his brain.
“Now then, please follow me.”
Eva didn’t realize that of course, since she started guiding him to somewhere very deep within the castle building.
Soon, a gigantic door was blocking their way from entering where they needed to.
Knock knock.
“It’s Eva, I shall enter now.”
It seemed like she received permission, as the gigantic doors slowly opened up. Then Knuckle saw it. Sitting amongst dozens of people around a huge table, ‘Artoria’ was sitting at the very end of it. As he stood there awestruck by her beauty, her tiny lips opened up.
“Welcome, Mr Knuckle. I am ‘Artoria486’.2”
