Manowa

Let’s in crisis
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Editor: Dre

==

I’m looking at the sky.
A little girl is looking at the sky.
Ah, what a beautiful blue sky.
Admiration leaks from that girl’s mouth.
A sudden expanded world.
An opened gra.s.sland.
Remains of a decaying ruin.
A flowing brook.
A far away mountain range.
As if it was the Iota’s region in “Zexiahart Biography of Illusions”… she thought in a daze.

“Eh?”
That’s why that girl is confused.
Raising her lying body, she looks at the soil in her hand.
“Soil.”
A natural confirmation. But it’s a truth that is not natural in any way.

“Where is…this?”
While pressing her head as her thoughts starts to be clear, she stands.
Then she once again feels confused. Where is this? She has no recollection whatsoever about this place.

No, wait.
“I think…I know this place. That ruin…is Signa Ruin. That mountain peak…it’s Jiltia mountain range…and that river is connected with Rull river.”

As it was smoothly said from that girl’s mouth, she convinced herself that this is not an unknown place. However, she being here is something that is impossible.

‘Why’, you ask?
“This is…inside the game?”
The answer to her doubt escaped from her mouth. An impossible truth.
“What’s happening?”
In a fl.u.s.ter that girl scans the area. This place is affirmatively not her own room, where she was awhile ago.

“I was at my room until awhile ago, right? I don’t remember coming here…”
Then that girl saw the ruin. Moss grew densely at the stone paving, indicating that there is no one who have ever touched it in months or even years. Well if it was only that then it might be fine. What if the idea of being in her room is her own misunderstanding, and the truth is that she was on a vacation abroad and she had hit her head in front of Mohenjodaro ruin, then she lost her memory?

“Well, as I thought it’s unrealistic.”
If only there’s no floating stone in the air.
(If I remember it correctly, Signa Ruin is a magic temple created to manufacture floating stone…that was the setting)
At the tutorial quest in the beginning of the game, Signa Ruin was explained as a place to produce floating stones that were used in the creation of flying ships.

I mentioned "was" because now it has been abandoned. After players drifted as emigrants in the town and registered as adventurers, the first quest urged players to pick the floating stones.
Those who took this quest would have surely learnt the basics such as purchasing item, using equipment, and fighting or fleeing from monster.

(eh, wait!)
As she saw the ruins, dumbfounded, cold sweat starts to trickle down.
She thought back to her current status. This place is the tutorial quest ruin. This is the tutorial quest last checkpoint. The stage of the first boss fight.

(no way!?)
She feels beast presences from around her.
(uwawawawa)
Countless breathing sounds. Inhuman footsteps.
“Command Open.”
Following her words, various windows appears around her.
“Oh, they appeared! So this is really a game?”
She still thinks it as unreal, but she believed that this is inside the game and she opens the status menu.

“Yuihama Kazane, um it’s my name.”
(But I never used my real name when playing--)
While thinking she might have become senile, she—Yuihama Kazane, confirms the other parameter.
(Level 8? So it stays in the initial value. It’s not the one I used to play. Weapon, armor is…just normal clothes)
The one I wear here is the clothes I wore at home, a baggy tank top and shorts, plus somehow I"m also wearing sneakers. The defensive capability is just as pathetic as it sounds.

There’s no way I can fight. As Kazane judges it that way, for her next option she turns on the display visualization.
(Geh!!)
As she did so, in the plain with overgrown gra.s.s surround her several windows have appeared one after another.
Goblin level 12. Typical Goblin tribe, but there are a lot of them.
(17, 18, 19, 20. Twice the amount of when it was a game. No way. Seriously, no.)

As she realizes that she is in an absurd situation, she takes a deep breath in resignation. The boss in this quest is usually fixed at 10 goblin tribes. And now it’s twice the number.
With ‘High Freedom, High Reality’ as it"s catchphrase, a lot of the battles in Zexiahart were extremely strict.
For example, battling against twenty, no, even if it were just ten goblins, fighting while the character stats is still at the initial stage would mean certain death. Originally if you didn’t follow instructions from the guild to break them apart and kill them one by one, you will most likely die. That’s why the quest in Signa Ruin was often called as the ‘Beginner Killer’.

(They encircled me in an instant…well, of course)
Even If I fight, I can’t win. Just to be sure I checks the skill column, but of course it is empty. Running into the gra.s.sland is also reckless. As I have no weapon, if it become a hopeless situation my option will be limited.

Gulp… Kazane swallows her saliva.
“U, Uwaaaaaaa!!!!”
Instant judgement. She shouts with her might and run away.
“Gyaga!” “Agaijigigi!!?” “Jareaganii!!”
Ignoring the shouts behind her, Kazane run without turning back. Into the Signa Ruin.

(Game! Game! Game! This is a Gaaaameeee!!)
As she shouts in her heart while feeling dreadful presences closing by, she run along the stone paving and enter the entrance of the ruin, and there she hit the protrusion in the wall.

“Gyahaaga!”
Dreadful voices, accompanied with the sounds of something crushed enters her ears.
(Gu!)
The smell of metal stimulate her nose.
As Kazane saw the source of that smell, she feels the urge to throw up.

“Are you kidding?”
What was there were the shadows of the things that chased after her. Smashing the stone entrance, the gore objects with something in their mouths and eyes. It’s too real and hard to think of it as a game, they were objects of extremely nasty visual.

“Ugu”
Kazane instantly averts her eyes. If not, she might seriously throw up. It’s a high grade spectacle that no high schooler who was enjoying her game in an air conditioned room awhile ago can bear. That’s why, it’s her limit.

“In any case…I am saved right?”
While wiping acid like stuffs near her mouth, in a place a bit ahead the entrance, Kazane muttered. The inside of her mouth felt sour.
Then while chasing away the previous scenes from her head, she tries to calm down.

The inside of the ruin is dark, but not on a level where someone can’t see anything. In this kind of ruin, a lot of glowing moss called shining moss grew in the wall as part of the setting. Moreover the ceiling part is created in a way that allows sunlight to enter.
(Since that mechanism can be used, then this place is really inside Zexiahart, right?)

Now it’s certain. The previous mechanism was to be used as emergency evasive way if you were surrounded by goblins in the tutorial quest. It’s a structure designed that if you hit the protrusion in the right side of the entrance, the door will open.
The door will open again after a fixed amount of time, and the goblin will still be waiting outside so nothing would really change, but it can be used to buy time and prepare on how to deal with them. Repeating to come and go while slowly annihilating the goblins is possible. If this is inside the game.

“But as I thought, without weapon it’s impossible to kill them all.”
Even while boasting like that, Kazane actually feels that the premise of this being a game starts to crumble apart from the smell of the door and her tiredness from running with all her might before.

(Then…perhaps a dream?)
There’s something called lucid dream. It’s a dream where you would still be self aware that you’re inside a dream, but with the sensations she feels, it’s hard to say if it’s just a dream.
(Well… but it might be a dream since I feel like this)
Playing a game inside her own dream is also plausible, but the thought that she had played Zexiahart over 3000 hours until it appears in her dream made her smiled bitterly.

“Well, either way. Since I will fight…I must win.”
While saying so, Kazane looks at the inside of the ruin. Since the those goblins were the monsters of this ruin, there should be no more monster here.
“I really appreciate it if they don’t come. Seriously.”

Even if this is a game, with this kind of equipment, no matter what monster appear, she won’t win. If this is reality then even more so. But if she enter this ruin, then there might be a way.
While thinking like that she walks forward, and from right beside her she heard a voice that she recognized, and the thing that is swinging down at her is…

Name                            : Yuihama Kazane
Occupation                   : Adventurer
Equipment                    : Clothes
Level                            : 9
Vitality                          : 23
Magic Power                : 12
Strength                       : 8
Agility                            : 9
Endurance                       : 8
Wisdom                       : 8
Dexterity                     : 9
Skill                             : [[Goblin Language]]
==
Kazane                            : Finally, Mamono Taosu Nouryouku Ubau Watashi Tsuyokunaru (Kill the Monster, Steal Their Power, Grow Stronger) or “Manowa” has started!
Yumika                            : *drum roll*
Kazane                            : status above is my status at the end of the story. Actually I didn’t notice it but I smashed the goblin so my level increased. By the way, the initial value of Zexiaharts characters are Vitality 20 Magic Power 10 and the others are all 8.
Yumika                            : In this game status will increase according to user action before level up and bonus status that can be distributed freely
Kazane                            : That’s right Yumika. That way you’ll feel that each and every character will grow differently.
Yumika                            : alright, then the next one is my turn. Swing it down as you like!
Kazane                            : err… Am I killed?