Sasami-san @ Ganbaranai

Chapter 12: Yamata no Orochi, Electronic World

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VOLUME 1

Chapter 12: Yamata no Orochi, Electronic World

We walked through the hallways of Takamagahara Academy.

After all that fuss in the nurse’s office over reviving and healing my brother, the Yagami sisters, my brother, and I all became companions and headed for their cla.s.sroom.

Having finished the quest, they had to go back to receive their reward from the homeroom teacher. Also, because they had slipped out of cla.s.s mid-lecture, they had to stay and listen to all the information that they hadn’t been able to hear before.

I wasn’t a new student though, so it’s not like I had to go with them, but…

Tsurugi: So, I mean…

Tsurugi seemed quite interested as she clicked on me and checked my parameter and equipment details.

Tsurugi: You haven’t been coming to school, and you’ve just been playing Yamata no Orochi SNS this entire time…

“Nah, it’s not like I’ve just been doing this… I also order things online, read manga, keep up with net idol blogs…”

Tsurugi: I kind of want to ask you more about that last one, but… you’re a student, so studying should be your top priority, right? You should be doing things like this in just your spare time.

“It’s precisely because I didn’t want to hear this lecture that I didn’t want other people to know I played this game…”

Also, considering Tsurugi played games in the middle of work, getting lectured by her just p.i.s.sed me off.

And these girls were all trying to do weird things to my brother… I had tried so hard to hide myself but in the end I had to reveal myself.

In retrospect, it would have been much faster if I had just punched these girls out in the real world. Oh well… hindsight is 20/20.

I let out a sigh and asked a question somewhat disinterestedly.

“But from what you said, it sounds like there are a lot of other students who haven’t been to school because they’ve been obsessed with Yamata no Orochi SNS?”

“Funyaa.”

Kagami, who even in the game looked pretty sleepy, slowly responded.

“I hacked… investigated the company that manages Yamata no Orochi SNS, and found that right now, all of the people in my cla.s.s who are absent are absent because of this game. There are around ten of them. It is clearly abnormal for so many people to be absent for the same reason.”

“Kagami, you can hack…?”

“It seems I do have such a ‘function.’ But I cannot control these functions willfully, so I’m not too sure. That is why I am here investigating Yamata no Orochi SNS with everyone right now.”

Tsurugi: It would’ve been a huge time-saver if Kagami could just have found everything out, but she has fairly weak resistance towards irregularities. And this might be a fairly dangerous alteration, so I didn’t want her to deal with it alone.

Maybe Tsurugi was trying to replenish her blood sugar levels, but she was munching on a piece of ningyoyaki (1).

Tsurugi: Well, Sasami is a shut-in so her reasons might be a bit special… but I’m still not convinced on everyone else. This Yamata no Orochi SNS is pretty fun, but it’s not so amazing as to get a bunch of kids to develop an addiction to it. To get a dozen people to sacrifice their futures for it… that is definitely abnormal.

“So you’re saying… somebody brainwashed the students, or made Yamata no Orochi SNS arbitrarily addictive and people couldn’t stop playing it… or something?”

I said that as if it had nothing to do with me, but maybe… maybe I too…

If all these vast amounts of time I had already sunk into Yamata no Orochi were because somebody else had forced me, then I wouldn’t be very happy.

“I looked into it a bit.”

As I watched my brother and the others making a racket, I found the game homepage and read some of the news out loud.

“Looks like it’s not just our school. The entire country is obsessed with Yamata no Orochi SNS and the number of people who have shut themselves at home to play is growing. Looks like it’s become a serious social problem… among the three-hundred-thousand users, maybe a few thousand… or upwards to ten thousand users are like that.”

Tsurugi: Ten thousand hikikomori…

This news seemed to put Tsurugi on her guard.

Tsurugi: Brainwashing that many people, stealing their life force… or maybe manipulating their consciousness and controlling them like puppets… the irregularity which has nested itself in Yamata no orochi SNS might be more powerful than we expected. And it also seems to be a glutton on top of that. If we just leave it alone then the damages will just get worse and worse…

“It seems beyond the shadow of a doubt that there are hostile evil G.o.ds involved in Yamata no Orochi SNS…”

Kagami got serious and added her own thoughts in.

“This can’t be normal. However, we don’t know what the culprit’s goals are. Capturing such a large number of people, saving up power… what exactly could he possibly want? Stealing life force from people is just a ‘means,’ and we have to ask ourselves what ‘ends’ this culprit will use all that power for. But whatever has taken nest in Yamata no Orochi SNS is not making any obvious moves…”

Tsurugi: That’s true. Right now, it’s like whoever is behind this is just storing up electrical power. Take electric stoves or refrigerators… you have to use the electric power for something before it actually produces something useful. But if you’re just talking about pure electric power, which hasn’t been used for anything… all you can do then is pointlessly electrocute people.

Tsurugi sounded annoyed as she mumbled.

Tsurugi: This time, we can’t see who our enemy is at all… and we don’t know what he’s after. All he’s doing is gathering up people and sucking power from them. That’s all. Even when clear threats like us invade the game, he’s pretty much left us alone until now… and I don’t think he’s underestimating us, but rather he’s just really operating automatically. He’s acting like a computer program, or some NPC… it really feels like we’re not fighting against someone with a human will, but rather just with enemies that are just programmed into the game.

“Tsurugi-nee.”

Tama had been silent all this while, but was now mumbling with a serious look on her face.

“Tama has an emergency situation…”

Tsurugi: … What’s wrong?

Tsurugi responded immediately.

Tsurugi: What did you find to, Tama? Anything is fine, since we have so little information right now… so don’t hold back and let your sister know anything you’re thinking about.

“Ahh… no…”

Tama flushed bright red and squirmed around uncomfortably.

“T-Tama can’t hold it anymore…”

Tsurugi: Wow, what an emergency!

She just wanted to go to the bathroom.

It was wrong of us to have had expected more of her.

Tsurugi: You should’ve gone before we started the game… you suddenly sounded so serious so I thought something had happened.

“Hmph! Sorry!”

Tama was trembling as she stood up and began pulling on Tsurugi’s white lab coat.

“T-T-Tsurugi-nee… c-come with Tama…”

Tsurugi: You know, you’re already an elementary schooler, so can’t you just go to the bathroom by yourself? Oneechan is a bit busy thinking about things right now.

“It’s a sad truth…”

Tama put on a somber expression as she mumbled.

“But humanity has yet to reach that stage.”

Tsurugi: I have no idea what you’re talking about. Ugh, fine, I guess there’s no other choice.

Tsurugi also liked to take care of her sisters, so she stood up and began to walk out of the room while holding Tama’s hand.

Tsurugi: Alright, I’m going to go with her… sorry! Tama and I are going to be out of the game for a bit, so just move forwards by yourselves! We’ll meet up somewhere later!

“Funyaa.”

Kagami looked bewildered.

“Well, we just have to go back to the cla.s.sroom… and it looks like we’re not going to be attacked by any delinquents anymore, so maybe we’ll be fine by ourselves.”

“Well, if it comes down to it I can fight.”

I casually accepted that task. I don’t mean to brag, but my character was super strong, and except for the enemies in Valhalla I could deal easily with most other enemies with one hand.

“Got it. I’ll leave it to you then.”

Tsurugi finally spoke again with her real voice and led a sniffling Tama out of the room.

“Alright, let’s go. By the way, Tama, what do you do when you need to go to the bathroom at school?”

“Umm, Tama’s cla.s.smate Nozomi-chan goes with her, or Tama goes with sensei…”

“You know, Nozomi-chan is fine and all, but isn’t your teacher a single man? Is that seriously okay?”

I listened to them talk about stuff like that as they left the room.

“Hey, the bathroom is on the first floor!”

I yelled that at them before returning to the game.

We left the now frozen Tsurugi and Tama on screen behind, and the three of us headed for the cla.s.sroom.

Well, we were at school, so it shouldn’t be dangerous to just leave them there.

“……”

However, I just noticed it, but the three of us left couldn’t strike up a conversation.

Kagami didn’t talk much usually, and I was pretty bad when it came to communication. And my brother was just a perv (for a while, he’s been staring entranced at my character’s profile, and was so busy taking screenshots that he didn’t have time to talk).

This was awkward……

I was having a hard time composing myself, but for now we had arrived at the cla.s.sroom so I opened the door.

“Eh…?”

I was at a loss for words.

Kagami’s cla.s.sroom… the cla.s.sroom for cla.s.s 47 in the first year… was completely bathed in red.

The homeroom teacher, the dozens of students… they had all been mercilessly ma.s.sacred…

“W-What… is this…?”

I was dumbfounded, and completely rooted to the spot.

Kagami and my brother seemed shocked as well.

In this somewhat narrow cla.s.sroom, the people who had been enjoying school life until just a while ago were now collapsed into piles of blood.

We were presented with a grotesque mountain of corpses, so vivid that it was hard to think this could be in a game.

I had never seen anything like this before.

I felt like I was standing in the middle of a terrorist attack.

It looked like something had exploded.

One person had been reduced to a pile of raw meat, one person had both his arms blown off, one person had his skull cracked open and its contents were spilling out, one person had been burned completely black… this was not a scene I’ve ever seen in a fantasy game, but a bizarre reproduction of a battlefield during a b.l.o.o.d.y war.

“What happened?! Why is everyone dead?!”

I was completely shaken and I screamed.

This cannot have happened.

Yamata no Orochi SNS was an SNS system that was turned into a fun game. It was a game that offered a feeling of refreshment and stress relief, a game which gave you a chance to communicate with others a bit and also feel like you’ve accomplished something… it was a wonderful way to escape from a dull reality into a s.p.a.ce that was much, much more comfortable.

What the h.e.l.l was this?

What was it?

As I stood there completely shocked, I saw the students turn into particles of light and vanish.

Their corpses didn’t remain… they couldn’t be revived ever again, and they were completely dead. They had been “terminated.”

They had been ma.s.sacred and now no longer held the right to interact with this world.

And that wasn’t all.

Usually, the particles of light would just float around for a little bit before disappearing, but for some reason this time they just hung around like insects, and then flew outside the window leaving a slight trail behind them.

It was almost as if they were being drawn somewhere.

“Sasami-san… what is that?”

My brother looked in the direction the particles of light had gone, and sounded a bit worried.

On the other side of the window, there was…

The wide schoolyard, and the castle town beyond that were being destroyed…

Destroyed by a bizarre, huge army that stretched out all the way to the horizon.

It was an army of monsters. Demons, warriors with pig heads, sinister-looking giants, dragons, succubi, krakens, goblins, slimes… and various others.

“It’s the demon king’s army… look, oniichan! Kagami, you too!”

I desperately pointed to a spot in the back ofs the monster army.

Towering back there was a huge monster.

A monster so big that you might mistake it as a building.

But that was definitely a living creature.

A dragon with eight heads.

That was the only way you could describe this ultimate being.

His huge tree-trunk necks majestically waved about, and his flame-like tongues came in and out of view as he got closer and closer.

He was on my computer screen, but I could sense so much pressure from him that I almost felt like he would fly into my room and bite into my throat.

“It’s Yamata no Orochi…”

I’ve seen this creature before.

I’ve seen him displayed at the top of the Yamata no Orochi SNS homepage.

“The demon king, the absolute being. The tyrant once created by the coming together of many G.o.ds who had created this world, and who had once tried to destroy everything… they said he might be revived one day, but this is impossible. If he appears then the game ends… because he’s supposed to be the last boss…”

In Yamato no Orochi SNS, the entire point of training adventurers was to someday defeat the demon king Yamata no Orochi when he revived.

But that was precisely why he could never be revived.

If Yamata no Orochi appears, then everyone… the students, the teachers, the graduates… everyone would have to fight him.

And if he gets defeated, then the story would end there.

When the story ended in a fictional world, it was the same as that fictional world itself coming to an end.

It meant that this comfortable paradise I had escaped so often to would be no more.

“Kyahh?!”

Kagami screamed.

The demon king’s army was now bombarding us.

The school walls were smashed, and the windows all shattered.

At the same time, the monsters who were coming ever closer began to rush into the cla.s.sroom.

The students were being ma.s.sacred, whether by that bombardment or by getting attacked by monsters.

I could almost feel it happening.

“Yamata no Orochi…? That huge thing back there?”

Kagami hurriedly tried to distance herself from the monsters flowing in, and her expression changed.

“I can feel a strong power… I can sense that he is like us, someone who a.s.sociates with the G.o.ds… I suppose that our enemy has suddenly revealed himself. What an amazing divinity… this goes beyond my expectations.”

“That’s the enemy…? Of all things, he’s living inside this world’s most powerful monster…?”

I blinked in astonishment, but this was not the time for that.

Something bizarre happened in the next moment.

“It’s like watching a manga series getting a premature end… uhyahh?!”

Kagami had been muttering random tactless things… but she suddenly toppled over in the real world.

She had been sitting on her knees up until now, but both her legs suddenly sprung straight up.

And then, her hand which was placed on her mouse to control her character… that hand was suddenly sucked into that mouse. It was almost as if an invisible hole had opened, and her hand had fallen into that hole.

“W-What in the world is… kyaahh?!”

Soon, her entire body had disappeared, and I felt myself beginning to sink into panic.

“Kagami?!”

Kagami: O-Ow ow ow… h-huh?

At that point, I realized the horrible truth.

The Kagami inside the screen was sitting on the floor, almost as if she had fallen in from somewhere.

And whatever she said was now displayed in text on the screen, even though up until now she had been talking out loud.

I started typing, a bad feeling beginning to creep into me.

Sasamisan: Umm, Kagami, don’t tell me…

Inside the screen, Kagami blinked, looking strangely lifelike.

Kagami: T-This place… could this be… hyah?!

Suddenly, the monsters swarmed around her, and Kagami desperately tried to run away.

It seemed that she had been sucked into the game.

“Not good! Oniichan! We’re probably going to-“

I couldn’t finish that sentence.

I was attacked by a violent pulling on the fingers I was using to type on the keyboard. And then, like Alice in Wonderland, I felt my entire world turn upside down.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) A pastry made in the shape of a person. Ningyo means “doll.”

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