Everyone Can Manage This Much, Right?
Anyone should be able to manage at least this much, right?
“Your ID?”
I tried to move my hand to press one of the two buttons floating before my eyes.
“Oh.”
But the cursor moved naturally at the mere thought, without me having to lift a finger, and I couldn't hide my astonishment.
Virtual reality or not, I'd only just entered the machine—how was it already responding to my thoughts alone?
It almost felt... real.
“...Real?”
I swallowed hard.
Come on, there's no way it's actually real.
I tossed my stray thoughts far away and stared at the two buttons.
If this was a fresh start, the blue button.
If I already had an ID, the red one.
“I don't... have one, do I?”
I had never played the game before. Having an ID would've been stranger than not having one.
I pressed the blue button with nothing but a thought.
As the cursor clicked it, the button gave a slight depression, and a bluish veil began to spread over my entire body.
Welcome to Devil of Angel.
Composing starting data… Verifying data.
Assembling avatar… Assembly complete.
Entering Tutorial Mode.
“Uweh.”
Somewhere along the way, I was standing in a field of grass.
With the rustle of blades beneath my feet, I could see tiny stalks of grass sprouting up between my utterly spotless toes.
A cool breeze blew, and somewhere in the distance came the chirping of birds.
“Whoa… this is virtual reality?”
Didn't this feel far too real?
[Link Avatar]
◈ Objective: Confirm your appearance.
🎁 Reward: 10 EXP
Customizing?
Had I ever decorated an avatar at some point?
It didn't feel like I'd done anything of the sort.
In the very center of the grassy field stood a full-length mirror at least fifty centimeters taller than I was.
An orange holographic arrow pointed the way.
When I followed it, my reflection appeared along with a quest completion message.
“...It's just me.”
Lily Elbrit.
The Saintess of the Small Village, with her blue hair and sapphire eyes, was standing right there.
Still as huge as ever.
The me in the mirror was dressed in a saintess's garb.
White cloth, threaded throughout with slender bands of sky blue symbolizing the Celestials.
The only difference from the past was that while the long, skirt-like garment used to reach all the way down to my ankles, the one now was rather form-fitting.
At this length, it wouldn't get in the way of moving around, at least.
[First Words]
◈ Objective: Speak to the farmer ahead.
🎁 Reward: 20 EXP
A new space draped itself over the one that had held nothing but grass.
Before I knew it, a dirt path had been carved into one stretch of the field, and from beyond it came yet another gust of wind.
The orange arrow appeared once more.
Walking slowly along the dirt path, I spotted a farmer tending a paddy riddled with holes.
An old man brandishing a sickle as he pounded his aching back... or a farmer who was close enough to it.
“Hello there.”
“Ah, it's been a while since an outsider came by… hrm. Say, wouldn't you mind giving me a hand?”
[The Farmer's Plea]
◈ Objective: Grant the farmer's request.
🎁 Reward: 30 EXP, an old sword gathering dust in the storage shed
...Out of nowhere?
Receiving requests was nothing new to me, but it had been a long time since anyone asked me for help so bluntly, without a shred of preamble.
“What seems to be the trouble?”
“I've got my crops, see, and—damn these boars, they've gone and torn my fields to shreds. Would you go cull a few of those wild boars for me?”
“...Sure.”
“Bless you! There's an old sword of mine from way back in that shed over there—use that to take care of them!”
The farmer thanked me over and over.
I gave a vague nod and headed for the dilapidated shed.
Still, being thanked for something was a nice feeling, as ever.
You call this a sword?
Should I have taken a closer look when I first saw the old shed?
What lay inside it was, indeed, an old sword.
An old sword of the sort that carried no grade at all—a lump of scrap metal that seemed fit only for the discard pile.
Sell the blade for scrap iron and you'd be lucky to get pocket change for it.
Half-hoping I'd been wrong, I rummaged through the entire shed, but nothing that could reasonably be called a weapon turned up.
For a moment I found myself wanting a refund on that earlier gratitude, but I held it in for now.
This was a game, after all.
Not reality—a game. All I had to do was follow the tutorial's lead.
Because this wasn't reality. It was a game.
“...Logout!”
My mind was suddenly seized by an unease I couldn't name, and I called for logout at once.
Saving data… Proceeding with logout.
The blue veil parted, and I lifted myself out of the capsule.
I had returned to reality.
Feeling over my face and body with trembling hands, I hurried into the bathroom.
Lily stared back from the mirror—smiling faintly, yet somehow frozen stiff.
“...So it really is a game.”
Thankfully, this time I hadn't been possessed by anything.
Maybe I could live a little more at ease after all.
Lily smiled brightly once more.
I returned to the game.
Following the arrow's guidance, I made my way toward the boar territory.
A verdant forest, now rather the worse for wear.
Nearly every tree bore the marks of some kind of collision, and half-eaten crops lay scattered here and there across the ground.
When I pushed deeper into the woods, I found them—brown-furred boars, snuffling about.
Each one was so massive that it easily doubled my size.
Not that I'm exactly tall.
[Cull the Boars]
◈ Objective: Dispose of 3 wild boars.
🎁 Reward: 50 EXP, 50 Silver
The moment I closed within a certain distance, one of the boars let out a low growl and came lumbering toward me.
When I moved, it broke into an even faster run.
I raised the rusty old scrap of iron. No—the sword.
I was never much of a swordsman.
I'd always preferred a long spear for its reach, or a great hammer whenever raw, crushing force was called for.
REEEAAARGH!
“Hmm.”
That said, being out of practice with a sword didn't mean I couldn't use one.
From the moment I inherited the blood of the Celestials, every cold weapon in existence came with a meaningful bonus in my hands.
Much in the way that demons are, by birth, masters of every school of magic.
The boar charged in a dead-straight line, and I slipped aside by the barest margin.
Even as I dodged, I set the rusted old blade in its path and poured my full strength into it.
Shhhkl! The boar carved through, spraying a arc of crimson, sliced cleanly in two.
Had I lacked the strength and merely planted the sword in its path like that, the blade would have been knocked clean out of my hands, or buried itself hopelessly in that tough hide and been lost for good.
But I had strength to spare.
If the demons were a race of mages fluent in even the grandest of spells,
then the Celestials were a race whose raw physical might was simply overwhelming.
...Then why was my strength only now kicking in?
“Huh?”
The question came too late, and I stood there in a daze as I retrieved the sword.
The boar had died mid-charge, tumbling head over heels into the dirt.
Its blood ran green and its innards were nowhere to be seen—apparently a side effect of it being a game.
Unlike the corpses I remembered, the boar's body wasn't particularly gruesome at all.
Definitely a game, then.
I poked at the carcass idly with the tip of my sword, then turned to face the remaining two.
The boars showed far less of the fight they'd had a moment ago.
Did even boars in a game feel fear?
Out in the real world, they certainly had.
Sword raised, I charged in.
With nowhere to retreat, the two boars must have decided they had nothing to lose, and they attacked in unison.
Until now, the reason I'd been dodging attacks at all was my assumption that this body performed on par with an ordinary Earthling's.
But if that wasn't the case?
Then there was no reason whatsoever to keep dodging while I attacked.
WHAM!
Sword met tusk. The boar's tusks struck the old blade and shattered with a sharp crack.
The boar's body was just slightly heavy, that was all.
So it hadn't fully come back to me, after all.
Right now, I was lamenting the shortfall—but had any Devil of Angel player witnessed this scene, they'd have leapt out of their seats demanding to know what nonsense I was spouting.
Boar hunting was, in the end, a device meant to teach new players the danger of early-game monsters and the existence of 'death'.
Under normal circumstances, a level 1 average player could never kill a boar, and after dying they'd be sent back to the farmer for another quest.
Whereupon the farmer would apologize for the misunderstanding and hand over far better swords and armor.
But a player carrying the blood of the Celestials—the most absurdly broken race in history—had just hunted down monsters of level 10 and above armed with nothing but a lump of scrap iron.
The brief contest of strength between a frail young woman with an old sword and a massive boar ended in the frail young woman's victory.
The old blade cleaved the first boar clean in two and, flowing like water, cut down the second as well.
It had aimed for my back mid-clash, apparently thinking I was struggling—useless against someone who had marked its position long before it moved.
Before I knew it, three boar corpses lay before my eyes.
“Won, huh?”
I retrieved my sword with a strange sense of emptiness.
Even so, the fight raised no real questions in my mind.
Most tutorials were, by design, a stage for teaching the fundamentals of combat.
A way to introduce battle in terms anyone could grasp.
It surely wouldn't stay this easy forever, but at this level, I could win without breaking a sweat.
Anyone should be able to manage at least this much, right?
Smiling, I headed back toward the farmer.
“What the... is this?”
It was at that very moment that Lee Ji-na (27), an employee of Nutri Company enjoying her salary-lupin session under the noble pretext of a 'user inspection', watched the coffee in her mouth trickle slowly down her chin.
“Assistant Manager! You've got to see this!”
