Welcome to Silia Online!
Welcome to Silia Online!
Silia Online.
A virtual reality game made in Korea, and an MMORPG that had taken the world by storm.
And yet, when word of its development first spread, Silia Online had not attracted much attention.
Maybe that would have been different in the days before virtual reality games existed, but now, with so many already on the market, the words “virtual reality” alone no longer carried much appeal.
On top of that, MMORPGs as a genre had been losing their charm.
Both videos and games had evolved toward delivering intense stimulation in a short span of time, while MMORPGs went in exactly the opposite direction.
They were fun for roleplaying and growth, sure, but the pacing was agonizingly slow. To develop a character properly, you had to pour in time in the most literal sense, which made them an acquired taste.
The few MMORPGs that had survived had solved the dilemma by letting players replace part of that growth with money—what people called pay-to-win—but…
As the price of survival, they had earned the image of games you couldn’t really enjoy unless you spent money.
But Silia Online had proved that boldly and decisively.
All of those problems could be solved, so long as the game was well made.
If people can’t stand the boring growth grind, then why not make the growth grind fun too?
As if it were saying exactly that.
There were many reasons Silia Online rose to the top of the gaming world, but the features players most often praised were its graphics and freedom.
Unlike other games, where the illusion of reality only barely held up under scrutiny, Silia Online’s graphics felt so natural it was like stepping into another world, and its freedom was so complete that the phrase “anything is possible” didn’t feel exaggerated at all.
It gave people a sense of escaping their exhausting real lives and living a new one in a fantasy world, and that was enough to pull in heavy users, casual users, men and women, young and old—everyone fell head over heels for Silia Online.
“It’s not a game. It’s a real other world!”
“They must’ve shoved thousands of aliens into making this!”
“If MMORPGs make you lose the line between reality and games, then regulations are needed so you can only log in for a set amount of time!”
It was no wonder people said things like that.
Other game companies had been crushed underfoot, but the world of competition was a cold one.
Other game companies cried, while gamers and Silia Online laughed.
It was a beautiful world.
* * *
Half a year had passed since Silia Online had opened.
And yet, even after six months, the community surrounding Silia Online was still thriving—if anything, it was more active than right after launch.
People shared what they knew with one another, and every time new information came to light, they never failed to marvel at it.
Then one post appeared and immediately drew everyone’s attention.
A sea of the community, a mixture of countless fishing lines and bits of information.
The post tossed into that sea was discovered by a fish swimming below the surface, and before long, a whole school of fish had rushed in and carried it back up into the light.
The truth of the information, the discovery of a new raid boss, and the sword planted before a grave that looked unmistakably extraordinary at first glance.
What could easily have been buried was lifted all the way to the top of the popular posts in no time at all.
* * *
“…What?”
The corpse turned into a scatter of light and vanished.
I was briefly startled when the body suddenly disappeared, but then I decided that, well, it could happen.
There were magic spells that could erase a person in an instant, so a corpse disappearing was hardly worth mentioning.
Maybe it was some kind of artifact that delivered corpses back to the bereaved family.
If they’d spent that time developing a spell like that on defensive magic instead, they might have lived one second longer. What a shame.
I let that pointless advice drift through my head and trudged forward, checking the ground carefully in case blood had splattered onto the sword.
“…At least it didn’t get stained with blood.”
I didn’t care if blood had splashed onto my sword, but it would be a problem if it touched this Crimson Aegis.
The stench of blood belonged to the living.
I couldn’t go disturbing the dead’s rest.
“Pfft.”
While I was at it, cleaning the blade with an oiled cloth, a laugh suddenly burst out of me.
Here I was, casually cutting down a person and polishing my sword without a shred of guilt.
Back when I was still me, when I lived on Earth before I was reincarnated, I never would have imagined doing something like this.
But there had been too many things in this world by now for me to get sentimental about it.
I’d clearly just been walking along, and then I opened my eyes after a brief blink to find that I, who had been… not exactly robust, but at least male, had somehow become a little girl, while everything around me was fantastical nonsense far removed from modern life.
I had stumbled and crawled my way through survival until I adapted somehow.
If I let my guard down, my head would be off in an instant, so where would I have found the leisure to adapt slowly?
Thanks to that, I’d heard countless times that the girl acted far too much like a boy.
“Thinking back on it, I guess I really did die then?”
Was it a car accident? Maybe I’d been hit by a truck.
What was it again—there was that saying that if a truck hit you, you’d be reincarnated in another world.
It had only been a meme, a joke imported from another country, but after ending up reincarnated like this, I found myself having the absurd thought that maybe those who knew the truth had been pioneers all along.
“It’s not like I ever felt especially homesick.”
Maybe because life had started to have a little breathing room, I’d been thinking about my old world more often lately.
“I want fried chicken.”
Of all things, food was what I thought about the most.
The food here wasn’t bad, exactly, but I’d gotten used to artificial, strong flavors, and that was what I missed…
Even though this body probably had never once eaten anything like that.
Was this some kind of memory from the soul…?
Still, dimensional beasts had proven that other dimensions existed, but crossing between them was another matter entirely.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t just take a packed order of fried chicken from Earth and come back to the Silia world to gnaw on a drumstick.
If there were a way, I’d try it immediately.
Do your job, mages.
“…Should I at least try?”
I didn’t mean crossing dimensions.
I had no idea how to do that, and there was no guarantee I’d even arrive on Earth if I tried, so that was impossible.
Maybe when I was an old granny with white hair and wrinkles, I’d think about it again.
So instead, I’d make it myself…!
I hated bothersome things with a passion, but fried chicken was a different story.
Besides, I was already living tucked away in the mountains, doing nothing with my time anyway. From today on, my goal was to recreate the taste of fried chicken.
“I think there was a cockatrice around here somewhere.”
A monster that looked like a mix between a chicken and a reptile: a cockatrice.
According to people who had eaten it, it tasted similar to chicken, if not even better, so it should be fine to use, right?
Then the most important part—the chicken—was secured.
“Flour, oil, salt, milk, eggs….”
What else was there?
Counting off the ingredients I could remember one by one, I prepared to head down the mountain.
I couldn’t get the rest from the mountain, if I could even get the chicken there, so it was time to make a rare trip down to the village.
“…Ah.”
As I wrapped myself in my worn cape, what had happened earlier came back to me and my hand hesitated.
I hadn’t expected anyone to come this far, and I also hadn’t expected someone to touch the sword in front of the grave, so my reaction had been a bit slow.
It was annoying when I thought about it, but the guy was dead anyway, so what was the point of getting angry?
“It should be fine, right?”
I was a little worried that some similar disaster might happen while I was gone, but…
This place didn’t even have a proper path leading up to it. There was no way anyone would come again, right?
If they had, I wouldn’t have gone a year and a half without seeing a single person.
Even so, I couldn’t shake the feeling, and after hesitating for a long while in front of the grave…
“…I’ll be back.”
With a light pink cape draped over my head, I forced my reluctant feet to move.
Come back safely.
Though there was no reason it should have happened.
The wind blowing past seemed to be telling me to return well.
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