JRPG Cliché
The girl looked up at me with wide, worried eyes.
“A-are you okay?”
“Yeah. I think I’m fine. Do you live around here? How far is your village from this spot?”
“If you follow this path all the way, you’ll reach it. I can guide you there. Oh, right—my name is Yanne.”
“Yanne? That’s a nice name. You can call me Jinwoo.”
I gave her only my first name, omitting my family name, then stood up and prepared to head to the village. But the girl named Yanne was fidgeting restlessly, like a cat that desperately needed to pee.
“If you need the bathroom, go ahead. I’ll wait.”
“No, that’s not it. We can’t just leave the goblins like this. You have to cut off their left ears and remove the poison sac under their chins. Those are worth money.”
It wasn’t a bathroom emergency. She simply couldn’t stand the thought of walking away from something that could be turned into cash. Following her advice, I decided it was smarter to collect anything that might have value.
I searched the three goblin corpses and found four dirty coins. Nothing else looked particularly valuable. The coins seemed like they belonged to some fantasy currency system, but since I had no idea what they were worth, I pocketed them anyway.
Using a dagger, I sliced off each goblin’s left ear. Then, to extract the supposed poison sac beneath the chin, I dug around with the blade. Goddamn…
Because the game was so realistic, the act of cutting into the soft flesh under a goblin’s jaw to pull out its poison sac was utterly repulsive. Their blood wasn’t red but a sickly green, and the stench was so foul I nearly gagged. It was a task I hoped never to repeat.
Swallowing back the urge to vomit from the rotting smell, I finally pried out what appeared to be the poison sac, soaked in green blood. Yanne, seemingly from nowhere, held out a large leaf. I placed the sac on it, and she carefully wrapped it in several more leaves.
“One of these poison sacs goes for half a silver.”
Once she had secured the goblin’s poison sac, Yanne looked visibly relieved and took the lead. Along the way we stopped at a stream so I could rinse myself off. After about ten minutes of walking, the village came into view.
“That’s my home—Honey Mushroom Village.”
It was a small settlement of about twenty wooden houses, all enclosed by a wooden palisade.
“Yanne! Did you go out gathering honey mushrooms by yourself again? Wait… is that a goblin ear you’re holding?”
The forty-year-old guard at the village entrance eyed me warily.
“Yes. I took care of them on the way here.”
“Oh-ho! You don’t even look injured. Well done. Come on in. We always welcome anyone who can actually fight. There’s no inn or tavern, so you can stay at the chief’s house—that biggest one over there. Welcome to Honey Mushroom Village!”
After passing the friendly guard and entering the village, Yanne spoke up cautiously.
“Um, Mister Jinwoo… would it be all right if you stayed at my house instead?”
“Is there some problem with the chief’s house? Do they charge too much or something?”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just… I need the money.”
“Huh?”
For a moment I wondered if this wasn’t the classic innocent village girl cliché, but the money-grubbing rogue girl cliché instead.
“Fine. I’ll stay at your place. Still, I should let the chief know I’m staying in the village, so let’s stop by there first.”
The largest house belonged to an elderly couple who greeted me warmly and invited me to stay with them. When I told them I had already promised to stay at Yanne’s house, the chief’s wife snorted.
“Hmph. That girl’s always been crafty. Do as you please.”
The chief and his wife immediately lost interest and turned away.
“This is a bed?”
It was a crude frame made of wooden planks filled with straw and grass—an eco-friendly bed, if you wanted to put a positive spin on it. Yanne, who had shown me to my sleeping spot, blushed with embarrassment. I found myself wondering how much I should pay her for lodging.
“Where are your parents?”
“They passed away last winter.”
After hearing that, I couldn’t possibly complain about the poor sleeping conditions.
“Yanne! Is it true an adventurer came to your house?”
“Which road did he take to get here?”
Villagers began dropping by one or two at a time, apparently having finished their work. Each person carried something. Since outsiders rarely visited, they were bringing gifts in exchange for news from beyond the village. Yanne accepted everything they offered, and only then did I understand why she had asked me to stay at her house. It wasn’t about the lodging fee—it was about the items the villagers would bring.
The problem was that I knew even less about the current state of the world than they did.
“I’m a mage who has been training in a tower. I’ve only just come out, so I’m afraid I don’t have any outside news to share.”
“A mage? Then… can you use healing magic?”
I couldn’t actually cast healing spells, but I confidently told them I could, trusting in my buff magic.
“In that case, could you please take a look at my father?”
“Examining him won’t be difficult.”
“Um… the thing is… we don’t have money for treatment…”
“Let’s look at the patients first and talk about payment later. I understand how things are in a remote mountain village, so please don’t worry.”
Because this was a realism-focused game that didn’t automatically generate quest windows, I couldn’t tell whether this counted as a quest or not. Still, “help or heal people in need” was such a common trope that I decided to treat them anyway.
When I downplayed the money issue, every sick person in the village came flooding in. There were people who looked like they suffered from chronic back pain, others so gaunt from serious illness they seemed to have only days left. These were long-term conditions that couldn’t be fixed in one go. But since this was a game, I figured a dramatic recovery might be possible, so I cast growth buffs on everyone.
“Ooh! It’s magic light!”
Not only the patients but their family members gasped in awe as the glowing particles sank into the patients’ bodies. Magic really was all about the visuals! That was the true cliché of magic.
“Mage, sir… I know my father’s illness is too advanced to be cured. But just having you look at him and receive your healing magic is enough to satisfy us.”
The forty-year-old guard who had been at the gate placed two silver coins in my hand. This was exactly why magic needed to look impressive. The visible effect built trust. The others paid what they could—some with money, others with cloth or grain. When I promised to cast the spell once more before leaving tomorrow, they left with bright, hopeful faces.
Watching their joy actually made me feel pretty good too.
“Mage, sir. Here, have some honey water.”
After all the patients had gone and I sat down on the bed, Yanne brought me a cup of honey water.
“Honey water? Is honey common around here?”
“Yes. The mushrooms I gathered today are honey mushrooms.”
“Ah, so that’s why the village is called Honey Mushroom Village.”
Yanne cut the caps off the honey mushrooms in front of me and sliced the stems into pieces. She wrapped the stems in cloth and squeezed, and sweet honey dripped out. I dipped a finger in and tasted it. It was less sticky and less sweet than flower honey, but it was unmistakably honey.
“Are these honey mushrooms the village’s specialty?”
“Yes. The village is named after them because they grow on the mountain over there.”
“I see. But why did you go gathering them alone? Is there a reason?”
“Well… the goblins know about the honey mushrooms too. During harvest season, people and goblins fight over them. Our family’s assigned patch was taken over by goblins.”
Reclaiming the stolen honey mushroom area would require fighting the goblins, but the village apparently lacked the strength to do so.
“So I’ve been sneaking over by myself to gather a little at a time. That’s how I ended up being chased. As long as I can make it to the village entrance, the goblins usually back off.”
She looked no older than ten, yet she was risking her life just to survive. It was heartbreaking. She had been forced to grow up far too quickly.
With a backstory like this, I guess the cliché quest where she asks to follow me is coming next?
I decided to test the waters.
“You can keep everything the villagers brought. That should cover the lodging fee, right?”
“What? All of it? There are even two silver coins.”
“Yes. I don’t need them. More importantly, I’d like something to eat.”
I handed her the dirty coins I had taken from the goblins’ pouches.
“Ah, just a moment.”
Yanne ran out with the coins and goods, returning with a flat loaf of bread and a thin porridge—or maybe it was soup; it was hard to tell. The humble meal on the table made me wonder if the game really needed to be this realistic. Still, when I tore off a piece of the flatbread, soaked it in the soup, and ate it, it wasn’t bad. Dipping it in honey made the nutty flavor of the oats blend with the sweetness of the honey in a surprisingly delicious way.
“Aren’t you eating?”
“I already ate my portion for today.”
Looking at her skinny limbs and the sack-like clothes she wore, and remembering she had just bought that bread for me, I doubted she would have eaten properly tonight if I hadn’t been there. She probably would have just eaten the leftover mushroom stems after squeezing out the honey.
I deliberately left some bread and soup for her, then lay down on the straw-and-grass bed and closed my eyes.
Ding-dong! You have played for 7 hours and 20 minutes. Physical responses are normal and all systems are stable.
According to the manual, if you logged out while sleeping and logged back in, you would resume at the exact same time. After checking the clock and doing the math, I realized the time ratio between the game and reality was 3:1. That was probably why the secretary had emphasized the eight-hour limit—it equaled a full day inside the game. The instruction not to stay logged in for more than a day of game time made the calculations relatively simple.
“But setting everything else aside, this game is way too realistic.”
I could still feel the texture of the oat bread in my mouth. I rubbed my left arm, remembering how it had been injured. The game’s realism was on another level.
Since this was my first play session, I wrote up a report on the tester experience and, just in case, contacted the secretary.
“Excuse me, Director. The game manual mentioned receiving assistance with food and weapons. How exactly does that work?”
“Oh, you’ve already eaten and fought battles?”
“Yes. I included the combat details in the report. It was so realistic that the pain felt genuine. That part was pretty tough. I think there should be an option to adjust the pain sensitivity.”
“Understood. I’ll review the report and discuss it with the development team. As for food, since we can’t upgrade the entire world’s cuisine, we’ll probably add cooking tools and seasonings to your inventory.”
“So the idea is that if I want to eat something delicious in the game, I have to cook it myself.”
“Correct. It’s still a beta version, so we can’t do everything.”
“Well, if you can provide that much, it should be fine. I’ll add my requests to the report.”
Since killing goblins and digging through their innards had been so realistic, cooking would probably be implemented with the same level of detail. From the perspective of someone who might open a restaurant after finishing the tester role, that kind of cooking gameplay didn’t sound bad at all.
After sending the report with my requests, it was time to return to real life.
I told my parents I had quit being a pro gamer and joined Changing as a regular employee. The fact that I was a secret tester for a new game was classified, so I couldn’t tell even my family. My mother was overjoyed that I had joined a global corporation like Changing, especially since I told her the work had nothing to do with games.
I slept deeply, ate a hearty meal, worked out at the gym, and then prepared to enter the capsule again.
Hmm. Park Jinwoo started in the remote forest. He sent in his report and then called. Did he seem suspicious at all?
Elon Busker looked over the translated report from Park Jinwoo and asked the secretary on the screen.
“No, sir. He hasn’t noticed anything. He still believes this is all inside a game.”