To Märchen, That Place Is Reality
The official release of Raider was not a perfect copy of the CBT build.
For one thing, the UI had shifted a little. Cleaner, you might say, or more refined — hard to pin down which. Either way, personally, I adored it.
Next came something called the base system. Plant a base, and the terrain around it opened onto your map; so long as you weren't in combat, you could warp back to it whenever you liked. A convenience feature, plain and simple. You could only set one, there was a cooldown on placing it again, and it vanished after twenty-four hours — drawbacks, sure. Even so, I could say with certainty it was a hundred times better than having nothing. A thousand.
And last.
"The Normal Parry window is definitely looser than it was in CBT. Perfect Parry, though... this window is seriously strict."
Parries now came in two flavors: Normal Parry and Perfect Parry. Put simply, Normal Parry was the old CBT parry with a more generous window and a nerfed parry limit and parry gauge, while Perfect Parry was that same CBT parry with a stricter window and a buffed limit and gauge. A statement of intent, most likely — ease the burden for phone players and anyone whose hands couldn't keep up, without letting the veterans slip away.
"Anyway, Small Fry A has served its purpose as my test subject, so I don't need it anymore..."
Its parry gauge had filled, leaving it vulnerable, and a few cuts were all it took. Small Fry A became my experience points. A satisfying result.
But the third-rate weapons, not yet properly steeped in the madness of the battlefield, were still whimpering their weak little complaints. I let out a long sigh and scowled.
With that, I seized the monitor the camera was mounted on and gave it a light shake, the way you'd grab someone by the shoulders and rattle them.
"...I've said enough. I trust the point has landed."
Having thus restored discipline among an unspecified number of Raider players, I took off running for the city again. A few wicked apostles did bar my path, of course, but not one of them managed so much as a scratch.
"Ah. Almost there."
If the story hadn't changed, the guards would seize me the moment I set foot in the city and throw me in a cell, and from there the quest to earn the recognition of that city's mayor, Catarina, would begin. In the CBT I'd been able to skip it, having already put down Karata's elite in advance.
Same route as last time, or a different one?
The hesitation didn't last.
"I'm curious whether the quest skips again, so I'll take the same route as before and go after Karata's elite."
And the otaku soul inside me was screaming. A powered-up protagonist casually crushing a once-mighty foe — tell me that doesn't hit like pure dopamine. I had to concede the point. Just picturing it set my chest ablaze. So, nearly at the city gates, I turned on my heel.
How far from the city had I gone?
I ignored the warning and pressed on, until—
"...Long time no see."
In the end, I met him anyway. Karata's elite, ambling along with an axe in each hand. The moment he spotted me, he leapt high, just as he had back then.
Back then, I had chosen a roll over a parry. But now there was Perfect Parry. With what Perfect Parry could do, if I knocked that attack aside, could I keep from hitting the parry limit? A high-risk, high-return choice. And a low-risk, low-return one.
The debate was short. There was no reason to shoulder the risk. I crossed parrying off the list.
The safest instant to dodge was the breath before both axes came crashing into the earth. But if I wanted to cram in even a little more damage, it had to be earlier than that — the axes needed to meet the ground in the heartbeat before my roll's invincibility frames ran out. It didn't feel impossible.
No. Losing didn't feel possible at all. The possibility of defeat did not exist, at least not inside my head, and it wasn't simply because I'd already fought him once and won. I wasn't the nobody I had been back then.
I had fought across the mountain field of Lord on the Punch. So I had experience in mountain warfare. I had fought in Water Gun Meltdown, using water itself as bullets. So I had experience in war upon the water. And I had waged battle in Witch and Tentacle Princess, riding a broom through aerial maneuvers. So I had experience in war in the sky. Yes. Unlike back then, I was a seasoned warrior who had been through the mountains, the water, and the air.
Composed, I slipped past his would-be finishing blow with ease. And I made my declaration.
...Objectively speaking, that line just now was kind of cool, wasn't it?
In the end, Karata's elite could not surpass a me who had grown through mountain, water, and sky. He couldn't even put a scratch on my armor.
I was basking in the afterglow a victor is owed when the donations suddenly erupted.
Apparently, people who had ignored the warning in hopes of skipping the quest, just as I had, were paying the price.
What was the right thing to say here.... Right. At a moment like this, there was really only one unwritten rule.
"Hmm... Is that all?"
If you're a Korean gamer, teabagging is basic literacy. Yes. Obviously.
It was absolutely not because I was nursing a grudge over the lukewarm reception to that earlier "...Slow."
Really.
"All right, elite's down, so I'll hustle on over to the city."
Keep wasting time here? Every second I wasted was a second stolen from heart-pounding gacha time. Adventure and exploration could wait until after I'd gathered some companions.
I made straight for the city, and the instant I arrived I was hauled off to prison. Not long after, the bespectacled heroine who served as mayor — Catarina — made her entrance. The moment I showed her the corpse of Karata's elite, the disbelief on her face turned to trust. Watching that, I nodded.
"Up to here, the story's unchanged."
From the moment the gacha window unlocked, though, something felt subtly off. In the CBT, unlocking that window had set me free. Now the window unlocked, and freedom still didn't come. The system dragged me to it by force and ordered a single pull. ...Don't tell me a five-star. Here?
With that thought, I spun the single pull, and the brilliant, many-colored rainbow that heralds a five-star——
"It's a four-star."
No rainbow burst forth.
...I mean, obviously a four-star is the law of the land here. Still. A person can hope.
The four-star the single pull gave me was the healer I'd used back in the CBT: Komyu.
I stared at the result screen in silence for a moment, then put a question to the viewers — specifically, the ones playing Raider while they watched.
"Does anyone else show up here?"
Unfortunately, the viewers didn't have the answer. The game's story, instead, quietly offered one.
"So the first single pull is locked to Komyu. ...But when do I actually get to gacha."
At any rate, seeing Komyu grow, Catarina put on a look of surprise. Lip service for the protagonist? The barest of basics. Lifting the hero up just enough not to overdo it — now that was the political touch you'd expect from the mayor of a city.
Lip service complete, she left me with word that she had something to give me, and that once the fatigue built up in my body eased I should come to her office whenever I pleased. Then she stepped out of the room.
And at last, I was free.
The very first thing I did, the instant that long-awaited freedom was mine—
"TIME TO WHALE!!!!"
—was slam the shop window open.