Logout

I tilled the field, dug up a nearby tree, and planted the seeds that came out of it. Sticking them in the ground wasn't the end of it. I watered them, and I put together a fence at the item workbench — the least it took to keep monsters from barging into the plot. Do exactly that much, and the tutorial quest was over.

The tutorial quest, all seven stages of it, closed out just like that. I looked at the seeds sitting in the little patch I'd tended into something like a kitchen garden, and immediately shouted for logout.

"Logout!"

"...What?"

Ten years of Farming World, and I'd never seen a system like this. Login and logout each had their own seven-day cooldown? So I could only log out once every seven days? If I logged out now, rested a little, and came back in eight hours, then after that I wouldn't be able to log out again for seven days. If I had that right.

"What the hell kind of bullshit is this?"

I couldn't shut the game off when I felt like it. Once I came in, I had to run seven days straight?

"This is gonna kill me, isn't it?"

The world had gotten convenient enough that gaming for days on end wouldn't wreck your health, but nobody recommended it. On a top-tier capsule, the advised limit was forty-eight hours. You could play safely up to seventy-two at most, and past four days the nutrient solution stocked in the capsule ran dry to begin with. I didn't even use a top-tier capsule.

"Hah."

Here I'd been thinking I might step outside, ask them to give my map back, and give it a shot if things worked out. That little notion had just turned into a whole production. Damn jobless bum or not, time to burn or not, there was no way I could hole up in a capsule and game for seven days straight.

Reading the system, it did look like I could raise the level of this login-logout setup, and raising it seemed as if it would shave the cooldown down. Did that even matter? In this game, every last Farming Point was precious. Especially early on — invest it wrong, and you went straight to a garbage build, or the game got so brutal you had to start an entirely new map. And they wanted me to spend Farming Points just to log out?

"Too bad."

Brief as it was, I'd been happy. I'd only had a lick of SSS+, and already I wanted a taste of the other SSS+ ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠rank abilities too. All the more reason I had to log out first.

"Logout."

A full day had passed, after all, and I still had no idea what the hell had even happened.

Old machines have a smell all their own.

Ten years ago, it had been an older-model capsule, listed a little cheaper under the label of used-but-like-new. A decade of patching minor breakdowns as they cropped up, and now ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it looked no better than scrap, even if it still ran. Made you wonder how they'd built virtual reality capsules so solid. If dungeons and hunters had never shown up, wouldn't the world still be coasting along on virtual reality? The strangeness I felt logging out was what put the thought in my head.

The distinctive smell that had always greeted me, familiar as anything, wasn't there.

I opened my eyes.

"Huh?"

It was my room, all right. A capsule in a narrow space, a worn-out bed, and nothing else. An empty room. I was standing in the middle of it.

"Why am I...?"

Had I been logged into the capsule for more than two days and come down with dementia? Had even the memory of climbing out the moment I logged out vanished?

I wasn't idiot enough to try to sort the situation out with thoughts that mundane. Over ten years of gaming I'd meant to keep to the forty-eight hours, but it wasn't as if I'd never broken it. Back when I was living like a lunatic for the game, forty-eight hours was the floor, and on the worse days I'd poured my life into Farming World for seventy-two hours, even ninety-six, thrilled that I was setting records.

I was only twenty-six. Dementia was a long way off.

More than anything, it felt different from a normal logout. If the usual sensation was my mind flickering, today it was closer to my body itself being pulled in somewhere. And the system message hanging in front of my eyes cut me loose from the confusion.

"Huh?"

Something that belonged in the game was showing up in reality. What was that supposed to mean?

"Did I become a hunter?"

It could mean that, sure. A status window was a hunter's mark. This was a world where the window you'd only ever seen in a game was treated as a hunter's own exclusive property. I took it another way.

"...Don't tell me. Farming World...?"

I didn't know how to put it, but the system windows I'd been looking at in the Secret Farming Map were visible here in reality ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠too.

"Farming Window."

Fuck...

They weren't two different things. Abilities in Farming World were close enough to a real hunter's that you might as well call them the same. If those abilities had crossed into reality intact, then I'd become a hunter in all but name.

"...Why?"

What I wanted was the reason. Why a person became a hunter had been researched for years, and nothing had ever turned up. The reigning theory now was that there simply wasn't one. No reason at all. Dungeons appeared in the world and monsters spilled out the way a natural phenomenon just keeps flowing, and to deal with them, humans evolved, or were chosen, and became hunters. Plain facts. Nothing dressed up.

Supernatural, something no science could prove — but it wasn't one or two people. It was the whole world, so there was nothing to do but accept it. I could understand a hunter wanting to know why, waking up superhuman overnight with a power that might be a blessing or a disaster. My whole life, though, I'd figured: do I really need to pick it apart?

Now that it had actually landed on me, some nameless anxiety squirmed in my chest.

It was good. Definitely good. I knew that better than anyone. When I'd first laid eyes on the Secret Farming Map and come into an SSS+ ability, a thought had sprouted, honestly — map or no map, if rewards like this kept coming, wouldn't it be fine to hand back the map I'd raised for ten years? That might have been me talking myself into a consolation prize. The map had already been taken whether I wanted it or not, and the fear that I might never get it back already carried a lot of weight.

But if the reward was tied to power in the real world? Put another way, my ten years of effort and grinding were pathetic, worthless hours that meant nothing to anyone else. If I could be paid for them in reality, it was a reward I didn't even need to weigh.

The why would keep me uneasy to the last, and it would make me think this power could vanish at any time. Even so.

"This is insane..."

Only once it sank in did I feel that this body wasn't my real one. Lately I spent longer inside Farming World than out of it, and logging out often left me limp under the physical whiplash of coming back.

"...Wait a second."

Farming World's body had crossed into reality as it was. More precisely, my character's stats had crossed over. Did that mean the customized in-game character had come over whole?

I hurried to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and looked in the mirror.

"Whoa..."

Handsome.

When I'd first started Farming World in the middle of puberty, customization was where I'd sunk the most time before the game even began. I'd used my own face as the base so I wouldn't turn into someone else entirely, chiseling my original features down just enough to come out good-looking. What did I know about handsome back then? Even so, leaning on the game's cosmetic-surgery assist, the face I'd somehow scraped together still looked like me — handsome enough that ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠even I thought so. I'd been loading that saved customization onto every map ever since.

"Then my body...?"

The character had come out. So what happened to the real me that had been inside the capsule? I checked the battered old unit. I wasn't in it.

"...What the hell."

Was this suddenly turning into a horror movie? Could my vanished body be walking around out there somewhere? I was fretting over nothing, all on my own, when—

Seemed like it had sorted itself out.