Even Virtual Reality Felt Real
As expected, even virtual reality was real… [Death]
“Aaaah!!! Fuck, seriously!” Tyuni’s scream echoed through the air. Floating in front of her eyes was a system message announcing her death.
“Ah, ah…. Ah, how the hell am I supposed to not swear….”
It had been three days since Tyuni started New Dimension. She was still stuck in Barley Town, one of the starting villages. The reason, needless to say, was the self-proclaimed Inquisitor who swung a warhammer at her head every time they met.
Three times while harvesting barley. Four times while gathering herbs on the mountain behind the village. Six times while wandering the streets. Eleven times while hunting wild boars. That was how many times Tyuni’s head had been smashed during her time in New Dimension.
“Ah, be honest…. One of you guys is doing this, right? Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. Huh?!”
New Dimension gives players beginner quests to help them adjust to the game when they start. First-time players gradually learn the basic systems while completing these quests. …Of course, given New Dimension’s high degree of freedom, skipping the quests wasn’t a problem, but after having her head smashed twenty-four times in three days, Tyuni was stubbornly pushing through the beginner quests out of sheer spite.
“Ah, really? So it’s not targeted, they just do this to every Priest they see…? No, that’s even worse!”
Tyuni furrowed her brows slightly at the chat window that was starting to give her a headache. ‘This isn’t going well…’
Of course, most viewers enjoyed watching streamers suffer. That was why the majority of the chat was having fun right now. But if the same pattern kept repeating, people would naturally get bored. For Tyuni, who was already a small-time streamer, that was one of the situations she wanted to avoid at all costs. Chats like “Can’t you just go to another town?” were already starting to appear, so she was beginning to think she should stop repeating this situation.
Of course, leaving for another town would solve everything, but Tyuni’s pointless pride wouldn’t allow her to run away. The problem was that Tyuni had no confidence in beating that “Inquisitor.”
Clank, clank.
“…Ah.”
So how was she supposed to overcome this? A way to not run away and not get killed by the self-proclaimed Inquisitor… While Tyuni was pondering this, that sound reached her ears again. The heavy sound of full-body armor signaling death, now imprinted on her body. Running away was impossible. Even wearing full-body armor, the level difference made the opponent’s movement speed much faster, so she would be caught immediately and have her head smashed.
“…Hey!!! Can we talk for a moment?!”
In the end, what Tyuni chose was conversation. She attempted to talk with the terrorist who had smashed her head twenty-four times.
The Inquisitor has requested a 1:1 chat.
“…Huh?”
★ There wasn’t any particular reason. The opposing Priest looked like a complete newbie who barely knew anything about New Dimension, and she simply thought there was still a chance for repentance. “Um… Hello?”
At the sound of a woman’s voice echoing in her ears, I quietly typed on the virtual keyboard.
[Inquisitor: Hello]
“Ah, you’re not comfortable with voice chat?”
[Inquisitor: No]
[TyuniLove: Then I’ll talk in chat too]
When I confirmed, the opposing Priest also switched to chat, probably to match me. She didn’t have to, but the fact that she deliberately tried to accommodate others made her seem like a pretty kind person. Why would someone like this become a heretic…
[TyuniLove: Could you tell me why you keep killing me every time you see me?]
[Inquisitor: Because you’re a heretic]
[TyuniLove: What?]
[Inquisitor: Because you’re a heretic]
Why was she asking such an obvious question? She could tell just by looking at my nickname. Well, thinking about the heretics I’d met so far, that reaction might be natural. Heretics hated admitting they were heretics even if it killed them. And unfortunately, this person seemed to be the same.
[TyuniLove: Could you tell me why I’m a heretic?]
[Inquisitor: Because you’re a heretic]
So I told her directly: You are a heretic. People with strong faith wouldn’t understand their mistakes even if you beat around the bush. You had to point out their faults honestly and clearly for there to be any chance.
[TyuniLove: Is it because my class is Priest?]
[Inquisitor: Yes]
As expected, my path was not wrong. The other Priest player I met last time had been difficult because they refused to admit they were wrong until the very end.
[TyuniLove: But isn’t it bad manners to kill someone just for playing the Priest class that the game encourages?]
[TyuniLove: Besides, there’s a separate Inquisitor class. Doing this as a Traveler seems like you’ve got the wrong concept…]
I see. This person was already a heretic who had been thoroughly deceived by some false words.
[Inquisitor: Be quiet]
[TyuniLove: What?]
I immediately ended the 1:1 chat and swung my old friend, the warhammer.
Clang!
Someday, this person would understand my goodwill…
★ If someone asked why I started New Dimension, I wouldn’t have much to say. I was captivated at first sight by the scenes shown in the New Dimension PV and decided to start playing—what more explanation was needed? Still, with thoughts about living expenses constantly popping up for such a trivial reason, if I had to add another reason… Well, since I was always holed up in my room, I needed some level of going outside, so I decided to use New Dimension as the method. The purpose of going outside was usually to see new sights I’d never seen before, right? In that case, just being able to travel this vast world meant going outside. Moreover, since this was virtual reality, it meant I could achieve the effect of physically going outside in reality just by logging into New Dimension. What perfect logic. In my past life. In that world. And now. I, who had always lived as an unhealthy shut-in hikikomori, could now take care of my health through this. Yeah. If it was for my health, this level of spending was acceptable, right? Well, actually, this body had the goddess’s blessing, so I didn’t really need to manage it to stay healthy, but… let’s just say this completely solved my mental health too. In other words. Now I was the strongest.
May this world be the one you dreamed of…
After character creation ended and I chose a starting village, light flashed for a moment and a new world unfolded. The wide plains and golden barley ears swaying in the cool breeze were a landscape that perfectly matched the idiom “autumn’s harvest.” It was Barley Town, the place that marked the beginning of my fantasy life.
“…What should I do first?”
With that question in mind, I looked around and saw an arrow floating above my head. Did it mean I should go in the direction it was pointing? For now, I walked aimlessly in the direction the arrow indicated while looking around. The golden scenery was truly beautiful, enough to captivate me with this world once again. But… why were there so few people? It wasn’t that there were no people at all. There were NPCs managing the barley fields and a few players scattered about besides me. But no matter how I thought about it, the number of players was far too small. Was it because servers were divided by country? That didn’t seem right either, since I’d heard that pre-registrations in Korea alone had exceeded one million last time. …I don’t know. I should look up information on the gallery or something later. Anyway, following the arrow, I arrived at… in front of some old man.
Try talking to the village chief!
“…Huh?”
What the fuck. Talk to him? Me? Right now, to that old man in front of me… the village chief? They might as well have told me to hunt a dragon… The company that made this game clearly didn’t understand people’s hearts. There could be people who found talking to others difficult. They should have considered that too. What should I do about this? “Aah, seriously…” …There was no choice. It wasn’t like he was a real person anyway, and since he was an NPC, there was no need for me to get nervous for no reason. I took a deep breath. Slowly, step by step. Yeah. I could do this. “Um, excuse me, well, uh…” [Ah, you must be the one who came to help this time!] “Ah, yes…” [If you go to the field in the back and harvest some barley, that should be fine.] “Yes…” Even after that, all I could do was nod with my head down and say I understood.
★ I couldn’t talk to people. Not that I didn’t, but that I couldn’t. It wasn’t a personality issue or the influence of my past life or anything like that. Well, there might be a little of that… but at least it definitely wasn’t the biggest factor in my declining communication skills. This was all because of my job in that world. In that world, my job was Inquisitor. What I did was… well, simply put, finding heretics, capturing them, and then smashing their heads. After that, sending them to a priest for healing, and if they didn’t repent, smashing their heads again… After repeating that kind of thing, I became reluctant to look at other people’s faces and started avoiding eye contact. Even without that, the other priests avoided hanging out with me because of my unusual hair color, and with that habit added on top, opportunities to talk with anyone gradually disappeared. In the end, what was completed was a shut-in hikikomori Inquisitor who couldn’t even make eye contact or hold a conversation with people. And continuing that lifestyle created bad habits too… In the end, the only thing I was good at was smashing heads. Even the heretics who had their heads smashed and repented acknowledged that. They said it didn’t hurt at all when it shattered. …But thinking about it this way, wasn’t I someone who shouldn’t be on Earth? Well, it wasn’t like I particularly wanted to go back to that world. Anyway, it meant I couldn’t talk to people, and that applied even to NPCs in this virtual reality world. As expected, even virtual reality was real…