Leave a comment

There were countless clips saved into the official video archive. Kou was watching one of them now, one of his group fighting a powerful boss. Various comments passed across the screen, left behind by viewers admiring the fight against that enormous monster.

Due to certain events shortly after the game was released, the Strongest Monster was a boss that kept being ridiculed in the forums, being defeated so quickly while having that adjective. Though no one had seen it before.

Now that its appearance was finally broadcasted for the world to see, they saw that it was actually a powerful and terrifying creature, not one to ridicule, but a proper monster in every meaning of the word.

Watching how the comments’ perspective shifted so quickly made Kou chuckle. But the video showed more than a tank taking hits, there were many others constantly dodging attacks and trying to deal damage themselves.

Two stood out, a young girl with white hair, who was controlled by Kou, and a silver haired swordsman holding two blades.

Seeing some of those comments he inadvertently brought his hand to cover his face. He could tell his face was getting red. He was far from getting used to being called cute, or rather, it made him extremely uncomfortable, and he had to fight the urge to just close the video right away.

But as the fight went on, he found himself engaged in watching it again and his emotions calmed down. The comments seemed to lose interest, mentioning how the fight was essentially won already if everyone continued like that, but then a portion of the window he was watching seemed to turn black…

◇◇◇

“…uki… Huh, is this thing on? Mitsuki?”

A foreign voice called to him, bringing his attention back to the virtual classroom and away from the video he was watching.

The device’s camera captured the figure of a girl wearing the uniform of Kou’s highschool, her black hair arranged into pigtails and whose simplicity seemed to bring out her cuteness. She was Gotou, the class president, and she had been helping Kou out from time to time too.

“Ah…I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Are you okay? I just hope things didn’t get worse again…”
“Oh…no, I’m fine.”

Kou replied, being careful to speak as quietly as he could so his voice did not stand out, while also making sure that his words were actually intelligible.

That was all Kou could do about his voice, which for some reason was still the same as that of his in-game avatar. But when it came to the impression that it gave to the rest of the class…

…They all thought of Kou as a timid and frail girl, who still did her best to communicate with others.

It was quite different from what Kou was trying to accomplish by speaking that way. The same had happened before with everyone thinking of him as a sickly girl that spurred the protective instincts of everyone. But only Kou did not seem to realize that perception everyone had.

“Are you sure? I hope so at least… Anyway, I’ll send you a copy of your homework for Golden Week, alright?” Saying that, Gotou inserted a memory stick into the slot in a corner of Kou’s desk.

Once the files were copied, Kou took a look at them, feeling relieved that there was less homework than he had expected.

“Well, I hope you have a nice break.”
“Umm, thank you…very much.”
“You’re welcome. Just make sure you recover soon so you can join the rest of us here, okay?”

Kou thanked her as she was walking away, which prompted her to turn around with a bright smile, after which she picked up her bag and left the classroom.

It was the last day of classes before Golden Week started.

Their other classmates were also leaving now, all of them in a good mood as they were looking forward to their long break.

Kou could simply return to the virtual world whenever he wanted, but he was waiting for Hijiri and Subaru to come back from the teachers’ office, as they had been asked by Sora to hand over the final paperwork confirming the date of Kou’s discharge from the hospital.

Even when everyone else left, the twins had still not returned.

It was rather puzzling for Kou, but there was little he could do about it so he just resumed watching the video. At around the time the fight ended, the twins finally came back to the classroom.

“Hey, the light on Kou’s device is still on I think?”
“Kou, were you waiting for us here?”

The two began to gather their things as they spoke to Kou.

“Yeah. What happened? It took you a long time to get back.”
“Sorry about that… We ended up having to talk to the teacher for a while.”
“It’s okay, but that was also because of me, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Your father gave us a really thick envelope, and when the teacher looked through them, she said she needed to talk with the board director, so we had to wait for that.”
“She also seemed strangely distressed by it. I wonder what caused that?”
“Hmmm..?”

Kou wasn’t sure how to feel hearing that. Was him being discharged from the hospital really something so important?

“Kou, what were you watching in secret there?”
“Ah, ahahah…well, it’s just the boss fight from the other day.”
“Oh, that one really blew up. It’s still getting a lot of views somehow.”

Nord Glacier had a long track record of defeating bosses, and Lua Cheia’s members were all very popular, so a collab stream of both guilds was something everyone wanted to watch. And the fact that they were fighting a boss that had already been defeated before only made it more intriguing.

Thanks to that they were able to amass a large amount of Popularity Points, even after they were split half and half between the guilds, and so Lua Cheia’s coffers were able to recover from hiring three mercenaries from Nord Glacier.

“Hinagiku was also so happy after that…”
“Yeah, I always smile when I remember how happy she got.”

Hinagiku had been the one to deal the finishing strike during that boss fight. The bonus drop from that was a powerful katana called the Demon Slicing Tachi, which brought immense joy to her.

“I’ll treasure it my whole life!”

She had said, dearly hugging the scabbard with the large katana inside. Seeing her like that had quickly dissipated the frustration Crim felt for missing the finishing strike herself.

Other than that they had obtained a rare leather gambeson, which according to their loot distribution agreement was given to Nord Glacier’s tank Lueger.

Freya was slightly miffed about that, as she was also a tank, but that was only for a short time, as she quickly regained her bubbly attitude towards life.

There was also a pair of leather boots, called Hiding Boots which erased the sound of footsteps and was given to Lycoris, as well as a large pile of raw materials, which was split evenly between the two guilds.

“Still…we can’t deny that a big part of our victory came from the help of that guild.” Subaru muttered that as they walked out of the school, with Kou’s device mounted on Hijiri’s shoulder again. That was something everyone in their guild had noticed.

“Yeah, I know… It really goes to show how much experience a guild that focuses on fighting bosses has.”

While their formation had been nothing out of the ordinary, the main and sub tanks had come from Nord Glacier, and they were the ones carrying the most weight through the fight, and it was hard to say whether Lua Cheia would have been so consistent with it.

“I really want to be able to defeat that boss all on our own now…”
“We’d need new recruits though…”
“Yeah… I just gave everyone the authority of sub-masters, so feel free to invite anyone you think would be a good fit.”

That was the end of that conversation. There was something else they needed to know though.

“Also…we’ve decided when we’re going to the dungeon, so I’ll tell you now.” Crim switched topics to the raid they had been organizing. “We’re going the last day of Golden Week at 9am.”

“Wait, isn’t that…”
“Yeah…it’s a day before I can finally log out.”

That raid really felt like it was going to be the last task Crim had to accomplish before being able to return…