Paying to Win in a VRMMO: Volume 2

by Blitz Kiva

  “That’s what I thought!” Iris snapped, unwittingly raising her voice to a scream. “That’s what I thought! So that’s it! And then, despite all that history, you built that big stupid guild house up there, right across the street from them!”

  “Yes, and?”

  “It’s perverse!”

  “Nonsense.” The young heir shrugged, as usual.

  Iris wondered if this wouldn’t just make the problem worse. The Forging Guild couldn’t possibly have found this amusing. Bossman had been magnanimous, but that didn’t mean other players might not still come after them.

  He’d been brought there by Bossman, shown the workshop, and acted utterly insolent (Iris hadn’t been there, but she was certain he had). Then after all that, he’d decided that they weren’t what he was looking for, and left. What were the members of the game’s largest crafting guild to do but be offended?

  Then, two days later, the same man had founded his own workshop diagonally across the street.

  Wars had been fought over lesser insults. What could they have taken from it but “You can’t make the armor I want, so I guess I’ll have to make my own”?

  No, that was surely how they interpreted it. Anyone seeing it from the outside would assume malicious intent.

  “I’ve gotten a little afraid,” Iris muttered.

  “Have you?” Ichiro asked.

  “Let’s get back to the guild house right now.”

  “Yes, let’s do so,” he agreed readily.

  She certainly was afraid. But of course, she couldn’t stand the idea of clinging to him, so she kept her distance as she continued on, walking with exaggerated strides.

  When they got back to the guild house, they found Kirschwasser had already made it back with the Blue Bird of Paradise Wing. All she needed to finish the accessories, now, was a Jewel Quartz from the Wrath Wyrmhollows. But it was already getting late, and while Iris wasn’t tired yet, the young heir refused to work late into the night. So, they dispersed for the day.

  The next day came. As usual, Iris logged in a bit early. She checked the guild menu and saw that the young heir and Kirschwasser had already logged in, but she didn’t see them in the guild house, which meant that they were probably off gathering components.

  Iris placed the recipe and the Magi-Metal Dragon scales on top of her magic circle. She closed her eyes and focused her mind, causing particles of light to begin to rise up from the edges of the symbol.

  The name of the Art was “Alchemical Circle.” She had raised her intelligence stat through grinding, and combined with her high levels of Craft, it all but ensured the combination would be a success.

  She had designed the belt and the wristwatch based on the components of the recipes that would be used to make them. Recreating the luster of metal and the reptilian scales had been quite an ordeal, but she felt satisfied with the 3D graphics she’d ended up with.

  Iris herself would be paying the real-life funds for these two accessories.

  She didn’t know how much money the young heir really had, but it wasn’t that she felt sorry for forcing him to pay for everything. It was just that Iris had supreme confidence in her ability to craft accessories. The reason the young heir had chosen to shoulder the real-money burden for the graphics changes was a psychological one; it allowed her to work without needing to fear failure. (Of course, it wasn’t only that, but to Iris, that was the important part.) Thus, her pride wouldn’t allow him to pay for her in the field in which she had greatest confidence.

  A cheerful fanfare rang out, and the light enveloping the circle suddenly extinguished. The usual process, the usual sight.

  Usually, this would have been the part where she would feel a pang of depression, wondering if this latest accessory would ever sell. But this time, that wasn’t the case.

  “There we go...”

  She held up the belt, striking a little victory pose. She looked forward to when the young heir returned.

  Though it was a belt, it was permanently affixed into a ring shape. That was only natural; the .obj file she had created wasn’t designed to move. Though if it weren’t such an inflexible block of data, it might have been useful as a sub-weapon — a whip made out of dragon scales.

  Since the item had no equip requirements, she added it into her inventory, then selected “Equip” from her menu window to test it out. Watching it flash into existence over her Alchemist Robe reminded her of the tokusatsu hero shows she had watched with her little brother when they were children.

  This was one reason she loved making accessories. According to the system, it was a Magi-Metal Earring. But when applying the new graphics to it, she could assign it to a different part of the body. This allowed for great flexibility when customizing your avatar.

  “Yeah, that should do the trick,” she said.

  She twisted her upper body as if doing warm-up exercises. She hadn’t programmed any movement data into the belt, yet it moved naturally with her body. This was where the lion’s share of the graphics optimization process went: Each customization required the transmission of a considerable quantity of data, and about half of the money spent went to those transmission fees. Of course, Iris didn’t know that.

  Next, the wristwatch.

  From her inventory, she selected Orichalcum, Mythril, and Jewel Quartz, and set them out on the circle along with “Recipe: Gorgeous Bracelet.” This would be a bracelet becoming a wristwatch, so unlike the belt, it would be more or less the same before and after. The young heir himself would texture the watch function onto it, so for her part, it was no different from making a bracelet.

  Just as she was placing the items onto the magic circle, she realized that she had a visitor.

  It seemed like such a large guild on the outside, she hadn’t thought anyone would come visiting so soon... yet, a message popped up to tell her that someone was inside the guild house. Butterflies began flapping in Iris’s stomach. After what had happened yesterday...

  Iris left her “workshop,” descended the staircase, passed through the cavernous front hall and opened the front door.

  “Ah, excuse me,” she said. “We don’t have anything for sale yet...”

  Looming in the door was a tall mechanical man dressed in full plate armor, with two swords on his belt. He had the dangerous air of the true adventurer about him, yet the civilian’s hammer on his belt indicated he was actually a Blacksmith.

  The imposing air about him had been enough to cut her off mid-speech. The Machina race didn’t have many emotes, but just the way he towered there — cutting off her path to escape, casting a long shadow into the room — filled her with terror.

  “U-Um... er...”

  “Are you the only one in the house right now?” the man asked as he gave a piercing look up and down Iris’s body.

  In the real world, trade school student Airi Kakitsubata was a courageous woman. If a pervert touched her butt on the train to school, she wasn’t afraid to yell out and hand him over to station security. But this man’s gaze, though intrusive, did not fill her with the same visceral revulsion.

  It wasn’t that the NaroFan system and brainwave scanner wasn’t picking up on his true intention, and it likely wasn’t the Machina’s lack of unique emotes, either. It was because the emotion in his eyes as he looked her up and down was something else.

  “Are you an Alchemist?” he asked. “What are your subclasses?”

  “B-Blacksmith and Mage... Um, what do you want? Who are you?” Airi Kakitsubata had an inkling of what that emotion was.

  The school Airi was attending was full of girls who aspired to the world of fashion. They were all very confident, each believing that their own clothing designs were more polished than anyone else’s. Airi was no exception.

  Her confidence was backed by her experiences in middle school, where she had earned envious looks from her friends as the girl in their class most likely to become a star fashion designer.

  But Airi had learned, much earlier tha
n most do, how empty this youthful confidence was. She did have talent, certainly; or perhaps she simply, unconsciously, put in more effort than most. Either way, the result was the same.

  The school she now attended was full of people who had superior design sense to hers, and the adults mercilessly pointed out the immaturity of even their excellent designs. Airi found it intolerable, and she couldn’t deny that part of the reason she had begun playing the VRMMO in the first place was to escape that reality.

  Airi looked up to those more-talented girls from a dark, hopeless abyss. And when she looked at them, the look in her eyes was not the same as the envious glances that her peers in middle school cast her way.

  Jealousy and hatred, misplaced scorn... and a bottomless feeling of disappointment at the sheer unfairness that she was not the one in their place. Such was the emotion in this man’s eyes.

  Then again, maybe she was just misinterpreting. She didn’t want to think that a fictional world could drive a human being to feel such things. But what was this feeling of repugnance and frustration that sprang up inside her when she looked at this man?

  She knew.

  Iris thought back to the conversation she had had with the young heir the day before. It was just what she had feared. The man standing in front of her was a Blacksmith whose pride had been wounded. To ask him what he was doing here would take great courage.

  “Don’t worry about me. Can you make armor?” the man said in an inflectionless voice augmented with a mechanical effect.

  Her heart pounded in her chest. “N-No...”

  “I think you can. I heard that there were three people in this guild, and the other two are a Magi-Fencer and a Knight. If you’re going to make a crafting guild, one of your members must be able to make equip items.”

  Technically, the system did not require that, but it was still common sense. There were a few crafting guilds that were mainly established to sell off potions and other consumables, but such a guild wouldn’t have built a guild house this large.

  That stupid young heir! This guild was supposed to be disposable! she fumed.

  The man opened his inventory and took out a number of items. They were all armor recipes.

  She picked one up, and found it had a dizzying level of difficulty. She could try to make it dozens of times and still not stand any chance of success.

  “I have all the components ready. Of course, if you succeed, I’ll pay you,” he said.

  The Machina man didn’t know Iris’s Create Armor level. It was impossible to see someone else’s stats unless you were friended, or they gave you permission to inspect them.

  She thought about just asking if he wanted to see her stat screen, as that would be better than embarrassing herself with the recipe. But the man’s forbidding aura and glare kept her silent.

  Contradictory emotions swirled inside her heart, never quite settling on anger. Hesitantly, she took the recipe and components from him, then led him to her second floor workshop with heavy steps. With the dark way he had been looking at her since he’d come in, she couldn’t just yell and drive him out like she normally would.

  The recipe he had given her would only be sold by NPCs if the buyer had a high Create Armor level. Iris had heard of it, but this was her first time seeing it in person. It was the type you couldn’t buy secondhand, either. She might not ever see it again.

  Of course, its rarity corresponded to the high stats of the armor it produced, and it had a comparable level of difficulty, as well. In both regards, it was far beyond the level of the dropped recipes the young heir had been bringing to her.

  Ah, I knew it... Iris thought.

  He was definitely a member of the Akihabara Forging Guild. Things were getting really dicey. He had come all the way to Iris Brand, which didn’t have a single thing for sale, accepting the challenge he was convinced the young heir had issued.

  The man followed her into the room without a single word spoken. He watched intently as Iris cleared away the components currently in the magic circle, and replaced them with what he had given her. Normally she’d be very fussy about the placement, but she couldn’t even think about that now.

  Silently, she closed her eyes and raised her hands to the symbol, then focused her mind, and activated Alchemical Circle.

  Light began to well up around the edges of the circle, wreathing the components within. A familiar sound effect filled the room, as if the visual itself were being converted to sound. It was followed by another familiar noise, signaling the process’s completion. Before she could even wonder how it turned out, the negative BGM that always inflamed her irritation made it eminently clear.

  It was a failure.

  I knew it, she thought, followed by a sudden numbness that filled her body. What must he think of her right now? But before she could even look at him, he proffered another recipe and set of components.

  “Next.” His tone was completely businesslike.

  The recipe was significantly lower in difficulty than the previous one, the kind you could easily buy in a store. The components were also easy to acquire, and available in Vispiagna Meadows.

  I can do this, she thought as she cleared away the failure and placed the new items on the magic circle. She activated Alchemical Circle and initiated the fusion.

  It, too, failed.

  Her face was on fire. What was I thinking?

  Just because the difficulty was a few levels lower didn’t mean she could easily make the armor in question. The game’s emotion tracer detected her awkwardness, turning her face bright red. She focused her eyes on the floor. She didn’t have the courage to look at the man. It was too easy to imagine him laughing at her.

  But the reaction he revealed was not one of mockery.

  “...round.” She could only make out the last syllable of the phrase he had murmured. Looking up, timidly, she saw the usually stoic Machina’s face contorted with some unrestrainable emotion.

  “...Stop joking around!”

  It was anger. The violent emotions he had kept pent up finally found their release, gushing out of him in a torrent. But their expression was far from rational.

  He strode past the cringing Iris towards the center of the room, to stomp hard on the failed combination in the circle.

  The words “stop joking around” were merely a mindless expression of his frustration. He would have been happier if it had been a joke. But he must have known that that wasn’t the reason that Iris had failed. She simply didn’t have the ability, right now, to create the armor on the recipe he gave her.

  To this man, that was the far greater crime.

  “Um, Mr. Edward, p-p-please calm down...” she stuttered.

  At last, Iris was sure of the man’s true identity. He was the Akihabara Forging Guild’s second-in-command, the Machina Blacksmith, Edward. He was called the Fighting Blacksmith because he could play on a high level both in fighting and crafting. The fact that he could do this was a sign of the extreme care he had put into planning his character build. Without question, he was one of the game’s top players.

  That playstyle was a symptom of a slight VRMMO addiction — or more likely, that he was a full-fledged gaming junkie — but that would just contribute even more to his pride in his status in the game.

  Edward whirled back around. The Machina’s inhuman appearance, combined with his overwhelming anger, was a sight that caused Iris’s knees to buckle.

  Edward was trembling, one hand clenched into a fist. A jumble of feelings and urges raged inside of him, and he was clearly straining to keep them in check.

  “Are you people mocking me?! Are you mocking my boss? Building this huge damned guild house and staffing it with one useless Alchemist? Stop joking around!”

  “Useless” was a pretty harsh term, though Iris couldn’t actually argue with him.

  Still, no matter how angry Edward got, they were in the middle of a city. His fists, his sword, his hammer... none of them could hurt Iris. No pain would be transm
itted through her nerves.

  But that was just as far as the system went. The malice and hatred he directed towards her, unlike anything she had ever been subjected to before, were like daggers through Airi Kakitsubata’s heart. That only got worse when she realized it was the natural extension of the same jealousy she had directed towards those students above her in class.

  She wondered if she would feel better if she just let him hit her. But just as she was thinking that...

  “Forgive the trite expression, but I’m not a fan of this sort of behavior.” At some point, the young Dragonet man had appeared at the room’s entrance with the usual odiously cool look on his face. He wasn’t smiling, but he didn’t look especially angry, either. His posture was, as usual, indifferent.

  “Young heir...” Iris murmured, dumbfounded.

  The silver-haired Knight also peeked in from behind him. “I am here, as well.”

  “Sir, could you please stand in front of Iris?” the young heir asked casually. “I don’t think Ed will mind, as his hatred would be better directed towards me, anyway.”

  “Yes, sir.” The middle-aged Knight, Sir Kirschwasser, moved to kneel in front of Iris, armor clinking. “Were you hurt, Iris?”

  “Rationally, there’s no way I could be hurt, because of the system... but thanks, anyway,” she said. “You really saved me.”

  “Not at all.”

  As the young heir predicted, Edward immediately switched the target of his anger from Iris to Ichiro.

  Of course, since he had no reason to be angry with me, Iris thought, belatedly feeling some indignation of her own.

  “Now...” With a brazen attitude, the young heir raised his index finger. “...you’re angry with me, because you think I spurned your boss to ask Iris to make my armor instead, correct? And I see some failures on the floor, which means you came here to test Iris’s abilities. If you had found them acceptable, you’d planned to back off. You made up your mind to settle things. I admire that.”

  “Y-You... You’re...!” The man probably wanted to ask who the hell Ichiro thought he was. It was likely that all three people present except for Ichiro felt the same way.