A Friend

It was not long before the field boss sank to its knees and toppled.

The body burst apart into particles, and the same enormous level-up fanfare I had heard after the Orc Chieftain rolled across the field. On the bare ground, where nothing at all should have remained, the field boss's one-handed sword lay waiting.

A drop!

I scurried over and checked the loot.

"Hah—!"

It looked a hundred times better than anything I had on. The field boss had actually dropped the one-handed sword it had been swinging.

"Whoa... a legendary. The Corrupted Adjudicator's Sword."

"Ah— thank you for the heals. Um... d-do you want it? Sh-should we auction it?"

It was an obviously delicious drop, and a one-handed sword besides, the first real hit of loot-dopamine I had tasted ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠in ages. I had been so drunk on it that I had forgotten Pink Berry was even there.

By rule, every drop a boss left behind went to auction among everyone who had cleared it. This time that meant Pink Berry and I would have to see who put up more gold. The problem was that every coin I owned had come from quests and trash mobs.

All I had on me was a measly 2,100 gold. What a level twenty earned and what a max-level player earned were worlds apart. In other words, this sword was not leaving with me.

But I was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a proper raid leader. We were auctioning it.

"Oh, it's fine. You can use it, Arang."

"H-huh...! R-really!? It's such a good sword...!"

"I don't need a sword."

"Ah... thank you!"

Pink Berry was an angel.

"In exchange..."

"...!?"

What was this? Why the dramatic pause?

Pink Berry squeezed her eyes shut, worked a menu with her right hand, and a window bloomed open in front of my face.

"Would you accept my friend request?"

"Is that really enough?"

A field boss was a level-synced raid. I knew the gear that came out of one was seriously good, and the drop rate was so low that a piece like this sold for a fortune. She was turning all of that down, and a friend request was enough?

What a strange player.

"Oh, and..."

You really do have to hear a person out to the last word. I braced for whatever terrifying favor was coming.

"Do you want to play with me...?"

"Together?"

"Yeah. Party up and hunt monsters, or take field bosses like this..."

"I just hit level 23 off that field boss, you know? You're max level. Isn't that a waste of your time?"

"There's level sync, so it's fine."

In Legacy of Raid, friends who partied together could use a system called level sync. Just like a field boss, everyone was pulled down to the level of the lowest party member.

It was a system you almost never needed, one whose entire reason for existing was a shrug and a why bother? And she meant to turn even that on, just to play with me?

"Why?"

"Ah... well... you look like you really enjoy the game..."

"Enjoy it? That's what games are for."

"Yeah. But... you seem like you truly love it..."

"Hmm..."

I could not begin to follow what Pink Berry was thinking. She wanted to party with a low-level like me, turn on level sync, and play together.

Was this one of those veterans who got a thrill out of cozying up to newbies? She seemed a little too timid for that, though.

"Okay."

"R-really!?"

"Yeah. But when do you usually play, Pink Berry?"

"Oh, I'm free whenever."

"Whenever?"

"Yeah. The thing is... I quit my job. I'm going to try Ryutube."

"Aha. So you came after me on purpose?"

"N-no, that's— I mean, ah..."

"Hehe. It's fine. I know exactly how famous I am right now. And it's not like I dislike you."

"Th-thank goodness..."

A level-sixty, max-level healer, and her play was genuinely solid. Shields at the right moments. Almost no overheal, so her aggro never spiked. And at the very end, that skill called Rescue had saved me when the recovery lag after a parry nearly got me killed. A very decent healer.

If a healer like that wanted to party with me, I had no real reason to refuse. I got a good healer. Pink Berry got material for Ryutube. Everybody won.

Lee Hayan, who went by the name Pink Berry, had been bullied by the other women at her company for no reason except that her chest was large.

They spread rumors about things she had never done. They stopped speaking to her. She ate alone. The stress piled up. It had been the same since she was small: ostracized for her chest, and then, through middle school, high school, and college, kept at a distance by people who insisted she went around seducing men, though she had done nothing of the sort.

Sick of that reality, Lee Hayan turned toward virtual worlds, and fell into Legacy of Raid.

She reached max level, grew close to a great many people, and even joined a raid group for the endgame. Legacy of Raid had been where she let go of the stress from work, until the raid she had been clearing with started talking about an offline meetup. Hayan had run with them for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a long time. She went, glad to be asked.

The problem came afterward.

All at once the men took an excessive interest in her. Raid members who barely spoke to her in the ordinary course of things began striking up conversations, and even after a raid ended they sent whispers and stuck to her with a stubborn, clinging persistence. Hayan had only wanted to enjoy the game. She turned them down, politely. Somewhere along the way, she became the raid's trash bitch.

Legacy of Raid, which she had played to bleed off stress, had itself become a mass of it.

She left the raid and tried to enjoy the game alone, but it no longer felt like fun. In the end, with the stress stacked layer on layer, Lee Hayan quit her job. Playing by herself was lonely, so she meant to start Ryutube.

That was when a rapidly rising Legacy of Raid video caught her eye.

She clicked it as if her hand had been carried there on a current. The video was a very small girl soloing a field boss.

Other people watched the girl's fighting. Hayan watched the girl's face.

That open, bright face was happier than anyone else's as she fought. The moment Hayan saw it, she felt envy. She wanted to play with that child. Maybe, if she did, she could find the fun she had lost.

Somehow, she met her. A girl whose nickname might as well have been her real name: Lee Arang.

Hayan had felt it in the video, but the girl really was tiny. In Legacy of Raid you could alter your appearance, though not by much. A third eye was out of the question. You could manage something on the order of real-world cosmetic surgery, and height and build could be nudged only slightly. No matter how far you shrank yourself, it came to about four inches off your height and twenty pounds off your weight. Which meant the little girl in front of her did not look so very different from the person she was in reality.

Swept along by the child, Hayan came back to herself and found that they were raiding a field boss together.

She had run raids. Seeing Arang's skill with her own two eyes, she startled so hard she nearly jumped.

She had already known about the solo clear of the Orc Chieftain. In person, the skill was real. Parries and dodges landed exactly where they needed to, and a damage dealer who ought to have died to a single blow from the boss held its aggro and carried the raid anyway. In the end, just the two of them brought down the Corrupted Adjudicator.

At an accomplishment she had not felt in a long time, a small smile found Hayan's mouth. Then she laughed, watching the little girl bounce in place and take off at a hop-hop run.

Playing with Arang is going to be so much fun...

And so Lee Hayan asked her to play together.

"Pink Berry, want to just drop the formal speech?"

"Ah— ah, okay."

"Then I'll just talk casual. It's gonna take me a long time to hit max level, though. You sure that's all right?"

I dropped the polite register first, so I could breathe. Counted in years, Pink Berry was much older than I was, but that did not matter inside a game. Friends were friends. Casual was easier.

"Um... yeah... I think it'll be more fun being with you, Arang. But, um..."

"Um?"

"Your nickname... don't tell me it's actually your real name?"

"Yeah. It is. I came to and found out I'd already made the character with it."

"I see..."

"Why Pink Berry, then?"

"I just like pink berries..."

"Figures. Want to go hunt, then?"

"...Yeah!"

"First, let's put on the weapon I just got."

Hoo. A sword that pulled a sound of awe out of me every time I looked at it.

If I equipped this, wouldn't everything up to max level die the moment I poked it? That might actually be a little less fun...

Still, I had earned it by killing the boss, so on it went. Why did a sword like this have no level requirement?

I had barely finished the thought, and barely finished equipping the drop, before I understood exactly why.

Of course.

The moment I equipped it, the stats adjusted to my level. Even so, it was far better than any weapon sitting at the same level as I was. The gap in raw stats was not enormous, but having an effect was what mattered. At full stacks, Attack and Defense climbed a full thirty percent.

"Yes! Let's go!"