The Tutorial Begins 02
The alcohol fled my brain in an instant, driven out by a reality too hard to swallow.
The world I'd endured for ten years wasn't some virtual reality game—it was a horrific battlefield. Bone shards jutting through open wounds, guts spilling out in a reeking cascade, greenhorn adventurers torn apart alive by monsters—and all of that was supposed to be game flavor text?
Form a party by joining streamer 'Hanna'
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But the hologram floating before my eyes refused to vanish. Neither did the pretty young woman glaring at a translucent drone-shaped camera hovering in midair. If this hadn't been a magically verified safe zone certified by the Adventurer's Guild, I would have stabbed a dagger through the back of my own hand just to check whether I was hallucinating.
This isn't a hallucination.
The odds that the drinks I'd downed—trusting the safe zone enough to get properly wasted—had been laced with some drug were naturally zero. My robust body swept the mind-dulling alcohol clean out of my system, and my thoughts snapped into sharp, clear focus.
It isn't auditory either. Other guys are staring at that woman—Hanna—too.
There were the wistful gazes of old adventurers recalling their own reckless youth, the greedy looks of mediocre types sizing her up as easy prey, and the lecherous stares of men stirred by a beauty that put the average female adventurer on the street to shame.
This safe zone was where mid-tier and higher adventurers sprawled out to rest. Unless every adventurer here had collectively gone mad and was sharing the same hallucination, Hanna was a real person who genuinely existed.
Which meant I obviously had to form a party with her.
After ten long years, a game system window had finally appeared. I might not immediately figure out why I'd been dropped into this world in this body—but I'd learn something, at least.
I set my empty glass down on the table like I was tossing it aside, and the gazes that had been fixed on Hanna snapped over to me instead. Looks that said, What's that guy doing? On a holiday he usually parks his ass here until the master kicks him out at sundown.
A few of those looks turned complicated once they noticed the pretty newcomer mixed up in it, but none of that reputation nonsense mattered right now. This was the first real variable in a decade. If I dawdled and let her slip away, who would I have to blame but myself?
I shook off the last of the alcohol and walked out into the street.
It was the same street as always—and yet it felt slightly different. A chaotic thoroughfare where game elements were mashed together into something ambiguous and messy, and somehow it all felt unfamiliar now. I'd walked this road countless times over ten years, but one hallucination that looked like a game system floating in midair was enough to make everything strange.
…Now's not the time to be second-guessing this.
I cut off every suspicion about this world's bizarre construction and strode forward with purpose. Being something of a local celebrity, I drew plenty of eyes, but I ignored them all—brushing off the adventurers who tried to greet me so I could reach the destination ahead of Hanna.
The destination was, of course, the Adventurer's Guild.
This world was a typical fantasy setting that felt like someone had roughly mixed a mobile gacha game with a fantasy RPG. A tower rose at the center of the city, spawning powerful artificial monsters that dropped mana stones and various rewards, and adventurers flocked to the city to hunt them.
Naturally, an Adventurer's Guild stood prominently on the street—an organization that controlled adventurers while also looking after their interests. Managing tower access permits, appraising and purchasing loot, taking personal commissions… a guild that sucked fees dry at every turn.
If this world really was a game, then Hanna—freshly arrived in the city—had nowhere else to go but the Adventurer's Guild.
"Whoa, I figured a fantasy setting would mean horse dung all over the streets, but this area's almost modern. I was really worried when the carriage I rode in at the start of the tutorial was so old and shabby."
Talk about initiative.
I'd taken a different route and walked as fast as I could, worried that trailing behind her on camera would make me look like a stalker—and she was already chattering away in front of the Adventurer's Guild signboard. To everyone else, the translucent camera drone was invisible, so she just looked like a dreamy young girl adventurer lost in wonder.
An innkeeper auntie with a houseful of daughters was watching Hanna's monologue with a deeply worried expression, after all.
…She sure ran her mouth a lot with self-talk that people from this world would struggle to understand. Was there some kind of filter? The same way nobody could see the translucent camera drone, maybe words like "tutorial" and "NPC" just slid right past them.
No. Stop.
The moment I learned this world was a game and I was an NPC, every train of thought started barreling in that direction. The stark difference between the tower city and the outside world. A magitech civilization so convenient it bordered on modern. The tower itself, an alien presence of unknown origin…
"Hmm? Isn't today your day off?"
"I can't just keep loafing around forever."
"Words that would make the master very happy. You didn't go and get mixed up in gambling, did you? Need seed money for a quick score or something?"
"Come on. If I were hard up for cash, I wouldn't come here—I'd be sprinting straight to the quest board."
I reined in the thoughts threatening to spiral negative and headed for the receptionist, Alice. A beauty with blonde hair and blue eyes, every bit the guild's face of the house. Looking at her now, even that started to feel suspicious. Outside the Adventurer's City surrounding the tower, peasant women worked themselves raw under the sun with zero skincare—most of them had skin weathered to ruin.
And yet the women of the Adventurer's City somehow boasted fair, freckle-free complexions like polished white jade. The difference between extras, supporting roles, and leads?
"So what brings you in today? By this hour you ought to be sprawled out dead drunk."
"Isn't that tongue a little too sharp? We haven't seen each other in a while—what's with the attitude?"
"It's because we haven't seen each other in a while."
As I bantered back and forth with a receptionist I was on familiar terms with, eyes gradually gathered around us. For all my laziness, I was a veteran adventurer who'd stubbornly kept his neck intact for ten years. The rookies camping out at the guild couldn't help but look at me with envy.
It was a conveniently designed fantasy world—but fighting monsters was pure dark fantasy, with people dropping dead left and right.
How to put it… thanks to advanced magic, the population was larger than medieval Earth's, which was fine as far as it went—except most of that swollen population got ground up by monsters. That was this fantasy world with its dreams and hopes subtly smashed to pieces. An ordinary farmer could barely survive an encounter with a wolf, and packs of somewhat intelligent monsters like goblins or kobolds regularly targeted humans and raided villages.
"So, why did you come to the guild at such an early hour?"
Alice's lake-clear blue eyes fixed on me, brimming with curiosity.
At the same time, attention naturally funneled my way. A beauty who could pass for the guild's idol and a ten-year veteran chatting casually at the counter—of course people stared. Adventurers knew that even scraps of information were worth picking up, and there were plenty of them here. I'd steered the conversation this way on purpose.
"Early hour? The sun's high in the sky."
"It's early because the sun hasn't set yet."
"Well… fair enough. …Honestly, I got bored and came to hang out."
"Bored?"
"Yeah. Thought I might grab a junior and try raising one."
The guild system was methodical, with a faintly modern scent to it. Among its features was a kind of mentoring program where senior adventurers helped juniors. On the surface, it was a way for retired adventurers who'd left the killing fields to earn pocket money as personal instructors on the lower floors—but if you assumed a game system was behind it, the story shifted a little.
Wasn't this a first-companion recruitment event the game company had put in to look after newbies?
If you started by partying up with some clueless farm-boy bumpkin named Hans, most gamers would end up as goblin droppings in some corner of the first floor. Even I, with a blessed physique, had needed nearly a year just to get used to combat. The majority of VR gamers with no fighting experience would take even longer than I had.
So the position I was aiming for felt like those free event five-star characters you get from the tutorial gacha.
The kind of early-story freebie character you bow in gratitude for and slot into the party without a second thought—a carry unit for the opening arc. Of course, looking at my body and abilities, I was confident I was more of a permanent roster unit you'd keep until the end of the game…
But I had to deliberately play the part of someone holding back. Not completely weak—just a decent senior adventurer.
If I solo-steamrolled the field with overwhelming force, what if she dropped me for the sake of stream entertainment? The most important fact here was that Hanna was a streamer. A woman dead serious about game strategy would fall for my overwhelming stats and stick with me to the end—but a streamer chasing fun might build a comedy party for a bottom-rung start.
"Good heavens, that lazy—"
"Um, hello!"
"Oh my?"
While we were absorbed in conversation, Hanna shoved the door open, marched boldly right up to the counter, and greeted us. At the appearance of an exotic black-haired beauty, Alice's eyes went round.
Alice—the receptionist rumored to be one of the guild's great beauties. Blonde hair, blue eyes, the generous figure hidden under her guild clerk uniform… none of that mattered right now. There was exactly one reason I'd bothered making small talk with her and bringing up junior mentoring.
"I don't believe I've seen your face before. Have you come to this city to become an adventurer?"
"Huh? Ah—yes!"
"Hmm. You're not thinking of joining as a receptionist, are you?"
"No. I really want to go to the tower."
"In that case… the timing is perfect."
Receptionist Alice took looks extremely seriously. Not in the sense of treating ugly people coldly—more in the sense of being extraordinarily warm and friendly toward exceptionally handsome men and beautiful women. In game terms, anyone above a certain charm threshold got a massive affinity bonus.
"What do you think, Roland?"
"…Ro… land?"
"What about what?"
"Right here—a pretty, adorable little junior."
Which was why she could so confidently recommend an unvetted country bumpkin junior, fresh off the cart into the city, to me—a senior adventurer so established that rookies at the guild barely dared speak to him.
Naturally, I had no reason to refuse.