Escort Quest

When Alto came over, I showed off the Home Connection. She kept going in and out of the gate, testing the feature.

Good to know people other than the Home's owner can use it too.

"Huh. So you can connect Homes, yo… That just makes earning SP even more important, yo."

"I also confirmed that the connection stays active even after storing your Home and setting it up somewhere else."

"The gate was closed while it was in storage, though."

Since you can't store a Home while a player's character is inside, nobody can end up trapped in a stored Home. Makes sense.

"Anyway, I was thinking about checking out a new town. What do you think?"

"Sounds good to me, yo. I'm grinding SP for my own Home right now, but with this I can come back to Tsudon every day, so it won't mess with using the Adventurers' Guild I'm used to, yo."

"Fast Travel is instant so that part's fine, but getting to a new town for the first time means we'd actually have to travel there."

"Ooh, leave it to me, yo! I've got experience, yo!!"

Alto did make it all the way to Tsudon on her own, after all.

"But you didn't make that trip in VR Mode, did you?"

"I was still using device controls back then, yo. But on the flip side, if the journey gets boring, we can just switch to device controls and use Auto Mode, yo."

"Well, if we're just following the highway, there shouldn't be any real danger."

"If bandits show up, Alto-chan will happily blast them away, yo!"

"If they're cute girl bandits, I wouldn't mind locking them up in my Home and keeping them as pets."

"Yo! Cute femboy bandits would make great pets too, yo!"

You swing that way too, huh.

"Then keep them at your Home. I'll take the girl bandits."

"Yo yo yo! That makes getting my own Home even more exciting, yo! … Nika-chan's gonna have to work hard grinding those SP Quests, yo!"

"I-I'll do my best, Spirit-sama…!"

Nika-chan's face was twitching. Her SP Quests are all Defilement purification, after all…

"Oh, um, I-I can do it by myself, okay?"

"… No! I'm coming with you, yo! I won't let Nika-chan suffer through the bitter stuff alone, yo!"

"S-Spirit-sama…! Thank you, I'm so happy."

Nika-chan hugged Alto tight.

Penpen quietly slid calorie-bomb drinks loaded with honey and whipped cream over to the two of them.

"But would bandits that cute even exist? If they were cute, they wouldn't need to be bandits!"

"In games, cute bandits are a staple, yo."

"Yeah, yeah! Make the cute bandit beg for her life, and then hehehe! Hehehehe."

"Oh right, this is a game… But at this point, who's really the bandit here?"

"Relax, we won't do anything unless they attack first, yo."

"Exactly. We just don't show mercy to criminals."

Bandits are fair game the moment they attack, so sparing their lives is actually pretty generous, right?

"If you're planning to prey on others, you should be ready to get preyed on yourself, yo. Only those prepared to get shot should pull the trigger, yo!"

"If you put it that way, that means we should be prepared to get preyed on too, right?"

"Obviously, yo? … Oh wait, if it turns into a combat situation, wouldn't that break through the Ethics Filter, yo?"

"The, uh, spicy stuff would probably still get skipped, unfortunately."

"Then there's no point in losing on purpose to trigger a defeat event, yo."

If anything, getting the scene skipped might mean going straight to Lost, so deliberately losing would actually be a terrible idea.

"… Ha! I just had a great idea, yo! Penpen, make me a hat, yo!"

"A hat?"

"One that hides this Halo! The Halo's proof you're Spirit-Possessed, so bandits might not even come near us if they see it, yo."

We've made a name for ourselves as adventurers too. No matter how cute we look as girls, if our Halos give us away as Spirit-Possessed, nobody's going to bother attacking.

"Uh, can you even hide a Halo with a hat?"

"Halos phase through walls and stuff, so… Maybe a really big hat would work? Something tall like a chef's hat, but wider too… Like balancing a drainpipe on your head."

"That'd look super unnatural, though… Hmm, maybe priest-style? Or wealthy merchant-ish? Basically give off a rich person's eccentricity vibe, and if the outfit matches, we might be able to pull it off?"

Penpen started sketching designs on paper. Impressive stuff. A proper priest-style hat, tall and elaborate. The outfit looked like some kind of gorgeous ceremonial vestment fit for an extravagant cleric.

… It'd be terrible to move around in, but she was right that you'd need at least this much to keep the hat from looking weird.

"The cosplay looks fun too, yo. Oh, but we'd need a quick-strip gimmick, yo. Getting stuck in that thing during a fight would be rough, yo."

"Think it'd be enough to fool people from a distance?"

"Actually, from a distance you might not even look like cute girls anymore. Not great as bandit bait."

"A wealthy merchant look might actually attract them, though, yo?"

"Hmm, actually making this outfit would be a real pain, though."

Fabric, accessories, a quick-strip mechanism. The list of things to figure out was piling up fast.

"… Oh. Why don't we just take a merchant escort quest and hide inside the carriage? That'd be way easier!"

"Penpen, you genius."

"If we tag along with a merchant who knows the roads, we won't get lost either, yo! As expected of Penpen, absolutely brilliant, yo!"

Plus we'd get to complete a quest and earn some pocket change on the side. A great idea all around!

And so, we decided to accept an escort quest at the Adventurers' Guild.