Golden Experience

After maintenance was over, Rare logged in and received a bunch of notifications. There was the usual notification about the maintenance, but it had been sent before maintenance so, after skimming the title, she ignored it.

“A recording of battle footage, huh. Well, as long as it doesn’t show me changing, then whatever. Let’s see, so they’ll also ask for my permission after I’ve been given the edited footage to review… Since my face doesn’t appear, then yeah, whatever. Ah, that’s right…”

Something came to mind that she had written down as a possibility. If it worked, then things might get interesting.

“Great, so all that’s left is that ‘Wayne’ guy.”

“What’s going on with Wayne?” asked Kerry, who was standing by next to Rare.

After going to the forest with Wayne, Kerry had spent nearly all her time in the queen’s chambers. Apparently, while she had been pretending to be weak, having to attack her allies, the engineer ants, caused her quite a bit of stress. Unless Rare ordered it, she didn’t intend to maintain her relationship with Wayne.

“Regarding the event the other day where I was gone for about two hours, there was a little incident.”

She wasn’t sure if her followers could tell if she was logged in during those two hours. Since she had predicted that there wouldn’t be a way to earn XP while in the event area, she had ordered her subordinates to go out and randomly kill stuff in the meantime, curious if she would still get the XP. However, since she ended up earning a ton of XP during that last exhibition match, it was hard to tell whether she had gotten any or not.

<If there is something obstructing the princess, shall I sally forth and cut it down?>

“No, that won’t be necessary… Okay. Let’s do this. Kerry will go out to the city, and I’ll use [Summon Caster: Mind] to possess her. Like that, I’ll make contact with Wayne—

—lead him into the great forest, then kill him for XP.”

After Kerry arrived at the city, Rare activated [Summon Caster: Mind] to take control. She had borrowed Kerry’s avatar before when she was testing out how the skill worked, but for some reason it felt uncomfortable now, like she was overly conscious that it wasn’t her own body. Though that was natural since it wasn’t her body. Yoroizaka was completely subservient, so that felt more like controlling a robot, or playing that kind of VR game; to put it plainly, the experience was so alien that, conversely, it didn’t bother her at all.

“So if it’s a character with an extremely strong sense of self, so much that they have their own mannerisms, that might be the cause of this incompatibility.”

In the real world, since every given person has their own unique way of walking that uses their own personal habits and quirks, their muscles and nerves are optimized in a way to accommodate those quirks and minimize any discomfort. Because of that, if a stranger were to take over that person’s body and try moving in it, they would definitely feel ill at ease. She couldn’t believe that the game would go that far to replicate that feeling, but at the same time, she felt that since it was this game, then it wasn’t that odd at all.

“How did it go, ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology’^[1]…?” she muttered aloud as she made her way to the sellsword guild. Her habit of talking to herself had gotten worse. It was fine when she was in the queen’s chamber, but she really needed to watch herself when she was out and about.

There weren’t that many sellswords in the sellsword guild—or so she had been expecting, but there were actually more here than usual. Looking closer, they seemed to be players. She didn’t see any of that desperation characteristic of someone looking to lay down roots in this city; to put it negatively, it felt like they had come to the boonies on break in order to kill some time, like they were the grandkids of the neighborhood old folks or something.

As someone raised in the countryside in real life, Rare was rather familiar with people like that. To this city, these players were “city slickers,” as it were. With the advent of VR, there were fewer opportunities to go outside, so the gulf between the countryside and the city got even wider. While the feeling of being trapped that was characteristic of living in the countryside had faded, so had the positive spirit of wanting others to know more about their own hometown.

“Now, is Wayne— Ah, there he is.”

He was in a corner of the lobby, sitting on a bench and staring at the floor. For a split second, the heavy atmosphere confused Rare; was she actually in a game right now, or was she in a VR employment center? Not that she’d ever been in one of those before.

“Yo, Wayne. Keep ya waitin’?”

“!!! Rare…! Ah, not at all… You came to see me.”

“Yeah. It’s written all over your face; you got a bunch of stuff to ask me. And we haven’t talked since coming back from the forest.”

As she spoke, Rare mentally clicked her tongue in irritation. A number of other players appeared to be looking their way after hearing Wayne’s response. That lack of consideration was probably why he didn’t have any friends. Not that she could judge; she had no friends herself.

“I don’t mind chatting, but… we stand out too much here. I’d like to go somewhere more quiet; let’s head to the forest. If I remember right, there aren’t many monsters or people around the edge.”

Wayne stood up and, with a nervous look on his face, nodded in assent. Rare accompanied him out of the sellsword guild. It didn’t seem like anyone followed them. Not that she’d particularly care if anyone had.

On the way to the forest, Rare did her best to walk in a way that didn’t seem unnatural. In order to accomplish that, she had to trace Kerry’s habits. She wasn’t sure how closely Wayne had been monitoring Kerry’s behavior, but for Rare, it felt like she was on a mission in disguise to converse with someone she didn’t know. After framing it in that manner, she couldn’t help feeling a bit pumped up. Since things had already become like this, she wanted to do her best not to get found out.

When they got there, they decided to find a spot about 20 minutes into the forest. Last time Kerry had come here, if she remembered correctly, they leisurely wandered around for an hour before an engineer ant had been set on them. Even after just 20 minutes, no one would be able to see them from the edge of the forest, so last time there was no need to wait until they had gone in as deep as they had. Even after they had gotten that far in, though, no ants would have come without being ordered.

The forest was originally Kerry’s home turf, though, so doing all this was actually good practice for Rare. As far as avoiding discomfort, she found it far easier to move about in the forest. Riley and the others also had regular patrols; maybe it’d be good for Rare to occasionally go with them via possession.

“All right, this should be far enough. So Wayne, what do you want to know?”

“…Are you… really Rare?”

“Of course I am. I’m obviously Rare. Who else would I be?”

Since she was currently possessing Kerry’s body, the person talking to him was unmistakably Rare. In fact, all the previous times actually weren’t Rare.

“I feel like… you’re not… the same Rare I know.”

^[1]: The third of Clark’s Three Laws