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[Busujima: "If you've got an online handle, that means you're from a modern-world setting, right?"]
[Blizzard from Hell: "Gabriel, have you figured out where the newbie's from?"]
[Shut-in Angel: "At least tell us your real name first, @Shepherd. Mind sharing?"]
[Shepherd: "Rosen."]
Gabriel stared at the name, racking her brain, then gave up and turned to a search engine.
Nothing. Not a single matching hit.
If Rosen were a main or side character in some anime, something should have popped up.
She tried adding more keywords. Still nothing.
[Shut-in Angel: "Can't find anything."]
[Femme Fatale: "Oh?"]
[Shut-in Angel: "Nope!"]
[Shut-in Angel: "Don't tell me the newbie's like me—someone stuck in a world where you can only receive info passively?"]
[Shepherd: "If you mean anime, then according to the theories you guys came up with in the group files, yeah, sounds about right."]
[Shut-in Angel: "Group status: -1."]
[Old Mage: "Another one who's seen the plot… I have mixed feelings."]
[Blizzard from Hell: "It's not a big deal. Anime plotlines don't perfectly match our real experiences anyway—sometimes the differences are huge."]
[Femme Fatale: "The real headache is how much of our private lives got exposed."]
She was a demon lord.
Once, she'd signed a secret pact with the Defense Minister of an island nation to protect its existence from other demonic threats.
Only a handful of people in the entire world knew her true identity.
But ever since joining this chat group and meeting members like Gabriel, she'd had the constant, unsettling feeling that her underwear was being seen right through.
And… well, it kinda was.
[Old Mage: "Doesn't bother me. That's not the real me anyway."]
[Shut-in Angel: "Well, you're already over a thousand years old. In human years, that's ancestor-level."]
[Old Mage: "Hmph! Elves and humans age differently. By elven standards, I'm basically a sixteen-year-old girl."]
[Shut-in Angel: "But you're still over a thousand years old."]
[Old Mage: "I'm an elf. You have to look at it from an elf's perspective."]
[Shut-in Angel: "But you're still over a thousand years old."]
[Old Mage: "..."]
In the real world—
A white-haired elf girl with delicate features sat in a wooden cabin, studying magic. When she saw those three lines, her rosy lips quivered like ripples on water, and her eyes began to glisten.
[Busujima: "Better apologize, or Miss Frieren's going to ignore you for three days again."]
[Shut-in Angel: "@Old Mage, sorry! I was just joking. Elves are long-lived, so you're not old at all."]
[Old Mage: "Really? Put it in writing."]
[Shut-in Angel: "Fine, fine—written and signed!"]
[Blizzard: "Did you guys forget we still have a newbie here? Oh, right—I forgot to send you the 'New Member Guidelines.' Read them through, and if anything's unclear, just ask in the group. We'll answer anything we can."]
[Shepherd: "Thanks."]
Rosen smiled faintly at their warm welcome.
He opened the file Blizzard sent and began reading carefully.
The truth was, these kinds of "newbie guides" were mostly for members who'd never seen a chat group before.
Even without them, the interface was simple enough to figure out most features.
Beyond standard stuff like group files and video calls, shrinking or folding the chat window revealed the real tools.
Daily check-in. Lucky draw. Group shop. Enhancement system.
All of them idiot-proof to use.
Check-ins earned you points. Draws, shopping, and enhancements all required spending points.
Points were the group's one and only currency.
At the moment, the only steady way to get them was the daily check-in—though you could also sell items to the shop for a points payout based on its own "valuation."
Of course, just like every game store ever…
Something that cost 18,000 before you bought it would only sell for 1,800 afterward.
So unless you were desperate for points or getting rid of junk, selling valuables back was a bad deal.
The shop's inventory was made up of items from members' worlds.
The catch? What appeared was totally random.
Which meant you could refresh the list only to get a pile of trash… or see something amazing but not have the points to buy it, forcing you to watch helplessly as it vanished at midnight.
The enhancement system was exactly what it sounded like—basically RPG stat points.
And the deeper you went, the more points it cost.
Then there was the one feature you had to try at least once: the lucky draw.
"..."
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