VR Stress Management Virtual Reality Experience Program
It was a different system from the alphabetical ranks the Hero System prescribed, but Luce was an adventurer girl whose skill sat at roughly the same level as Sonia's.
A D-class hero and a D-class adventurer. Society assigned them slightly different status, and the public's perception of each carried its own subtle distinctions — yet in Sky City, where both of them scraped by day after day handling the dirty work no one else wanted, their situations were essentially the same.
A considerable amount of time had passed since the dimensional gates opened and exchange with other worlds began. Encountering second- and third-generation immigrants from other worlds was no longer unusual in Sky City.
Luce was a pure first-generation migrant, born in a quiet rural village in a fantasy world. She had left behind aging parents and potato fields that stretched to the horizon, crossing over with nothing but a hunger for adventure in an unknown world clutched to her chest.
Sonia and Luce's connection had begun from something utterly trivial: they were both first-floor residents of the same apartment building.
They weren't even next-door neighbors. Sonia had simply found Luce floundering with the products of modern civilization — a gas range, a shower — and helped her figure them out. That was their first meeting. After that, the two of them became the kind of neighbors who exchanged greetings whenever they crossed paths in the hallway.
Then one day, almost by accident, Sonia tagged along on a few of Luce's dungeon runs, and the relationship accelerated from there. Now they were the sort of easy friends who wandered in and out of each other's apartments without even sharing the door codes.
To Luce, Sonia was the first reliable older sister she had met in this strange world — and her only real friend. To Sonia, Luce had settled into the role of a lively little sister she could never quite bring herself to resent, no matter how much of a nuisance she sometimes became.
"Ah… ahaha… the cola is the real thing, at least, so let's talk over a drink… yeah?"
The reason Luce was calling Sonia "unnie" right now, cooing with that sugary little smile, was perfectly clear.
Buried in Luce's heart was a request so shameless it made her feel awful just thinking about it. This was her special move — the repertoire she pulled out whenever she had no choice but to ask for something difficult.
Cold sweat beaded down Luce's back as she watched Sonia's face for any sign of reaction. But Sonia had a more urgent question than whatever Luce was fretting over.
"Luce… how did you get in here?"
The meaning behind the words was unmistakable. A sharp interrogation: I never gave you the door code, so how did you unlock a locked door and walk in like you own the place?
Under Sonia's gaze, Luce bowed her head even more apologetically and pointed a finger toward the massive machine sitting in one corner of the living room.
It was a device the size of a large refrigerator, its brilliant silver chrome finish catching the indoor lights and flashing. It was identical to the "stress management" whatever-it-was that Sonia had selected from the prize catalog she'd received from the MegaCorp Association only a few hours earlier.
Ordinarily, Luce would have come running with her eyes sparkling in curiosity — "What's this? So cool! Can I try it too?" — but right now she felt like a criminal carrying a massive debt to Sonia, and she couldn't even lift her head.
"Haa…"
"Um… hey… Sonya…"
Instead of the line Luce had been bracing for — something like "What on earth is going on, Luce…" — only a deep, heavy sigh came out.
Sonia, worn down by a full day of grueling work, no longer seemed to have the energy to dig into anything. The unexpected reaction left Luce — leader of a D-class adventurer party from a fantasy world — more than a little flustered.
It was already deep enough into the small hours that the only safe way home was public transit. She had been warned that showing up unannounced at someone else's place at this hour was a serious breach of etiquette in this world, and Luce's head sank even lower.
She had rehearsed endlessly in her mind, waiting for Sonia, turning over the right timing to speak — but the sight of a Sonia this exhausted, listlessly picking at potato chips, had never factored into her calculations.
"Hey… Sonia!"
"Luce. Sorry to cut you off, but… if someone who didn't know the situation overheard this, I'd sound like the bad guy… You did bring the money, right?"
"Th-that's… th-that's…"
The words that left Sonia's mouth were cold and razor-edged, the kind of thing you'd expect from an illegal debt collector or a private investigator.
It was dialogue that had nothing in common with the usually timid, gentle Sonia. There was a perfectly valid reason for the change.
Luce wasn't a complete novice, but she wasn't especially gifted either — she led a perfectly ordinary, unremarkable adventurer party.
Temporary members joined from time to time, but the fixed roster was the three people currently in front of Sonia: a beastgirl martial artist with rabbit ears, a mage girl with a gloomy air, and a female knight in pearl-colored armor.
Dungeons in this world were structured so that offering a specific item on an altar granted entry. The standard layout was a handful of monster rooms, a boss, and treasure chests.
Difficulty and rewards varied wildly by region and by the grade of your pass, so adventurers routinely shuffled their party compositions to match the dungeon.
The reason Luce couldn't lift her head in front of Sonia right now, squirming where she stood, traced back to an incident that had started with Luce's own proposal to clear a newly discovered dungeon.
Luce had gathered her fixed members and a few temporary ones, dragged in Sonia — who happened to be loafing at home with nothing to do — and together they had opened a treasure chest deep inside the dungeon.
Unless there was some special prior arrangement, the unspoken rule was that the chest that appeared in front of each person was that person's share.
That day, of all days, Sonia's chest had produced a rare item marked in brilliant purple text: a Wizard's Hat Covered in Star Ornaments.
Regrettably, they had agreed to divide the proceeds fairly eight ways, and the knight of Luce's party had promised to take it as their representative and put it up for auction.
"Look… Luce. I don't know if I have any right to say this, but… your party members could use a little… um… even here on Earth, there's a process for checking basic credit information. I'm not questioning your judgment of people, but… wouldn't it make sense to be a little more careful?"
She had talked around it, but the meaning was crystal clear.
It was a thoroughly rude and deeply cutting piece of advice: properly check a party member's finances and credit rating before recruiting them. The truth of it was as heavy as Sonia's ample chest, and Luce had no rebuttal.
"Um… Sonia, I'm right here next to you…"
"So what. Should I start calling you Lady Knight with all the proper respect?"
The knight, who had been sitting at one side of the four-person dining table next to Luce for some time now with her head bowed in deathly silence, muttered under her breath. It made no impression on Sonia whatsoever. If anything, Sonia only grew more aggressive — "Tch… you should count yourself lucky I didn't call the police" — and Luce could do nothing but fidget in place.
Sonia, Sky City's darling hero, was always kind and spoke politely to everyone. When money was involved, though, friendship meant nothing.
For Luce the friend, maybe. But Sonia was not soft enough to extend that same generosity to a friend of a friend. It was a wise way of surviving in a harsh world.
"Ahem… I do feel bad about this too—"
"If you feel bad, then bring the money. That shiny armor you're wearing right now — sell it and you'd cover my share with plenty left over, wouldn't you?"
Sonia's rough, merciless voice rang through the room: if you're sorry, sell the gear that keeps you alive and pay your debt right now.
There was a reason she was spitting out uncharacteristically harsh words. She still hadn't received the rightful payment for a rare item earned through days of hard work in a damp dungeon — all because of the pathetic knight sitting in front of her.
The reason was truly absurd. This perverted knight, who even on ordinary days hung around the brothels run by succubi and racked up tabs on credit, had stopped by one of those places again for a little "rest" before putting the rare item up for auction.
In place of the accumulated debt, the Star-Ornamented Wizard's Hat had been confiscated, and she had come back empty-handed.
What was even more disappointing was how they handled it afterward. Trust among party members was as vital to an adventurer as life itself. If word got out that someone had eaten the reward and run, it meant a dishonorable retirement on the spot.
Luce's party had stripped their shared assets bare for the other temporary members and spent whole nights grinding low-grade dungeons to scrape together the money and pay those debts.
Sonia still hadn't been paid a single coin. They had been counting on Sonia's kind nature and her friendship with Luce to quietly let the whole thing slide.
"It's not that you can't pay. It's that you won't. Lady Knight."
Sonia's voice was calm, but her face, flushed bright red with anger, made it perfectly clear just how furious she was.
"Luce, I'm really disappointed this time. Of course, if I were you, I would have looked after my teammates first too… but disappointed is still disappointed. You understand that, right?"
"Yeah… I'm sorry, Sonia…"
"I have no excuse…"
At Sonia's words, Luce bowed her head even deeper. The guilt of having exploited the consideration of a friend who had been looking out for her washed over her in waves.
In truth, Luce had come intending to use the machine installed in Sonia's apartment as a pretext for an entirely different favor. Faced with a Sonia this unyielding over money, she couldn't bring herself to open her mouth.
In the end, instead of calling the police or reporting it to the Association, Sonia decided to give them time — for the sake of her friend Luce.
Making it absolutely clear that she had no intention of letting this slide, Sonia pressed the cola and potato chips Luce had brought back into their hands and showed them out the front door.