A Tutorial for This World
I stamped out the campfire and dropped low to the ground.
The sound of hoofbeats came from beyond the ridge—not coming toward us, but cutting across our path and fading into the distance. And where that sound died, another one began.
Human voices. Laughing.
"...Reika..."
"Hold still."
She drew in a few more breaths through her nose. Her expression hardened by degrees.
"That's a lot of blood. More than one man's share."
We crawled up the ridge through the undergrowth.
Two wagons sat on the road below. One had toppled onto its side; the other listed at a drunken angle, a single wheel gone. Cargo lay scattered around them, and among the crates, people were lying still.
Three of them. No—four.
One was face-down. Another sat slumped against a wagon wheel, his head hanging at an unnatural angle. The remaining two were hard to make out as human at all.
And then other men appeared, swords in hand.
Something like a conversation seemed to pass between a fallen man who still looked conscious and one of the swordsmen. Then, in an instant, voices rose. The swordsman shouted, and a man who appeared to be his subordinate drove a blade into the one slumped against the wagon wheel.
......
My breath caught in my throat.
For a week I had seen plenty of animal carcasses. I had split their bellies with my own hands, skinned them, roasted their meat and eaten it.
This was different. Completely different.
"One, two, three.... Eight of them in all."
Six wore clothes patched with scraps of leather. Two had rusty iron breastplates.
"Those are... bandits, aren't they?"
"Aye, most like."
"What do we do..."
Reika's hand closed around her sword hilt.
"Wait—you're going to fight them?"
"What, ye mean to just sit and watch?"
Her expression was set, unwavering. And in that instant, a thought landed with perfect clarity.
Ah. This person is a good person.
What would a modern Korean do, in her place? Some people help those in trouble, of course. But the truth is, most of us can't bring ourselves to step forward. We think about the risk. Help someone and you might take a loss yourself, get hurt. Sometimes the person you saved turns around and comes after you instead. So nobody moves.
But Reika? She'd been like this from the beginning. When I was surrounded by those monkey monsters, she had appeared out of nowhere and saved me—a complete stranger, someone she didn't even know. And it was the same now. Not animals. Not monsters. People. People with swords, people who had already stabbed a man, people who could absolutely kill us. And she was still getting ready to charge.
The kind of person whose body moves first, the moment she sees someone who needs help. The kind of courage that puts another life ahead of her own danger.
For a moment I was ashamed of myself—of the thought I'd had of quietly slipping away somewhere else.
But... can I actually do this?
Still prone in the grass, I drew my pistol. My hands were slick with sweat.
Up until now I had shot bugs. I had shot fish. I had shot snakes. I had shot monkeys.
Never a person.
The sights lined up on the man with the sword.
If I shoot, that man dies.
The finger resting on the trigger trembled.
That man was surely someone's son. He had eaten and slept and lived a life just like mine until he reached that age.
But then the trembling in my finger stopped.
That man was a robber. He had killed people. Innocent people.
I was different. If I killed him, I wouldn't be killing Civilian #1. I would be killing Villain #1. It would clearly be a service to society.
Violence can't solve violence?
Don't make me laugh.
The world overflowed with evil people. Scammers, thugs, murderers—hell, even the ones who never broke a single law but still inflicted harm on others. Demons, everywhere you looked, in every corner of the world.
The world needed heroes. No—more precisely, it needed executioners. Someone to protect the peace that the law could not.
At least, that was how I had always thought. I simply never had the power to make it real, and I never wanted to take on that kind of risk.
But now? There were no security cameras here. If I killed someone, the world would never know.
I would know, of course. Reika beside me would know, too. But she was on my side. She would support me. I was sure of it.
And now I had the power. Pull the trigger, and that man dies. And the three remaining civilians live.
There were eight of them.
Kill eight, and three survive.
The numbers didn't add up.
But the weight of a life is not the same. That's what I believe.
The only question left was whether I could bear the risk of putting myself in harm's way.
It's going to happen anyway. In this world, even if I don't pick a fight, a fight will come looking for me. I felt it in the village, didn't I?
This world is no utopia. The moment I have to fight will come. Many times over.
That was why I thought of this moment as a tutorial.
Not a tutorial for some other world. A tutorial for living in this one.
I stopped thinking.
Tak!
A short, muted crack, and the bullet flew.
But it missed.
The distance to them was about twenty meters. They might have heard the gunshot—and even if they hadn't, they would have heard the round hiss past. Though they wouldn't know it was a gun.
"Tch..."
The man looked around, scanning his surroundings. But there was no big reaction. First time experiencing something like this—he probably didn't even realize he was under attack.
Should I take out the ones on the outside first?
The thought had barely formed when Reika burst from cover.
"You filthy scum!! Come at me!!"
She roared as she dropped into her draw-stance, same as always. Every last one of them turned to look at her.
"What's this—grab that bitch!!"
And then it was over in an instant.
One of them charged Reika. And before his blade could even reach her, I saw Reika's sword cut through his waist. It was a speed I normally couldn't follow—but in that moment, I saw it. I didn't want to. I saw it perfectly.
The blade struck the man's side. Then it went in. Deeper and deeper, until the edge reached his navel. His expression didn't change. Had he not even realized he'd been cut yet? The blade kept going, and at last it came out the other side. A gap opened between his upper body and his lower body.
The gap filled. With blood. A torrent of it, pouring down. Something horrible spilled out along with the blood. Only then did the man's face begin to twist. And as blood splattered across Reika's face, half of him fell to her right and half to her left—and my brief, frozen moment ended.
"Ugh... uurk!..."
Nausea surged up my throat. The blood and viscera scattered across the ground made everything feel simultaneously unreal and more real than anything I had ever known—the sense that this couldn't possibly be happening in real life, and at the same time the crushing awareness that I was not inside some VR game, that this was actual reality, and I was living in it.
"You crazy bitch!! Kill her now!!"
The remaining seven moved as one. The air itself seemed to shudder. And I was frozen in place.
I had steeled myself. I had decided to shoot. And what I had just witnessed stopped me all over again.
But I had to move. I had to. Was I going to dump all of this on Reika, then spend the rest of my life making excuses about how I had never killed a person?
I couldn't.
In the end I burst from the undergrowth too, and started shooting.
"C-come at me, you bandits!!"
Only then did one of the men charging Reika spot me, change direction, and come running my way.
Tak!
I fired once. Even with shaking hands, the bullet flew true and caught him around the shoulder.
But he didn't stop. He staggered, clutching his shoulder, then planted his feet and came at me again. One round wasn't enough to kill him.
I pulled the trigger.
Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak! Tak!
The suppressed gunshots seemed to grow louder and louder, narrowing my mind and my vision until all I could see was the man running at me. A shot or two went wide, but round after round kept hitting him. Slowing him. Making him bleed. When I emptied the magazine, the man went down.
He lay on the ground with holes leaking blood from all over his body. Dead. Definitely dead. Eyes open, staring at the sky, life gone.
But I was more numb than I had expected. It wasn't like watching someone get cut in half, and I hadn't stabbed him with my own hands.
They say a gun lessens a person's guilt. You're not killing with your own hands—the bullet flies out and does the killing. Or rather, that's what I chose to believe.
"I'll have to get used to this..."
"Astella! Don't just stand there!!"
Reika's shout punched through my ears. Another one was coming at me without a moment's rest.
I reached for a magazine pouch, but my hand flailed at empty air.
Damn it! I used them all!
The last magazine had just gone. I'd been holding onto those points because I only had 50P left. Not buying spare magazines ahead of time had come back to bite me.
"Die!!!"
The man's sword came down at me. Moonlight flashed off the blade and blinded me.
"Aaaagh!!! Fuck!!!"
I shoved the gun up.
Kang!!
Luckily, the pistol caught the blade. A little worse and that sword would have cut me, and I would have ended up looking just like the bandit Reika had split in two.
Goosebumps raced across my skin, and at the same time some survival instinct I didn't know I had kicked in.
"Get off me, you bastard!!"
I kicked him in the gut, opening up space. Then I yanked the sword from the corpse of the man I'd just killed and threw it, buying myself even a second of pause. I spun and ran, immediately opening the Gun Shop and buying magazines.
I slammed a magazine into the gun, turned, and got ready to fire—just as the man was right in my face.
Tang!
One round, dead center in the crown of his head. The running man's momentum carried him into me as his posture collapsed, and he went down.
No time to stop. I had to check if anyone else was coming. And there was. A man in iron armor.
Kang!
The man I'd hit staggered in pain but didn't die. The bullet had punched through the armor and lost most of its stopping power. The kinetic energy of the round had still hit him, still done damage—but the bullet had lost its speed and failed to inflict a fatal wound. And he was still coming, axe in hand.
The man swung the axe horizontally. At the same time I dropped into a crouch and ducked under it. It was unconscious. The same way my body had moved to escape the snake monster on that first night, it moved now to avoid the danger. And immediately I kicked his legs out from under him.
I put the gun to the fallen man's forehead and fired. Dead.
I moved at once, scanning the surroundings for any remaining threat—but it was quiet.
Reika had finished the rest. All that remained was the man who'd looked like the leader from the start. He'd dropped his weapon and was crawling across the ground.
"Hah... hah... Reika... is this the last one?"
"Aye. The rest are dealt with. This one's the la—"
Tak! Tak! Tadak! Tak! Tak! Tak! Tatak!
I aimed past the armor, for the head, and fired. I burned through every last round in the magazine, pumping them uselessly into a man who was already dead.
I don't know why I did it.
"Hahh...."
Smoke rose from the muzzle, drifting up into the night sky.
