Paying to Win in a VRMMO: Volume 1

by Blitz Kiva

“You’re going to go after Sera and try to fight her?” Sakurako asked.

  “I’m not sure if Sera’s a him or a her, but yes, that’s the plan.”

  “Huh? She’s a her, right?”

  “I believe he’s a him.”

  Realizing that they had come upon a slight misunderstanding, they stared at each other in silence for a few seconds.

  “Well, never mind that,” Ichiro said, immediately.

  Sakurako had noticed a slight change in Ichiro’s behavior since he had first begun playing a week ago. He was looking bored a lot less often than he used to.

  He was actually looking forward to Narrow Fantasy Online. It seemed to have far outstripped his expectations. Looking back over the week’s events, that seemed clearly the case, and the incident with King Kirihito just confirmed it.

  Ichiro himself had said that everyone enjoyed the game in their own way, and he was clearly figuring out his own unique playstyle. He had found something he never imagined he would: a friendly rival worthy of his skills. Perhaps what her master had wanted for so very long was just something to alleviate his boredom.

  She couldn’t escape the nagging thought that this was a supervillain’s motivation, but that was only natural. Ichiro was certainly the “mastermind” type.

  “Anyway, the initial agreement I made with Asuha was only that we would help her until she found Sera Kiryu,” Ichiro said.

  “I’m not sure that’s a reason to immediately declare her friend your rival on the spot... but ah, well.” Sakurako broke off suddenly as if remembering something. “By the way, what was the interesting thing you mentioned before?”

  “Hmm?”

  “The thing going on inside the game.”

  “Oh, I’ll tell you after we log in.”

  Sakurako finished her meal, and the two put their hands together to offer thanks.

  “Ah, Ichiro-sama, you really should let me handle the dishes, at least.”

  “Please do, then.”

  Ichiro moved to the living room to enjoy his post-meal downtime, and around 9:30, with plenty of time to spare, they were both in their Miraive Gear Cocoon seats.

  They got into their Miraive Gear Cocoon seats at 9:30 and logged in with plenty of time to spare, arriving right at the frontline base in the Necrolands.

  There was a large crowd of people for so early in the morning, in part because it was a Saturday. Felicia was one of them.

  She averted her eyes awkwardly at first as she noticed Ichiro and Kirschwasser, but then approached them. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” she said.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” Ichiro answered. “In my opinion, there was nothing incorrect about what you did.”

  He had a bad habit of saying what he really felt in a very roundabout way, but Felicia just smiled, seeming to be relieved that he wasn’t angry.

  “Incidentally, I see there are quite a lot of people here,” Kirschwasser said, gazing over the large crowd of players around them.

  There certainly were a lot of them, and they weren’t just standing there. They all seemed to be buzzing excitedly about one single subject.

  Felicia and Kirschwasser both looked around, trying to figure out what was going on.

  “Do you remember the dungeon we visited yesterday? It seems a player made it to the bottom floor.” Ichiro selected “Config” from his menu window, then called up the Miraive Gear’s proprietary browser. It was an app that let you view web pages at any time while in a game, and it was so convenient that most players installed it despite the 300 yen monthly usage fee.

  “Wow...” Felicia said.

  “Oh-ho!” Kirschwasser cried.

  Their reactions were the polar opposites of each other.

  “Might I ask who it was that made it to the bottom?” Kirschwasser asked.

  “Matsunaga, the man who runs this blog,” Ichiro said. His browser was opened to an affiliate site, “vsoku@VRMMO Aggregate Blog.”

  “Ah, from the Dual Serpents,” Kirschwasser said. “His guild specializes in speed dungeon-diving, so that stands to reason.”

  Matsunaga was one of the people Kirschwasser had spoken of so proudly the day before. Ichiro remembered him as an Elf dressed in a green coat who comported himself very elegantly.

  “But that doesn’t mean the Grand Quest is finished, does it?” Felicia asked.

  “It seems not,” Ichiro responded, after checking his status window to confirm that the special icon marking their participation in the Grand Quest was still there. He then switched back to the web browser and continued. “It appears that reaching the dungeon’s bottom floor is not the win condition. Matsunaga says there are quite a few triggers required to complete the quest, and he wants players from various other guilds to work together to achieve it.”

  Ichiro went on to explain that there was a stone monument on the last floor containing information on the Grand Quest’s boss, a.k.a. the Grand Boss. Several spellcaster-class characters would be needed to set off the monument and the triggers around it, which meant that Matsunaga’s party alone wouldn’t be enough.

  One thing he knew for sure was that activating the monument in the dungeon would cause the Grand Boss to appear on the surface. Since Matsunaga’s guild couldn’t trigger that alone, he was proposing the formation of a “United Guild” with other top players.

  “Master Ichiro, you know an awful lot about this,” Kirschwasser said.

  “As a matter of fact, I received an invitation as well,” Ichiro said offhandedly, opening up his messaging box. The newest message showed the name “Matsunaga” along with an account ID in the “sender” column. It was an invitation to join the United Guild, and to attend a strategy conference regarding it. “This is the ‘something interesting’ I mentioned to you this morning. I found the message on my tablet computer when I woke up.”

  Felicia tilted her head in confusion. “I-Itchy, are you... famous here?”

  “Are you satisfied?” Kirschwasser asked, expression blank.

  Ichiro was struck by a feeling of déjà vu. The silver-haired Knight had looked at him in the exact same way when he’d described his microtransaction-based playstyle.

  “But Itchy, haven’t you only been playing the game for a week?” Felicia asked.

  “Much has happened in that week,” Kirschwasser said, gravely.

  Felicia knitted her brow.

  It was true that shortly before he’d met up with Felicia in the game, Ichiro had been the center of some controversy. She may have guessed that by this point, and Ichiro saw no reason to hide it.

  “It’s on Matsunaga’s blog,” Ichiro said, bringing up one of his past articles to show Felicia.

  Kirschwasser peered at it, too, and let out a faint groan. The article had gone up just a few days ago.

  “What? Is it about Itchy?” she asked.

  “Yes, but that article will not paint Master Ichiro in a flattering light. You may not enjoy reading it.”

  “Okay, I won’t read it,” Felicia said.

  As far as Ichiro could tell, the site was quite biased, so while it made for interesting reading material, he found it to be an unreliable source. Kirschwasser was right when he said that it painted Ichiro as the villain in a conflict that had happened several days before. But as Ichiro seldom cared what others thought about him, he wasn’t especially angry about it.

  Felicia frowned. “So he wrote a smear article about you, and now he wants you on his quest team? That’s kind of...”

  “Yes, it’s extremely shameless,” Ichiro grinned. Perhaps he had even meant it as a compliment.

  Ichiro described the e-mail Matsunaga had sent to him in more detail. It indicated that there was a possibility that, after the event to trigger the Grand Boss below was activated, the dungeon’s bottom floor might be cut off from the surface. This was merely an unproven hypothesis, but at the very least, it would take a long time to travel from one to the other, which meant that the players who triggered the event on the bottom floor
could not participate in the defeat of the Grand Boss.

  “This is going to get messy,” Kirschwasser murmured as he listened.

  “What do you mean?” Felicia asked.

  “The common goal of all players is to defeat Grand Bosses and clear Grand Quests. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone willing to give up on that chance,” he said.

  “But someone has to be on the lowest floor activating the monument,” Ichiro responded. “Quite a few someones, at that. You’ll need spellcasters to trigger the monument, skilled Thieves and Scouts to navigate the dungeon, and powerful damage-dealers, too, given the large number of monsters you’ll face on the way.”

  In other words, in the battle against the Grand Boss, a significant force would have to be diverted to the lower levels. But, as Kirschwasser had explained, everyone would want to fight the Grand Boss themselves, and push for someone else to be on the dungeon team. It was, indeed, a messy situation.

  Felicia grimaced openly. “So is that what they’ll discuss at the conference?”

  “Perhaps. I think that when they read this, most players will attempt to recruit the aid of other guilds and top players to trigger the event down below while they fight the boss up on the surface.” Ichiro gazed into the eyes of the silent, scowling Felicia.

  Felicia didn’t seem to much care for the way the discussion was going, demonstrating a self-righteousness characteristic to girls her age. It was clear that she disliked this sort of quasi-open calculation.

  “Whom else has he invited?” Kirschwasser asked. He didn’t seem to mind in the least.

  Ichiro went back to his inbox and checked the body of the message again. “It says he contacted the Red Sunset Knights, too.”

  “Oh-ho!” Kirschwasser let out a noise of admiration. “An alliance between two of the Three Great Guilds?”

  “You make it sound very impressive, but I’m afraid it doesn’t resonate for me the same way,” Ichiro said.

  “Me, either.” Felicia’s reaction was a muted one.

  Ichiro felt similarly. Perhaps it was because he had only recently learned of them. But then, even if he had been very familiar with them, it was very unlikely that he would feel the same admiration as Kirschwasser. Ichiro’s basic stance was to mind his own business and pay little heed to the concerns of others.

  “I’ll read the message out,” Ichiro said. “It says they’ve assembled ‘only the finest’ for the party. ‘The leader of the largest guild and his four generals...’” That likely referred to the Knights. “‘The brave hero who has never logged out since the service launched, a beloved adventurer who has logged 2,000 friends, a warrior who has skipped school to max out all their skill levels... There are too many to name in all, but we’ll have a party strong enough to take out any Grand Boss. We even have a player who took out a Magi-Metal Dragon solo.’”

  “Wouldn’t you die if you never logged out?” Felicia remarked, accurately. “And isn’t 999 the max number of friends you can have?”

  “That message may be slightly exaggerated,” Kirschwasser spoke gravely. “But I more or less understand who he means. They’re all relatively famous players.”

  “The one who beat a Magi-Metal Dragon solo is me, isn’t it?” Ichiro asked.

  “When did that happen?!” Felicia exclaimed.

  “Recently.”

  It seemed that, aside from the Knights, the players Matsunaga had reached out to were not necessarily ones associated with large guilds, but instead those who had earned fame on their own terms. Perhaps he had deemed players like that easier to manage, given the unique needs of this quest. Ichiro didn’t know this Matsunaga very well, but he didn’t judge him to be the sort to form his United Guild haphazardly.

  Still scowling, Felicia peeked into the open window Ichiro was looking at. “The player who skipped school to get maxed out skills must be Kiryu...” she said, pointing out the one line in Matsunaga’s message. “Which means that Kiryu might be at the meeting, right?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” Ichiro said. He was definitely one of the game’s top players, and thus, he would surely have interest in beating the Grand Quest.

  On the other hand, they called King Kirihito the ultimate solo player, so it was doubtful that he might want to participate in a coalition like this.

  “Itchy, will you be going to the meeting?” Felicia asked.

  “I plan to. Of course, King may be there, or he may not. To find out whether or not he will is part of the reason I want to go.”

  The Grand Quest strategy meeting was to be held in the wilds of the Delve Necrolands.

  “A joint operation between the Red Sunset Knights and the Dual Serpents,” Matsunaga’s aggregate blog proudly proclaimed. In addition to the two great guilds working together, the strength of the other names mentioned had gathered attention of many, which had resulted in the higher-than-usual attendance in the Delve Necrolands that day.

  Matsunaga would be recording the conference with the video capture app, and streaming it live. Mid-level players who were curious but not strong enough to make it to the Delve Necrolands piled into the streaming channel to watch.

  So it is a big deal after all, Ichiro thought as he took his place at the meeting.

  He wasn’t sure why Matsunaga had chosen to broadcast it on such a wide scale, but either way, his advertising had been extremely effective. It was clear that disseminating information all over the web was one of the man’s strengths.

  A round table object had been set in the middle of the field’s main thoroughfare to set the stage for the meeting. Several Acolyte class characters were projecting Saint Barriers to keep enemy mobs from interrupting. The many famous players invited directly by Matsunaga sat at the table, while many others crowded around it.

  There was one empty seat at the round table. King Kirihito’s, most likely. In the end, he hadn’t shown up. Ichiro couldn’t find him among those sitting around the table.

  “Greetings, everyone,” the Elf in the green coat said. “Thank you for accepting my invitation. As I believe you all know, I am Matsunaga.”

  The players seated at the table included him, Stroganoff, and the Red Sunset Knights’ four team commanders. There were two players Ichiro had never seen before, as well as two of the Knights’ team commanders who were complete strangers to him. He knew they were supposed to be impressive, but it still hardly registered with him.

  “This quest will need to be dealt with simultaneously on two different fronts,” Matsunaga said. “It is for this reason that I gathered you all here today. Now, shall we go around the table and introduce ourselves?”

  “I believe I know everyone here,” Stroganoff said, crossing his arms from his seated position. “But I haven’t spoken to them directly. And introductions are necessary in the name of courtesy.”

  “Well, then, if I may...” The Elf Scout Matsunaga cast the group an artificial smile and gave a small cough before beginning. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Matsunaga, leader of the Dual Serpents. My race is Elf. My classes are Scout, Thief, and Shinobi. As you can likely infer, I specialize in exploration and information gathering. I’m not especially good at fighting.”

  As he finished, Matsunaga cast a glance to Stroganoff in the seat beside him. The red-haired giant grunted in response.

  “Leader of the Red Sunset Knights, Stroganoff. Human Knight, subclasses are Fighter and Samurai. I’m a DPS-specialized heavy warrior, and my preferred weapon is the two-handed sword.”

  “Gazpacho, also from the Red Sunset Knights. Dwarf, Fighter, Blacksmith, Knight. Axe is my main.”

  After Stroganoff and Gazpacho introduced themselves, the rest of the Red Sunset Knights followed suit. The Paladin Tiramisu, the Mage Gorgonzola, the Ranger Parmigiano-Reggiano. All very delicious names.

  It was becoming clear that the Knights weren’t just a large guild, but had a good balance among their commanders. The four of them, plus Stroganoff, would likely be the strongest party in Narrow Fantasy On
line, even if they took on a dungeon by themselves.

  Ichiro cast a glance at Felicia and Kirschwasser, who were sitting in the bleachers. Kirschwasser was looking on with great interest, while Felicia seemed indifferent. Well, it likely wasn’t very interesting to watch.

  The introductions continued to Parmigiano’s left. This was one of the faces Ichiro didn’t recognize.

  “I am the High Elf Tomakomai. I did not expect to be called to such an event, so this is quite novel. My class is Philosopher, to which I added the Grappler class for fun.” The androgynous High Elf with the faint green glasses smiled.

  A buzz spread through the audience.

  “Isn’t that the...”

  “The player who hasn’t logged out since the service started...”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Realistically speaking, it seemed impossible that you could play that long without ever logging out, but everyone appeared to have heard the rumor.

  Next to Tomakomai sat an Anthromorph with cat ears. This one was female.

  “I’m Amesho! Me-ow do you do?”

  Ichiro winced. The others glared daggers at her.

  Tomakomai turned to address her with a gentle smile. “Amesho, could you please speak normally here?”

  “Aww, if mew insist... Okay.” The Anthromorph, Amesho, cleared her throat. “Let’s see... I’m an Anthromorph Thief, and I’ve got so many friends! Lots of rare items, too!”

  This sent another buzz through the crowd.

  “Isn’t that the...”

  “The player who has over 2,000 friends...”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  Of course, the maximum number of friends you could register in the game was 999.

  “Next, Mr. Tsuwabuki.”

  “Hmm?” At Matsunaga’s prompting, Ichiro held up a hand and answered. “I am Ichiro Tsuwabuki, a Dragonet Magi-Fencer. I came because I was invited, though I’ve only been playing for a short time. I believe my abilities are easily on par with yours, though, so there’s no need to worry.”

  Yet another buzz ran through the crowd.

  “Isn’t that the...”

  “The player who buys over a million microtransactions a day...”