The Conversion Test
The relationship with Zero could be summed up in a single word: partner.
A business partner. A relationship of helping each other pursue their goals. He didn't trust people in general, but lately his mental guard had loosened around the members of Jucheongwang. With Zero in particular, wasn't it safe to trust her? There were times he caught himself thinking that way.
But friends? No. Ever since the friends he'd trusted had turned their backs on him, the very word friend made his skin crawl. Comrades, then? That didn't quite fit either. What he had with Zero wasn't simple enough to be pinned down by any one word.
She had helped him take his revenge, so now it was his turn to help with hers.
Conversion. After the 2.0 update, it was something everyone did as naturally as breathing. And yet Zero, who had boldly declared that she would convert into DQ right this instant, had been standing rooted to the spot for ten full minutes.
"Are you gonna convert or not?"
"Quiet! I'm mentally preparing!"
"It's been ten minutes."
"Ugh, just wait a bit more!"
Another five minutes crawled by.
"So, this is a hypothetical. Purely hypothetical."
"......."
"My body is a prosthetic, right? Not real. Fake. Everything except the brain."
"And?"
"What if I convert and it turns out only my brain is left floating there? Like something straight out of a horror film?"
"......."
This is the first time I have ever felt the urge to forcibly convert another person, Master.
"You feel it too? So do I."
And so, after restraining himself, restraining himself, and restraining himself once more—
"Okay! Here I go!"
Zero finally attempted the conversion. A good half hour past the original plan.
"DQ has a friend system, so send the request as soon as you're in."
"Got it."
Zero took a deep breath and dove into the world of DQ. The moment he confirmed she had vanished, he converted into DQ himself.
Five minutes after conversion, the friend request arrived. Apparently the conversion itself had gone off without a hitch.
He cast the Fly spell and shot straight to the first town. He was curious what form Zero's conversion had taken. Her prosthetic body? Or something else entirely? For all he knew, she could genuinely be nothing but a brain floating in midair. If so, it would be an absolute horror show.
There is also a possibility that 'Freyja's' side is what materialized, Master.
"Honestly, a floating brain might be preferable."
He waited for Zero in the first town's plaza. For some reason, the area around him was in an uproar. He was wearing a disguise MOD to avoid any troublesome situations, so he shouldn't have been drawing anyone's attention. Wondering what on earth was going on, he turned his gaze toward the source of the commotion.
The way she walked. The way she gestured. Hair swaying gently in the breeze. A strikingly beautiful woman dressed in a gorgeous dress—despite wearing nothing but beginner equipment—was glancing around at her surroundings.
"Zero...?"
She resembled Zero's prosthetic, '00', and yet something was different. The faintly artificial quality that had clung to 00 was gone, replaced by a living, breathing, natural body. Zero approached with a somewhat awkward gait.
"The sensations are so different from the prosthetic. So this is what having a living body feels like. Well, it's still a digitized body, technically."
"......."
"Hm? What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
The exact mechanism of conversion was unknowable, but there was no doubt that it had recreated Zero's prosthetic form. He'd heard that '00' was modeled on what Zero's persona would look like after 'growing'—but he hadn't expected it to be literal.
"Well, at least you're not a floating brain. Count that as a win."
"You said that the instant you saw me... I mean, yes, it is a relief, but still."
Zero twisted and stretched, moving her body this way and that. The unfamiliar sensations were apparently fascinating enough that she couldn't stop fidgeting.
"So this... this is what a physical body feels like."
Zero hopped in place like a child, giddy with delight. He could understand her joy, but there was something they needed to verify first.
"How's Freyja reacting?"
"Ah."
Don't tell me she'd actually forgotten?
Zero cleared her throat a couple of times. "W-well... as you can see? Everything's fine? What you just saw was me checking whether my body had any issues, that's all."
"Sure you were..."
"Stop making that 'I understand everything' face, it's mildly infuriating."
"And here I was, going out of my way to be considerate."
Master, Master. None of that counts as consideration.
YggON had to throw in its two cents, but he let it slide.
"Back in the old version I did all sorts of things, but this is my first conversion in 2.0. The sensation really is completely different from generating an avatar through a terminal."
He wouldn't know—he'd started with a full-body conversion, never an avatar generated through a terminal. But seeing Zero, once a prosthetic, restored to her original appearance, it was clear that 'conversion' held some special secret that hadn't yet been brought to light.
"Anything else out of the ordinary? Weird stats, suspicious skills... everything check out?"
"Hmmm."
Zero poked through her UI, checking one thing after another. "My stats don't seem unusually high, and there are no suspicious skills. Looks like a totally standard DQ build."
"So conversion alone doesn't awaken Freyja's soul."
Whether that was a blessing or a misfortune, he couldn't say.
"Leveling up might trigger something. For now, let's stop by the guild, pick up some quests, and get you hunting."
"You're not going to help me?"
"I'll shadow you for about a day, but combat itself is one-on-one, so I can't fight for you. Advice, maybe."
"A one-on-one rule in an RPG? Makes zero sense. Well, that might change as expansion patches roll out."
He guided Zero to the guild established in the starting town. The UI and map were thoughtfully designed, but newbies got lost all the same.
"You got your adventure subsidy from the king, right?"
"200G. I will never understand this. The hero setting off to save the nation gets a measly 200G? Isn't the fate of the country on the line here?"
"Don't complain to me about it."
Word was that the king here wasn't an NPC but a game resident. When 'heroes' came barging in every single day shouting "I am the hero!", he supposed even handing out 200G a pop was generous.
The moment he and Zero stepped into the guild, the attention of the gamers clustered in the newbie hall swung toward them. Zero's appearance was simply too eye-catching. She'd be better off wearing a helmet or activating a disguise MOD.
That was when he felt it—someone's slimy, lingering gaze. He'd caught all sorts of looks since entering the guild, but this one felt uniquely unpleasant.
"YggON."
I have detected an anomalous data flow. It appears someone has deployed a surveillance web inside the guild.
"Can you trace it?"
Difficult at the moment, Master. The data volume is too high—there are many gamers streaming right now.
"Streaming..."
More and more gamers were leveraging livestreams these days. Being secretly filmed wasn't exactly a pleasant feeling, so perhaps his reaction had been oversensitive.
Zero had meanwhile made her way to the reception desk and was chatting with the receptionist. Once she moved away, the strange gaze vanished as well.
So the look wasn't for me—it was aimed at Zero?
Half doubting, half believing, he approached a different receptionist—the one who had handled him when he first started DQ.
"It's been a while. Back to the Royal Capital, are we?"
"Just some small business. Actually, I have a question... is there a temple around here somewhere?"
According to Loki's map, there was supposed to be a temple in this vicinity. But he had no memory of ever seeing a temple-like structure here, so he needed to gather information.
"There is."
"There is?"
"You mean the Ratatoskr Shrine beneath the kingdom, don't you? As long as you have a guildmaster's permit or His Majesty's authorization, you can enter the Ratatoskr Shrine."
The receptionist answered without a moment's hesitation. He hadn't expected it to be discovered this easily. More than that—a subterranean shrine had existed beneath the kingdom all along? This was news to him.
The conditions have been met, so the information lockdown appears to have been lifted. The Dragon King's Orb event was likely the unlock requirement, Master.
If YggON was right, then Loki's reason for telling him to obtain the Dragon King's Orb first had been to break the information blackout on the temples.
"The Ratatoskr Shrine can be entered with a guildmaster's permit or His Majesty's authorization."
"What are the conditions for a guildmaster's permit?"
"You need a certain level of guild contribution. Your current guild rank is D, so you'd need at least B, I'd say."
What a pain. Honestly, it might be faster to leverage his Hero title and get authorization from the king.
"His Majesty won't hand out authorization easily either. This place is tied to the systems of this game labyrinth, so it's strictly controlled... oh."
She was a resident of an RPG world, yet she spoke freely about things that fell outside her 'role'. Realizing her slip, the receptionist coughed delicately.
"It is a site connected to this nation's founding myth, and is therefore strictly managed."
"Is there a way to raise my contribution quickly?"
"You'd clear the high-difficulty quests the guild offers, but one that would take you from D straight to B rank... hmm. The best I can think of would be slaying the fire dragon of the volcano."
"The fire dragon of the volcano?"
There was indeed a dormant volcanic zone not far from the castle, but the monsters there had never been particularly strong.
"A fire dragon suddenly took up residence there recently, so it was posted as an emergency request—but every hero who's taken the quest has failed."
Ryu Hwi ordered YggON to search for details.
Confirmed. The fire dragon appears to be a monster that emerged abruptly. In addition to the fire dragon of the volcano, boss-class monsters have been sighted appearing across every region.
Don't tell me this is also...
The unlocking of the temple information is believed to be the trigger condition for their appearance.
In other words, every one of these newly appeared bosses was a Unique Monster—and they might all be connected to the temples. Unique monsters surfacing in the wake of Loki's event. Naturally, the other S.E.N would be circling like vultures too.
If I have to hunt Unique Monsters to gain entry to the temples from here on, then this is no time to be dawdling. The most dangerous one is XENIX, I suppose?
It was certain that XENIX was connected to the S.E.N in some form. And since they were the ones who had built DQ from Loki's blueprints, there was a good chance they knew far more than anyone else.
"Ryu Hwi, I took a quest. For starters there's a Flubber subjugation nearby, plus herb gathering and—"
The closer he got to Zero, the more vividly that slimy gaze pressed against him. Her appearance was drawing the attention of other gamers, but the owner of this nauseating stare wasn't any of them.
Just as I thought. The target is Zero.
Without warning, he seized Zero's hand and pulled her out of the guild. The moment they stepped out, the sensation sharpened—as if a predator stalking its prey was watching from behind.
Confirmed. The anomalous data flow is concentrating on Zero.
If a data flow was being focused, it meant someone had intervened directly in DQ. And anyone capable of intervening in DQ—not just any game labyrinth—could not be an ordinary person.
Who is it? An S.E.N?
The possibility was more than plausible.
"What's going on?"
"Log out for today."
"What? Why?"
"Someone's watching you. The odds are good it's an S.E.N."
Zero's face registered surprise—but only for a moment.
"Then all the better. Means they might come out of hiding on their own, doesn't it?"
"Excuse me?"
"What are you hesitating for? Use everything you can use. That's your style, isn't it?"
"Nobody's hesitating. Fine—then the plan changes. Don't say I didn't warn you."
Fly - Luora (DQ) Lv1
Ryu Hwi cast the teleportation spell. Fly had one distinct advantage: it could carry anyone in direct physical contact along with the caster. The two of them reached the volcano in an instant.
"This is...?"
Zero scanned the surroundings. "The volcano near the Royal Capital. Normally the surrounding forest spawns monsters that are moderately tough, but—"
A POWERFUL FOE HAS APPEARED!
Due to the powerful foe's appearance, the average level of all monsters has increased by +10.
Rare item drop rates have increased.
Combat debuffs have increased. Pain suppression has been adjusted to ⟨Intermediate⟩.
A warning alarm blared the moment they drew near the volcano.
"The average monster level here was 12 to 15, so we're looking at around 22 to 25 now."
"Doesn't seem like a place a Lv1 should be anywhere near?"
Ryu Hwi glanced sideways at YggON.
The anomalous data flow has vanished, Master.
"The S.E.N's surveillance is gone."
"Then I can't lure the S.E.N out."
"Well, no matter. I wasn't planning to fight them today anyway. Today was about confirming how far the S.E.N's surveillance extends."
"Really? So what do I do now? Cheer you on from the sidelines?"
At Zero's words, Ryu Hwi flashed a positively wicked grin.
"Like that'd happen. Since the volcano's acting up anyway, let's check out what's going on with it—and level you up while we're at it."
Zero's face drained of all color.
"You're telling me to fight HERE? Now?"
"You'll be fine, so take this first."
Ryu Hwi handed over the most serviceable armor and weapons from his stockpile of DQ-exclusive items.
"Wear these and even a Lv1 won't die in one hit."
"Not dying in one hit doesn't mean I can WIN! The stat gap is way too big!"
"Not a problem. I've got a plan."
"A plan?"
Whenever Master gets this smug, it is invariably the completely unexpected that blows up in our faces.
"Your only job is to spoon-feed me snacks."