Chapter 12. Meeting and Parting
“Say hello! This is my new friend, Doldol! He’s the biggest and hardest stone among all the stones I can pick up and swing around in my hands!”
The place where I am right now is a waterfall, where the beautiful sound of water falling from a high place echoes all around.
This is the place I want to settle down in!
There are a lot of incredibly hard rocks around this waterfall that are ridiculously difficult to break!
On top of that, there isn't any flat land around here, so choosing this place as my home is a really, really stupid decision!
Ah!
I think it's time!
From now on, I have to start the routine I've been doing every day for the past few days!
Everyone, cheer me on!
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Damn it! Fucking hell! Goddammit!”
Ten days had passed since my fight with the wolves.
And there were about ten days left until my fight with the bull-headed monster.
What I had gained during those ten days was resentment and irritation toward a world that refused to go according to my plans.
And, of course, my steadily deepening madness.
Yeah.
Eventually, I even gained a strange class called Sinner of Madness.
That pretty much said everything.
No matter how much I thought about it, I figured the problem was probably that I had been punching rocks and even biting them because they wouldn't break.
“I told you to calm down, didn't I?”
Still, I was doing much better now.
At first, the rocks were so heavy that I could barely move them.
They didn't even break.
But now, at least, they were breaking.
Could it be that someone who had been monitoring me had seen me trying to destroy the rocks and finally patched the game?
I really hoped it was the result of my own efforts.
“I'm always calm and cold-headed. Even now, I was just playing an exciting rhythm game with Doldol here.”
“While swearing?”
“It was a kind of rhythm accompaniment…”
“Ahem!”
Pie was gradually starting to resemble a mother.
Of course, I was somewhat lacking and often asked her to do this and that for me.
So perhaps raising one troublesome son really did feel like this.
But did she really have to nag me like a mother too?
Still, she always helped me without hesitation, so I felt incredibly comfortable around her.
That was also why I couldn't bring myself to say anything unpleasant to her.
“No, I'm serious! I'm doing this after giving it a logical and reasonable amount of thought!”
“…Tell me.”
I felt strange.
It was a feeling I had never experienced while alive, so I couldn't really put it into words.
But it was incredibly frustrating.
“The way to make a tragedy even more terrible is to show happiness before the tragedy happens. The greater that happiness is, the more miserable the fall into tragedy becomes.”
“So?”
“…Therefore, I'm deliberately raising the power of madness and then forcibly calming it down. It might not be some extremely positive emotion like peace or relaxation, but isn't there any mental power more suitable for suppressing madness than that?”
“Oh… Well, I suppose a method that produces immediate results would be better than just sitting cross-legged and meditating.”
Yes!
I convinced her!
I couldn't believe the day would come when I could actually convince someone!
Hooray!
The world was still bright!
“So, does it seem to be working?”
“Hmm, I've succeeded a few times.”
“How do you know whether you succeeded?”
“Whenever I failed, I came to my senses covered in blood. So if that doesn't happen, I count it as a success!”
“You really…! It's a miracle you managed to hide that from me.”
Of course.
I always washed myself before going inside.
Even if some blood remained, I could just say I had fought goblins, and she would usually let it slide.
But now that I had stupidly told her everything, that trick wouldn't work anymore.
Haha.
As expected of me.
“Can't you think of another method?”
“Hmm, maybe meditating and having a conversation with myself… I do it whenever I have time, but whenever I meditate, I strangely get sleepy.”
“That's because you're tired and sitting there with your eyes closed.”
“Right?”
I had thought that maybe I could become friends with another version of myself, just like I had become friends with Modak.
But staying up all night in this rough primitive lifestyle wasn't exactly easy.
And if it were that easy, Pie would have already known about it and told me.
The fact that Pie had nothing to say probably meant either that there was no such method, or that even if one existed, it was extremely rare and kept secret from everyone.
Or perhaps it simply hadn't been implemented in the game yet.
Still, it was a little disappointing.
A game where I could even talk to fire had introduced some strange concept called mental power, yet hadn't created any interactions related to it.
Come to think of it, it had already been a week in the real world too.
Why weren't the people responsible for this telling me anything?
Seriously.
They were being way too cruel.
“Hang in there. You're the guy who even became friends with a campfire. I'll work hard to make you weapons together with your friend.”
Yeah, Pie.
Just the fact that you were willing to talk to me made me feel a little better.
Haha.
Even if you were an AI made of nothing but zeroes and ones, at least you were still here.
Haha…
…After this game officially launched, there would probably be countless people who escaped from reality and lived entirely inside the game.
Even right now, there were people living with 2D characters and virtual girlfriends despite not being able to communicate properly with each other.
So what would happen when they had an almost perfectly recreated human AI like Pie standing right in front of them?
People would probably start talking about games being harmful substances or something again.
“You don't seem to be doing very well either.”
“Yeah. There isn't exactly anything decent to work with. The materials you give me are nothing but goblin tendons, bones and blood, and completely rusted pieces of iron.”
I had thought that if we made weapons out of those things, perhaps the grudges of the dead goblins would remain inside them and create some terrifying demonic sword.
But the moment I mentioned that idea, I received a look that clearly said:
Are you seriously saying that while thinking this could actually happen? Are you sane?
