Chương 40: Reborn as the Dragon: — Chapter 40 - We Must Unite

"Damn it! I'm genuinely speechless — what the hell is going on with this game? The Blaze Rabbits outside the Starter Village are jacked up on something, it's completely impossible to beat them." A player from Sakura No. 1 Novice Village had posted that complaint on the world channel. The mockery came fast. [DavidCameron]Oh, God. Did I read that right? Sakura Island players can't beat the Blaze Rabbits outside the Starter Village? Merciful Lord, I honestly don't know why He bothered giving them limbs.

Truly baffling. [????]Ah, come on now~ drank too much nuclear wastewater yo~ that explains it, seumnida~ [Furueru]The small fry here are easy. One slash each, moving right along. [OneSwordWest]lmaooo we've nearly wiped out all the small fry outside our Starter Village. No Blaze Rabbits though, just level 3 and 4 Yamaguchi Mura Chickens. Braised, naturally. [SixPackCorn]Sakura Island players really are something else. Why not call in your Beautiful Country daddies for backup? [SakuraJam]Damn it all!

Hold on, are you saying your small fry are easy? Aren't all our Starter Villages supposed to be the same?... The players of Sakura No. 1 Novice Village stared at the world channel feed in complete silence. Scattered among the messages were screenshots of treasure chests, opened cleanly, no traps sprung. Players from other Sakura Novice Villages were posting monster screenshots too. Normal monsters. Boring, manageable, level-appropriate monsters.

Nothing like the nightmare fuel prowling the forests around their village, each one built like a mob enforcer. What was going on? Why were they the ones being singled out? The players of Sakura No. 1 Novice Village had absolutely no answers.... The sun finished setting. The red glow bled out of the sky. Darkness settled in like a cloak, and the stars blinked down at the vast earth below. Sakura Island No. 1 Novice Village.

A circle of players sat around a campfire, their faces dark with frustration and poorly suppressed rage. Every so often, one of them would lurch forward with a dry heave. Clearly, even if none of them had suffered quite as thoroughly as Mori Yama Yaren, they'd all eaten their fair share of Origi-Splat today. Brave pioneers, every one of them. And every one of them had been thoroughly beaten up by the world.

"We must unite and work together!" Yamaguchi Mura Chicken raised his fist and called out, his expression grave. There was something genuinely imposing about him in this moment, a leader's presence, and even the distorted geisha tattoo stretched across his belly seemed to carry a little more dignity than usual.

"The ancients said: know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win every battle. To defeat our enemy, we must first understand our enemy!" He paused, then took a savage bite of the wolf leg in his hand. Roasted wolf meat from the System Store. Yamaguchi Mura Chicken had grown up eating the finest food money could buy, and yet right now, sitting by a campfire in a starter village, he had never tasted anything so satisfying. The wolf meat was incredible. The dog meat, too, if he was being honest.

"Now. Let's go over what we already know."

"First: the actual strength of the magical beasts outside the safe zone has absolutely no relationship to their listed levels. My subordinate Yaren-kun has a very personal understanding of this point."

"Furthermore, this situation appears to be unique to Sakura No. 1 Novice Village." If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Yaren-kun, please share your experience with the group."

"Ugh... Young Master... ugh-hack... p-bleurgh..."

"... (ー_ー)!!" Yamaguchi Mura Chicken watched Mori Yama Yaren collapse into another round of violent retching and decided, with some regret, that he would be handling this himself.

"These magical beasts are extremely physically developed. They are also led by a Level 30 black dragon. To have any hope of defeating these monsters, we must pool our strength."

"And since we're pooling our strength, we should do it properly, form a guild. A real one, with a real name." No one objected. They were ordinary players, freshly dropped into a game they didn't understand, and none of them had strong opinions about guild names. Beyond that, the man addressing them was covered head to toe in tattoos and radiated danger, so even the players with opinions quietly kept them to themselves. Yamaguchi Mura Chicken was very pleased with the silence.

Exactly the atmosphere he'd been cultivating. He let the pause breathe for a moment, then delivered the name he'd already chosen:"Since no one objects, our guild shall be called: the Flower Girl Munch Munch Guild!" All players: "(=°Д°=)???" Yamaguchi Mura Chicken continued as if he hadn't noticed their expressions.

"There is no need for surprise. As far as I have been able to determine, that black dragon is keeping a very beautiful flower girl, one could say a girl of extraordinary charm, the kind you encounter perhaps once in a hundred million years."

"The purpose of our guild is not merely to fight the monsters of this forest. We are also here to rescue that flower girl and free her from captivity."

"A true warrior will earn the flower girl's favor. And so our guild shall be called: the Flower Girl Munch Munch Guild!" He posted Anna's screenshot to the team channel as he spoke. Mori Yama Yaren had taken it in secret, the only photo where the little girl's full face was visible, since most of the time she was tucked firmly inside the black dragon's embrace. The first time Yamaguchi Mura Chicken had seen this photo, he'd nearly lost his mind.

He had never encountered a girl who could simultaneously project the innocent, unguarded sweetness of youth and the faintest hint of a maiden's playful allure. Pure and captivating at once. And on top of all that, born petite and delicate, like something sculpted for maximum devastation. She clearly hadn't fully grown into herself yet. And yet, the charm she was already radiating, some sacred fox deity, some divine Tamamo-no-Mae, none of them could hold a candle to her.

They wouldn't be worthy of carrying her shoes. Not to mention the fluffy fox ears. The fox tail. And most remarkable of all: whenever Mori Yama Yaren brought her up, his eyes went soft and distant, and the retching stopped completely. Like something in him had been cleansed just from thinking about her. One could only imagine how singular she truly was. Most likely, Yamaguchi Mura Chicken concluded, she was an S-tier companion from some role-playing game, the kind players wrote entire forum posts about.

The players listened, looked at each other, and slowly nodded with expressions of deep understanding. Just an old pervert. All these grand justifications and he's still just an old pervert. Hypocrite. That said, they got it. Dragons in every game and anime they'd ever touched had a habit of kidnapping princesses. The girl was probably royalty from some other kingdom. An otherworld princess. The thought was electric.

Most of the male players were already reaching for the screenshot with a mix of curiosity and something they weren't going to examine too closely. The female players who didn't care scrolled past. The rest opened the image. And then they froze. Like Cupid had reached through the screen and shot them at point-blank range.

"Hiss — wh-wh-wh-WHAT—!!!"

"Oh my god, I'm in LOVE—""Incredible. Kawaii... she's so kawaii..." The elven girl in the photo was pressed into the black dragon's chest, enormous innocent eyes wide open, staring at something off-frame. Both small hands were wrapped around the dragon's wing. Her round, baby-soft cheeks were dusted with a blush that looked almost too perfectly placed to be real. She looked slightly dazed. A little naive. The kind of expression that made you want to protect her from everything, immediately and forever.

Porcelain-delicate features. Pink, tender cheeks. An expression of soft, almost bewildered vulnerability. Snow-white hair spilling over her shoulders. And the fluffy, unmistakably real fox ears. And the tail curled around her. The otaku contingent of Sakura Island's starter village collectively ceased to function. How does a girl like this exist? And then, right on the heels of that thought, something darker bloomed in their chests. Anger. Jealousy. Greed.

A whole tangle of feelings arriving all at once, sudden and irrational, as though the photo itself had reached into them and pulled a lever.

"That despicable dragon!" a player snarled.

"Snatching a girl like her away to his lair, how could he? How heartbroken her family must be!"

"Exactly! We defeat the evil dragon, we rescue her, we end her suffering!"

"A girl that beautiful deserves a man worthy of her. Someone like me!" The energy around the campfire crackled. Yamaguchi Mura Chicken surveyed the scene with deep satisfaction. Goal achieved. A group of people with something to fight for was far easier to lead, and far more dangerous when pointed in the right direction.

"For now, everyone stays inside the safe zone and levels up. No more running out there to die. We need to be stronger before we have any real chance against that dragon."

"I've already confirmed it, we can still gain experience from the beasts inside the safe zone. Slow, but it works. Seven days from now, gentlemen, we march on the dragon's lair." He raised one clenched fist above his head, voice ringing out across the campfire. The players roared back as one:"We march on the dragon's lair! We march on the dragon's lair!"

"Long live President Yamaguchi!". No blade. I'll stack shields. ➤ Next: Tyrant Stinkbug