RPG's Unwritten Rules 2

Some people, when they play an RPG, turn into deranged spoon-murderers who torment a boss to death while wearing nothing but a single pair of tattered leather pants and swinging a broken shortsword. Or they obsess over characters with suspiciously grotesque skeletons, skin the color of bright fluorescent paint, or an unhealthy fixation on baldness…

But what Han Se-ah was doing wasn't some extreme challenge like that. It was a speedrun. In the speedrun genre, as long as you weren't using hacks or cheats, even glitches were fair game—so there was no reason whatsoever to insist on garbage equipment.

Watching the party members fidget and grin sheepishly, half-embarrassed and half-delighted as they armed themselves with their new gear, I felt a warm sense of pride for the first time in a while. Like I'd finally done something worthy of a senior adventurer.

I didn't mean that I'd simply paid for everything as their senior. Spending money on equipment isn't the same as walking into some department store, grabbing a mannequin still wearing the display pieces, and hauling it home—or strolling up to a merchant NPC and declaring, "I'll take all the gear."

"Whoa, Roland? The Hero himself has come all the way out here!"

"Yeah. More precisely, it's the Hero's companion. Old man Salvan hasn't retired yet, has he?"

"That old coot? Still going strong as ever."

The gloves and bracers for Grace came from a leatherworker under exclusive contract with the Archer's Guild. Years ago I'd saved a guy who could track swamp crocodiles like a bloodhound yet somehow failed to notice the bog itself and nearly sank to his death. That same guy now held a solid position in the guild.

She already had a Mage Tower quiver linked to her alchemical arrowheads, so there was no need to replace that. And her leather boots had been custom-fitted for toughness and durability, so swapping them out now made no sense either.

"S-so, um, could you… pass along a message…?"

"I only came to ask for that one favor… Well, I already knew he was that kind of person."

"S-striking up a casual conversation with a noble young lady you've never met—only someone like you could pull that off!"

Irene, for religious reasons, had to wear her nun's habit, so rather than armor I prepared a bracelet enchanted with protective magic. I'd gotten it for a song from a mage I'd met years ago while capturing orc hunters out on the plains.

The man had serious shut-in hikikomori tendencies; even though we had history, he couldn't bring himself to talk to Charlotte's group and had apparently run dry on research topics. Thanks to that, Irene now had an item that could buy her precious seconds to cast her enhancement holy arts whenever her reaction speed fell short.

"Tell him to put it to good use. It's more useful than it looks—if you know how to handle it, you can even deflect a wyvern's breath."

"…Senior, did you shove your head into a wyvern's maw again?"

"Heh. To think I'd live long enough to hear the master of the Holy Sword call me 'senior.' If word just spreads that I'm a Wyvern Slayer, I'll be set."

"Try heading up to the northern Empire, sir. Plenty of wyverns up that way, from what I've heard."

"Maybe I will. Though it's pretty cold up there, isn't it?"

Katie was attached to the sword she'd brought from her family, and she'd already applied a Special Enhancement Stone to it. On top of that, the piece of armor she'd obtained from her personal character quest and the magic armor her house was preparing made commissioning a whole new set impractical.

So instead I acquired a miniature targe from an adventurer who'd decided to retire. It was a small shield that strapped to the forearm—so tiny you might wonder if it even counted as a shield rather than just a bracer. Being a magical tool, it didn't block by physical contact; it used a mana barrier to deflect only ranged attacks, so the compact size was actually convenient.

And last of all came Han Se-ah.

"I'll pick out my own gear!"

"That so? Then here's some gold coins…"

"No way—then it just looks like I'm only taking the money. Shopping's something we do together."

"Hm?"

She was the player, possessed genius-level mana control, and yet still preferred alchemy and bombs. The whole situation already made me question whether she truly counted as a Hero, so I'd planned to just let her outfit herself freely. Instead she suddenly grabbed my hand and pulled me along.

The rest of the party stared with wide eyes at this uncharacteristically proactive side of her. At least the Ice Cross Knights were off elsewhere reorganizing their own equipment, so we could count that as a small mercy.

Rather than feeling annoyed or jealous at Han Se-ah's sudden assertiveness, the others wore soft, almost encouraging smiles and exchanged glances among themselves. They looked like they were silently deciding something—and even without words, I had a pretty good idea what it was.

"Go on, Roland. I'll be breaking this thing in while you're gone."

"Mm. If ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠this shield can ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stop arrows, I suppose I can spar with Grace."

"Um, I think I should stop by the temple for a bit. I'd like to hang a symbol on this bracelet. Since I received it as a gift, I want to use it for a long time."

Grace flexed her gloved hands and thrust them toward me while fiddling with her new bracers. Katie thumped the shield now fixed to her forearm and stuck right to Grace's side. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠And Irene, declaring she would attach a Goddess Church symbol to the bracelet I'd bought her with my own money, quietly slipped away toward the rear.

…Irene I could understand. But Grace had left her quiver at the Mage Tower, and Katie had dropped her sword off at the Adventurers' Guild's affiliated forge—yet here they were talking about sparring.

Han Se-ah asks Roland out on a date!

The invitation that had set our entire party buzzing naturally set the internet communities buzzing as well.

Thanks to that, the fact that I'd plastered ordinary enhancement stones all over my armor and weapons—despite already having Special Enhancement Stones applied—and jacked my base specs sky-high through sheer brute-force upgrading got completely buried without a shred of attention.

"Alright, everyone who just suggested movie theaters and cafés as date spots—you're the new viewers who wandered in without realizing this is a Heroes Chronicle stream, right? I'm gonna mute you for a bit so you can shut up and watch~ A café maybe, but a movie theater in an adventurers' city? Come on."

Meanwhile Han Se-ah, seen off by the sincere smiles of Grace, Irene, and Katie, walked beside me and chattered away at her viewers.

The topic of conversation was, naturally, the date. Whether it was because the chat had teased her so relentlessly or because she simply wanted to milk the equipment-shopping-as-date angle for sweet content, she was clearly planning to wring every last drop out of it. Then again, a subject like this pulled in viewers just fine, and with good editing it would upload nicely to the site later.

Videos of people smashing monsters to pieces were stimulating, sure—but a handsome man and a pretty woman flirting was stimulating in an entirely different way.

"By the way, Hanna—if you're buying equipment, shouldn't we be heading to the Mage Tower? Do you already have something in mind?"

I was thinking that when a chat message about how Sensei had gone quiet caught my eye, so I prodded Han Se-ah a little. The direction she was walking wasn't toward the Mage Tower at all; she kept glancing at her minimap and heading somewhere else entirely, which looked more than a little suspicious.

"Ah, I don't plan on changing my staff or robe. Since it looks like we're heading into a war with boss monsters, I figured I'd use the leftover gold to buy some alchemy supplies."

Hearing the exact answer I'd been dreading inside my own head made my temples throb a little.

"Ahem. Why are there so many people who learned romance exclusively from books and think a proper date means sipping coffee at a café then quietly holding hands in the dark of a theater? If I, a woman, go wherever I want and Roland, a man, follows without complaint so we can spend some cozy time together—isn't that a date?"

The viewers had clearly been expecting something sweet—or recoiling from it—when they heard the word "date," all of them imagining the textbook version. The moment "alchemy" entered the chat, the messages went into overdrive.

Yet Han Se-ah kept her shameless composure even under the barrage. This wasn't the first or second time she'd steamrolled a broadcast with pure stubbornness, and most of the sizable audience wasn't actually here for a romance show, so they caught on and moved past it quickly.

Of course a minority—and with nearly a million live viewers, even a "minority" still numbered in the tens of thousands—kicked up a fuss, but in the end raw firepower decided the fight.

And so, accompanied by one viewer's scathing donation roast, I ended up heading with Han Se-ah toward the street where the alchemists gathered.