In the Abyss
Ever since that day, Aso had begun to grow remarkably sharp. Her dormant perception had awakened, and she had started to actually think. Along with it, her skill — once too pitiful to even call Third-Rate — had improved to a plainly unremarkable level below Third-Rate.
"Teach! I think I got better!"
She must have sensed it herself, because she came scampering over, begging for praise. It would be perfectly reasonable to snap, You couldn't even manage Third-Rate — what exactly did well? But with her beaming like that, there was no need to splash cold water on her. Though speaking of which, I still hadn't managed to acquire that child Cheongmyeong... hmm. A matter for the far future, I supposed.
"Ahem. Well done."
"By the way, Teach, are you really not planning to stream?"
Truly persistent, this one. I had told her plainly enough... and not a single person had yet cleared that game, so how could I possibly take up a broadcast?
"But if you're really waiting for three people to clear it, that's gonna take over half a year!"
"Half a year, you say. The world holds many hidden gems in the rough. Waiting for them is no burden."
"But those people would have to be watching your stream first, Teach..."
"...Ah."
So that was it. I was not the Sword God here. I was not the Sword God once hymned by all things under heaven. I was merely an exceptionally capable, utterly ordinary human being.
"You are right. A most correct observation. I was drunk on my own conceit..."
People in this world numbered like grains of sand upon the shore, and I had assumed every last one of them would know me and watch my broadcast. Conceit, plain and simple. Naturally, here I was nobody at all.
"I retract what I said before. I shall begin streaming tomorrow."
Reversing my own declared word was an exceedingly rare thing for me — but Aso's argument had been so airtight that I found I could not refuse it.
"Whoa! I did it! I actually did it!"
What in the world was so delightful? There she was, chattering away excitedly as if to the viewers of my future broadcast.
"Then recommend me a game I might manage."
"Oh, so you want something super hard, right?"
Merely difficult would hardly suffice, would it? Judged by her standards, nothing was difficult. Therefore...
"Right. Something you couldn't manage even if you died and came back to life, Aso. That should do."
"Wow... you're so mean!"
I could guess exactly what sort of chat was scrolling by. After all, Aso's lack of skill was rather famous.
"Yes, I am a total scrub..."
Why, pray tell, did she say that while staring directly at me? Her duel with the viewers ended, as it always did, in Aso's defeat. Would I ever live to see the day Aso claimed a victory...
"Okay, so I do know one really hard game. It's kinda old, though. Oh — no, it's not a relic! Honestly it was a masterpiece. Dark souls–style, and the difficulty? Honestly top-tier, like top five all time?"
Top five of all time, was it. I had no way of knowing what manner of game commanded what degree of difficulty, so I could hardly judge — but how would it compare to that previous game?
"How much harder is it than that game before?"
"Honestly, that one was hard too."
"Difficulty described by your mouth I cannot trust."
"Ugh... okay, but Puzzle Arcade is at least beatable, you know? This one's different."
"Different how, precisely?"
"It has a 0% clear rate. Nobody has ever beaten it. Well, at this point only a few people still play it."
No one had ever seen its ending. That sounded quite promising indeed. It would have substance, and raising my standards above "easy" would serve my teaching well.
"Then that is the one I shall play. The stream begins tomorrow at one in the afternoon."
"Wait...? One PM? That's way too early."
"That is because you have nothing to do. Go watch a rerun or something."
And so — "That, incidentally, is why today I'll be playing In the Abyss."
"You may wonder whether I truly needed to bring in the original title. Regardless — this is In the Abyss. According to Aso, not a single soul has cleared it to this day."
It seemed they had plenty to say among themselves. Very well — let them amuse themselves while I took a look around.
"I take it there is no tutorial of any kind in this place?"
Amid the rapidly scrolling chat, one remark I simply could not ignore caught my eye. Thirty-five times? Dying thirty-five times was an accomplishment? Virtual reality or no, to endure thirty-five deaths and still stand...
"You boast of dying thirty-five times?"
"By the way — where exactly is this 'section one' you speak of?"
"You have suffered terribly indeed. What in the world lies beyond that door..."
When the game began, the scene before me was nothing remarkable. A medieval-style hovel: a hearth and chimney, a taxidermied deer's head, dry firewood piled in one corner of the room. Yes — nothing special, nothing odd, just the picture of an ordinary house. Only the plain curtains, drawn to block out the view beyond entirely, gave me any pause.
"You complain too much."
Puzzled by their incomprehensible reactions, I opened the door. Beyond it, a thick blizzard raged across a world dyed black — so dense that even my own eyes could not properly make out the path ahead.
"GYAAAH!"
"Is this a horror game?"
Something leapt out at me without warning. Whether it had leapt or merely charged, I struck it down with my fist all the same. And it was... something like a corpse, was it not? A walking corpse... a jiangshi, then. No — I could not say for certain. A jiangshi-like thing would do for now. In any case, for such a creature to come lunging at me... was this not closer to a horror game than a soulslike or hardcore RPG?
A mere trash mob, then. But a spider? I knew nothing of it, yet something about the mention felt oddly stifling. Still, there was a faint thrill of setting out on a journey somewhere in it, so no matter.
"Spider?"
I approached the jiangshi-like thing I had knocked away on reflex and examined it. Keywords that came to mind: whiskered, middle-aged, commoner, male. Its clothing looked like that of a woodcutter or a hunter — so it was likely the former owner of that hovel. But was this not an ambiguous thing to call a jiangshi, a zombie, or a ghoul? Something altogether other.
"Strange."
And yet why was I so certain of what it was? The qi flowing from it was peculiar, certainly, but... hmm.
"What, in truth, is this thing?"
"I see."
For now, I would walk along the road as I had been told. Pushing through the savage blizzard, my vision blocked to the point of worrying I might lose the way entirely, I noticed the very flow of qi around me shifting strangely.
"I cannot see properly at all..."
"So this is what a road is."
Pressing forward through the disorienting senses, I began to make out a floor of stone. A road so deliberately made that I could feel the touch of human hands upon it.
"A road leading where, I wonder."
Given the hovel, human settlement could not be terribly far. Though self-sufficiency was also possible, of course. Hmm — no, the desk inside had been piled with letter paper, after all. And here was a stone road running not far from the cabin. There had to be a village nearby.
Skritch. Skritch. Skritch.
"Hm?"
A sound of something gnawing came from nearby. Could it have been buried under the howl of the wind — a mere trick of the ear?
Skritch. Skritch.
"No. It was not."
So this was that spider, was it not?
"Spider."
"You cannot hear this sound, then?"
The road was man-made, yes — but technology of a medieval level could hardly produce a surface like concrete or asphalt. And on a mountainside, less still.
"This much should suffice."
In truth, there was no real need to throw stones at all — but if I did not do this much, the thing would hardly be provoked, would it? There was not even any need to aim.
They already carpeted the ground in every direction.
SKREEEEE!!!
"Come, then."