Goblin Hunt
A crowd of doctors came in, and one dull examination stretched into the next. Lee Anna stayed beside them the whole time, tears slipping down her face as she watched over me. They took turns drawing my blood, shining lights into my eyes, taking my blood pressure—test after test.
When the tedious work finally ended, the doctors went on explaining things to my sister. She nodded along with a grave look on her face, and only after every one of them had left did Anna come over to me.
"Arang... are you okay?"
She asked as slowly as she possibly could. Are you okay?
Okay. Was I okay? I didn't know. I had inherited every memory and every feeling that belonged to Arang, but the real Arang was dead.
"Arang...?"
She was about to cry again. I hurried to open my mouth.
"...Yeah."
The feelings Arang had left behind in my head wanted my sister not to grieve.
"Arang...! Th-thank goodness. R-really, thank goodness..."
Anna gathered me up and wept. Even if I was a little girl, how could she lift me so easily? Was she that strong? The thought had barely formed when I realized it all over again.
I had no arms or legs.
Right. Take away the arms and legs and your weight drops by nearly half.
On top of that, this body had lain in a hospital bed for a long time with its mind dead, and it was nothing but skin and bones. In practice I probably didn't even weigh forty-five pounds.
Maybe I had been lost in the thought too long. Anna set me down and asked, flustered.
"D-do you want to play a game? Should we start right now?"
Ah. Was it because I wasn't reacting at all? If I had still been my old self, I would have answered her somehow. Was it the merge with Arang, or was it simply that I hadn't spoken in so long? Either way, getting the words out was strangely hard.
"...No."
Once my sister calmed down, the first thing she did was talk to me.
With Arang's memories and feelings inside me, I could speak with her almost naturally. Naturally enough that I had started to think of Anna as unni—an older sister, the way a girl would say it—rather than noona, the word a boy would use. It still wouldn't stick to my tongue, but I figured time would take care of that.
Anyway, talking with her let me sort through the memories properly.
Arang seemed to have been deeply loved. A prosperous house, a harmonious family, and good people, every one of them. Under that family, she had lived a happy ordinary life.
"Thank you, Arang. For waking up again."
"...Yeah."
"Mom and Dad are on their way now, but I think it'll take a while."
"Ah..."
"Do you want to play the game until then?"
"...Yeah."
I turned my head and looked at the enormous machine sitting on my bed.
I had always thought a virtual-world Connector was nothing more than a choker, but the thing on my bed was the size of a refrigerator.
Searching the memories, I found that only five of these Connectors existed in the entire world. They were also called deathbed units. By blocking the nerves in the neck, they kept you from feeling pain, and even if something was wrong with your body they let someone like me move through virtual reality the way an ordinary person would. This machine, the culmination of the finest technology in the world, had been obtained for Arang alone.
Anna unni—no. Noona. My sister laid me down with care and fitted a device like an eye massager, wired to the Connector, over my eyes. Then she fastened a choker-style unit, the same kind as an ordinary Connector, around my neck.
Vision black as pitch turned, before I knew it, into a pure white space.
I had expected to drop straight into the game, but an empty white void greeted me instead. I was still wondering what this was when a hologram rose in front of me, crowded with countless game titles. At the very top, Legacy of Raid floated under recently played.
I tapped the Legacy of Raid title at once and launched it.
Before long I was back in the starter plaza, the same place where I had first come to my senses.
I sprinted for the plain I had visited only a little while ago. Strange. This was obviously a virtual world, and yet every time my stamina dropped, my breath grew short. They had implemented even that?
When my stamina hit its limit, my whole body began to tremble, as if it could not move another inch. I stopped.
Huh?
Even standing still, if I held my breath and refused to let it out, stamina didn't recover.
"Pwah!"
I exhaled, settled into the most comfortable posture a person can take, and steadied my breathing. Only then did stamina begin to fill.
Incredible.
This wasn't clicking away at a keyboard and mouse. Running on an actual body, breath going ragged—the whole thing made my heart pound.
Managing my stamina, I reached the plain. More people than before were out hunting goblins.
I headed for a stretch where the crowd was thinner and approached a goblin standing off by itself. Unlike last time, I drew the sword hung at my hip. I charged the goblin, which still hadn't noticed me.
Power rose from my feet and traveled all the way into my hands. The instant I meant to swing, a strange sensation seized my body, as if something were setting the direction and telling me to do it this way. I gave myself over to that current, and the sword sheared through the goblin's upper body.
10
The impact traveled from my fingertips through my whole body, enormous. And the number floating over the goblin's head was damage.
Anyone could see it was a shabby, pathetic number, but that wasn't what mattered now. Attacking a level-1 goblin—the simple, boring thing you do the moment a game begins—was a completely different kind of fun in virtual reality.
"Kieeeek!"
The goblin, not yet dead, swung a dagger at me.
Before I even registered it, my body reacted first and twisted at the waist. The attack missed by a hair.
It startled me. This was obviously a game in a virtual world, and still I had felt killing intent.
I stopped thinking and swung to kill the goblin in front of me. That strange sensation seized my body again, and when I yielded to it the sword crossed the goblin's neck.
16
The goblin's head flew off, broke into particles, and vanished. The damage was fifty percent off from before. Because I had cut the neck, a vital point, instead of the torso?
This was fun.
Sensations I had never felt, combat in a situation that might as well have been real—it was the thrill of the first time I had ever played a game. No. A bigger thrill than that.
How could hunting the level-1 goblins that show up the moment a game starts be this much fun?
There would be raids later, obviously. How fun would those raids be?
Arang had woken up. Arang was alive again.
When had it begun? Arang, who had always worn a bright face and made the whole family happy, fell ill.
We poured tremendous amounts of money into it, and still we couldn't stop the disease. In the end we had no choice but to amputate her arms and legs. If we didn't, Arang would die.
She had always been bright. Once the arms and legs were gone, once her body weakened and the pain set in, she lost that bright spark little by little, until at last she became a doll that gave no reaction at all.
Even doctors counted among the finest in the world gave up. There was no way to treat her in sight.
Time kept flowing with nothing we could do, and somewhere in the midst of it I learned about the virtual-reality Connector Arang was using now. Hoping she might recover even a little of who she used to be, I obtained one.
I had her try several games, but she did nothing at the starting point. She didn't so much as twitch a finger.
I was sunk in that grief when a friend contacted me. She said there was a game she had been enjoying lately, and asked if I wanted to try it too. I looked it up. It was a VRMMORPG that had become very famous recently—a game called Legacy of Raid.
On the off chance it might work, I installed the game on the Connector and forced a login. Sure enough, Arang simply stood there at the starting point.
I shook my head, stepped away to the bathroom, and came back to find that something had changed.
The screen that had shown her merely standing in the starter plaza had switched to a plain. A goblin stood there, and Arang was holding a sword.
She was moving. Arang was moving.
The moment I confirmed it, I called her name in a panic and hit the forced logout.
The instant I released the Connector, Arang turned her head and looked at me.
She hadn't moved in years. She looked at me—and then she screamed and fainted.
Doctors came and examined her.
The illness itself wasn't cured, but she had regained consciousness. Her senses were returning, and she was responding. Seeing that, it was certain this was a good thing.
The problem was that no one could say when she might worsen again, or how.
After the doctors left, I approached so I wouldn't startle her, and I tried to talk. Arang answered only in short replies—yeah, no—but that alone made me happier than I knew how to hold.
Because I was talking with Arang.
Partway through the conversation, I realized she wasn't focused on what we were saying at all. Her attention was somewhere else, and I understood that it was the game.
Mom and Dad would still be a while, so I asked Arang if she wanted to play. She nodded and said yeah.
Of everything she had said so far, that answer was the loudest. Of course, even that voice was very small.
Thinking about it, the reason Arang's mind had woken again was precisely the game called Legacy of Raid.
Before she could worsen, the first priority was letting her keep playing the game that had caught her interest. I fitted the Connector onto her.
I need to make it comfortable for Arang to play.