Come to Think of It, a Strange Situation
How peculiar.
Seyul was every bit as taken aback. She didn't know the game's story, but that didn't mean she lacked perception. She'd roughly figured out what a village populated solely by hostile monsters was supposed to be for—so the fact that it lay smashed to pieces without her, a player, so much as lifting a finger was bound to strike her as strange. And for some reason, the scene stirred a faint sense of déjà vu besides.
She had run into something much like this before crossing the river: arriving at a new place, only to find that someone had already taken care of everything.
Gerard.
The Land of Outcasts, where everyone seduced by a forbidden skill had ended up killing one another—and the werewolf who had survived there to the very end. This was a situation much like the one she'd walked in on the day she met him.
"Huh."
"What?"
Wondering if her ears had deceived her, Seyul glanced around—and found the monsters staring back. The ones slumped on the ground groaning had been thrown into utter shock by the sight of her appearing out of thin air.
"H-have they already sent someone to take us away?"
"No."
"Look, it's a human."
"What's a human doing here?"
The monsters hauled their aching bodies upright. Faces contorted into fearsome scowls, they moved to surround her.
"What business does a human have coming here?"
"Just passing through."
Seyul cast a glance at the monster who'd asked and answered flatly. "I'm on my way somewhere, so mind your own business."
"And if it were your village, could you just brush off some stranger barging through it?!"
The monster shot back, flabbergasted. It was such overwhelming common sense that even the viewers watching couldn't help nodding along.
"Get lost, human!"
"Did a slave run off or something?"
"We're mad enough as it is, and now some human crawls out of the woodwork."
The monsters bared their hostility all at once. Their village had just been pounded into rubble, and now a human wanted to stroll through it—hardly a surprising reaction. They moved to seize her by force on the spot.
Seeing Seyul raise her spear, the viewers said their prayers for the monsters' souls. But—
"Everyone, stand down!"
Just in time, a savior appeared. One of the monsters held back his comrades, who had been on the verge of committing the greatest blunder of their lives.
A scaled body and a long tail. It was a lizardman—a low-rank monster that looked like a reptile grafted onto a man.
The moment he reined in the ones who'd nearly attacked Seyul, the monsters cried out in protest.
"But Lord Koras, this fellow says he means to pass through our village—in the midst of all this!"
"Is there a problem? This is no fortress. If he is merely passing through, there is no reason to bar his way."
"B-but of all times, this is the time! And he is a human—look at him, dressed like a slave..."
"That, too, is no matter. ...For now, we and they stand in the same sorry position."
The lizardman called Koras spoke with bitterness, and at his words the monsters' expressions froze in an instant. They wrestled with it for a moment, then clicked their tongues and backed off.
"My apologies if we frightened you."
Once his comrades withdrew, Koras alone remained and addressed her. "The folk of this village were never the sort to bare their fangs at a human slave on sight, but times are dire. Everyone's nerves are worn raw, so I shall apologize in their stead."
Koras bowed his head with perfect courtesy—and the viewers were dumbfounded by the display of manners.
Even the hardcore fans of God's Warrior had never seen this monster before.
A strange village, and a friendly NPC no one recognized. Everything was so odd that not only the viewers but Seyul herself grew curious.
"An apology will do."
Seyul quietly lowered the spear she'd been holding at the ready. It struck her as genuinely novel—this was the first time she'd met a monster that regarded her with hostility.
"Koras, was it? What exactly happened here?"
Since the lizardman could clearly hold a conversation, she asked for the story, and Koras's face clouded with grief.
"High-rank monsters who rule the nearby city came calling."
"Why?"
"To take us with them."
Koras spoke through gritted teeth. "When we refused and resisted, they smashed the village and left us in this state. They beat us without mercy, but we held out for dear life."
Seyul's small head tilted cutely to one side. There were parts of the explanation that refused to add up.
"Why would those high-rank monsters want to take you away? And why would you resist them so desperately?"
The ones who'd flattened an entire village just to make them come along—and the ones who, having watched it happen, still dug in their heels and refused to go. Both sides were behaving in ways that defied all common sense.
When she pointed this out, Koras took on a sorrowful air. "It is because of a certain skill that has been spreading through this land of late. A devil's skill that drinks in the power of the slain and claims it as one's own!"
It was an explanation she'd heard somewhere before.
"Ever since a cursed skill called Drain appeared out of nowhere, everything has gone to ruin. Anyone can pick it up, and now the whole land is busy murdering itself."
"That thing again?"
Seyul's lovely face scrunched up. Drain had already been a thorn in her side twice before, and now here it came crawling back—her expression crumpled all on its own. The viewers reacted much the same way.
A skill that players learned had become a skill that turned up everywhere she went. And on top of that, it was out there causing trouble. Exasperating didn't begin to cover it.
But what Koras had just described was only the tip of the iceberg.
"Against a low-rank monster, one might at least fight and kill. The true problem is the high-ranks. The pack of high-rank monsters that rules the nearby city has laid eyes on Drain. To serve as sacrifices for that skill, they are dragging off low-rank monsters such as us!"
Even Gerard, a mere low-rank monster, had grown considerably stronger through Drain. If high-rank monsters—formidable to begin with—put it to use, the results would be that much more devastating. And so the high-ranks had cooked up a plausible pretext to haul off this village's monsters, while the villagers, sensing the scheme beneath it, had resisted. That was why the village lay in ruins.
Though "resistance" had amounted to little more than lying down flat and refusing to move. Fighting back had been out of the question—because their attacks simply did not work.
"As a human, you will know this well: against high-rank demons, a blow that carries no mana does nothing at all. It is nullified outright, so we could do naught but take a one-sided beating."
Koras spoke with festering resentment, and at those words, Seyul's eyes gleamed.
It was the same for a Melusine like me.
Just like the high-rank monsters in this game, the high-rank species of the other world nullified ordinary attacks. It was a baseline ability shared by every high-rank species above a certain threshold. Because of it, regular attacks were meaningless against them—and it had been a tremendous advantage for Seyul as well.
The kaiju back in reality do it too. Maybe the game lifted the setting from there.
Seyul tilted her head for a moment, then said, "So that's what happened. Thanks. At least now I have a rough idea of what's going on here."
"There is no need to thank me. You had best be on your way."
Koras gazed at her with pity. "In your state, I would tell you to rest before moving on, but there is no room for that. Last time they merely left, but who knows when that pack will return. Be gone before they do."
"And you?"
"We tried fleeing. There is nowhere left for us to go. But you are human—you can yet run to human territory as you are. Go, and quickly."
Human slaves were sometimes devoured by monsters with a taste for human flesh. Koras had mapped that plight onto his own people, who had been reduced overnight from living beings to prey. Feeling a kinship in their shared misery, he worried for Seyul's sake.
But speak of the tiger, and it comes padding through the door.
"Chief Koras! Today, we shall not simply turn back!"
Before Seyul could leave, the high-rank monsters from the nearby city returned.
Not human, then.
At the sight of them, Seyul very nearly mistook them for humans. Unlike low-rank monsters, the high-ranks had near-human forms—and handsome ones, at that. There were six of them, dressed up like nobles, and they swaggered into the village with their chins held high.
"Ugh."
"Y-you bastards..."
The very culprits who had razed the village and beaten every monster in it half to death. At the sight of them, the villagers scrambled back in haste, wounds and all. Even Koras, the chief, faltered.
"You would do well to quit this stubbornness and come along quietly."
A blond high-rank monster in armor, dressed for all the world like a knight, spoke for the group. "Struggle all you like—it changes nothing. We have been given leave: if you will not follow, we may cut you down where you stand and eat you ourselves."
"Wh-what did you say?"
"So, what will it be? Will you all follow us home and be eaten in our manor? Or will you be eaten by us, here and now? Speaking for myself, I rather prefer the latter."
The high-rank monsters who had come here had learned Drain as well. If the villagers refused, the six of them would get to monopolize every last resident. The monster knight smiled a slimy smile, ill-befitting his knightly garb.
But the knight's slimy little wish would go unfulfilled. Seyul appeared, wedging herself between Koras and the knight.
"Who's this human supposed to be?"
"Have you lost your mind!"
The monster knight gaped in disbelief, and Koras nearly had a heart attack. "Do you want to die?!"
Koras tried to haul her back, demanding what she thought she was doing, but Seyul paid him no mind. She simply raised her spear toward the high-rank monsters without a word.
"Is this human out of her mind?"
The high-ranks seriously questioned the girl's sanity. From the look of it, she meant to shield Koras and fight them. A human—and a small girl dressed in rags like a slave, no less—pulling this on them was beyond absurd.
"Hah!"
"How hilarious."
The high-rank monsters, wary not in the slightest, were too busy laughing to do anything else. Seyul, for her part, had no idea they were laughing at her.
They had dropped their guard completely. These were foes she could dispatch easily enough, but this made it easier still. Seyul moved to exploit the opening and finish this quickly—but—
"What do you think you're doing?"
Someone just had to interrupt a perfectly good opportunity.
"Ngh!"
"What the—?"
The monsters startled at the sudden appearance of a glowing red humanoid figure. The God of Fire had materialized out of nowhere and addressed Seyul.
"What are YOU doing?!"
The detestable god had to butt in at the best possible moment, and Seyul glared daggers at him. "Why do you keep showing up?"
"I was watching, and you were doing something strange. That is why I have come."
"What strange thing am I doing?"
"Do you truly ask because you do not know? Are you not trying to help the monsters living in this village?"
"And if I am?"
"What kind of lunatic helps monsters?! They are enemies—vermin to be hunted down and exterminated!"
The God of Fire roared, beside himself with incredulity. And in that very moment, the chat window filled with its own chorus of wait, hold on.
Mobs slaughtering one another—and a player protecting the weak ones. Utter madness! The viewers, only now catching on to the problem, laughed at themselves in embarrassment.