I turned around to see a familiar face. It was one of the other women who’d been working the booth at the convention, the super-charismatic one dressed as a Swashbuckler. This woman had caught my eye as being special as well. She looked different now that she was in street clothes, but still just as striking. Her mane of red hair was woven into a single long braid, and she was dressed casually in a striped crop top and trendy jeans. Like Sigrid, she was far too good-looking to be here among the gamers, and far too stylish.
“Uh, sorry, what?”
“The food,” she said. “Any good?”
I stared at the stick I was holding and the remains of the war pig still clinging to it. “Shockingly good.”
“It smells so amazing I’ve been dying to try, but I wasn’t sure if I could trust the street meat here.”
“I think it’s safe,” I told her. “But if you do risk it, I’d get some protective gear first.” I held up the stick so she could see the juice dripping over my hand and oozing its way down my arm.
She laughed. “It does seem a bit messy. Say, I know you, don’t I?”
“We met yesterday, at the convention. Briefly.”
“Oh right. With the little boy. You’re the nice guy.”
“That’s me.”
“I’d love to try one of those skewers, but I should hold off. I’m meeting a friend for dinner soon.”
“Sounds like fun,” I said. “I love eating out.”
I didn’t just say that, did I? Tell me I didn’t just say that.
She quirked an eyebrow over one of her wide green eyes. “Do you now?”
“Uh...”
She laughed again, a high, tinkling laugh, almost musical. She patted me on the shoulder as she walked past, heading back toward the center of town. “Pity you’ve already eaten. Well, I shall be sure to follow your advice and use protection. See you around, I guess.”
That could have gone better. Real smooth, Daniel. Meh, what did it matter? She was out of my league anyway.
Watching her leave I wondered who the lucky sod was that she was meeting, then I realized I hadn’t used All Shall Be Revealed on her yet.
Mary-Jane Anders Affinity: Light - Novice Gifts:
Let’s Dance - Remarkable agility
Master Of None - Player can develop mastery in all Affinities; Restriction: cannot evolve mastery in any Affinity, Power, or Skill beyond Expert level
Powers:
Captivating Presence - Novice: Affect the moods of others
Glow Worm - Novice: Emit light
Gone the Next - Novice: Teleport short distances
Skills:
Acting - Novice
Dancing - Novice
Gymnastics - Novice
Music - Novice
Sword - Novice
Whoah, nice powers. And that Master Of None gift was the same as my Good At Everything, only she was capped at Expert for all her abilities. Expert seemed like it should be better than Adept, so I guessed that meant hers was better than mine. Poopy. The Captivating Presence power and Light affinity, though. That has to be Stratos taking what I said at the convention literally again and translating it into powers here. Heh, Glow Worm. Cute.
When I’d seen her at the convention this swashbuckler, whose name I now knew was Mary-Jane, had impressed me with her social skills. Sigrid was sociable but wary, choosing who she engaged with. Mary-Jane, on the other hand, was sociable on a whole different level. She talked to anybody like they were old pals. It’s in the job description for a booth babe to be affable, but Mary-Jane was the very personification of bubbly cheerfulness.
“Look at her,” I’d said to Stratos. “Look at her face when she talks to people. It’s like she glows.”
“She does? I cannot detect any phosphorescence from her,” he’d said. I was used to them saying things like this by then. I wasn’t sure, because they almost never showed any expression so I could never really tell what they were thinking, but I figured it was just their straight-man sense of humor to take things literally so I ignored it. Of course, I hadn’t known at the time that they were an alien.
“Being able to light up a room like that is a pretty rare talent. Don’t you see how many more people they’re attracting than the other booths? It’s like they’re drawn to her, captivated by her presence.”
I glanced over at Stratos and saw them staring at the booth with a strange intensity.
“So if working at a booth was a game...” they said.
“Then these women would definitely be the winners.”
“Games are everything,” they said after a few moments of contemplation.
“And everything is a game,” I recited.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Now, there she was. Watching her saunter into the crowd I was struck with a strong feeling that she was important. Those impressive powers and her special affinity were enough to make her special, but it was more than that.
Strong abilities? Check.
Unique attribute? Check.
Stands out in a crowd? Check.
Total fish out of water? Check.
Gentlemen, I think we may have found the protagonist of this isekai.
There was no doubt I had to have her on my team, but the thought of building up the nerve to talk to her again and asking her to join made me queasy. Or maybe it was just the war pig meat settling in. Either way, she’d been swallowed by the crowd so I was saved from having to do anything about it; that was a problem for future me.
I spent the next few hours wandering up and down streets, browsing the shops that looked interesting, and just about everything was interesting. The streets were lively, NPCs bustling about and acting like real people as they greeted each other, argued with each other, and did all the things real people would do. It made me start to question whether or not they really were real people. As an experiment, I chose someone who looked the most like an extra in this scene and tried talking to them.
It was a guy, just an ordinary Joe with the Status name of Common Citizen, and I could tell right away that he was not real. He looked real, but there was a delay in his response to when I asked him if he could please tell me where the adventurer’s guild was. It wasn’t a long pause, but it was noticable, and it came with a blank look on his face.
When he finally responded, “I am sorry, sir, I don’t know what that is,” I knew for sure he was just an NPC. He wasn’t important enough to talk to, he was simply filler, a true extra plopped into this place to take up space and make it look more real. He hadn’t been programmed to know anything, and his generic reply was flat, lifeless.
Then, in a flash, he changed. His expression softened, his tone had more inflection and character, and even the way he carried himself became less robotic, more lifelike. “If you’re looking for gear,” he said, “there’s an armorer down the road I can recommend. Her name’s Justina. Just look for the sign with a hawk on it. Tell her Diego sent you, she’ll take care of you.”
Sure enough, when I checked his Status again, it didnt’ say Common Citizen anymore.
Diego Fortuna Citizen Skills:
Carpentry - Adept
Interacting with me seemed to have caused System to upgrade him from generic NPC, giving him a name as well as knowledge and personality.
Interesting.
I kept wandering, and kept using my All Shall Be Revealed power on just about everyone and everything I saw. I must’ve evaluated hundreds of times but my mastery of the power didn’t go up. It’s pretty normal in games that as levels increase it gets harder and harder to raise them, so I wasn’t too surprised. Still, I learned some stuff. For example, I learned that I was not the only one with the special quest. With All Shall Be Revealed at a higher level, I could now see that those people I saw in the arena with hidden abilities had a special tag in their statuses: Team Builder.
Troy Hobbes Team Builder Affinity: [Hidden] Gifts:
[Hidden]
[Hidden]
Powers: [Hidden]
[Hidden]
[Hidden] Skills: [Hidden]
[Hidden]
I hadn’t noticed that the same tag had been added to mine too. I couldn’t be sure of the reason why all their attributes were hidden, but I figured it was probably safe to assume mine were hidden from them, too. This was confirmed when Troy Hobbes looked at me and scowled, then gave me the slightest of head nods. I couldn’t remember him from the convention, but just one look told me he was one of those smug, arrogant guys who pop up every so often to make my life hell. I knew guys like him. That hint of a nod was a gesture not given to many, but it was the extent of his acknowledgement of my existence. He passed me quickly, sauntering down the road with supreme confidence, heads turning in his wake to watch him; he was annoyingly good looking, too.
I was sure his abilities were also amazing. I hated him.
I continued my wandering, and learned that just about everything had a Status. Not just Players and NPCs, but also items, creatures, and even places could have them. Apart from Players, most things didn’t have more than a basic identifier and maybe a short description. Old Food Cart. Chipped Knife. But some were special: they had real names and some even had powers or skills, like Crazy Sadie and her Tarnished Ring. My Tarnished Ring, I should say. I learned what the things people used as mounts were called: the dinosaur-like ones were Land Dragons, while the big bird creatures were Filolials. I recognized these names from a couple of popular isekai animes, cementing my idea that everything here had been culled, seemlingly willy-nilly, from an assortment of fantasy source material.
We Players were far outnumbered by the NPCs, who filled just about any role you can imagine. There were only 300, er, 299 of us, and I estimated the city had the capacity to hold tens of thousands of people. There were Shopkeepers, Blacksmiths, Prostitutes, Street Urchins, you name it. Seeing Prostitute as an NPC role made me wonder about just how exacting the creators of this game had been in reproducing all human functions and sensations in these Player bodies — I won’t get into details, but I knew that I wasn’t a Ken doll when it came to anatomical correctness — then I remembered Stratos saying something about feeling pleasure and had to assume they had been very exact. There were even a few prostitutes who had names.
The city’s spoke-like main avenues were interconnected by many alleys and side streets. Viewed from above, it resembled an imperfect spiderweb. The areas closest to the core where the shops were concentrated were clean and bright, but the further you moved away from the center of town things got a bit less picturesque. This was the residential area, and the only shops this far away were those that catered to the simple daily needs of the residents.
In the shops near the core there were places to buy anything you need, as long as it was in the fantasy theme. You could get various types of armor, swords, shields, rope, torches, and such, but none of what you and I would consider basic essentials like a toothbrush or shampoo. There was soap, but it reeked of ash and animal fat and I don’t think was intended to be used to clean someone’s body.
There were a lot of places to eat, from fancy restaurants to quaint cafes to rough taverns to the ubiquitous street vendors.
There was a bank. There were temples. There were guildhouses for the various trades. There were a couple of brothels. There was a library. And there were several dojos, each devoted to training various martial skills.
There were also, as I had suspected, an assortment of inns, but I spent too long looking around and by the time I thought about it I couldn’t find an inn with any vacancy. So much for my plan.
Dusk had long since turned to night by the time I finally found one with an available room, but when I tried to rent it the innkeeper demanded ten gold per night. Naturally, I told him that was a ludicrous amount and refused to pay it. I’d be out of money before the Tutorial was over at that rate. A couple of Players behind me, a young man and woman, said they’d take it and handed over five gold apiece. They took the key and rushed for the stairs, dangerously close to one another, presumably in a hurry to confirm my theory that these Player bodies were, in fact, fully functional.
The innkeeper gave me the sort of look you want to wipe off someone’s face with an orbital sander as he took the money from them, and I had no choice but to venture out onto the street and try to find a place to spend the night.