Chương 31: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 31 - Players Descend

"Grey Wolf, you're the tallest among all the monsters. Come up here and explain what this phrase means." The Gnoll chieftain Grey Wolf looked like someone had just asked him to solve a riddle in a foreign language. He hemmed and hawed for a long moment before finally squeezing something out:"Master... does it mean... if we sniff around on the road in the morning, we can find the corpses of the things that died at night?"

"That's complete bullshit!" Su Nian's ferocious dragon face twisted with contempt. His claws raked across the stone beneath him, throwing off a sharp, grating screech.

"Listen up, all of you! The meaning is: if I know the way to your home in the morning, you're going to be dead by nightfall. Me. Killing you. Got it?" The monsters stared at him for a beat, and then erupted into collective enlightenment. Their gazes turned reverent, and a chorus of species-specific cheers rose from the assembled horde. Su Nian let himself enjoy it for exactly three seconds. Then a row of blazing red text cut across his vision, accompanied by a rapid, urgent alarm: [Attention] [Players descending. Starter Villages confirmed.] [Generating world rules.] [Rule One: All players descend in designated regions across the world. Starter Villages have a one-week self-protection period.] [Rule Two: During the Starter Village protection period, any native creature entering a Starter Village's boundaries will be teleported out and have all relevant memories erased.] [Rule Three: Treasure chests will begin spawning worldwide. Humans who open chests receive loot. The more dangerous the location, the more valuable the chest, some will have Guardian Monsters.] [Sakura No. 1 Novice Village has spawned on the Morigan Plain near Silvermoon Forest.] The red text vanished. Light flared in his eyes. Then, CLANG, a massive golden treasure chest slammed into the ground directly in front of him. What the hell. The Guardian Monster is me? And I'm only worth one golden chest? Su Nian's claws crushed the rock beneath his feet. He was so furious he almost laughed....

Meanwhile, Blue Planet. Sakura Island.

"Yamamoto-kun, p-please — no more, I really don't have any money, I don't — I already gave you everything I had, I can't even afford the cheapest rice balls anymore..." In one of the bathrooms at Fujimoto High School, four or five bleach-haired delinquents were taking turns kicking and punching a chubby boy curled up on the floor. Yamamoto Nanjirou watched with an expression of bored contempt. He despised weaklings.

If Haruta Motono would just drag himself up and fight back for once, even a little, Yamamoto wouldn't have to go this far. At least that would be something. But Haruta never did. And that was why Yamamoto Nanjirou, undisputed delinquent king of Fujimoto High School, had to make his point clearly.

"Boring." He sneered, stepped forward, and planted one foot up on the urinal. From there he looked down at Haruta Motono, filthy, shaking, a heap on the bathroom floor.

"Listen up, fatso. Next time I see you and you still don't have money, I'm pulling your pants down, taking a photo, and posting it on the school bulletin board. Understood?" A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Hah — ptui." He spat directly onto Haruta's face. Then Yamamoto turned and strolled out, delinquents in tow, leaving Haruta alone on the bathroom floor, sobbing into the tiles. [You have been selected.] A flat, cold electronic voice rang inside Haruta Motono's skull. [The World Gambit Game has begun.] [As players, your objective is to invade and occupy this world. If you succeed, this world will replace the Blue Planet as the sacrifice.] [If you are driven out, the Blue Planet will take its place. Warning: the sacrifice is almost always destroyed.] [Time limit: 10 years, Blue Planet time.]"Who, who's there?" Haruta scrambled backward into the corner, eyes darting across the stall doors.

"Is, is that Hanako?" The voice didn't answer him. It continued without pause. [Game Rule One: Players cannot exit the game before death. Upon death, players enter the World Plaza to await resurrection. One return trip to the Blue Planet is permitted per month.] [Game Rule Two: Surviving longer and completing quests earns Invasion Points. Invasion Points can be exchanged for items and daily necessities, used to purchase resurrection time, and traded between players.] [Game Rule Three: Treasure chests will spawn randomly throughout the game world, containing Invasion Points, equipment, and other loot. All rewards are tradable.] [Game Rule Four: Resurrection timers double with each death. The first resurrection takes 5 seconds. Cherish your lives.] [Game Rule Five: Time in the game world runs at a 1: 10 ratio. Survive. Death inside the World Plaza counts as permanent death.] [Countdown begins.] The voice faded.

And then, a crack of thunder, vast and planetary, rolled across the entire Blue Planet at once. Every human being on Earth looked up. A colossal blood-red hourglass had appeared in the sky, wrapped in churning storm clouds. Red sand fell slowly inside it. Beneath the hourglass hung a rectangular electronic display showing: [s] Then a voice, enormous, sonorous, inescapable, spoke in every ear simultaneously: [All Chosen Ones, please enter the game.] [Those not selected may view proceedings from the spectator stands and await future selection.] A low hum pulsed through the air. Across every nation on Earth, the selected vanished in bursts of white light. Including Haruta Motono, still crumpled in the corner of a bathroom stall, terrified and completely lost.... Sakura No. 1 Novice Village. Haruta Motono materialized in a wash of golden light. One moment his vision had gone black, his head spinning, and then suddenly he was somewhere else entirely.

An open plain stretched out around him. The grass was thick and green, and a gentle breeze moved across his skin. The sky was a deep, clear blue, dotted with clouds so large and close they looked like you could reach up and touch them. The air smelled faintly of grass and something sweet, clean, alive, nothing like anything back home. At the horizon, lush tropical jungle crowded the edge of the world. Beyond it, barely visible, snowcapped mountains rose up to meet the sky.

"World Gambit Game?"

"Invade a world. An actual game?" Haruta squeezed his hands open and closed. The weight of his own body was exactly right, the same familiar resistance as reality, nothing like the half-there sensation of a VR headset.

"World map, forum, party system, five-senses calibration, quest tracker..." He blinked through the interface.

"No logout button."

"It's real. There's actually a real other world, and someone turned it into a game." The scale of it hit him like a wall. What kind of existence had the power to do something like this? Golden light kept flashing around him. More and more people were appearing, Sakura Island natives, dozens of them, then hundreds. And somewhere in that crowd, Haruta caught a familiar silhouette. Yamamoto Nanjirou, staring around with wide, curious eyes. Haruta shrank back and let the crowd swallow him.

For a moment, he let himself think. Ordinary face. Ordinary body. Ordinary family with nothing to offer. The colossal hourglass hanging in the sky back home. All the hours, no, years, he'd poured into games that no one else around him cared about. He was the fat kid everyone looked through. A high schooler who came home every day and disappeared into a screen. An otaku who'd found more warmth from fictional 2D girlfriends than from anyone in his actual life.

The guy who'd cleared games other people gave up on, who knew systems and mechanics and the exact moment the tide of a fight could turn.

"Am I going to be a punching bag in here too?" He let the question sit for exactly one second. No. This was his world. Games were where he lived. In here, he could become something, something stronger than any of them. He would never, not once, be the one on the ground again.

"Everyone who's ever humiliated me. Everyone who spat on me. Everyone who laughed." His jaw tightened.

"Just wait."

"I don't care about the World Gambit. I don't care if the world burns."

"But I'll be a player. I'll be an invader." He pushed his glasses up his nose with one swollen, puffy finger. His eyes had gone somewhere strange and bright.

"Now, it's my turn." [Chosen Ones deployment for Sakura No. 1 Novice Village complete.] [Note: You have seven days to build your Novice Village. The green zones on your map are safe areas, free for exploration. Safe zones disappear after seven days.] [A fortified Novice Village is your best chance of survival. Good luck, and enjoy the game.] P. S. To avoid confusion with the previous book, all instances of "Blue Star" have been changed to "Blue Planet", they are different settings.

There are also Chinese players from the Blue Planet, though they haven't appeared in the story yet. Haruta Motono is not the protagonist, Su Nian is the one and only main character. Just getting that on the record before anyone accuses me of anything. ➤ Next: Adding Some Extra Flavor