Strongly Resolving Not to Make Mistakes Only Makes You More Conscious of Them
Aside from the light bulbs and flashlights I'd created myself, this was only the second external light source I'd felt since the subway station.
I blinked, staring blankly at the sunlight seeping gently through the blue-green leaves, then carefully started walking toward the tree roots from which the light was spilling.
Light. A light so bright and warm that no light bulb or flashlight could ever compare.
If anyone had been watching me just then, they might have said I looked exactly like a moth drawn to a flame.
Because right now, I was walking toward those tree roots with the vacant expression of someone whose brain had completely short-circuited.
But it wasn't as if I was approaching this thoroughly suspicious tree root without any caution at all. If anything, it was precisely the opposite.
Even as I drew closer, I was ratcheting up my tension, gripping the Scissors Blade's hilt so hard that my hand had gone completely white and bloodless.
If something suddenly lunged out at me, I was ready to mutter "I knew it" and swing the Scissors Blade without a shred of mercy.
Ambush attacks were only truly threatening when you didn't see them coming. The moment you were even slightly aware of the possibility, their effectiveness dropped off exponentially.
How long has it been since I last felt sunlight?
But even while staying conscious of a potential ambush, a human being was still a creature that couldn't help but be drawn by instinct.
The sunlight and warmth and the scent of grass — things I could never experience in the Data Trash Heap — were stimulating my brain, pulling me forward...
I only managed to stop myself once I'd reached the point where taking even one more step would mean there was no turning back.
"...A forest, huh. No matter how you look at it, this is a Delic."
Beyond the hollow of those tree roots — which had become a kind of doorway — a forest vista was laid out before me with startling clarity.
The trees and grass, and the solid earth beneath them, seemed to glitter with a vividness that was almost deliberately seductive.
Noise had told me that Virtual Beasts almost never left a Delic unless something extraordinary happened.
Standing face-to-face with one now, I understood with absolute certainty that she hadn't been exaggerating in the slightest.
If I had to put it into a metaphor — if the Data Trash Heap was outer space, then a Delic was a planet. Simply breathing the air on the other side made the difference in environment feel dramatic.
...Thinking back on what Noise said, Delics themselves are rarely dangerous. Maybe I should go in and take a look.
I stood in front of the tree roots for a long while, deliberating, then finally pulled a rope from the bag on my back and secured it firmly to a nearby scrap-metal pile.
Naturally, since I'd prepared it in advance, this wasn't an ordinary rope.
I'd spent a fair amount of CP on special treatments so it could endure the Abyss's environment for a long time — a custom rope, if that makes it easier to understand.
How many times had this rope saved me in that dark, stifling space? The first time I left my room for the outside world had been genuinely dangerous, after all.
In that sense, I'd developed a habit of always carrying tools like this whenever I went far afield. A good habit, at least.
"I'll tie one end around here for now... and secure the rest on the inside."
I'd already decided in my heart that I was going in, but that didn't mean I was free of worries.
What if I wandered in carelessly and the door closed behind me, trapping me forever? What if the environment was life-threatening? What if there were an absurd number of Predator Species? And so on.
I suppose people would call this an overthinking personality. I was the cowardly type to begin with — if I didn't prepare for every trouble I could anticipate, I'd get so nervous I couldn't even drink water.
Still, it was far better than filling my head with flowers and casually getting myself killed.
I clenched the rope tight.
Using a knotting method I'd seen once on OTube, I fixed one end of the rope to a standing scrap-metal pile, then skillfully looped the other end into a kind of lasso.
And then, just like a cowboy in a movie, I whirled the rope around and flung it hard toward the forest visible inside the tree roots!
Yes. First try success...! It caught on a branch of just the right thickness.
I carefully pulled the rope with just enough force that the snared branch wouldn't snap, confirmed that the end was firmly caught, then took a deep breath and settled my trembling heart.
Noise — who was, in matters of the Abyss, something of a senior to me — had told me that if I ever found a Delic, I should wedge something between the doorway.
A Delic's door had no ability to expel foreign objects, so that would keep it from closing. When I first heard it, I'd wondered what she was talking about — but as always, there was no such thing as useless information.
"Well then... shall we?"
Preparations were complete. I'd made a path back, and my condition was fine. All that remained was to find the courage.
The courage to take a step toward a completely unknown world.
Crunch, crunch.
I felt the sensation of my sturdy boots — tough enough to crush scrap metal — trampling the grass underfoot with satisfying firmness.
But as they say, the reed does not break in the wind. The grass was only slightly deformed; it still looked as if it were alive.
A sudden question rose from that phenomenon. I bent my knee for a moment and tore up a handful of the grass underfoot... and only then did I understand that this grass was a kind of deception.
...Yeah. Of course it's not alive. Just like the things I create — this is nothing more than a data fragment shaped like grass.
The grass wasn't a living organism that sustained itself through photosynthesis the way it had in the world I'd once lived in.
In this virtual world, it was an inorganic object no different from scrap metal, glass, or dust. This grass was nothing more than artificial turf that happened to look extremely realistic.
Which meant... the trees surrounding me on all sides were probably the same — data fragments, objects.
But if you thought about it carefully, that was only natural. The Abyss's environment was so harsh that survival required constantly devouring data from the outside.
There was no way trees and grass that were essentially fixed in place could maintain any real life of their own.
"...Then the sun floating up there is an artificially created light source too. The smell, the wind, the temperature — all of it objects, huh."
I muttered that to myself as I stood up and took a casual look around.
A dense forest overflowing with vitality, as if someone had cut out a European woodland and dropped it here whole. The sight was so realistic it almost went too far.
The idea that something like this had been artificially created sounded more absurd than the alternative.
But what was even more astonishing was that this was one of the servers discarded from the upper layers of the virtual world after it had outlived its usefulness.
According to internet sources and Noise's knowledge, there were thousands — hundreds of thousands — of servers like this in the upper virtual world.
I was finally starting to feel, in my bones, why the virtual world was called humanity's greatest masterpiece.
I marveled for a while at a level of virtual reality that somewhat exceeded common sense, then suddenly tilted my head upward and thought.
If everything in this Delic was not a real object but objects rendered inside a virtual reality... there was one thing I was curious about.
"Is there any chance I could take the sun with me?"
Even now, that artificial sun was pouring heat and light down through the gaps in the high-reaching leaves.
If I somehow managed to bring that back to the Data Trash Heap, wouldn't it be an absolute revolution?
...No. Even so, I couldn't exactly peel the sun off the sky. It might not even be a physical object — just a light-source effect.
Or it might radiate thousands or tens of thousands of degrees of heat, just like a real sun. In that case, far from moving it to the Data Trash Heap, my body would burn to a crisp first.
So I decided to abandon that idea immediately. Honestly, I was only saying it out loud — I had no idea how I'd even detach the thing. There was zero practicality to it.
My real interest wasn't in the sun floating high above, or the trees rising here and there. It was directed at this space itself.
This forest is so much more comfortable than the Data Trash Heap in every way. Which means... maybe I'll be able to find one.
In the process of absorbing all kinds of information about the Abyss from Noise, I'd learned that the entities existing here could be broadly divided into two categories.
First: Virtual Beasts. These had physical bodies, but no reason whatsoever — creatures that rampaged like animals.
From the Mimic and the crocodile I'd already encountered, to monsters shaped like giant mantises and others with no fixed form at all, chasing whatever prey happened to be in front of them.
If I hadn't had the Scissors Blade... I probably wouldn't have even considered wandering freely through an Abyss crawling with those powerful monsters.
Second were the Virtual Spirits. These were the exact opposite concept of Virtual Beasts.
In the Abyss, where you had to abandon either body or mind, these were the ones who discarded their bodies to preserve their reason. If I had to classify her, Noise before she received a body from me would fall into this category.
According to her explanation, because they'd abandoned their bodies, properly replenishing data was difficult. In other words, compared to Beasts, their lifespans were short.
That was why, until now, I'd never met a Virtual Spirit other than Noise in the Data Trash Heap. The fact that she'd survived long enough to reach me at all was pure luck — she'd managed to slip into the line connected to my computer.
But inside this Delic? Maybe I'd finally encounter a new Virtual Spirit I'd never been able to meet before.
Hm? What would I do if I met one? Is that even a question? It's simple...
I'd make them Worker Number Two after Noise! What else would there be?
Well... usually people keep their bodies and abandon their minds, not the other way around. I shouldn't get my hopes up too high.
All right, then. Time to stop daydreaming and get moving.
I'd promised Noise I'd be back today, so there was no reason — and no need — to dawdle any longer.
Fiddling with the gourd-shaped object hanging at my waist, I muttered that to myself, then lifted my head with a serious expression and properly took in the forest.
I would not let my guard down. No matter what happened, I would move forward carefully and with full seriousness.
A resolve that might not even hold — I repeated it to myself over and over.