“Hey! You ochibi-chan over there. You’re really a girl, right? I can tell from the way you walk.”
While enjoying window shopping, wondering which live-ammunition gun she should buy next, in a gorgeous shopping mall in ≪SBC Glocken≫, GGO’s central city,
“Care for some tea? It will be Onee-san’s treat.”
LLENN heard a feminine voice calling out to her from behind. She was being seduced.
Onee-san?
What LLENN, wearing a robe with a hood that hid her face, saw by turning around was――
A tall, though not as tall as herself IRL, black-haired, ponytailed, brown-skinned beauty with a brick-coloured tattoo on her face.
At this time, her garments were something just a hair’s breadth away from being a bikini, and with such excessive exposure that it wasn’t suited for battle no matter how one looked at it. The garments exposed her slender, firm, cyborg-like flesh to those in her surroundings.
While finding it odd that the tattoo only covered her face, and wanting to ask why this was so, and moreover, thinking that if that was her own character, she would probably have left GGO immediately――
LLENN lowered her guard a little, as the other party was obviously a woman.
In most of the current VR games, it was impossible for someone to get a character that was of a different gender from their RL one, aside from slight mistakes in judging the gender based on the player’s brain waves.
There were male players who tried speaking to LLENN out of curiosity, but it was unmistakably her first time conversing with a female player.
In the first place, GGO was a game with overwhelmingly few female players. Obviously, LLENN had seen female characters from afar, but she hadn’t dared to run up to them to hold a conversation.
The brown-skinned beauty smiled sweetly.
“I’m „Pitohui“. Everyone’s booing about how hard it was to say my name, so just call me „Pito“ for short. Ochibi-chan, what’s your name?”
“Good day…… I am…… „LLENN“.”
“LLENN-chan huh! What a cute name! Oh, and you don’t need to use keigo in the game! After all, bringing Japanese society-like hierarchical relationship here when you’re finally enjoying a different world is such a drag, right!”
This exchange with someone in GGO was LLENN’s first conversation.
LLENN went to a restaurant in the game where she sat down in a private room with Pitohui, and they had a conversation while having tea and cake as a snack. A VR girl meeting, so to speak.
Karen hadn’t conversed directly with anyone other than her professors and family for quite some time, but strangely, as LLENN, she became lively in this conversation, which was without keigo. Pitohui’s cheerful and frank character reminded her of her friend Miyu.
Firstly, the two carefreely shared their tales of amusement, as well as those of their hardships, eventually culminating in talking about their difficulties due to the scarceness of female playersin GGO.
Pitohui informed LLENN that, having ended up as a sexy character, Pitohui tattooed her face, greatly reducing the number of nanpa(1), and thus she recommended this method to LLENN.
LLENN answered by quickly shaking her head, and then,
“I don’t have one IRL either. Since I wouldn’t be able to go to the hot springs if I did!”
Pitohui remarked and showed a sweet smile.
In the first place getting a tattoo and removing it in GGO was instantaneous, so, as long as one had the credits, it was possible to attempt it as much as one liked.
Pitohui’s VR game history was much longer than LLENN’s, as she had been playing them even during the SAO death game turmoil.
And as for GGO, she had been playing it ever since the service started 8 months ago. She liked the scenery of a savage world that did not resemble any other VR games, so she currently only played this game. However, she had recently been busy IRL, so her play time considerably decreased.
Not only was Pitohui LLENN’s sempai as a gamer, she was also far superior in terms of playerability.
Due to the conversation, LLENN was able to open her heart, thus she listed Pitohui as a ≪friend≫. With this, they were able to exchange messages even if they weren’t in the game.
More than 3 months after starting to play GGO, LLENN was finally able to find an in-gameacquaintance. On that subject, after a long while, LLENN remembered that she wanted to resolve her feelings of anthropophobia caused by her height complex, which was the reason she decided to begin playing VR games in the first place.
Of course, LLENN had absolutely no idea what kind of person Pitohui was in the real world.
Miyu once told her this:
“Though we’re within a VR game, the characters are still controlled by real humans, so a person’s nature is still revealed through their speech and actions. There are no people who’d truly be able to act out a different personality.”
Pitohui’s attitude did not fully give an impression of her being cheerful and wild.
Thus, LLENN arbitrarily tried profiling her as „A good-natured onee-san-type female in her twenties. Working adult. Single“ and things like that, but she didn’t know if she was right.
After finishing their tea and cake, Pitohui asked whether they should „drop out“, in other words, return to reality for the day, and LLENN responded to the question by stating that she was looking for a new live-ammunition gun.
“…………”
‘Ah, she’s the kind of person that you can’t let your guard down against.’
While thinking so, LLENN opened the window to log out.
Thus, LLENN and Pitohui formed a ≪Squadron≫.
This was a team formed with congenial partners that, in a fantasy genre game, would be called a ≪Guild≫. It allowed members to fight together, exchange items, and share a matching crest.
Naturally, banding together and fighting as a team in a game had various advantages.
For LLENN, who began playing the game to improve her social disposition, yet never grouped up with anyone, this was her first squadron. Though it was essentially a group consisting of only LLENN and Pitohui.
One month later―― whenever the two were on at the same time, LLENN would go on a farming session with Pitohui.
As opposed to LLENN, who would always be on at around the same time, Pitohui’s play time was really scattered. There were times when she would be playing on weekdays from morning, and also times when she would never come on during the weekend.
LLENN was curious about the kind of life she led IRL, but considered asking to be a violation ofmanners.
Eventually, LLENN realised that Pitohui was an extremely rich player.
She noticed this because of the number of guns that Pitohui had. Every time that they played together, the gun that Pitohui used was different.
“Pito-san, what are you using…… today?”
“Oh, it’s an ≪L86A2≫. It’s a version of the British army’s assault rifle L85 with an enhanced gun barrel and it’s a lengthened squad automatic weapon. It only uses a regular magazine, but as for differences from a rifle, well, its penetration isn’t as powerful as a normal gun, but its accuracy rating isn’t half bad. Although it’s heavy, I like it.”
“H-huh……”
“As for my sidearm pistol, it’s a ≪Colt Double Eagle≫! It’s a double-action auto gun based on Colt’s Government, but its appearance and ability are poor, so it’s not a popular gun! Well, as soon as I heard that it was in GGO, I looked for it! I found out that a collector had it, so I piled up my credits and bought it!”
Pitohui was a strong character who had been playing for a long time, but even so, she possessed a lot of expensive, rare, strange and unconventional guns.
One day, during the waiting period of their farming session, LLENN couldn’t hold back her curiosity any longer and asked how she obtained that many credits.
“Ah, through the ≪real money trade≫, of course.”
Pitohui quickly told her about it.
Real money trade, abbreviated as RMT, is the act of exchanging the real world’s electronicmoney for in-game credits and items.
GGO was currently the only VR game that officially allowed interchanging in-game currency with the real world’s electronic money. For that reason, in GGO there were pro players who would obtain „sellable” items by playing the game and selling them to earn a living.
Pitohui took advantage of her RL financial power. Such a playstyle was frequently flamed by people who thought that games were about putting in extraneous effort to obtain the items. However, everyone was free to choose their own playstyle, and, most importantly, it wasn’t prohibited by the system, so though it was sad, they were just the cries of the poorer players who were jealous..
Pitohui was rich in the real world. At the very least, to the extent of inexorably investing in agame. LLENN knew just this one thing about her RL. Because of this,
“Today’s gun is a ≪Remington M870≫! Speaking of pump action shotguns, it’s cliched. Wanna try shooting with it? Come on, shoot!”
“Finally, I got my hands on it! An ≪M16≫! Look closely, it’s not an ≪M16A1≫! It the originalmodel M16!”
“Today, I’ve brought five guns, all of them automatic pistols using 9 mm Parabellum bullets. I’ll explain, firstly this is――"
LLENN was told a considerable variety of details regarding small arms.
She would try firing guns that her strength value allowed her to hold, but
“Well? Well?”
“Yeah. It was fun shooting with it, but……”
“Just as I thought, you’re set on P-chan, huh.”
NOTES
1. ^ Nanpa (ナンパ) is a type of flirting and seduction popular among Japanese teenagers and people in their twenties or thirties. Basically, guys “girl hunting”.
2. ^ LLENN used the word なまら (namara), a Hokkaido dialect word that means “very much, exceedingly”.
3. ^ LLENN first used a -masu verb, but then remembered about Pitohui’s hatred of hierarchical society and used a plain verb.
4. ^ A kinchou (金打) was the act of hitting each other’s metal objects to signify that an oath will be kept. In the case of samurais, they would hit each other’s sword, while women would use mirrors instead.
5. ^ The period in the history of Japan between 1603 and 1863.
6. ^ A tsuba (鍔) is a part of a Japanese sword. An English equivalent would be "sword guard".
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