Mahariku-san's Second Character

"Triaaaa. Mahariku-san keeps bugging me, yo…!"

"Hey, Coworker, we're in the real world right now."

"Oh crap. My bad, yo, force of habit!"

I couldn't really blame him. We'd been spending more time over there than here lately, after all.

Work ten hours a day on this side, spend three days over there, come back to reality and sleep. That was our routine now.

Seven times our working hours. Seven times. At this point, the game was becoming the main part of our lives.

How did the flow of time work when we were with Mahariku-san? I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. Even if we spent an hour with Mahariku-san, once we exited VR Mode, only six minutes would have passed on this side. Meanwhile, when we somehow got around the mystery filter to ask, Mahariku-san said a full hour had passed on her end.

Were we… time-slipping into Mahariku-san's past??? I-I didn't get it. Made absolutely no sense.

…Still, I wished there was some way to bring my backlog of anime and games over there. Yeah, I know bringing another game into a game is kind of, well… but still.

"So? Mahariku-san's second character is still taking a while?"

"Seems like it, yo. Apparently she's a gladiator slave in an arena, but the character's so weak it's hopeless, so she's been doing strength training, yo. Oh, and it's a mage character, yo."

"A strength training character for Mahariku-san too, huh…"

People in sales really are the athletic type, huh. As I thought that, I recalled that Nika-chan's scenario had taken close to a week in real time on its first day too.

"…By the way, how much time has passed for Mahariku-san herself?"

"About three days' worth, I'd say, yo."

"Well, that's still on the mild side…?"

"Compared to a week in one night or half a year in one night, yeah, it's pretty mild, yo."

"So, how's Mahariku-san reacting to it?"

That was the most crucial point.

"She hasn't noticed, yo."

"…? Wait, how do you not notice three days passing in a single night?"

"She's been repeating wake up, train, pass out, wake up, train, pass out, so she's completely lost track of time in-game, yo. Said she hasn't passed out from exercise this much since military academy, yo."

"What kind of insane training is she doing? Wasn't this supposed to be a mage character?"

Hold on, Spirit-Possessed were supposed to have virtually no fatigue and be able to train endlessly… A Spirit-Possessed passing out from training? Was that even really just training???

She was probably genuinely pulling off the contradiction of thirty hours of training per day.

"Well, she seems to be practicing magic alongside the training, so the passing out is probably from MP depletion, yo."

"Ahh. Fainting from running out of MP… Was that how the system worked?"

Come to think of it, I'd never actually used magic until my MP ran out.

And since she was in VR Mode, time skips would kick in too. From her perspective, she'd wake up instantly after passing out, so… yeah, you really wouldn't be able to tell how much time had actually passed.

"By the way, apparently you can juggle Fireballs by holding back the activation, yo?"

"Juggling Fireballs, huh…"

"But she got scolded because they flew off when she passed out and nearly started a fire. So now she's training her MP by colliding two Fireballs of exactly equal power at exactly the same time, yo."

"That sounds like a pretty advanced technique in its own right."

Or rather, casting two simultaneously meant she could use double the magic, right? That was basically Simultaneous Casting or Dual Activation or whatever you'd call that kind of skill.

She'd probably picked it up with SP.

"Hold on, being a gladiator slave means she has to fight for work, right? Is she gonna be okay exhausting herself that much?"

"She's already gotten through two bouts, and surprisingly she can overpower them with technique alone, yo."

"Technique?"

"Mahariku-san does martial arts IRL, yo."

"Karate?"

"Yep, yo. Or was it Aikido?"

"Being able to use real-life skills really is one of VR's perks, huh…"

On top of that, with VR Mode, she'd have complete control over her body's movements. As long as her body was up to the task, pulling off techniques wouldn't be a problem at all.

…So that's why the strength training. Made sense.

"Is Mahariku-san actually jacked in real life?"

"…Now that you mention it, where she hides all that muscle is a mystery, yo."

"Could be an enhanced human or a designer baby."

"Can't rule it out, yo."

Jokes aside, though.

"So scenario-wise, would the clear condition be something like winning the arena championship?"

"Could be getting freed from slavery alive, yo."

"…Ah, but thinking about how second character scenarios have gone so far, wouldn't it be more like killing the arena's organizer to clear it?"

"For big arenas, the state runs them, yo. Overthrowing a nation, huh. Let me ask her, yo!"

Right, Coworker could contact Mahariku-san. If anything, she was probably the one constantly talking his ear off.

"She apparently has a grudge against the current champion, yo!"

"So it's a revenge-type scenario, huh."

"Kill the champion she has a grudge against to clear the scenario… totally plausible, yo!!"

"Once she clears it, she can just rejoin her first character to escape."

I wanted us to rejoin her soon.

That's what I was thinking, but——

——Mahariku-san failed her second character's scenario.