When Setting Out on an Adventure, Prepare Thoroughly for a Safe Return
I may have mentioned this before, but I absolutely hated being scared.
Not just the ordinary "I don't like horror movies or scary games" kind of dislike. Jump-scare levels of no immunity — the kind where something popping out beside me would send me leaping clean off the floor.
And among the things that truly terrified me…
…was any situation that forced me to walk straight into pitch-black darkness I couldn't see into.
"Urgh…."
I clenched the doorknob right in front of me, a miserable little sound escaping my throat.
A thin front door. One slight twist of the wrist and it would open without resistance.
But my hand might as well have turned to stone. I couldn't bring myself to open it.
"I-I don't wanna open it…."
Alright, fine — I'll be honest. I was terrified of opening this door.
That bottomless darkness I'd seen two weeks ago kept looping through my head, and I never wanted to face that sight again.
"…Still. No choice. Everything's for the next step… so!"
Even with that fear clawing at me, I had to open this door. Simply freezing in place would mean throwing away every possibility waiting on the other side — and that was far too wasteful.
Even if those possibilities were still only possibilities.
So just a little courage. I wasn't going to die, right?
"Uwoooooh!"
I squeezed my eyes shut, let out a battle cry, and flung the door open.
The door swung outward as smoothly and without resistance as it had the first time.
…I still hadn't opened my eyes.
But opening it didn't seem to have triggered any catastrophe. The surroundings were perfectly quiet.
"Mm…. Nothing… happening?"
I cracked my eyelids open and muttered the words.
Apparently the nightmare scenario of some monster or ghost greeting me with a horrific shriek the moment I stepped out had been pure imagination.
Thank god.
"W-well, anyway. That darkness still makes my chest seize up just looking at it. But at least I don't feel like I have to slam the door and run for my life this time…."
Looking at it was still a little much, but I could observe the situation with some composure. Compared to the panicked mess who'd slammed the door and fled last time, it was almost like I'd become a different person.
So had I changed? No.
Had the old me just been overreacting? No, not that either.
There had to be some concrete difference between then and now that was giving me the strength to hold the fear down.
"…Ah. Wait — is internet attention not limited to just the Creation ability?"
That rang a bell. The decisive difference between past me and present me.
It was the stream I'd just finished, and the sheer volume of attention from countless people that stream had brought me.
People's attention… chat messages and comments give me the energy that fuels Creation. But what if that energy isn't limited to the ability alone?
If drawing people's attention affected me directly — if I myself had become stronger than before…
Then not feeling the same crushing fear as last time was entirely plausible.
Still, that was only a hypothesis, not a proven causal link. Something to think through more carefully later.
"Anyway. Whoa…. What's going on with the floor? Is the house floating in midair?"
Having sorted my thoughts, I pressed myself almost flush against the doorway and edged closer. Peeking my head outside, I realized there was no floor beyond the threshold of the entrance.
Like a trap designed so that one careless step out the door would send you plummeting straight down.
For there to be no floor immediately outside, only two possibilities made sense: either the house itself was floating in the air, or it was fixed in place from above.
…Thinking about those two, it's probably the latter. This place has physics roughly similar to reality. Still, I can't say for sure without checking with my own eyes.
I turned my head carefully and confirmed that the outside was even darker than expected — not a single thread of light, just deep, absolute darkness.
No way to tell how far down it went, or what the surroundings even looked like.
In that case… I needed something that could serve as a light source.
I stepped back inside the entrance, sat down in the hallway, and turned the problem over in my head.
A flashlight would be ideal, but I honestly don't know how a flashlight is built. So — candles. I've made them myself a few times. Won't cost much CP either.
The energy consumed by Creation, drawn from comments and chat. I'd loosely named that something-like-energy Creative Points — CP.
Lately, prepping for streams, I'd been throwing material Creation around so recklessly that I figured tracking the numbers carefully would cut down on the waste.
If I count one comment on a post as roughly 10 CP, the math stays manageable.
For reference, the three thousand-odd comments I'd earned over the past three days through Nia's viral push had given me about 30,000 CP. But I'd blown all of that on cameras, outfits, and production prep I barely understood the structure of.
What I had left was the 150,000 CP from roughly thirty thousand chat messages during today's stream.
If I reinvest about 100,000 of that into better cameras, mics, and gear… that leaves me around 50,000 CP to spend freely.
And if making a flashlight I didn't understand cost, say, 10,000 CP…
Then cheap candles — which I actually knew how to make, so only about 50 CP each even if the quality was lower — were a far better deal.
Candlelight or flashlight, either way I'd be able to see. And with no idea what might happen, I wanted a healthy CP buffer.
"Good thing I took that candle-making class in college~ I sighed through the whole thing at the time, but still."
I exhaled in relief and Created five ugly cheap candles and a box of matches. For good measure, I also Created a rope to secure myself with, just in case.
Cost: five candles at 250 CP, a matchbox at 100 CP, three meters of cheap rope at 1,000 CP — 1,350 CP total. Still plenty of room.
"Rope gets tied tight to the bathroom doorknob…. Okay. H-here we go!"
Gulp.
The tension climbed so high my jaw went numb, and I swallowed hard.
But it was fine. I'd even prepared a rope in case something went wrong. Cheap-looking material or not, I knew it was decently strong — nothing as dangerous as I was imagining would happen.
"…It won't happen, right?"
I muttered it like a prayer, struck a match, and carefully transferred the flame to a candle.
Then, holding the weakly burning candle, I eased the light out through the doorway.
No wind. …Though I'm not sure a virtual world even has wind.
The unwavering candle flame told me there was no breeze. Not particularly useful information right now, though.
So I lifted the steadily burning candle a little higher.
"Ah — I can see it. The ceiling's right above. So it really is jammed into the ceiling upside-down."
What I saw immediately was that the outer wall of the studio apartment connected directly to the ceiling of this dark space.
Given that the underside of the room was completely empty, it was a bizarre structure — as if a giant had taken the house in one massive hand and driven it upward into the ceiling.
I didn't know the first thing about architecture, but how this thing was supporting its own weight was a mystery.
Thud.
I jammed one candle horizontally into the wall to fix it in place, then leaned out with another candle and looked down beneath the studio floor.
"Clean. I at least expected some kind of support pillar."
The view directly under the studio was even stranger than above. No load-bearing supports of any kind — just a smooth concrete surface waiting for me.
Utterly unreal. The kind of nonsensical structure you'd only see in a game.
My lips pulled into a natural triangle of confusion.
"Should I stick a candle down here too for now?"
Thud.
I fixed the base of a candle into the lower wall corner, lit a fresh one, and took a wide look around.
If this was all there was, I was in trouble. I couldn't exactly drop into a floor so deep I couldn't see the bottom.
So I scanned the surroundings hard, desperately hoping something — anything — would catch my eye…
…and finally noticed a faint shape at the edge of my vision.
"…Ah! Ground!"
Amazingly, far off on a diagonal, what I could make out was clearly a scrap-metal heap that looked solid enough to stand on.
The surface was uneven, so it wasn't flat ground — but the way something continued behind it like a shadow made it clear there was something in that direction.
Rope length…. Nowhere near enough. That distance has to be at least twenty meters.
I checked the rope secured firmly around my waist. The length wasn't generous — which made sense, since I'd only tied it so I wouldn't fall in the first place.
So if I wanted to head that way…
I was going to need to prepare thoroughly, so I could come back safe.