The Gal Who's Kind to an Otaku (2)
Day 2 on the Uninhabited Island.
To be perfectly honest, with this many cadets crammed onto it, calling the place a "deserted island" was a joke in itself — but let's set that aside for now.
'Geum Taeyang and the main heroine, both absent on Day 2, huh...'
In all my hours of playing this game, I had never once seen this case. Of course, there were routes where the story started with Geum Taeyang and the main heroine left to their own devices. But in those, an NTR flag was always raised, and the whole thing got glossed over as "and then lots of things happened~" in some flashback-style montage. A playthrough where the two of them were purely, completely excluded from the story? This was the absolute first time.
So maybe that was why.
"The world's so peaceful, huh."
No chance of Geum Taeyang stumbling into a random encounter out of nowhere. No chance of him barging in screaming "I'm moving on my own!" to sabotage me. And whatever I did, whatever I was doing, came straight back to me as a reward.
"Doha~ I'm thirsty."
"Give me a second."
Not that I was entirely alone, of course. Kang Ari — the gyaru who should have been glued to Geum Taeyang's side — had instead glued herself to mine. I had no idea where or how the system logs had broken down, but as the saying goes, a veteran player greets new events with open arms. Besides, the things Ari asked for weren't impossibly difficult or anything.
"Here, eat this."
"Fruit? Where'd you pick it?"
"There's a grove."
"Whoa. That's the best. We got lucky, huh, Doha?"
When she was thirsty, roughly speaking.
"Doha. I'm hungry. Something other than fish."
"Then how about this?"
"Rabbit? Where'd you even get this?"
"Found a warren."
"Huh, huuh...?"
When she was hungry, roughly speaking.
"Doha. I want something sweeet~"
"Eat this."
"...A flower?"
"It's not poisonous. Try it."
"...!! What IS this?! It's the sweetest thing ever!"
And when she wanted something sweet, roughly speaking. After countless retries, I knew exactly where everything on this island was, so catering to Ari's demands was an easy job. And apparently, bit by bit, Ari had started seeing me as a useful, competent loser — these days she'd sidle up next to me and loop her arm through mine.
"I mean, Doha, you've never even held a girl's hand before, right?"
"Consider it an honor for a hopeless loser, and be grateful ♬"
"Mmmh... so even a loser's still a guy, huh? Stop sneaking glances and just touch already? Touch and I'll insta-out you, though ♪"
Kang Ari, having an absolute blast at my expense. Still, she never actually disrupted my work, and she didn't meddle for meddling's sake either — which put me a comfortable distance from the worst-case scenario I'd imagined.
'So Geum Taeyang was the root of all evil all along?'
Come to think of it, from what I remembered: Geum Taeyang would make some absurd demand, run himself ragged chasing it, get NTR'd blind in the meantime, then once the deed was done he'd trample everything by insisting that wasn't what he'd asked for — and Ari would be the one to nitpick him over it and rake him ever so gently across the coals. Flip it around, and with nobody left to nitpick and insult, it followed naturally that all her raking and teasing simply had no target anymore.
And so it looked like today, too, would pass without a single problem.
─Crackle
"Doha, fishing again? Real industrious for a loser, aren't you?"
"Everything I do has a purpose and a plan."
To be precise, it was more like scraping at a boil, but still. According to the original event script, the NTR flag sequence went: Geum Taeyang steps up, rescues the main heroine, and demands something lewd as his reward. Except for reasons unknown, Geum Taeyang and the main heroine had been unceremoniously OUT, and only the gyaru beside me had survived. Judging by the situation, neither of them seemed to have actually taken down any monsters — which meant a slim possibility had opened up.
'No harm in being prepared.'
I gutted the fish, skewered them on branches, and hung them over the campfire. I told Ari roughly that I was smoking them to eat tomorrow. Time drifted by, night fell, and deep into the small hours—
─GRRAAAWR...!
"Hieek...!?"
'Right on schedule.'
The Max-Level Bear event had begun.
The Max-Level Bear event. To be precise, that was a nickname coined by the users who played the game and posted info guides — in reality it was just a wild bear. But "wild bear" was the name only; its HP, physical defense, and magic defense were at a level where the guides told you not to fight it past the third playthrough, let alone the first. And on top of that, its movement speed was nothing to sneeze at either — you couldn't run from it, and even if you tried, it would simply run you down.
─GRRAAAWR!!
"Hey, loser...! Do something!"
"I get it, so quit grabbing me."
The Max-Level Bear was glaring straight at us, making no effort to hide it. Although — the bear's condition was a little off. Normally it should have had a glossy brown coat, every inch the undisputed apex of the forest, but patches of its fur were scorched and its face was singed black. And above all, that expression — a face radiating pure, unfiltered rage. There was nothing normal about it no matter where you looked.
Something must have happened on its way here— oh. Right.
'Because Geum Taeyang is OUT.'
Which meant, in reverse, that Geum Taeyang had attacked this bear at least once. Thanks to that, what had been a gamble just moments ago had been promoted to a sure thing.
I slowly backed toward the campfire, holding my spear in a practiced low guard. And then—
"Hup!"
─...Grraowr?
I hurled one of the fish I'd grilled to perfection straight at the bear. In the Max-Level Bear event specifically, grilled fish didn't register as a recovery item — it registered as a usable item. Which meant...
"Try it, try it~"
─Grruuugh...
The bear ate the fish. And naturally, eating it triggered a small HP recovery. In other words, I was currently feeding a heal to a Max-Level Bear I was supposed to be killing or fleeing from on sight.
"Doha, are you insane?"
"Hey, loser! No way that thing's getting full off a couple of fish!"
For the record, pulling this stunt tanks your affection rating hard. Feeding the bear out of nowhere — and like Ari said, it doesn't stop attacking just because it eats. Back in the day I once caught a hundred of the things and force-fed it every last one, and attack it still did.
But this, too, had its own build-up.
─Grruuugh...
"There we go, eat up now."
The more it ate, the more its HP and attack power climbed — but in exact proportion to those gains, its defense and speed went into a vertical nosedive. And whether it was a convention of turn-based games in general or a quirk specific to this one, monsters were hard-coded to always attack the protagonist first. So the sequence went: the buffed-up bear attacks, tears the player limb from limb, and then Geum Taeyang cuts down the newly empowered bear in a single strike — that breed of NTR development. Even if the protagonist somehow seized his one chance to strike, an E-rank nobody's attack couldn't possibly fell the bear — a rigging as thorough as anything the devs ever pulled.
But.
"Alright. You've eaten well, haven't you?"
─Grraowr?
I had a burlap sack that I'd been charging all night long since last evening. As I said — defense and speed dropped in exact proportion to the restored HP and boosted attack. The HP Geum Taeyang had par-cooked out of it had come flooding back, which meant that much of its defense and speed had drained away in turn.
"Open wide and eat THIS!"
───!??
I rammed the burlap sack straight down its gaping maw.
─ZZZAAAP!!!
─GRRAAAOOWR!??
"Going down nice and smooth, huh."
Total release of every ounce of power I'd stockpiled. More than that — I'd detonated it from the inside rather than the outside, so the bear couldn't offer a shred of resistance as it roasted rosy-pink from within. Finally, white steam curling off its hide, the Max-Level Bear keeled over forward with a thud.
'If I kill this thing, there's definitely a reward...'
Money — in other words, Credits handed out as an enrollment scholarship. And if I remembered right, a potion that raised your potential stat for "showing promise." Probably, anyway. Drinking that potion would almost certainly transfer the growth straight to Geum Taeyang as well, so naturally I wasn't touching it.
"First things first, I need to deal with this carcass..."
"...You... what... what are you...?"
"Hm? ...Oh."
Right, Ari was here. The blonde gyaru was staring blankly in my direction, one hand pressed hard against her chest, completely at a loss.
"That... that's not power an E-rank is supposed to have."
"That's why I charged it all day."
"Still, that's... even so, that's just..."
A expression full of confusion. She looked back and forth between the bear and me, and in the end, unable to manage a single word, she just hung her head low. Well, a situation was a situation, and what needed doing needed doing.
"Butchering it... is out of the question, though."
How had this been handled in the original, again? Given Geum Taeyang's personality, he'd never soil his own hands greasing up with bear fat. The main heroine obviously wasn't going to take up a knife and butcher anything. And Kang Ari wouldn't lift a finger either.
'Oh. It was me, wasn't it?'
Back then it had all been a click of a button, so I hadn't thought much of it — but in my memory, butchering the bear deleted a huge chunk of time in one go. How fast could a kid with no skills, no Aura, butchering a bear in order to catch one, possibly be anyway? Original accuracy if ever there was any — but having it become my reality made my head spin a little.
"We can't just leave it sitting here..."
"...Move. I'll do it."
"Huh? For real?"
"...If I leave it to you, it'll take all day."
Ari, her expression still impossible to read, walked up to the bear. She soon produced a dagger from inside her jacket and got to work, quick, deft strokes. It wasn't professional-grade butchering by any stretch, but it was more than enough for our immediate meal.
"Thanks. I'll grill it right—"
"Stay still."
"...?"
"...I'll grill it for you."
"???"
Had the girl eaten something bad? Ari, who had hovered in the background this whole time, was butchering before I could, and now she was threading meat onto branches to grill it over the fire. Bewildered by this completely unforeseen development, I suddenly remembered something.
'Beating the Max-Level Bear adds straight onto the affection stat, doesn't it?'
In the rare case where the player threaded the needle and managed to take down the Max-Level Bear together with Geum Taeyang, there was an event where the main heroine's affection rose alongside it. Right now, with neither the main heroine nor Geum Taeyang anywhere in the picture, the only fair reading was that pure blonde-gyaru affection had just gone up.
"Eat. I grilled this for you specially. Be maximally grateful."
"Thanks for the meal, Ari."
"!...A loser, of all people..."
Ari tore into the meat without another word. I ate my fill as well, then settled into a spot near the campfire and lay down. And a short while later—
─Tap tap tap tap
"You loser bastard... my hands feel that good, huh? Can't hold it in anymore, can you? It's fine. Let it all out ♥"
"Huaaahhh...!??"
Post-event HCG scenes were the unspoken rule of the land.