The raw iron bar began to shine the desired color as Mila continued hammering without rest. It would’ve taken the whole day without her assuring Hajime that the Whetstone family never knew the word imperfection.
Just a few more strikes and the blade radiated an emotion within him, destined to wield it for good. He may be an outsider, but that aura remained real and alive.
At long last, Mila finished his sword, forming an elegant hilt and guard like magic, but in fairness, it couldn’t have been anything else. The curdled blood design of the guard flowed down to the hilt in a spiral pattern and ended on the dragon’s head, which was the pummel. The blade was red as it could ever be, yet he merely received a standard leather sheath they had lying around.
“So, what do you think?” asked Mila, looking up as she wiped the beads of sweat off her forehead.
Hajime examined the crafted perfection a bit closer each second. If he did it any further, it still wouldn’t lose its luster, almost as if patiently waiting for him to deliver a decisive strike on an indecisive foe. But first, the sword needed a name, as the Virtue Box program opened by itself before him.
Name your main weapon:____________
A plethora of options whirled in his mind, but some were what he’d consider as either beyond cliché or too lazy. He could name it Excalibur, Durandal, or Gram and call it a day, or if he wanted something more unique, he could name it Hrunting, Gurthang, or ThunderCat. Eventually, he decided on the more macabre side of labels. “Exterminator. It has a nice ring to it.”
“Well, if you say so, laddie,” Abram shrugged. “Forgive me for saying this, but that’s not as creative as you think.”
“Yeah, but it’s the principle that matters. For one, this baby is begging to cut shit in half. I can feel it in my bones,” said Hajime, sheathing the blade on his side. “So, how about you do me a favor before we go to the [Starting Forest].”
“With pleasure! What will it be?”
“Line up all your training dummies in a single file. Now, I know what you’re thinking: I’m so powerful that I eat nails for breakfast without milk and evidence. But you know what, watch me. I won’t use my hands or even feet because it’ll make things slightly more interesting. Whaddya say?”
“I say you talk big for a warrior of light, more like a warrior of short sight!” Abram let out a hearty laugh, eyes closed before he nodded at his claim. “All right, laddie, let’s see what you’ve got. General Theo hasn’t seen diamonds in the rough for a while. Don’t disappoint us.”
Hajime chuckled, cracking his knuckles one finger at a time. “You have no idea.”
The three exited the cottage together. Hajime thought he already prepared his heart for any other surprises in this world, but it seemed he never would. He witnessed more magic as the supposedly inanimate dummies began to hop gleefully out the front door. Perhaps he could say it was Disney magic, for lack of a better description.
Before his demonstration, he performed a strange routine he hadn’t done since his previous life, clasping his hands together with his arms twisted before slowly moving them to his back like a pretzel. Such flexibility was either godly or ungodly, depending on the person. The Whetstones leaned on the latter.
Hajime readied his soon-to-be-precious [Exterminator], only for it to fly out of his hands on purpose, straight to the sky until it twinkled with the stars. One could only wonder what insanity plagued his head, but only he knew the answer, and it surpassed insanity with the literal use of his head.
In a sharp moment, his senses perceived the world moving slower than molasses. He waited in that one sharp moment for the sword’s pommel to connect with his forehead in perfect alignment. Any miscalculation would’ve ruined the opportunity for good, so he delivered his promise without a second thought.
The blade sliced through the air on impact, piercing each dummy like a bullet through styrofoam. Hajime nearly considered calling this “technique” the Headbutt of Doom, but originality was never his strongest suit. Perhaps the Whetstones could suggest a better name, but their faces remained in utter shock down to their chins.
“Don’t act surprised,” he told them, surrounded by featherlight wheat straws in the air. “When I said I wouldn’t make it boring, I meant that shit with all my heart.”
Mila shook her head, now rid of her priceless expression. She turned to her father with a smile that beamed confidence and excitement. Despite the lack of words between the two, Abram nodded and swiped his finger down. This time, the screen was blank and gray without explanation.
Hajime asked again if the flashing screen before him meant he was overqualified for being a warrior of light, but Abram merely began uttering the foreign words that still perplexed his thoughts. Although it sounded fitting for a world like Swordland, it also sounded fitting for a William Wallace biopic.
“O dhiathan, foillsich an t-slighe chum mòrachd,” Abram repeated the incantation at least three times before the screen suddenly changed into a rather soothing hue of grass green.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Hajime sighed a few mental reliefs. After all, whoever their mighty general was, only a village idiot would turn down a man like him. He might as well accept his made-up explanation when it was more fun to guess what awaited his ongoing experience in a different world with different customs.
Abram closed his screen and erupted in hefty laughter, his peak rotundness jiggling like a water balloon. “Congratulations, warrior of light. You’re the fastest treader to ever be promoted.”
“Treader?” said Hajime, scratching his head.
“The backbone of our world, laddie. You’ll meet the general and others tomorrow at noon, but I’m afraid we’re still not done.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Theo still wants you to begin your first journey at the [Starting Forest]. It’s our policy, honestly, and why I chanted that spell.”
Suddenly, the ground trembled beneath Hajime faster than he could swear. A flock of blue, crane-like birds began to escape from the canopies of numerous trees not too far from where they stood. Although magic would obviously lead him the way, he still didn’t expect a bunch of stones lying around to form a road piece by piece.
Despite his demeanor dictating he should stash his hands inside his pockets without looking back, he waved to the Whetstones with thanks. He hoped they did the same before vanishing into the thick wood that stretched from one acre to the next. In his own words, the fun was about to begin.
----------------------------------------
The [Starting Forest] proved to be a more fitting name than Hajime gave it credit for. It was a tutorial, a level designed to know the ups and downs of Swordland’s rule system, and it was just as annoying as any MMORPG. Every step he took with even the slightest twitch bombarded his face with pop-up after pop-up telling him how to kill a pack of [Grove Slimes].
10/20 left to kill
In fairness, these gooey bastards, different from the ones he got used to, put up a decent fight. They were nowhere near as durable, but their bodies were less like flexible gelatin and more like living water balloons.
Slashing attacks made Hajime’s [Exterminator] bounce the other way while dealing merely three points of damage. Luckily, as the tutorial had taught him, a well-aimed thrust killed them in one or two hits.
Oh, great, I’ll have to use Kendo Girl’s gimmick. He decided to go with an all-out slime kebab, even if he needed both hands for better precision. It was cumbersome and time-consuming. Then again, he wasn’t like his old friend in any feasible way. Hand-to-hand bloodshed was his domain, not dashing around the place with ballerina finesse.
Hajime leaped on a branch high atop the canopy for a breather. He could’ve bathed his sword in a lovely massacre of NPCs with slightly janky AI, but it got relegated to even more thrusts. The least he could be thankful for now was that [Grove Slimes] were also masters of the “half-assed jump,” covering ground no farther than an infant’s stride.
“How disappointing.” He rested his back on the evergreen trunk, making himself comfortable for a quick snack. People might’ve heard about a triple-decker supreme, but such hamburgers seldom had full slabs of steak for patties. Scarfing his meal like a starved bear, he summoned a bottle of rum aged 15 years to perfection to wash it down for good.
There wasn’t much to do besides killing more enemies Hajime could do in his sleep. His [Exterminator] deserved better than this, even if it was the tutorial, but it made him realize something easy to miss, starting with the rather strange kill count in his objective.
50/20 left to kill
Now, that was unexpected. Flawed enemy AI was one thing; a supposed glitch on his semi-fake status was another. Hajime tried to rationalize it as the Virtue Box program acting up, but that idea flew out the window the more he toyed around with Swordland’s menu.
Not even the convenient virtual storage had any problems. Otherwise, his bottle wouldn’t have vanished into pixels from his hand for safekeeping. His thoughts raced to the one thing left to do for answers. With his phone at hand, he waited for the dial tone to stop ringing in his ear like a sign of ghosts.
Luckily, the king felt chatty today, even if Hajime had to sit through his newfound love for blueberry jam. “Yes, yes, they’re delicious. Can I ask you about something?”
“Why not?” said Harald on the other line. “This is your first mission in another world, after all. Even I, with my endless wonders, would ask many questions coming there.”
“Yeah, but this is different. You better listen carefully,” Hajime replied.
“All right, you’re the boss.”
“How often does Virtue Box bug out? I’m seeing some weird numbers.”
Harald didn’t respond for several seconds, perhaps a bit longer than Hajime would like to admit, until he finally uttered, “Oh, dear… That’s not the program’s fault at all. We of the P.L.A.Y. have used Virtue Box for nearly five millennia. I was there to see its progress.”
“Wait, five millennia!?” said Hajime, almost choking on his second burger. “How fucking old are you, man? No wonder you could do all that crazy shit before. That’s quite a bombshell, you know that?”
“Let us refrain from topics that don’t matter for now. It’s your turn to listen carefully. As I’ve said, the program isn’t bugging out. What you’re seeing is the result of the game’s infection. It sounds insane, but in other words, Swordland will become another instance of Beware the Horde if we don’t act quickly.”
Hajime squinted at the revelation. He never thought his heart rate would beat faster than a rabbit in heat once again, the sweat on his face growing twice in size. There could be tons of fun waiting for him in this world, and if it were to fade from the interstellar map, there would be no fun left to relish.
“What do you mean by ‘another instance’ of our game?” he continued. “What happened to the planets that didn’t make it?”
“Gone, goner than dust. The monsters we fight were far beyond their imagination, so please—”
Their call ended in the worst way possible. Hajime’s ears got assaulted with piercing screeches from below, and he knew them better than anyone. It was the same sound he didn’t like whenever a [Grove Slime] perished. Eventually, the area fell more silent than a library, and what came next were stomping tremors as though the ground beneath him would split in two.
Sliding down the tree, he steeled himself for the upcoming danger with a lengthy chuckle. It could be a land-based dragon or an obese mammoth with four tusks. Either way, he sensed more fun on the horizon with every thud and shake, and he would’ve enjoyed it if not for the untimely intervention.
Hajime had a piece of cloth pressed against his mouth from behind like he was a kidnap victim. Naturally, even someone of his caliber slipped into a realm of dreams before he could protest. No… this can’t be… happening.