Chapter 1: Hard Mode Clear
"Fuck. This is the last one. The real last one."
This was my hundredth attempt at the Hard Mode Demon King's Castle scenario — the Final Chapter. If I couldn't beat it this time, it was actually over. This goddamn game would let the world burn if you failed to kill the Demon King within a hundred tries.
A red dot blinked at the far edge of my right vision, the little telltale that I was live. And the number sitting next to that dot was a hundred thousand. There were bound to be staff in there somewhere. A stream this size was impossible not to monitor.
"You bastards...."
The virtual reality game was called Ero Ability Shooters. For a title that sounded like a B-movie, it had taken the world by storm — a revolutionary combat system, heroines whose reactions felt genuinely alive. The story was rock-solid, the fights were a blast, the girls were gorgeous, and since it was an eroge, you could have sex with them too. A perfect game, right?
Not for me, it wasn't.
As the name itself spelled out, the game's combat ran on one of two things: abilities, or guns. Naturally, every heroine event branched off those same two systems, and you brought the girls in as companions and let romance bloom from there.
And me?
In a twist of pure despair, the only thing I could use was a sword. I hadn't gotten to fuck a single heroine. I'd come all this way in involuntary solo mode.
Goddammit!
You think I hadn't tried beating it with abilities and guns? They just wouldn't aim. They wouldn't fucking aim. Glock, assault rifle, Fire Lance, Thunder Bolt — every shot veered sideways or sailed into the sky. So I had climbed all the way here with nothing but this game's secondary weapon: a two-handed sword.
My goal was to beat the Hard Mode final boss — the Demon King — with this one two-handed sword, and shove it in the staff's faces. Please. You can clear it with a sword. So put in some heroine interactions for it already.
"Yeah... fuck. I can do this. I can do this."
I closed my eyes. Every heroine sex scene from Ero Ability Shooters I'd ever watched on PornXXX flashed through my head. Just imagining it sent my willpower surging.
"Fuck! Sex!"
I roared it with everything I had, and slammed through the gates of the Demon King's Castle.
"Bring it on, you sons of bitches!"
"Hah...."
A hollow laugh slipped out of me on its own. Hard Mode, attempt one hundred. In the end I had cleared it with no companions, no gun, no ability. Just this one two-handed sword.
I was so happy I could barely stand it.
And what was making me happy, exactly? The money stacking up like crazy in the donation window? The achievement of being the first person to clear the Demon King's Castle with a sword?
No.
What had my chest pounding was the possibility — at last — that I might actually be allowed to do it.
"A paizuri from the busty American blonde...."
I murmured it under my breath, perfectly calm.
"A nursing handjob from the kind senpai..."
The words came low and heavy, packed with everything I actually meant.
"A blowjob from my tsundere childhood friend. Intense, secret creampie sex in the nurse's office....."
As the list went on and on, the chat window grew strangely solemn all by itself.
"I want it too... I want it too...."
When the last of my wishes had finally run out, I looked toward wherever in that chat an operator might be hiding, and said it with tears in my voice.
"I would like to have sex......"
I had died countless times clearing Normal Mode with a two-handed sword. Hard Mode had killed me even more. And in the end, I had done it. All of it, pointed at a single obsession.
"OPERATOR!!!!!!!!! GET OUT HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
I stared at the chat exploding up the screen and shouted again.
"OPERATOR!!! GET OUT HERE!!!! PATCH IT!!!"
The viewers fell in behind me, pouring on the firepower like they'd lost their minds.
And then, all at once, the chat just... stopped.
Not just the chat. The entire game world froze.
"Uh... huh?"
Is this a bug?
"Augh, this piece of shit game. It's glitching on me now too?"
Don't tell me the clear's going to get wiped.
The thought hit me like ice water.
"No, wait, I was streaming, so at least— urgh?!"
A flash.
In the frozen world, light burst open, and a phone booth popped into existence out of nowhere.
Rrrring!!!
And then the booth started ringing.
"I'm supposed to pick that up, right?"
Thrown by the sudden turn but shuffling forward anyway, I stepped into the booth and lifted the receiver.
"H-hello?"
"Ah~ hello there, Player~!"
The voice on the other end was bright, clear, and unmistakably a woman's.
"W-who is this?"
"Ah, yes~! Player, I'm one of the staff running this game — Operator1101!"
Thump.
My heart kicked. Ah... at last...
"Sex..."
"Pardon?!"
"Does this mean I can have sex now...."
"Uh... well, you see—?"
"Sex.. a nursing handjob... paizuri.... fellatio....."
My wishlist started spilling out all over again.
"H-hold on a second! Let me get my superiors on the liiine~!"
Click.
Her flustered voice cut off with the sound of a disconnect, and then the line connected again.
This time the voice was a deep, middle-aged man's.
"Finally... finally...."
The hand gripping the receiver trembled. A man's tears rolled down my face. And down below, something else swelled at the thought that it, too, would soon be shedding tears of burning passion.
"There's just one problem."
"What is it?"
Whatever the problem was, it wouldn't mean a thing to someone who had tried thousands of times just to get laid.
"We're broke."
"...Come again?"
Broke? What kind of nonsense was that? This was the number-one game in the world by revenue, and they were broke?
"Kh... how short are you?"
Fine. That could happen... Looking at a game that changed every single day with patch after patch and update after update, they might well have poured every last dollar back into it. This benevolent soul of mine would forgive them.
Then I could just chip in, couldn't I?
Ever since I'd started this game, my YouTube channel had blown up off the back of my two-handed-sword guides. Add up every donation I'd taken in from streaming and it was north of twenty million dollars. I spent all day in this game anyway — it wasn't like I had anywhere to spend the money. If they would just patch it, I could dump my entire digital fortune into it on the spot. That's how serious I was.
"No. Put it in the language of your world and we're out of money. Put it in ours, and we're short on Causality."
Huh? Causality? What the hell was that supposed to mean?
"Which is why I wanted to ask — think you could fill some of that Causality for us?"
"If it's something I can do, I'll do anything."
"That so?"
A chill ran through my entire body, unbidden.
"Then we will now begin Causality Mode, for the purpose of patching the Player's 'Two-Handed Sword.'"
Two-Handed Sword Patch
📍 Objective: Gather Causality
🎁 Purpose: Unlock two-handed sword heroine interactions
Crack. Crrrk.
The world inside the game came apart with those words. Every landscape in my vision crushed in on itself, and pure white light gushed out through the seams.
"Wh-what?"
The thought what is this? had barely formed before I—
Vanished from this "world" without a trace.