The Next Day

During work the next day, I sent Coworker a message.

"Coworkeeer. Second character's fun but also rough."

"Ohhh. Mine's not fun at all, just rough, yo."

"Seriously?"

Even if in-game communication was disabled, being able to contact each other in real life was a huge advantage.

"I wanna see Alto-chan so baaad…"

"I wanna see Tria-chan too… and eat Penpen's cooking."

"That! That's it, yo! That's exactly it, yoooo!!"

A sticker of someone banging on a desk came through the chat.

"Over here, I've been eating this stuff called 'Defilement' in a cave, yo. It's like, mud. And it tastes absolutely disgusting…"

"Huh, Defilement? Can't you have Auto Mode eat it for you?"

"When I do that, I get this bug where only the nastiness comes through… It's brutal, yo."

"Oof."

What the heck? That's abuse of VR Mode's sensory system.

"There's nothing else to eat, and if I don't eat I'll die, yo. So I've been exercising and training, keeping the HP drain and digestion barely in balance. Yesterday I only managed to get my stamina training on track. Been stuck in the cave the whole time with no visual changes either, it's driving me crazy, yo."

"That's an unreasonable ordeal for a game."

"Lost all sense of time too, and before I knew it a week had passed…"

"… Huh?"

"Couldn't log out until I died or a week passed…"

"Well hey Coworker, been a day."

"Sure has, yo. Did a quintuple-take when I saw the date… Ugh, I don't wanna go back…"

This game's time dilation was definitely messed up.

"So, how's it going on your end, yo? You said it was fun, right?"

"It's monster action. The Slime eats stuff, gets bigger, then attacks and eats more, that kinda thing."

"What the heck, I'm so jealous, yo! That sounds fun as hell! Trade with me, dammit!"

Well, it actually was fun aside from everything tasting sandy or rocky or dusty. Sorry about that, I guess?

"So while I'm over here doing ascetic training, you're getting all lovey-dovey with your Slime girl, huh."

"Ah. Now that I think about it, my second character hasn't really talked to me at all."

"Oh? My second character, Nika-chan, talks to me quite a bit, yo. Mostly whining though."

"Nice. My Miitei-chan was on the verge of losing her sense of self when her story started… Gotta nurture that part of her too, I guess."

Maybe I'd try raising her to be a cheerful girl. A bright and energetic Slime girl!

"Well, I'll make her humanoid eventually. But Slime action is fun. A state-run facility conducting internationally illegal research. A monster that escaped and now prowls around. That's me, AKA Miitei-chan."

"Ooh! One of those routes that changes based on whether you eat the captive test subjects or not, yo!"

"Hah, you're right. There could be other test subjects besides Miitei-chan."

After all, that room's owner was just one researcher at the facility.

There could be other researchers and labs conducting different experiments.

And imprisoned heroines could be among them. That's a classic setup!

"Ohhh. A route where you munch on the heroine, yo?"

"I-I wouldn't do that. Can't save and load, so I'm aiming for the best ending where the heroine survives. If there is one."

"Good luck, yo… Ugh, when I get back it's back to eating that disgusting mud and doing muscle training. Gotta clear this to see Alto-chan and Penpen…"

"Why not spend some SP on a resistance skill or something?"

"… There's a Bitterness Resistance, but spending SP on it would feel like losing, yo."

Oh right, this guy was the type of masochistic gamer who deliberately threw himself into ordeals.

He was the one who found this mysterious game called "Kaito a Luise" with that same drive, after all.

"It feels like my brain's being grated, but it's not unbearable."

"But that's just your opinion, right? And your girl shares your sense of taste. No wonder she's whining."

"She'll get used to it eventually, yo. It's just eat or die. And I'm pretty used to it by now."

"Your real-life pain tolerance is insane."

As expected of someone in sales, his resolve was on another level…

"By the way, have you checked the Wiki, yo?"

"Ah, come to think of it, I haven't looked in the past few days. Any interesting info?"

"Someone tried to make a world map, but apparently there are discrepancies in the info that don't line up, yo. Like, a town where one player is located doesn't exist according to other players."

"Maybe they're in different eras?"

"Could be, yo. Good thing we were able to actually meet up."

And yet for a social game, we hardly ever encountered other players.

I'd thought this game was way too dead. Was it even profitable? But maybe the servers were actually separate to begin with… There's no way each small group of players had their own server, right? If that were the case, it definitely wouldn't be profitable.

…

But then again, considering that VR feature, maybe profitability was beside the point.

"Ah. Speaking of maps, the research facility had some documents that included a map."

"Seriously?! Right, local maps. That's another valid source of info, yo!"

"According to it, my second character is currently in a place called the Majark Republic."

"Huh… Come to think of it, is this the first time we've gotten a country name?"

"Might be. I'll share the map info once we regroup."

We had town names, but I didn't even know what country Tsudon or Wantos were in.

Once I wrapped up the second character scenario, it might be worth looking into that.

"Anything else?"

"Ohhh. Also, apparently there are Spirit-Possessed who aren't players, yo."

"Huh, really?"

"Assuming they're not lying, anyway. It was a comment from someone doing racing, yo."

"Racing, huh. There was something like that in the second character options."

"Apparently every horse beastkin who can enter the races has a halo floating above their head, yo. Way too many to count, at least thirty or more."

Whoa.

Wait, way too many Spirit-Possessed gathered in one place to even count… Over thirty…?

"So that server has a ton of Spirit-Possessed gathered there, and ours is just a dead server…?"

"Could be, yo. Especially since we're day-one starters — we might be getting special treatment."

"If it's preferential treatment, great, but what does that mean for the game? Wasn't this supposed to be a social game?"

"What even is 'social' at this point… right, yo."

Well, as long as I could enjoy that VR Mode, maybe nothing else mattered.

Ahh, I want to eat meat. I'm sick of sandy dust. Gotta hurry home and progress the second character scenario so we can regroup…

"Gotta make sure to leave proper notes on our work along with the daily report when we leave today, yo."

"That's what you do before a long vacation, lol."

"Tomorrow's me… is probably me from a week from now…!"

Was that a title of something? Pretty poetic.