Wrecking the Database 6 (Log Horizon/Oreigaru)

Wrecking the Database 6 (Log Horizon/Oreigaru)

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Commissioned by: Weise

Wordcount: 2548

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Farming kills the soul, whilst quests are the balm that soothes it. Hours and hours can be spent never getting a certain drop, while the rewards of a quest are always guaranteed. In the world of MMOs, a good, repeatable quest is something to be wept over, jerked off to, and venerated over in on online forums. Yes, without a doubt, somewhere there is a moe anthropomorphic character of a questline that exists. Because otaku will watch it, gamers will “get it,” and it’ll undoubtedly go viral on western video channels for being “weird.” It has a guaranteed audience, potential to garner more without commercials, and can undoubtedly sell figures for both ironic and collection reasons. 

But, I digress.

The advantage of having access to questlines is simply immense. Finishing every new quest, doing a dozen or so runs of some that are repeatable, and getting the items, skills, and spells of your new class are very, very necessary. If the rest of the player population didn’t have access to a quests, then my group will undoubtedly have a definitive edge. However, quests are typically more dangerous than farming. Guaranteed rewards only come with guaranteed danger. If you want something, you’ll have to fight hard for it, because it makes the reward that much better.

I wouldn’t mind just getting everything I wanted handed to me, but I’m not going to lie about liking the thought of earning every .jpeg and pixel of my character’s new stats and equipment.

Anyway, I couldn’t put the newbies on a quest, so it was up to me and Zaimokuza to explore the new area, beat the monsters within it to hell and back, and pry our rewards from their cold, dead bodies.

Basically, for the first time, I could relax after being transported into another world with my sister.

Isn’t that sad?

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“Pwhahahah! Behold my might and power and despair! I, the Dread Pirate Dauntless Denise, am your reckoning.” Given her avatar, her outfit, and her matching equipment, it was undeniable that Zaimokuza looked cool whilst standing over the glimmering, fading bodies of the monsters that got in her way. However, since “cool” and “Zaimokuza” couldn’t exist in the same reality without reality imploding, I chose to give the situation no comment, and examined the one or two drops that the dozen enemies gave. They were just generic mobs with a frost cave reskin, but they were tougher and stronger than their regular kin, so I had to examine their drops. It would be foolish not to. And, again, I could ignore Zaimokuza for the sake of the universe. “EH!? Hachiman! You’re supposed to say I’m really cool! You saw that right!? I did great!”

“You made your character’s skirt short so that activating abilities showed your panties, so you’re dead to me, Zaimokuza.” Yes. That was totally something I wouldn’t do. Indeed, I would never use the glitch myself. This character I’m currently using is my only character. I do not have another, max-levelled character who I never used with a mic that did the same thing. No. I am an absolutely chaste and incorruptible gamer only present for the gaming experience itself. I have hentai and porn for slacking my lusts. I would never create a character and max them out solely for ecchi upskirts. Never. “Please, go die.”

“Ehh!? I do all the work and all you do is be mean to me, Hachiman-kun!” Look at that. A girl peering up at me with tears in her eyes. It’s every man’s dream to be able to comfort such a creature. In this sort of situation, hearing such a pleading voice and seeing such a creature, a man can only reach out and comfort what is before him. However, that is the will of flesh alone. The mind and spirit, working as one, can overpower the ill will of the body. With my spare hand, not holding a new material, I picked Zaimokuza up and threw her at the nearest mob. It was the right thing to do. “AH NOOOOOOO!”

Anyway, the new materials I was looking at were things that weren’t in the game before. Basic materials that humanity needed to advance toward civilization didn’t used to exist. However, that was before Elder Tales became a living breathing world that supported a population of NPCs throughout history. What wasn’t present before was filled in by the game. That meant that modern technology could be introduced to the NPCs… if one took several decades or centuries to do so. Maybe a lot less if all the Players banded together, deposed the current administration, and set about revolutionizing and modernizing the new world off the bodies of countless dead.

Typically speaking, rapid modernization led to rapid change, and rapid change meant a lot of rapid deaths either due to the momentum, or because lives needed to be exchanged for the engine of progress to speed up.

And, I doubted that Players would choose spend their lives, when their abilities, strengths, and power.

Suffice to say, I could only see modernization occurring with former NPCs becoming slaves or second citizens that can only look upon in horror at the immortal gods that ruled over them and demanded their subservience. Maybe, one day, that regime would be toppled and replaced by another that could erase the past and utilize the modern conveniences and the like… but that was unlikely given how Players can simply come back to life.

The current Fantasy-World setting was good enough.

Stability meant time to work carefully, concisely, and with as little problems as possible. So, I was focused on the things that already functioned in the current rules, so that I could use them in the current system, and prepare for the upcoming, inevitable change. Preferably at the very head of it, with as much of the NPCs at my back, and a guild capable of putting down everyone else with the newest assets provided by expansion. 

…reviewing my whole plan backwards really made me sound like some sort of Season 3 villain in hindsight.

I needed to work on that.

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“Eh, this is a boss room! Ain’t it, Hachiman-kun?” Indeed, at the very depths of the mining system we were supposed to enter, there was an entrance to an arena. However, judging from the size of the entrance, and the fact that there was safe room before it… well, it was tossup between being a boss or a raid. The former was something Zaimokuza and I could take on alone, while the latter was something we needed a guild of max-level players to tackle. “Hmmm, what do you think my partner across time and space? Do we venture forth and slay the beast—

“No. We’re leaving today.”

“Such a quick answer!”

“Well, we weren’t paid to handle this, so there’s no point.”

“What a shameless answer!”

“Working for free is a good way to get taken advantage of, right?”

“What a nihilistic answer!”

Ignoring the comedy routine, there was no point in tackling the current problem ahead of us. As I said, if a problem isn’t my problem, I’m fine with it existing. I prefer to handle problems that affect me, myself, and I. Selfish? Totally. However, problems never cease to exist. A person has to learn how to be content, otherwise they’ll just be forced down a path of pain and misery. Society has been constructed to force people to think that they always need to solve every problem, meet every expectation, and go above and beyond the minimum to get what they want.

I, Hikigaya Hachiman, prefer the path of least resistance… or the path which rewards me the most for the work that I do.

To work is to lose, therefore I might as well get the most from losing when I do.

Taking on a boss battle, which might possibly be a raid, and not getting paid with more than just the drops?

Yeah, that’s not happening.

“Hmmm, very well! I have no issue with this course of action, Hachiman-kun! Let us depart with the spoils of war we’ve already gathered and retrieve our prize from the locals for our efforts!” Zaimokuza assented in her typically bombastic way, chest puffed out, one hand on her hip, and the other pointing towards the exit—oh. “Eh… Hachiman-kun… that’s a new monster… and it’s very, very big.”

It seems that the safe room wasn’t a safe room, but actually the boss room, and the room ahead of us was probably where the treasures the boss protected lay.

Not good.

“Move!” My order had Zaimokuza moving. Given my status as a Healer, I witnessed many battles, and the fact that I controlled who lived and died in battle, I also assumed the responsibility of coordinating the whole situation. While healers outside of MMOs were supporting characters, they typically held the role of orchestrators within MMOs. They kept track of everything, took charge, and kept everyone alive and dealing damage. Thankfully, my experience with herding packs of retarded, suicidal cats didn’t fade with Elder Tales becoming real. “I’ll get its attention! You kill it!”

“Got it!”

And, with that established, Zaimokuza and I fought the first boss since the expansion released.

It was a larger version of the creatures we were fighting on the way through the mines. It was a sort of hermit crab, but it used a large stone boulder to settle within. Naturally, it spat lava, used its claw to make sweeping attacks, and curled into a ball to smash into things. Dangerous opponents for generic human beings, but not so much for adventurers, until everything about it was scaled up exponentially… and if it wasn’t facing a DPS-focused, max-level build and one that was designed to not ever die.

Taking on streams of pressurized lava was tough, but the more damage I took, the more stacks of regeneration and armor I gained. At the cost of basically crippling my offensive potential, focusing entirely on healing myself and others, I was essentially a sponge that solely soaked up damage, attracted attention, and coordinated whilst being murdered. I could do chip damage, just by doing auto-attacks, but the damage was negligible at best. Winning a boss fight alone would take hours or days, and might even be impossible if my opponent had regeneration faster than my basic attacks, however that wasn’t the case with Zaimokuza present. 

The strategy was simple. Neither of us took any risks. Dying was not acceptable since we couldn’t afford to go back and get noticed by all the other Players in the city. Therefore, I took on every attack I could whilst managing my health, whilst Zaimokuza claimed its health whenever the opportunity presented itself. The giant, generic hermit crab monster wasn’t facing two adventurers, but instead two machines with preprogrammed reactions and strategies that could also adapt on the fly. 

An instant-death grab which had a massive claw pick me up and squeeze me was an opportunity for Zaimokuza to deal damage. When it charged up an attack, I took the breadth of it, so that Zaimokuza could deal damage. When it surged into the air, covered itself in its own lava attack, and surged down, Zaimokuza and I both stuck to the walls, and healed up because it’s animation was freaking long, and having a casing of lava probably meant that it had some form of super armor buff. We didn’t try to take on new strategies, I simply tanked, and she did as DPS did, but with less dying like an idiot. 

And, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have been able to do this little battle without Zaimokuza. 

Being trash amongst trash, Zaimokuza was the best possible partner I could have in this current scenario. Barring the fact that he’s himself, and the fact that he couldn’t keep his entire guild together, he knew the game like the back of his hand, took every advantage possible, and practically did the job of two characters while making it look easy. While that was commendable if he was operating with hardware, the fact that he was doing all of it with his new form and body, frankly showed off how much of a freak he was. 

Aerial maneuvers off of cave walls? No problem. Zaimokuza even when the extra distance and used the descend to start setting up a skill, so she could land two before reaching the ground. When she did the same attack again, she refined it, and commited three at the cost of a little health, which I healed up. She went from doing the maximum amount of damage she could manage to taking another’s person job and doing that well to.

When dodging and doing chip damage, whilst her stamina recovered, she also studied the movements of the enemy. I went from having to take every attack to being freed up to recover and have to take less damage, because she forced it to target her instead, and then she evaded the attack with her typical methods. All the while she assaulted different locations, prodding every possible weak point, and gathered more information whilst utilizing what she already learned. 

Without a doubt, as an asset, Zaimokuza was the only one in my current group that could protect the rest of us without any issue. 

So, though I should’ve been doing my best to support her, I was using the battle to figure out ways to make sure she stayed with us. 

Isolating her away from the rest of society was a good first step, along with the fact that she was my friend in real life. Couple that with the fact that I didn’t treat her any differently from who she used to be, and her positive reaction to that, most people would think our situation was fine and that I had no need to do anything else. 

However, in our current situation, I didn’t want “fine” I wanted complete, undeniable proof that she’d stay with our group, until she wasn’t needed anymore.  And, even when everyone else was at their full strength, there was no denying that Zaimokuza simply had more innate talent that’ll keep her beyond the reach of everyone else. Watching Zaimokuza fight, after everything else she’d managed to do, made it clear to me that was the best possible action I could possibly take in our current circumstances.

At the very least, I’ll be giving Zaimokuza what she wanted in order to get my way, and not resort to any sleazy, underhanded tactics. Though I’d never make her our Guild Master under any other circumstance, I was willing to do so now to ensure that everyone was safe in the short term.

Did the thought of actively manipulating Zaimokuza make me ill? 

Yes.

I would hate anyone who used my relationship with them to their sole benefit with the aims of using me and my skills.  If someone did that to me, I’d honestly never associate with them again, if I found out, and I’d hate them for the rest of my life.

Without a doubt, Komachi would hate me for what I’m doing now too.

However, the safety Zaimokuza provided was something I couldn’t afford to let go.