Always Be Thoroughly Prepared
Preparation must always be thorough.
— Crunch!
The sound of muscle tearing free from bone echoed through the alley.
In the middle of that blood-soaked slaughterhouse, a lovely young girl hummed a cheerful little tune.
“Hmm-hmm-hmm~”
— Crunch!
Several black tentacles burst from the girl and greedily scavenged the corpses strewn across the ground. The larger tentacles swallowed bodies whole; the smaller ones shredded them into tiny pieces before devouring every scrap.
“Hwah… I’m full. Still… it never tastes all that good.”
The girl turned around.
The street was a ruined, dark-red mess. Yet not a flicker of guilt crossed her face. The only thing lingering in her expression was mild regret that she hadn’t gotten to eat anything more delicious.
“Haa… I miss Big Brother.”
Just then, the click of shoes rang out along the blood-slicked alley.
“Eve, I told you to eat neatly. Look at the mess you’ve made of the place.”
“Mother~!”
The girl—Eve—spotted the woman, her eyes going wide with delight as she dashed forward with a radiant smile.
“Mother! Where did you go today?”
The woman scooped Eve up and gently stroked her hair, answering in a tender voice.
“I brought a present for my Eve~”
“A present? What kind?”
“Ta-da~ Look at this.”
The woman stepped into the blood-drenched alley, drew a bottle of clear liquid from her coat, and let a single drop fall onto the ground.
At once the blood, flesh, and shattered bone fragments scattered everywhere gathered into one place, compressed, and reformed into a small red bead.
“It’s called Angel’s Tears. With this, Eve will be able to eat by herself without Mommy’s help.”
She pressed the Angel’s Tears into Eve’s hand and stroked her hair again as she spoke.
“Eve, for a while Mommy and Eve will have to stay apart.”
“W-what…? Why? I… I want to stay with Mother forever…”
“Instead, you’ll get to meet your big brother. Mommy simply can’t go to the place where he is, so only Eve will go in.”
“Big Brother…”
The light that had dimmed in Eve’s eyes began to sparkle once more.
“It’ll be your first time meeting him, right? Do you want to see him?”
“Yes! I want to talk with Big Brother… play with him… and also…”
Eve beamed as she finished.
“I want to try eating him…! Ah, but I mustn’t eat Big Brother.”
The woman chuckled softly at the absurd remark and stroked Eve’s head once more.
“Still, there are many things you must be careful about if you’re going to live where your brother is. That place is full of delicious food—and just as full of dangerous people. So Mommy will set some rules for you. As long as you keep those rules, our Eve will be safe.”
“Yes! I can’t wait to see Big Brother!”
A nightmare was drawing near.
Time passed, and the day of the Mock Occupation Battle finally arrived.
“Hoo… I just hope everything goes according to plan.”
My goal was simple: single-handedly repel every other team that came after my territory. Each team usually fielded about ten people, so in short I had to hold off thirty opponents by myself.
One against thirty. The number felt daunting, but with the game exploits I’d honed over the years, nothing was impossible. As long as the plan held, there would be no problem.
That was what all the training had been for. I could do this. I just had to trust myself.
Mock Occupation Battle begins in 10 seconds.
“Little brother. You’re not too tense, are you? Loosen those shoulders a bit.”
Ten seconds before the battle began, while I stood waiting for the Matrix warp, Pascal walked over. The easy smile on his face made him look completely carefree.
“Tense? Hardly. The teammates Sir Pascal assigned me are so reliable, after all.”
“Right? I figured you’d like them too.”
He wore a rotten little smirk. Hah… if it weren’t for that petty personality of his, the guy would have been a real looker. What a waste.
“Haha. In any case, I plan to do my best—within reason—so I don’t hold the others back.”
Mock Occupation Battle begins in 5 seconds.
“So please, Sir Pascal, try not to be the one who holds the team back either.”
I gave that carefree-looking shoulder of his a couple of light pats.
“It would look pretty pathetic if you got crushed after locking down all the good spots for yourself, wouldn’t it?”
“…You little shit.”
Yeah. That face suits you best.
Warp initiate.
— Fwaaat!
The moment the Mock Occupation Battle began, Pascal’s twisted expression vanished from in front of me.
We had each been warped to our assigned territories.
The last look on his face was quite satisfying. Good start.
I glanced around. This was the territory I was supposed to hold.
Seeing the familiar training grounds eased my mind a little.
“No time to stand around resting.”
Once the warp had fired, the Mock Occupation Battle was effectively underway. If I didn’t get ready fast, another team could storm my territory any second.
“In the game there was always a supply crate around here… Ah, there it is.”
I looked up and scanned the sky; not far away, a brown crate was slowly descending.
I headed to where it landed, crouched, and studied it carefully.
The 4-star fire magic Flame Touch is an “enchantment-type” spell that cloaks the user’s body in flame. The conditions required to alter the properties of Flame Touch are…
A sheet of paper covered in complicated-looking questions was stuck to the crate.
Solving them would probably produce the matching key, but that wasn’t my job.
— Click.
“Heh. Without the right tools, both body and brain end up suffering.”
I pulled the Master Key from my inventory and unlocked the crate with zero effort. Getting free rewards without lifting a finger felt deliciously sweet.
Time to check the contents.
“Hmm. Two scrolls and one potion.”
One scroll fired a high-pressure jet of water from the ground to attack—an advanced-tier magic scroll. The other randomly teleported me to a spot somewhere inside my own territory. A convenient escape tool, basically.
“Pretty lucky.”
Every single one of them was useful to me.
Water Strike first: solid damage. For someone like me who had zero offensive options, it was a trump card—rain after a long drought.
The Teleport Scroll was also extremely efficient in my current situation.
I wasn’t conquering a territory; I was defending one. Against dozens of opponents at once, an average attack would help far less than the ability to vanish and reappear.
“And I don’t particularly plan on fighting, either.”
To seize a territory, you had to eliminate every remaining member of the team currently holding it.
Put harshly: if I got eliminated, this territory would fall. Conversely, as long as I stayed alive, no other team could ever claim it.
“Of course the enemy has brains too. They’ll comb every inch of this place to catch me.”
But I had plans of my own. The moment I got those scrolls, several workable strategies had already popped into my head.
There was a reason I was a veteran of Grand Fantasia, after all.
“As for this potion… I honestly have no idea where to use it, but I’ll figure something out.”
The potion from the supply crate was frustratingly vague.
Drink it and you receive a random buff. On paper it sounded handy, but in practice it just as often slapped on negative effects—a classic white-elephant item I was reluctant to touch.
“I’ve seen people drink that thing and get eliminated on the spot.”
I would absolutely never be the one drinking it.
After stashing the supplies in my inventory, I activated Nature Realm and strode toward the area where the training magical devices were set up.
There you could find machines that randomly blasted magic according to difficulty settings, swordsman puppets whose level adjusted to your preferences—all the usual training gear for students. Exactly like the real thing.
I went to each one and cranked every setting to maximum difficulty and maximum level.
Of course I didn’t press the start buttons. Hit those now and I might eliminate myself before the enemy even arrived.
After that I did a few more odd jobs—little things like punching escape holes here and there.
“As promised, lend me the key.”
While I was working, Charlotte slipped out of a dimensional rift and demanded the key, so I handed it over without complaint. She took it, vanished through the rift, and reappeared in front of me almost immediately to return it.
Honestly, I’d half expected her to just keep it. Surprise.
“…You just thought something rude, didn’t you?”
“Nah, no way.”
Charlotte shot me a sidelong glare, then huffed and disappeared through the dimensional rift again.
I was still remodeling the training grounds when Nature Realm picked up groups of people approaching from a distance.
Three groups total. Probably squads from the Blue, Green, and Yellow teams—everyone except my own Red Team—coming to seize this place. Right on schedule.
I stopped what I was doing, straightened my back, and looked in the direction the enemies were coming from. Quietly, I murmured to myself.
“Here we go.”
Just like always, I’d do my best—within reason.