This Is Bad. I've Become the Hero of a Naked Wandering Eroge
Every time those nameless stars stitched themselves back across the night sky, the hope inside me withered a little more.
"I'm losing my mind. Honestly..."
Once again I found myself staring up at the heavens, heaving a long sigh.
At first, I'd dismissed the whole thing as an absurd dream. Trapped inside a game? Come on. Did that make any sense to a rational person?
But that vague confidence began to crack soon enough. Every one of my senses was far too vivid to write off as a dream, and all the evidence I'd gathered so far pointed, without exception, toward one troubling new possibility.
"Ha... damn it all."
Seven days had already passed, and still I hadn't escaped this place. I'd kept hoping that if I just waited, something would change. But damn it, by this point I could no longer keep turning a blind eye to reality the way I used to.
"How is this a dream? It's real."
I faced the truth with a short, deep murmur, almost as if exhaling it, and the instant I did, the air around me seemed to grow heavier still.
I had no idea what chain of events had caused this catastrophe, but the conclusion was simple enough: I had become the protagonist of an eroge.
"No, what even is this? If you're going to do this, then possess the actual character! Why is the world the same but the face mine?!"
Having accepted reality so abruptly, my emotions swung just as violently in response. A tsunami of negativity crashed over me all at once, shaking me to my core — but what gnawed at me more than anything was my appearance.
I simply could not understand it. Why did the worldbuilding and character settings carry over intact, yet my face stayed my own?
"How am I supposed to walk around looking like this..."
My voice trailed into something barely above a crawl, and my shoulders hunched on their own. Thanks to the Curse of Shame, I couldn't so much as put on a single piece of underwear. Up until now I'd managed to stay calm because I believed it was all a dream, but with that belief shattered, composure was beyond me.
"If only my appearance had been Elysia's, at least..."
Head bowed, I murmured the small wish under my breath. If it had only been her face I'd inherited, I might have endured all the horrors ahead by pretending they were happening to someone else. Cruelly, reality hadn't even granted me that.
"Whew..."
At length I let out a sigh long enough to sink the ground, then idly passed the time plucking at blades of grass for no particular reason.
"..."
How much time slipped by like that? At some point, my violently churning heart began to settle, and the reason that emotion had buried slowly came back into view.
"Right. It's already happened, and I can't just stay holed up inside the Barrier forever, so let's start by laying out a roadmap."
Whether I could return to my original world was still anyone's guess, but one thing was certain: like it or not, I had to go beyond the Barrier eventually. If I followed the original story to lift the curses, maybe I'd stumble across a way home. And even if I didn't, I had no intention of dying just yet — so for the sake of whatever life I had left, I needed those curses gone, one way or another.
"Let's start with Episode One."
So, like the hero of any transmigration story, I began picking my way back through my memories, piece by piece.
"First, in Elter Village..."
I'd replayed the game many times hunting for every ending, so its major beats were already carved deep into my brain. The overall framework came together quickly.
"Right, that part's easy."
The problem was everything after.
With the game turned flesh, the list of things demanding my attention was anything but short. How to move forward, down to mundane matters the game had conveniently ignored — food, shelter, clothing — once I started picking through them one by one, there was no end in sight.
"And I can't exactly avoid people, not with the Relics in the picture."
Of all my problems, the one that weighed heaviest was contact with other people. In the original, the moment the protagonist got tangled up with anyone, every manner of sordid incident came swirling in. I'd tried to draft a plan that would let me collect the Relics and break the curses while touching other people's lives as little as possible — and even that roadmap kept forcing entanglements on me.
"What do I do? However I look at it, this is the best I've got."
Chin propped on my hand, I sank into thought for a long while, like a man gone hollow with contemplation. I'd baked in every gimmick and workaround I could devise and subjected the plan to review after review. There wouldn't be a better option. And even if one existed, there was no way I — someone who hadn't yet taken a single step into this world — could think of it.
"Still, just in case, one more look. One last time."
I knew this wasn't review anymore, just lingering attachment. But I couldn't help it; anxiety is not an emotion you shake off easily.
"Same as before. Fine. Enough. I'm done."
When every pass produced the same conclusion, there was no reason left to hesitate. Sure, I still wasn't happy about it, but I'd built the best roadmap I could. From here on, it was time to think about how I'd respond when the events themselves came calling.
"Which means the answer, in the end, is nothing but growth."
Get stronger, and protect yourself. That wasn't just a solution to sexual peril — it held true in any situation, a method so clean you could call it perfect without exaggeration.
"Growth? Here, of all places?"
I had found an answer no one could argue with — and, paradoxically, all it put on my lips was a bitter smile.
"Any other game, fine, whatever. But of all things, why did I have to wake up inside Elysia Fantasy, goddamn it..."
Those damned curses. Wandering around stark naked, I'd known all along that sooner or later they'd drag me into something unreasonable. But facing it head-on like this, an unbearable irritation came bubbling up until my insides churned.
For the record, there were four curses currently weighing on my body.
Curse of Shame: You cannot wear any clothing. Attempting to cover your body by pressing an object against it inflicts severe pain.
Curse of Erosion: Demonification is in progress. If the curse is not lifted within two years, you will become Demonkind and live out your days as a sex slave.
Curse of Attachment: You cannot end your own life by any means.
Curse of Weakening: Slaying monsters will not raise your level.
There it was. As you can see, thanks to the Curse of Weakening, I couldn't level up the way any standard RPG would let me. In Elysia Fantasy, the only means of raising stats were Elixirs, obtainable solely through shops or missions.
"Farm slimes for money as long as possible, then buy my way up? Wait — would I even have the time?"
What I wanted, deep down, was to hole up in the weakest zones, grind out slow and steady growth. But the Curse of Erosion made even that impossible.
For reference, a single playthrough to the ending averaged 400 days. It looked roomy at a glance, but that figure had conveniently stripped out things like eating and sleeping — in reality, it was bound to take longer.
"Nothing for it, then. No data on this whatsoever — I'll just have to think it over and decide later."
Without experiencing it firsthand, I couldn't even guess how much longer it would take, so the judgment had to wait for another day.
"Ugh... my head hurts."
Chains of complicated thought had ground on long enough to make my skull throb, and before I knew it I flopped onto my back and drew a slow breath. I hadn't exerted my body at all, but I'd burned through so much mental stamina that the fatigue had apparently piled up something fierce.
"In the beginning, the hole wasn't nearly this big..."
My gaze drifted naturally skyward. The reason I could track the passage of time while trapped inside the Barrier was simple: a corner of it had been broken open from the very start, leaving the outside visible. At first it had been a palm-sized circle, no more. But as the days passed the crack spidered outward in every direction, until now it gaped wide enough to bare an entire stretch of sky.
"There's still plenty of food nearby, and at the rate it's crumbling, I could hold out a while longer... So what do I do? Leave, or stay?"
The decision wouldn't come. The Barrier had originally been built to imprison the Demon King, but now it was the sole safe haven hiding me from the dangers outside. Naturally, I wanted to remain as long as I could — yet the Barrier kept collapsing, and no one could predict how much grace period I had left. My mind was a miserable tangle.
"Ugh... I don't know anymore."
I let out a long breath against the suffocation, then lifted my wrist to my eyes and pressed the cool arm against my burning forehead.
"......"
Oh no. This is bad.
My body was already worn to a thread, and that casually raised forearm happened to shade my eyes just right — before I knew it, drowsiness came rolling in on top of everything else.
"...Should I just sleep?"
When a temptation this hard to refuse shows up, thoughts like this follow. It wasn't a riddle I'd solve easily either way, and whichever choice I made, the road ahead wouldn't be smooth. Besides, I'd wracked my brain so long that my mind had gone hazy, and in this state no amount of deliberation would produce a good answer.
"That's it for today. Going out at this hour would only be dangerous anyway."
Once I gave in to the first excuse, the justifications came flooding in without end. And for the finishing touch:
Like one extra day is going to bring the world down?
With that thought, I slowed my breathing and let myself drift toward sleep.
"Hah..."
But for all my body was spent to its limit, sleep refused to come. My head was too full; peace of mind wouldn't return.
"Still, I have to sleep somehow."
If I rested properly tonight, then whatever decision tomorrow brought, I could act on it unburdened. So for now, coaxing myself under was priority one.
Just think of it as closing your eyes and resting.
The harder you chase sleep, the faster it flees. So instead of sleeping, I told myself I was simply resting, and little by little, I quieted my breathing again.
"...Huh? It's morning already?"
When I finally opened my eyes, the sun was hovering just shy of its zenith.
"Ow, my head."
I squeezed my eyes shut against the faint throb, then slowly pushed myself upright and sat staring blankly for a long while.
Pull yourself together.
So I thought, and snapped my eyes wide open. And in that instant, I doubted my own sight.
"...What kind of sick joke is this now?"
The Barrier, which had been standing perfectly intact right up until I closed my eyes... was gone. Vanished without a trace.