Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Episode 9
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Opportunity in the Game Becomes Reality Episode 9
3. Battlefield (3)
Before stepping onto the battlefield, isn't the most essential thing to have strengthening of myself for the sake of survival?
Obviously, the most effective means of strengthening I can use right now is to play the game Chronicle Online.
-Kuoooh!
A troll swings down a huge wooden club with a rough roar.
I barely dodged that attack by a hair's breadth and fired Fire Arrow, a 2nd-circle spell.
[Critical Hit!]
The arrow of flame, powered up by my gear, pierced the troll's glabella without any deviation, and with a critical hit notification, it pushed the thing backwards.
Normally, even for a troll, getting its head pierced would mean instant death at that moment, but this is not reality, it's inside a game.
No matter how much you attack vital spots, a monster will not die unless its HP drops to 0, and even if you stab it with a fork, you can kill it as long as you reduce its HP to 0.
Because of that, the troll, whose HP still remained high, quickly straightened its posture and launched itself like a sprinter.
-Kwaaang!
Arcia, who is both supporter and tanker, should be blocking that troll, but right now she was holding off two of them by herself, making it hard for her to help.
So I had to fight alone, throwing myself here and there.
-Kwaang!
Chronicle Online is a game.
Even a mage has a certain amount of HP, so depending on the situation, you can sometimes tank hits with your body while attacking, and that would make hunting easier.
However, right now I have senses that are no different from reality, so I have no choice but to be cautious with every single movement.
If I get hit even once by that brutish club, the pain beyond imagination will make it impossible to carry out proper combat.
Thanks to that, the battle time grew longer and my leveling up was delayed.
However, I did not think of this only as a drawback.
Senses that are no different from reality.
That directly leads to accumulation of combat experience that is the same as real combat.
What use is it to learn magic if you cannot use it properly in actual battle?
In that sense, the fierce battles in Chronicle Online were perfect as preparation for real combat.
[You have gained 580 experience.]
"This is rough."
After about ten minutes of rolling on the ground and fighting like that.
Having taken down all the trolls, I plopped down onto the ground.
Arcia walked over to me and quietly stood by my side.
"Should I hire a top player and get carried?"
I shook my head and gave up on that idea.
It's obvious that getting help from a high-level player would make leveling faster, but in my current situation, I have to be extremely cautious about contact with other users.
That's only natural, considering that I am the one who inherited Manuel Lucas's opportunity.
There is no need to draw attention by advertising that I'm different from other characters.
If I suddenly cry out in pain after getting hit from the side, or show signs of physical exhaustion, it's only natural that people would start to wonder.
That's why I'm avoiding getting entangled with other people as much as possible and quietly collecting this opportunity, even if it's slow.
[A message has arrived.]
But things in this world do not go according to plan.
Because it was suddenly decided that I would participate in a battle that wasn't on the schedule, it seems I need to slightly revise this policy.
There is nothing better than leveling up to increase survivability in war, so I decided to prioritize results even if it meant pushing myself a bit.
"It can't be helped."
Of course, I will still avoid contact with other users as much as possible.
Instead, I decided to rack my brains in other directions.
[Production request has been completed. Please visit the workshop to collect your commissioned item.]
Reading the message that arrived during my break, I dusted myself off and stood up, then returned to the town with Arcia.
And the place we visited was the alchemy workshop.
"You've arrived, Mr. Minki?"
As soon as we entered the workshop, an NPC hurried over and bowed obsequiously.
"Thank you. Are those the items I commissioned?"
"Yes, that's correct."
I approached the wooden crates stacked high on one side of the workshop.
When I opened the lid of a crate, potion bottles were neatly arranged inside.
[Tears of Salamander]
Grade: Magic
Effect: Fixed damage 3,000
When you play games, there are items where, because of their terrible cost-effectiveness, you can't help but wonder why such trash items even exist.
Chronicle Online is no exception, and the Tears of Salamander I commissioned this time is exactly that kind of item.
Fixed damage 3,000.
In terms of power, it's on the level of 3rd- to 4th-circle magic, but because the core material is such an expensive item, the production cost of one potion, converted into real-world money, came to 10,000 root (root = won).
In other words, using this means burning 10,000 won on a single attack.
In the case of a troll, with 5,000 HP, two of them are needed, which means it takes about 20,000 won in-game to take down one.
What a truly infuriating cost-performance ratio.
'Still, it's perfect for me right now.'
But I'm someone who has time to spare more than money.
If I could buy levels, I wouldn't mind investing hundreds of millions, even billions.
"I've checked the items. Thank you for your hard work."
"It seems you've made all the stock for a year this time. I never expected the day would come when I'd receive such a large order for an item famous for its worst cost-performance ratio."
A response befitting a production NPC proud of its high AI.
I snickered and put the items into my inventory.
The Tears of Salamander I stored came to a total of 10,000.
That was a quantity worth 100 million root.
"I'll come again."
I left the workshop in high spirits, and the alchemist saw me off with a polite bow.
Its cost-performance is hellish, but inflicting 3,000 fixed damage without casting is useful in many ways.
Besides, 'fixed damage' means it deals a set amount of damage no matter how high the defense is, doesn't it?
I now had 10,000 Tears of Salamander, so by simple calculation, that meant I could deal 30 million fixed damage.
If I used my brain properly, I could earn experience in a way not much different from exploiting a loophole.
"Alright, let's go!"
At my cheerful shout, Arcia, as always, silently followed me.
* * *
That day Adrian bought Tears of Salamander in bulk from the alchemist.
A strange post appeared on the Chronicle Online bulletin board.
[Does a meteorite fall in this game too?]
Hello. I'm a user who's been enthusiastically training a scout lately, and I'm posting because I just witnessed something strange while I was out hunting hydra.
First off, the location was the Aint Basin, famous as a Hydra weapon farming spot for unique-grade gear.
When it was time for the field boss Hydra Berkus to spawn and I went to the swamp with my party, something absurd happened.
A streak of light flashed down from the sky, and the field boss Berkus, with 28 million HP, vanished in an instant.
The entire area was reduced to scorched earth and turned into a restricted zone, and it took 30 minutes for the system to recover.
How am I supposed to take it when my prey evaporated right in front of my eyes?
-User 1: Don't bullshit.
-Poster: I'm attaching a screenshot. Look at it, asshole.
-User 2: Isn't it just Meteor magic?
-Poster: Even if it were Meteor, dealing 28 million damage against Berkus, who has high magic defense, would be impossible. And besides, that wasn't a magic effect to begin with.
-User 3: Don't you have a video?
-Poster: Yeah, it happened so fast.
-User 4: Isn't it a bug?
The post, which drew as many as 1,000 comments, became a small issue among users.
But since Chronicle Online was the kind of game where all sorts of incidents never stopped happening, interest soon faded, and users simply dismissed it as a bug and moved on.
However, someone who saw this post had to be greatly flustered, because he had never expected the matter to grow this big.
"Did I stand out too much after all? I'll have to be more careful next time."
He was none other than Adrian, the owner of the character nickname "Minki," who had succeeded in earning a large amount of experience.
* * *
Two days later, on the day the Lawrence Viscounty's territorial army set out.
"Be careful and come back safely."
My mother, as I stood in the uniform of a territorial army commander, something Cédric liked so much, came over, took my hands, and prayed for my safe return.
"Don't worry. I absolutely won't overdo it."
My father silently patted my shoulder, and the odious Anna, pretending to wipe away tears, waved a handkerchief.
"If you can't accomplish merit worthy of the family, don't even think about coming back."
And Cedric was Cedric as always.
With a bitter laugh, I said I'd try my best, then boarded the wounded transport train amid the cheers of the territorial people, who were celebrating regardless of the family's circumstances.
With a top speed of 900 km/h and the ability to transport 800 troops, the wounded transport train looked less like a train and more like a giant combat aircraft.
As if to prove that its appearance isn't just for show, it can fly through the sky whenever it wants, but the reason it was deliberately made to cling closely to the ground was to prepare for interception.
There were a total of three wounded transport trains departing from the Lawrence Viscounty.
The number of troops was a little over 1,000, but including the attendants who would wait on me and the knights, as well as support supplies, three trains were mobilized.
"Young master, that lady is…?"
Naturally, I took the widest seat of honor and sat down, and Sir Haman, the seasoned staff officer who would effectively be commanding the army from now on, looked at Arcia sitting beside me with a bewildered expression.
"Do you not know about Arcia?"
Perhaps he hadn't expected me to ask so openly.
Sir Haman was visibly flustered.
"I have heard talk about the relationship between you two. However, we're heading to a place that may become a battlefield from now on, so bringing your lover along is a bit…"
"I will not entertain any discussion about her. Just think of her as my secretary or something."
"Mm, if that is how you feel, young master. Understood."
No one viewed my actions in a positive light.
But Arcia was someone who would throw herself in front of me to protect me if it came down to it, so there was no way I could leave her behind.
Moreover, thanks to power-leveling this time, she had come to possess stats on par with a regular knight, making her my most reliable ally.
Over the course of two days, I had dragged my level up from 35 all the way to 78.
This was thanks to wildly spamming the Tears of Salamander, that item with the worst cost-performance, and after placing three additional custom orders, I had burned a staggering 200 million on the game.
At first, I took the Tears of Salamander, gathered them in one place, and detonated them all at once to kill high-level named monsters and power-level.
[This is abnormal growth. The consolidation of the fortuitous encounter may not proceed normally.]
However, because the system put on the brakes with a warning like that, I had no choice but to use the Tears of Salamander by throwing them one by one.
Even so, my leveling speed was far faster than raising it through ordinary hunting, and in just two days I had broken through stage 3 of the fortuitous encounter quest and was on the verge of stage 4.
Normally, the higher your level, the harder it becomes to raise it, but my growth was ignoring that rule.
Aside from the creation of 3rd-circle magic, I obtained two rewards by clearing stage 3 of the fortuitous encounter quest.
One was cash assets: **100 billion** root.
The other was three bottles of "Elixir," a panacea that frequently appears in legends.
Elixir, considered on par with the miracle of a saint, can perfectly heal even mortal wounds as long as either the brain or the heart is still alive.
'It's like a reward tailored to my current situation.'
Naturally, Elixir was not a game item, but something that could be used in reality, and it is currently stored in a corner of my subspace.
Thanks to that, my heart as I headed for the battlefield could not help but feel all the more at ease.