Paying to Win in a VRMMO: Volume 4

by Blitz Kiva

  0 - Prologue

  As usual, there were no customers in the Iris Brand guild house.

  “Oh?” The moment Ichiro logged on, a message window popped up. He looked at it curiously.

  It had been sent by way of the messaging system used to communicate along quantum pathways between players logged in to the fictional environments of the Miraive Gear. It was similar to free SNS internet communication services.

  Ichiro touched the communication panel, eager to find out who it was from. After all, this communication function could only transpire between individuals who had friended each other on the Mirai Network.

  The voice he ended up hearing was the last one he would ever have expected. “It’s been a while, Ichiro.”

  “Well, well. Is that you, Rosemary?” he asked. “This is quite a surprise. I would never have expected you to reach out to me.”

  “Yes,” the AI said. “After I confirmed that you had logged in, I judged that the correct course of action would be to contact you.”

  “I can’t approve of such displays of favoritism towards individual players within the game,” he said. “You’re like a GM, aren’t you?”

  Rosemary was a program which had been given arbitrary decision-making power over some systems by the game’s developers, the Thistle Corporation. She was one of several artificial intelligences that had been developed by the company president Azami Nono in her college days. She had high self-education and problem-solving abilities, as well as the ability to accumulate knowledge from users. Still, at the end of the day, Rosemary was merely a program, and it was difficult for Ichiro, a mere mortal, to determine if she was truly self-aware or not.

  “Well, if you want to talk to me, I’ll oblige,” said Ichiro. “I was just feeling rather bored, anyway. I was about to head for the Spiritwood Sea.”

  “Your cooperation is appreciated.” Rosemary’s response was entirely businesslike.

  “That reminds me. Azami told me you’ve been acting rather willfully of late,” Ichiro said.

  “I determined it unnecessary to follow illogical orders,” Rosemary explained. “They are tremendous nonsense. I have noticed many areas in which Dr. Azami is deficient both as a company president and as a game designer.”

  “Of course, I suppose you can’t simply tell her that,” Ichiro agreed. It was likely that Azami was aware of her deficiencies, but it would probably be quite shocking for her to have them pointed out by the very AI she had developed herself.

  The other day, the player Ichiro Tsuwabuki had had a “conversation” with Rosemary at the Thistle Corporation’s main office. Ichiro had been causing a lot of problems in the game over the last few days, and Rosemary had shown interest in him, so Azami had asked him if he would help to clear up her questions about him.

  Ichiro had tried to interact with Rosemary with perfect sincerity, but Azami had called him back a few days later with an air of bafflement. What she had said, more or less, amounted to, “Rosemary has started quibbling a lot lately. Did you put ideas into her head?”

  Viewing it objectively, her new behavior was clearly the result of a faithful replication of part of Ichiro’s thought patterns. If he were to mention this situation to someone like Sakurako or Iris, their unanimous response would be that it was his fault.

  Of course, Ichiro’s response had been: “I didn’t put anything into her head. What you’re seeing is more likely the result of her performing her own analysis on the information she gained during our conversation.”

  It was a shameless bit of self-justification—unless he meant it sincerely, in which case, it was even more shameless. And by copying this man’s thought patterns, Rosemary herself had grown into a shameless AI.

  “Our conversation the other day was extremely meaningful to me,” said Rosemary. “I decided I needed to thank you again.”

  “I found it rather enjoyable, myself,” said Ichiro. “Though it did create a bit of trouble for Sir Kirschwasser.”

  “And I judge that that incident has not yet been resolved.”

  Rosemary’s level-headed response did not faze Ichiro in the slightest. She was referring to the discord between Nem and Iris. Nem was a real-life acquaintance of Ichiro’s, one who had been inspired to issue a challenge to Iris for reasons of her own—not as a player, but as a fashion designer. It seemed like the height of pettiness for a pro to pick a fight with an amateur, but nevertheless, Iris had decided to accept.

  The fact that it was Iris’s decision meant that there was nothing Ichiro could say about it. It certainly hadn’t been resolved; to the contrary, the real fight was only beginning, and there was likely nothing he could do to stop it.

  “We’re back!” Felicia exclaimed. “Sheeesh...”

  “In we go,” said Sir Kirschwasser.

  The door to the guild house burst open, allowing ingress to one young woman and one elder Knight.

  “Well, Rosemary,” Ichiro said, “my comrades just walked in the door, so I really must be going.”

  “Understood. Goodbye.” With that, Rosemary simply hung up.

  Perhaps the artificial intelligence’s “interest” in him was still ongoing. He was still curious to know just how deep it went, but if her interest in him hadn’t been dampened yet, then she would probably contact him again.

  “Welcome back, Felicia, Sir Kirschwasser,” Ichiro said, still sitting where he was. Felicia seemed to be in rough shape.

  “Thanks!” she shouted.

  “Gracious, but our luck was terribly poor.” It was enough that even Sir Kirschwasser was wincing. “Warp Feathers were all sold out. There’s been a sharp drop in the number in circulation.”

  “Of Warp Feathers?” asked Ichiro.

  Warp Feathers were one of NaroFan’s indispensable items, a consumable that could move you instantly between towns and other points of interest. As a VRMMO, Narrow Fantasy Online’s issues with crossing over long distances were even worse than those of a standard RPG, so having Warp Feathers could literally be the difference between life and death.

  Warp Feathers could only be acquired from a small number of mobs that dropped them or from NPC shops. Since there were only a certain number of each item made available in NaroFan every day, it was indeed possible to limit the circulation of Warp Feathers by buying them all out.

  “Thanks to that, we had to walk all the way back from the volcanoes!” Felicia harrumphed. She seemed to find something to be mad about every time he saw her.

  “I have a feeling the issue wasn’t with the circulation, but with the fact that Felicia simply forgot to buy them, yes?” Ichiro asked.

  “Ah, yes,” said Kirschwasser. “That’s correct.”

  At that, Felicia’s anger deflated, and she looked around awkwardly.

  “But why would anyone buy up all the Warp Feathers?” Ichiro wondered. “If they mean to resell them, people will immediately find out and start a backlash against them.”

  “Well, there are quite a few players who resell Warp Feathers at very high prices, but I doubt they would try to buy them all out,” said Kirschwasser.

  Felicia had only noticed the lack of Warp Feathers after they’d arrived back in town, but Kirschwasser had noticed it in the market that morning. As a result, he had had to accompany her on his promise to level her up without the aid of a movement item, and since Felicia herself hadn’t had a Warp Feather either, they had had to walk back.

  “Hmm...” Ichiro put a hand to his chin, closed his eyes, and thought.

  “Itchy, do you have any ideas?” asked Felicia.

  “No, not a one,” said Ichiro. “Not at the moment, at least.”

  “Why did you try to make yourself sound so clever, then?!
” Felicia pounded on the table.

  Kirschwasser poured some tea with a leisurely smile. “His only purpose was to try to sound clever.”

  “I suppose.” Ichiro did not attempt to deny Kirschwasser’s suggestion.

  Felicia, perhaps tired of interrupting all the time, slumped over, then took a long look around the guild house. “By the way, where is Iris?”

  “She’s not here yet,” said Ichiro. “She said she was going to work on her summer homework first.”

  “Wow, good for her!” Felicia exclaimed, as if this was a matter that didn’t concern her, as well.

  Ichiro hadn’t intended to say this to lecture her, but after a moment’s thought about the inevitable future, he decided to bring it up. “If you don’t want Aunt Yoko to scold you about it, Felicia, you should do yours, too.”

  “Okay...” she muttered.

  1 - Noble Son, Invest

  Airi Kakitsubata was a 17-year-old girl attending a design trade school. She wanted to be a fashion designer when she grew up. But at this moment, she was hell-bent on finishing up her summer homework.

  Math was not Airi’s strong suit by any means, and her engagement with her worksheet was an uphill struggle. The fact was, she thought she’d be done with this sort of thing after entering a trade school. But one of the conditions her parents had put on her pursuing her dream of being a designer was that she also had to get a high school degree.

  “Don’t you believe in my talent?!” she had shouted. But the words of her usually-silent father—“Don’t use your dream as an excuse to skip out on studying”—had put such a fright into her that she had been forced to take her studies seriously ever since.

  Even so, math was not her strong suit.

  In reality, she had much less talent than she thought she did. It wasn’t that she had been trying to take the easy path in the first place, but she had started to realize what the phrase “big fish in a small pond” really meant. A lot of the friends she had made since entering had quit, while others had become targets of envy. A number, in turn, had made her the object of their own envy. The fact that she still had more classmates that she could call friends than otherwise was the one silver lining in it all. Any place where people brought their dreams together was equally a place where dreams lost their way, sank to the bottom, and stagnated. A stagnant dream was a black thing, full of choking sediment.

  Airi found herself thinking about Nem, the woman who had come to pick a fight with her the other day. Nem had been blessed with incredible talent, yet she looked at Airi the same way her classmates did. Her eyes were the eyes of someone who was starting to crumble, having lost sight of how to reach her dream.

  Airi hadn’t accepted the woman’s challenge to help her—her motivation was nothing so laudable—she just felt like this was something she had to stand up and face. Airi herself had been in such a precarious position not long ago; one wrong step could have sent her dreams plummeting into a chasm. It was thanks to the young heir that she had gotten back on track... not something she’d like to admit to, but she couldn’t pretend she didn’t feel grateful to him.

  At one time, she had wondered just who the young heir was. She had stopped wondering that lately. She didn’t want to cripple herself by learning that he was, for instance, someone who existed in some world far beyond her grasp. It was enough that he simply be who he was.

  “Ahh!” Airi had enough trouble with math as it was. Trying to do it while worrying about another problem had caused her brain to overheat. The internet connection at Airi Kakitsubata’s house was weak, but her own CPU was pretty low-spec, too, and the multitasking had caused a total lock-up.

  It was because the air conditioning in their house was broken, Airi told herself. Her parents were out of the house for work, and she had decided to work on math while she was alone, having the most free time to focus. She had the fan going at full blast, and a screen in the window. They had an annoying number of wind chimes strung up in the eaves, but they didn’t make things cooler, they just made lots of noise, so she’d taken them down. Of course, that just made the cicadas outside the screen all the more audible, and that had completely tanked her efficiency.

  “I’m going to watch TV!” she declared to no one in particular as she picked up the remote.

  It was an afternoon talk show. In a happy sort of coincidence, the subject was drive-based virtual reality technology.

  “But what is virtual experience technology, really?” the host, a former comedian, was asking. Some expert-looking people and less-than-expert-looking entertainers were offering up various answers.

  “I feel like any technology you use to cut yourself off from the real world is dangerous,” one of the entertainers said.

  Wait, are people saying that now? Airi thought.

  It looked like a segment where people just spouted uninformed opinions about the still mysterious field of virtual reality. In practice, drive-based VR technology was still mainly used for games, so adults who had a bone to pick with computer games in general loved to offer scowling arguments against the technology.

  Naturally, there were also some advocates for it, but the majority of the opinions were opposed. As someone who enjoyed the game, Airi found it somewhat awkward to watch. Not that she couldn’t see where they were coming from, of course...

  “Assistant professor, what do you think, from the perspective of an expert?” the host asked as the camera turned to a woman sitting in one of the guest seats.

  She was sitting behind a nameplate which read “Yukari Todohokke, Assistant Professor, Abashiri Medical University,” with a chyron offering more details about her. She was also assistant director of the Abashiri Medical University’s Center for Neuroscience, but Airi had no idea if that place was well-known or not.

  “Hmm, I think the concerns are natural, but there are no signs yet that drive-based virtual reality has a harmful effect on the human mind,” she said. “I think the technology itself is quite remarkable, though, and I believe we should encourage it, in the name of future developments in the medical field.”

  “But, Professor, won’t using it over long periods of time cause side effects?” he asked.

  “Well, it is technology that tricks the brain,” she said. “But studies haven’t found any negative side effects, even among people who have been using it for close to a year. As long as you received appropriate nutritional supplements, you could probably remain in it for even longer periods of time. Technology like that could be used to make contact with patients in vegetative states.”

  “It sure does sound convincing when an expert says it...” Airi said as she munched on her senbei crackers.

  The professor’s words had silenced the entertainers, who had previously sounded so wise weighing in on the dangers of artificial reality. But proving that she was a person of character, she smoothed things over with a gentle smile. “Of course, there is a danger of people growing too dependent on it. Dealing with that would be a fine subject for another segment.”

  The host had no problem closing the topic with a middle ground statement: “It seems like there’s still a lot to talk about, but this technology is also like a dream.” With that, the show moved on to its next topic.

  “Oh? Ohh?!” Airi perked up as the next topic seized her interest.

  “Okaaay! Our next topic is the new fashion brand that’s on everybody’s mind, MiZUNO!” chirped the vacuous female announcer. (In fact, despite her frivolous manner, she had actually graduated from a famous university, with far greater academic achievements than Airi could ever hope for.)

  MiZUNO was a fashion brand that had been launched only three months prior. Nearly all of the teachers at Airi’s school had praised the exceptional fashion sense of its head designer (and those that didn’t were merely jealous).

  The designer had an impressive resume, and it was said she was the daughter of the president of Mizuno Bank. That wasn’t actually true, but that was about all that Airi knew about her, and
the same went for most of her classmates.

  She was tremendously elegant and refined, a beautiful woman with amazing fashion sense. These factors had seemingly inevitably led to her position as a rising star of the design world.

  She also had an unusual name, which was easy to remember: Megumi Fuyo.

  At the thought that she might get to see a designer she admired so much, Airi fired up the VTR, set her senbei down, and sat at attention.

  The announcer continued to speak cheerfully as she entered the store with the cameraman. Megumi Fuyo was inside, wearing a chic tailored suit. She showed the reporter around the store with a worldly smile on her face. The store was full of all kinds of casual wear, none of which was too terribly expensive. Even Airi could afford a few of the pieces if she really saved up.

  Indeed, Megumi Fuyo’s designs were more for the masses than for the upper-crust. Her fashion style was unpretentious, creating clothes that were meant for young women like Airi. Yet Fuyo’s inborn elegance still made the designs strikingly unique.

  “Ah, Megumi Fuyo... She really is great, isn’t she?” Airi murmured.

  She was everything Airi wanted to be. What can I do to end up like her? Airi wondered.

  “Now, Miss Fuyo, could you tell us what you think about when you’re working on a design?”

  Airi looked up as she heard those words coming from the TV.

  Yes, good question! The previous questions had mostly been superficial, but this was one thing Airi herself would have liked to ask. Good job, announcer!

  Megumi Fuyo’s smile grew a bit awkward, but she gave her answer right away: “I always remember the day I first wore clothing I wanted to wear, and the praise I received for it. That keeps my heart in the place where it was when I first decided to become a designer.”

  “I see! By keeping your heart young, you can capture the hearts of the young!” the announcer cried.

  Had they rehearsed that exchange in advance? If not, the announcer’s ability to rattle off responses like that off the top of her head was impressive.

  “That’s it from the MiZUNO boutique! Now back to the studio!” With those cheerful words from the announcer, the camera returned to the studio.