The Unreasonable Gates

Every now and then I found myself thinking about it — Karina had this peculiar habit of getting worked up over the strangest things.

Song ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Yura was one thing. Whether you looked at her subjectively or objectively, that girl didn't have a kind bone in her body, so the hostility there made sense. But why was she so harsh on the eldest daughter of House Esteber?

"Because she looks down on you, obviously!"

"I know, okay?!"

"I know just how incredible you are — so incredible people would call you insane! A normal person would've given up ages ago, but you never quit, and on top of that you work yourself to the bone!"

It was the kind of timing that practically demanded a swelling, emotional soundtrack. The honest truth, though, was that Karina and I had known each other for less than a full day.

"What does time matter when it comes to building unshakable trust and respect between two people?!"

"It's short. Way too short."

"What'd you say, Oppa?"

"Nothing. Forget it."

I reached out and stroked Lin's hair. Even though she was plainly an adult by any reasonable measure, her aquamarine-blue eyes sparkled, and she nuzzled her head into my hand like she couldn't get enough of it. I had no choice but to admit the truth.

Lin was, without ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a doubt, my little sister from a previous life.

"Wow. This guy. He's actually consistent about it. I'm not even gonna bother calling him out anymore. Quiet recommendation: check yourself into a siscon psych ward."

Then Karina muttered that Lin was weird too.

"Honestly, there aren't many women who actually like having their head patted. Weirdly enough, though, both your little sister and this Lin girl — who's basically sitting in the little-sister slot — seem to love it."

Is that how it is?

"Well, I don't have personal experience, but from what I've heard from other people, way more women hate having their heads patted than like it. That's the word around the office."

Karina's point was fair enough. Honestly, if I pictured someone patting my own head, it wasn't a great mental image either.

"Oppa, you worked hard."

Han Suhui made the cut.

"Oppaaa, wake up. Come on, hurryyy."

Lin, my little sister from a previous life, made the cut too.

And then...

"Please wake up, Master."

...Why the hell was Song Yura showing up in this?

Thanks to that, my mood soured on the spot, and I snapped out of the daydream and faced reality. After following Oliver for about ten minutes, we climbed out of that cramped underground passage and arrived at a vast training ground — big enough you could have easily held an elementary school field day there.

"Wait here."

Oliver said that, then walked to a corner of the training ground and pulled what looked like a lever.

The earth shuddered with a deep, grinding roar, and two enormous walls rose in a straight line from the previously empty floor.

"What you're looking at now is merely one of three prepared trials. For someone who survived that last space, it should be easier than you'd expect. But you're different."

I knew immediately what made me different. From start to finish, the reason Oliver had been so pissed at me was none other than my little sister. Then again, of course her presence was special. Hadn't I myself found it strange that a little sister had been tacked onto me in a space that was supposed to be nothing but men?

There's probably some role she needs to play in the Tutorial.

As I muttered that to myself, Oliver drew his sword.

"Choose."

My eyes flew wide and I tried to charge him. The blade he was pointing wasn't at me — it was at Lin. But frustratingly, the current me wasn't even worth a single punch against a knight like Oliver.

"...Put it away."

All I could do was scatter as much Killing Aura as I could manage and speak.

"A powerless dog can bark all it wants. It's still just noise."

My teeth ground together. This again. Without power, no matter how unfair or unjust something was, there was nothing you could do about it.

"You brought this on yourself in the first place."

I felt wronged. The Tutorial had created this situation, not me.

"If you sacrifice your little sister here, you'll receive the same level of trial as every other candidate who's come through. I hate to admit it, but looking at your presence, you'd pass it without much trouble. However!"

Only then did Oliver lower his sword.

"...If you refuse to give up your sister, you will most certainly see hell."

"You sure know how to dress up 'you're definitely going to die' in fancy language."

"Yeah? Then why'd you bring your little sister to a place like this?"

How the hell would I know.

"Just asking to be sure — if I pick the latter and die, you'll let Lin live?"

Oliver shook his head.

"This entire process is House Esteber's top-level secret. We can't let anyone who's seen it walk away alive."

In the end, even for Lin to survive, I had to pass this incomprehensible trial in front of me.

As if it had been waiting for that exact moment, a system chime rang out.

Malicious from the first word to the last. Sacrifice another person — and not just anyone, but my little sister — ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just so I could take the easy path? And would that path even actually be easy?

Absolutely not. Even if this world was a constructed one, it didn't matter. Everything in front of me was so vivid. I could feel each other's emotions, each other's thoughts. Anyone who dismissed this as a lie was just a pathetic bastard turning their eyes away from a hopeless reality.

"There's no meaning in me surviving alone. More than anything, one of my life's goals is to die before my little sister. No exceptions."

If my little sister died, my life would be over too.

Wasn't this exciting? If I could clear this gate ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠— even if I had to lean on that broken power called a Save Point — I'd be proving, to some degree, that I wasn't an ordinary human.

"What a moron."

That's what he said. And yet.

This damn tsundere.

"Just sit there and watch."

I sharpened every nerve I had and took my place at the starting line. The goal of the first gate was simple: follow this straight path all the way to the end.

There's no way this is just a running test.

Unfortunately, my prediction was spot on. The instant I took a single step forward, an arrow came screaming in at a speed no ordinary person could even track with their eyes, aimed dead-center at my forehead. If I hadn't received the all-stat rewards from clearing four achievements, I wouldn't have even been able to react.

But that was as far as it went.

I can't dodge it!

Sure, I was inexperienced, and my technique was lacking. But beyond that, the arrow was just too sharp.

Damn it. I'll give it a palm.

If I couldn't dodge the attack, I had to block it, and of all the body parts I could sacrifice in this situation, my palm seemed like the most reasonable choice. An arrow through the hand would hurt like hell, but it wouldn't kill me.

That's not the important part. I need to think about the next move immediately.

The thing I feared most was losing my cool judgment to the pain.

But every one of those thoughts turned out to be useless.

What the...

The arrow I'd expected to lodge in my palm punched straight through it and kept going — right through my forehead.

I felt like shit.

I'd thought I'd gotten used to dying, but maybe it was because I'd just spent another peaceful day back in the modern world. My stomach churned, and the pain I'd felt moments ago was seared into my brain, making my hands and feet tremble.

I can't take this lightly.

Just because I could revive infinitely didn't mean throwing my life away was smart. I had to be careful. Every single time.

That arrow just now. It doesn't make sense.

When it punched through my palm, it clearly collided with the Demonic Energy inside my body. It was almost certainly the energy I'd briefly seen when they explained Demonic Energy — the stuff they called magic power, or mana.

That was definitely not a mechanically fired arrow.

Of course it wasn't. The thick Killing Aura and hostility I'd felt through my Demonic Energy wasn't something a machine could produce.

Hah. Then memorizing the pattern and dodging it over and over is also a lost cause.

Judging by the sniping skill that punched through my palm and forehead in one shot, no matter how many times I died and came back, the archer would just kill me with a new pattern every time.

Damn it. This is bleak.

On the other hand, it was also embarrassing. Just sit there and watch. I'd said something so cool, and then died after a single step. If I hadn't had the revival... I didn't even want to imagine it.

There's got to be a way.

The Tutorial quest, the effort House Esteber had poured into this place — all of it. This gate wasn't designed purely to kill people. If it were, Oliver would've just drawn his sword and cut me in half without bothering with this whole process.

Wait.

When it came to finding a way to beat a gate that modern people supposedly couldn't clear, I was actually pretty good. Especially since the spread of smartphones, games like that had been released by the truckload, and I'd cleared a ton of them with Han Suhui on the weekends. And for someone like me, if I had to find a tool to block arrows, there was only one candidate.

That.

"...Can I use this?"

I picked up a thick, round wooden shield that had been lying on the floor, and surprise flickered across Oliver's eyes.

"There was never a rule saying you couldn't use tools."

Still stiff as a board, right to the end. I'd only made it back to this spot after tasting the pain of having my brain pierced, and this was the attitude I got. Then again, what could I expect from a measly scrap of affection? Besides, Oliver was a knight of House Esteber. I couldn't just expect consideration from him out of nowhere.

Doesn't really matter.

I was used to it. From a long time ago, my world had only ever contained two people: me and Han Suhui.

"Hup!"

I raised the wooden shield at an angle and kept my eyes locked forward. Sure enough, with the shield up, no arrow came flying from the very first step like before. That confirmed it: a person was firing, not a mechanism.

The reason they're still not shooting is because I keep watching the front.

The archer had to be finding this strange by now. A cautious person picking up a wooden shield? Sure, that made sense. But I was preparing as if I already knew an arrow was coming — precisely, specifically.

In the end, the archer had no choice but to fire an arrow that was noticeably less sharp than the one that had first killed me. Seeing it bury itself hard into the thick wooden shield no matter what angle I caught it at, I was freshly reminded of just how powerful these arrows were. I could also tell for certain that this person was a real expert.

The moment I tense up even a little, the arrow flies somewhere the wooden shield can't cover.

Seeing something with your eyes and reacting with your body were two different things. Even if I saw an arrow flying at my thigh, if the hand holding the shield was too far away, I couldn't defend against it. From here on, a certain amount of psychological warfare mattered too.

And...

I won!

You could call it luck, but I predicted every spot I thought they'd shoot at and blocked them all with the shield. I'd made it about halfway when a sound so chilling it scraped the bone rang out, and my field of vision seemed to crash toward the ground. My legs stopped. No — more precisely, my legs had been cut off. I'd heard something alien from below, and then blades hidden in the walls had sprung out and severed them.

"GAAAAAH!"

I clenched my teeth against pain so insane I knew dying would be better, and yet my body reflexively raised the shield to block the incoming arrow.

But it was hard to believe this was the same kind of arrow I'd been blocking this whole time. This one shattered my shield like kindling and punched straight through my heart.

So they could have broken the wooden shield whenever they wanted.

They'd just been going easy on me. Because my wit had been recognized as a valid method for passing the gate.

They're literally toying with people's lives.

I ground my teeth at House Esteber's utterly disgusting methods and stared dead ahead. Frustratingly, that was the best I could do right now.