Hard Mode? Wipe and We're Done
Feeling that clean, refreshed sensation of having just woken up, I slowly rose from the bed.
...I've gotten completely used to the two of us sleeping in this narrow bed lately.
Hearing me get up, the protagonist guy also rose right away and stretched out his body.
"You're up?"
"Yes. You go wash first. I take longer."
"Okay."
...At first it felt like some insane situation of a man and woman living together.
But the longer this goes on, the more that feeling fades — mostly because of how this wooden block of a guy acts.
We're wearing these perverted clothes and sleeping pressed against each other in the same bed.
I still don't know how he puts up with it.
'Even the times it gets bigger seem to just be morning physiology or something.'
Either his self-control is absurdly good, or he's just a eunuch. I can't tell which.
Or maybe he's actually gay and only picked me as a second choice because there are no male characters.
...That's kind of creepy. I shouldn't even joke about that.
"Hah..."
"Today's the day of the decisive battle."
"Yeah."
"Ah, but Master — I'm going to go wash my hair. Could you let go of me for a moment..."
He'd come back from washing almost immediately, and the second he finished straightening himself up, he drifted over and latched onto me like it was the most natural thing in the world, refusing to let go.
No, you just got clean — why are you coming over to get dirt all over yourself from the dirty one?
Looking at how clingy he is, he does like me, but...
"Your hair really is wrecked."
"...Are you obsessed with hair?"
"What?"
"Ah, it's nothing."
...Washing my own hair is still hard. What am I supposed to do.
At least he handles the grooming for me, so it's a little better.
It was true, though — my hair was in worse shape than when I'd first arrived here.
"Come with me."
"Huh? W-wait a second!"
In the end he couldn't stand watching me wash my hair any longer. He dragged me off to the bathroom and started washing it himself.
...At first I nearly had a heart attack thinking he was about to make me shower, but he just sat me in a chair and washed my hair like a normal person.
But why is he so good at handling hair? Was he a hairstylist in a past life?
"Haahng... nn..."
"Does it hurt?"
"Ah, no."
It was the opposite, actually.
The problem was that it felt dangerously good.
The water temperature was perfect, and he really did wash it so well it felt amazing.
Unlike me, who just slapped shampoo straight onto my head, he worked up a lather first and then applied it — that alone was fascinating.
It barely felt like washing hair at all. It was practically a massage.
He did it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and by the time I came back to myself, my hair was thoroughly, cleanly washed.
"Go shower and come out. I'll dry it for you."
"Yes..."
No, but it's my body, and handing it over to him every single day still feels weird.
Of course, everything related to the 'game knowledge' this world needs is something I solve in basically the same way, so maybe we're even?
...It does feel really refreshing and good when he takes care of it, though.
"Nngh... hah... haahk...!"
Normally, when I washed and dried my own hair, it felt like something uncomfortable was finally getting resolved.
This time, though, he was drying and styling hair that was already in pretty decent condition — so I sank into a cool-on-cool stacked state of pure relief.
A sharper, dizzier sensation than usual ran down my spine and made me shudder.
"Hah, hahh..."
"Sorry. You okay?"
"I-I'm fine. Please keep going."
...We're going to have a few more things in the laundry today.
And from now on he's going to insist on washing my hair too, so am I supposed to get used to this level of sensation?
God, I'm going to lose my mind.
"Hello."
"Ah, Jasmine, hi. Master, welcome."
"Hello, Jasmine unnie!"
Hmm. Looks like they got the talk ahead of time — everyone's sitting around bare-backed.
Anyone walking in would probably call this a pervert scene.
But for us right now, it was something we absolutely needed.
"As expected, the shortfall is unavoidable."
Gathering Linger early on, when there are no events at all, is hard.
Even the company must have realized the balance was off, because they started dumping resources from the first event onward to correct it.
But the Sand Ghost we had to fight first arrived earlier than any event, so there was nothing we could do.
'Barely around level 19, huh.'
One level-37 trash-tier supporter. Two level-19 dealers.
One level-14 healer and one level-17 tank who could put out a little damage.
Of course we'd be raising other specs on top of this, so by Normal standards we were going to be absurdly overgeared.
'The problem is if it's Hard.'
Hard is level 40. A 4% penalty per level of difference?
That would dump us into the ridiculous situation of dealing at 16% damage.
Our stats themselves were going to be decent, so without that damn penalty we could clear it fine.
And this malicious game didn't even limit that penalty to attacks alone.
When the tank got hit, extra damage scaled to the level gap came in too — so the "tank forever and stall it out" strategy had zero chance on Hard.
'What can you do. We did our best, so all that's left is to pray.'
If we failed we all died anyway — what was the point of hoarding resources?
I distributed the collection items primarily to the dealers so we could push their stats as high as possible.
And I was pretty sure we still had a few Cotton Candies left...
"You can feed these to Fruity."
Princess Fourmi also lets you raise skill levels.
Characters start with four skills of their own.
Those skills operate at a base of level 0, then star-rank ups unlock access to them — and once unlocked, you can feed resources to raise a skill above level 1.
And that skill-level-up resource is exactly those colorful Cotton Candies.
Eat one and the skill in the matching-color slot goes up — a different color for each slot.
They were incredibly hard to get, which made them the main culprit behind the endless package upsells that bled players dry.
We only had a handful, so I dumped every last one into Fruity.
It didn't look like much, but the attack coefficients themselves rose quite a bit — the impact would be real.
Next up for the power spike...
"From now on we need to reinforce Wings. We're going to use every last bit of Sugar we have."
Truly a deranged game — the ways you can pay-to-power-up never end.
Shockingly, it even has an enhancement system like something out of an RPG, letting you reinforce characters the way you'd reinforce gear.
And what that enhancement costs is pure money: Sugar.
"This is something called Soda... it's a surplus item, so don't worry about it. What matters is the Sugar. I'll start Wing reinforcement on the dealers one at a time."
Wing reinforcement plays out as an effect of completing a star-shaped donut draw.
If the donut cracks or breaks midway, it's a failure. If you form the shape cleanly all the way through, it's a success.
Fail and you get nothing. Succeed and the enhancement rank goes up by one and the stats increase.
...Sitting there mashing that all day used to make my blood pressure spike on its own.
'No need to go overboard.'
When I used to do it, hitting +22 was the baseline.
But that was only because I was a maniac.
Right now we not only didn't need that — we didn't even have the Sugar to invest that deep in the first place.
"Dealers to +8... everyone else roughly around +6 is fine."
Even if we were dumping every resource into this enhancement, we couldn't just mash randomly with no plan — because past +6, a failure drops the enhancement rank by one.
If we ended up with lower specs and no resources left, that would just be a net loss.
"Whew..."
It looked like we'd finished the power-up right about where I'd expected.
Seeing the results of everything we'd worked so hard for laid out across our backs like receipts made it feel like I was looking at the reward for all that effort — enough that I almost wanted to cry.
'Still a little disappointing, though.'
If the protagonist guy hadn't dumped all his Linger into me, I could have guaranteed a Hard-mode win for sure...
Of course, since this side was reality, there was always the chance the level penalty simply wouldn't apply.
...Honestly, I'd prepared this power-up with that possibility in mind too.
"...You all understand?"
"Yes. I got it."
I was in the middle of briefly explaining the strategy we'd need for this fight to everyone when a warning message appeared in front of the protagonist guy's eyes — and a deafening roar began to boom through the air.
DEADLY BATTLE COMMENCING
Raid Boss Invasion Detected
Target: Sand Ghost
'So this is what a real-world Deadly Battle feels like.'
The game had implemented it pretty stylishly in its own way.
Experiencing it in reality was a completely different feeling.
The moment we confirmed the predicted spawn coordinates, we started moving that way, and I stashed the protagonist guy carefully in a corner of the office.
"I can't believe something's actually going to attack us..."
"It's what Master said. You didn't believe him?"
"Th-that's not it. But a giant monster is still hard to believe, you know?"
Fair enough. Even if they were the Queen's Royal Guard, these were people who'd lived in peace for a long time.
Being shocked by an emergency like this was the normal reaction.
As soon as we'd secured a decent position, we drew our Wings from the Stigmata on our backs and took off into the air.
"Ugh!?"
"Are you all right?"
"Yes...!"
...We'd practiced flying ahead of time, but it still looked like they weren't used to it.
We landed on the sand at the predicted invasion point.
And the moment the scheduled invasion time hit, a strange cry rose up and the sand began to heave.
An absurdly massive snake-like monster — the raid boss called the Sand Ghost.
The size was so ridiculous I was overwhelmed before I could stop myself.
Honestly it looked kind of cute in the game, but seeing it in person, the curses just come out on their own.
"W-we're supposed to take that thing down by ourselves!?"
"Positions!"
I fired off the only attack skill I had and offered up a short prayer.
Please let it be Normal difficulty, not Hard.
No — Hard is fine. Just let the level penalty be gone.
"Master, can you tell me the damage I just dealt?"
"Yeah, I'll check."
I confirmed the damage I'd dealt and compared it against the original damage I'd calculated myself.
Recorded Damage vs. Expected Damage
≈ 12% Discrepancy
Level Penalty Detected — Hard Mode (Lv.37 vs Lv.40)
The difference between the two numbers was about 12% — exactly the level penalty a level-37 unit takes on Hard difficulty.
I bit down hard on my lip.