Chapter 3: In Order to Boost Efficiency, We Will Do Whatever It Takes

ShangriLa Frontier. It is a game that was released during Spring last year. It belongs to the same category as “Shit Chronicles Online”, but unlike that game it holds the certified world record for the most players being logged in at the same time, which was established earlier this year. As for the game’s setting…… It is set in the future, when humanity found a new home after long years of space exploration. Hence the Players are free to live however they choose in the game, whether it would be going full on fantasy mode in the Middle Ages setting or to bring the elements of Sci-Fi and advanced weaponry to the table. Its ratings are also very high, with Players holding the game in high regard, and the reviews can’t get enough of it, unlike “Shit Chronicles Online” which was bombing in the reviews so much that it was a miracle how it managed to survive for so long. 「I feel it would be rude to put the box on the same shelf as “Shit Chronicles Online” and other shitty games.」 There was a game called “Cosmo Buster” in my collection, an infamous shitty game from the FPS genre where the enemies were respawning infinitely and could pull a “360 no scope” on you without any problem, accompanied by obligatory overblown story. There was a game called “Thrilling Farming Simulator”. As the name implies, it is a simulation game where you cultivate crops and livestock at the local ranch at your own leisure. But the twist is that about once a week huge natural catastrophes like tsunamis or earthquakes or tornadoes roll through the ranch and you had to start everything from scratch. “Survival Gunman” was a catastrophe all of its own, which was so riddled with Gacha that it bombed shortly after being released. There was “United Runes”, the game that came some years ago, and it was simply apocalyptic levels of bad. Not only was it a cooperation game without any kind of single player to speak of, but the items drop rates were so abysmal that it was almost making the game unplayable. But wait, there’s more…… Oh, guess I’m getting a little carried away. If I decided to go through my collection right now, I am fairly sure that there would be some really interesting additions to be found there. I place the ShanFro package somewhere else away from all the shitty games, on the table near my bed where all the systems and controllers were. 「Right…… Let’s get this party started.」 I made sure to use the restroom and have something to eat and drink beforehand. After doing all that, I lie down on my bed and boot the console. I also make sure that there is a bottle of water in case I needed something to drink right after finishing playing. After confirming those basic rules of VR gaming, I was about ready to venture into my first genuine “game” in years. 「Hee…… So, you can adjust things like height, gender and appearance?」 I was a somewhat standard setting for any MMORPG out there, but still the number of options and freedom of choice was kind of overwhelming at first. Race, physique, accessories…… wait, you can even add horns here!? …… With this level of customization, I don’t think there would be any two avatars that would be exactly the same, even if I really tried hard to find them. 「I wonder, what should I make my avatar look like?」 I belong to those people who tend to make their gaming avatars different from my real appearance. I know that there are players who recreate their own appearance because of how confident they are in their own looks, but I strongly believe that game world and reality should be two different things. 「Hmm? Oh, so it’s that system where you decide on your class first and choose appearance later, huh?」 Apparently this game calculates your stats from the moment you are born into this world and depending on the occupation you choose to do. And since the list was rather long and complex, I decided to start my avatar creation from there. 「Uwah…… It takes more than five seconds to scroll down from the top to bottom, how am I supposed to choose a job like this……?」 That being said, this knight (OO user)…… Aggh, I knew it! It’s going to be too long trying to have a look at them one by one. Not to mention that after choosing a class you needed to also choose a weapon you were going to use. At first your equipment would be basic and made out of wood, but talk about commitment from the developer’s side. If that’s the case…… Yeah, let’s become a mercenary whose skills focus solely on dishing out as much DPS as possible. 「Place of origin…… fumu.」 Noble, commoner, orphan, outcast…… Those were all standard options, but yet again, there were just so many of them…… Ah. 「Wanderer…… This sounds nice.」 My defense stats would be rather weak, but my luck would be set a little bit higher to compensate for that. And I believe that luck is going to be an important parameter, since it will affect things like critical chance or item drop rate. Oh well, it is only a game, so does it really matter? Having a high luck stat shouldn’t be a bad thing to have around. Next I tried to tailor my appearance so that it would match my job and place of origin…… This should be about right. 「This is……」 Surprisingly enough, the end product of all of my editing was…… A half-naked figure of a long-eared man, who looked almost identical to my avatar from when I was clearing the “Shit Chronicles Online”. How did this happen? No, there was a reason for this, trust me. It was all for the sake of getting a good start. I examined the game’s manual and it looks like you could sell the initial equipment you were starting with. Mercenaries had the mercenary class items and equipment, which were going to sell for quite a bit of money. It was able to double or even triple the amount of money you were going to start with. Money was sure to be an important element of this game. As a full dive game, even after receiving a quest you had to go and do anything yourself, without any kind of shortcuts or fast travel, so completing quests was rather hard and time consuming. My playstyle usually revolved around maneuverability and using strong weapons rather than fitting myself into armors, hence I was always selling it first…… However, walking around half-naked while looking like the protagonist of “Shit Chronicles Online” was pretty embarrassing in its own right…… so I decided to wear a mask on my face, one that would resemble a bird’s beak (“Mask of Bird’s Eye”) and that would give me a slight boost to perception and eyesight. It was one of the options available. 「This is…… No, no, no! I’m sure there are people out there who have even more ridiculous ideas than that…… Finish!!」 Before doubt would force me to erase all of my progress, I press the “Proceed” button and finish the rest of my character’s creation. Now the only thing that was left was to input my Player’s name. But there was no problem here. I was always using this name in every game I’ve played before, creating a certain legend to it. That name was the name of the man who has conquered many shitty games! …… Nothing wrong with that for a mercenary. 「Sanraku, there……」 I derived this name from the alternative readings of kanji in my own name, so it wasn’t as witty as I would like it to be, but oh well, what can you do? 「Now, game…… Show me what you got!」 With that, a new mercenary was about to enter the world of ShangriLa Frontier………….!! Although the game is available worldwide, due to things like time difference or lag and Internet connection, there weren’t that many players who were migrating servers, therefore the playerbase for each country was always more or less the same. Furthermore, since the only available language for the game was Japanese, it was hard for players outside of Japan to get into the game. But still, the number of people playing was as astonishing as ever!