A Frog in a Well Never Realizes It's Trapped Until It Sees Beyond
The hundred-thousand-subscriber event I had poured everything into planning—Nia's OX Quiz—was the product of long hours spent locked in thought with Visk, and we had managed to turn it into something genuinely spectacular.
Roughly two weeks had passed since the day that event, which boldly offered Ooparts as prizes, wrapped up without a hitch.
Just two weeks. Barely enough time for a seed buried in the dirt to push its way back into the world, and yet the changes that had overtaken me in that short span were far from small.
For one thing, my subscriber count had climbed by about a hundred thousand. Apparently my outrageous event had spread through various communities, producing a surge so steep it was hard to believe.
But Visk shut down my fussing in a single breath, insisting the growth wasn't all that surprising.
‘Nia’s streams have way too many parts that don’t match the existing data. No—from the start, a stream that always draws nearly six thousand viewers somehow sitting at only sixty or seventy thousand subscribers was a phenomenon that never made any sense to begin with…!’
Summarizing her words roughly: my stream had a viewer count completely out of proportion to its rather meager subscriber numbers. And because that viewer count had only grown further after the event, even gaining a mere hundred thousand subscribers still left the balance skewed, she explained.
Of course, any streamer who suddenly blows up tends to carry a bit of a bubble that eventually pops… but given how unique my stream concept was, she said there was almost no worry of that happening.
To dump Ooparts the way I did, even the richest person in the world would be hard-pressed, or something like that? Truly good news. That meant no one would be stealing my pie.
Anyway, this dramatic shift didn't affect only the channel's growth. Twice as many viewers meant the chat was that much more active too…
In other words, it meant the average CP gains had increased to a degree that couldn't even be compared to before.
‘On stream days I rake in close to four hundred thousand CP. If this keeps up, I won’t have to worry at all about the maintenance costs for the things I’ve set up in the Data Trash Heap.’
For reference, during the hundred-thousand-subscriber event that set a new peak-viewer record, nearly twenty thousand people had fired off three hundred thirty thousand chat messages over about three and a half hours, letting me earn 1.7 million CP.
An overwhelming inflation made possible only because people had chatted so enthusiastically in the heat of the event.
Still, with that much CP, I couldn't help wondering if I might be able to revive at least one of Nia's videos I had never experienced… but I somehow managed to resist that sweet temptation and had no choice but to pour everything left after the Data Trash Heap maintenance costs into LP and EP.
In a situation where some dangerous Predator Species could suddenly come after my life at any moment, having the means to protect my own body was more important than anything else.
Anyway, those were the changes of these two weeks.
The streams were sailing smoothly, the Virtual Beasts that occasionally showed up had become easier to handle as my physical abilities improved, and the territory I had secured inside the Data Trash Heap was steadily expanding.
At this rate I might even be able to build a theme park here someday—that was the kind of smooth growth it was. But perhaps because everything had been progressing so easily without a single failure…
A gap had opened in my heart, and I had let my guard down. Today, I made a fatally critical mistake.
“Haa, haa….”
My arms, clutching the Scissors Blade tightly to my chest, trembled. Was it fatigue, or fear?
But even though something sharp had sliced my thigh, my legs showed no sign of stopping. No—I couldn't stop.
I instinctively knew that if I came to a halt right here, it would lead straight to death.
Kiiiruk! Kiiik!
A bizarre sound like sharp metal chunks grinding against each other echoed from that thick, dark forest.
At the same time came a vicious noise of things breaking and crushing, along with a vibration drawing closer.
From that rough din and the clear, distinct sensation, I couldn't help but realize.
That thing was coming for me.
‘How did it come to this?’
Because I had grown day by day—yesterday more than the day before, tomorrow more than today—to the point I could feel it myself, I had grown arrogant.
The tattered Virtual Beasts that came looking for my territory whenever I forgot about them had thoroughly misled me.
I wasn't that strong a being in this Abyss, and the ones that came to me were the losers who had fallen all the way to the bottom after losing every competition that took place here.
My stupid head only managed to notice once the blade was pressed right up against my throat.
‘I’m still… weak!’
I had no choice but to bite my lip hard enough to draw blood and admit that fact.
Then a question naturally arose.
Why was I running full tilt from something, and what kind of place was this forest I was wandering through…?
To know that, I had to rewind time a little.
Back to about four hours earlier, when I was saying goodbye to Noise and telling her I was heading out.
“Haaap!”
Seogeok.
A nutcracker doll with half its face melted cleanly split in two under my sword strike—a refreshing clean cut that looked like something out of a picture.
Kkeuk. Gik…. Gigik….
Then the doll began to spit out the data it had been holding inside and slowly extinguish the fire of its life.
I carefully watched until its movements completely stopped, and once I was sure it had fully ceased, I slowly approached the corpse.
“Hmm…. About this much, I guess.”
Tuk-tuk.
I carefully poked the completely lifeless Virtual Beast with the edge of the Scissors Blade, then kicked the severed parts away with the tip of my shoe to prevent any possible resurrection.
After leaning the Scissors Blade against a nearby wall, I carefully lifted the severed section with my hands.
“…A dud this time, huh. Haa. So not every Virtual Beast has good data.”
The data a Virtual Beast had eaten and made part of its body wasn't something you could identify just by looking with your two eyes, but there were still things you could tell.
The cleaner the interior and the sturdier the frame, the better the quality of data the Virtual Beast held.
And if the inside was messy like it had been stuffed with sand or paper, it held low-quality data.
This nutcracker doll was completely the latter. Seeing dusty data trickle out of the cut body made it obvious it had fattened itself up by eating a ton of bad data.
In other words, this hunt was a total bust. Decrypting this kind of data wouldn't yield anything meaningful. The data would be fragmented like sand.
“Umm, looks like I’ve pretty much cleared out all the trash mountains around here, so if I want to find Ooparts I’ll have to go a bit farther out….”
I couldn't help scratching my head with a somewhat troubled expression.
When I cleared one of those trash mountains that required craning my neck to see the top, only three or four intact Ooparts would come out of it at best.
Of course, since I was expanding my territory and clearing obstacles in the way, thinking of it as securing land while picking up Ooparts on the side didn't feel that bad, but the efficiency was honestly pretty terrible.
So lately I had been getting a lot of my Ooparts supply by gutting the Virtual Beasts that occasionally came by and decrypting their insides….
‘Lately all the Virtual Beasts that show up are like this. Makes content sourcing tough.’
It wasn't a huge problem right now. I had plenty of saved Ooparts, and if things got really bad I could just force a bunch of minor Ooparts together into one whole piece of content.
But if this situation dragged on for a month or two long-term, it would inevitably lead to material exhaustion. Coming up with new methods was always a headache.
So let's think of a solution in advance. If I waited until then to try and figure something out, I might run out of time.
Having finished that thought, I set the useless nutcracker doll corpse down somewhere suitable, picked up the Scissors Blade again, and headed toward the shelter.
If I had been alone, it would have been hard to figure out the right approach, but fortunately I had someone by my side who was like a walking encyclopedia when it came to the Abyss.
‘Maybe I should consult with Noise a bit?’
The girl who had no memories of herself but still retained knowledge of the Abyss—Noise.
If I talked this situation over with her, maybe a decent method would come out of it.
And even if she said she didn't know, that was fine.
I still had plenty of free time, and I could just keep bashing my head against the wall until I found a way.