Chapter 3 (2/2)

k.u.miko tied a short sword to the end of her mop and was using it as a spear. She was stabbing away at the orcs and goblins headed this way. She wasn’t fighting for anyone but her comrades. It was a good fighting strategy.

“It’s about time they stopped coming.”

“k.u.miko, now’s not the time for jokes.”

“I’m alright, but this spear won’t hold out.”

“If it’s the short sword at the tip, you can just replace it with new one.”

Since goblins dropped it, she could just grab one off the ground.

“No, it’s the binding that’s the problem.”

“Ah, like I thought.”

k.u.miko used the fabric from ribbons that girls used to tie their hair back to help make the spear. It had low durability despite her careful usage and there was no replacement if it broke.

“Can’t you use something other than a spear?”

“Not like I can’t use it, but nothing too heavy.”

For weapons, the humanoid monsters dropped them for free, but most of them were hunks of metal with rusted and chipped blades that required a considerable amount strength to actually cut anything. Most of them were too c.u.mbersome of a weapon for someone slender like k.u.miko.

“It would’ve been better if treasure chests had useful weapons inside them. Well, if it’s you k.u.miko, you should ask vice-president Nanami that you’re so buddy-buddy with.”

“Stop it. Treasure chests are too dangerous.”

There were occasionally treasure chests while we were traversing the dungeon. They occasionally contained weapons, but contained gold coins or jewellry more often.

Diamond, ruby, sapphire, emerald, topaz, peridot, lapis lazuli…. For girls, who really liked s.h.i.+ny stuff, they ran towards the treasure chests as if it was a race, but there were traps there as well.

The girl who carelessly opened a treasure chest said “ouch!” and fell on her b.u.t.t, only to never stand up again. She lost her consciousness and soon pa.s.sed away with a high fever. I suspected that she was stabbed with some sort of poisonous needle that came out the moment she opened the chest.

The heavily injured or poisoned ones were annoying because it took manpower to take care of them too. I wanted to say it might be better to die, but this was the reality we faced now.

From then on, we didn’t open the treasure chests and simply moved on. Gold and precious jewelry was desirable, but was worth nothing compared to a life.

“k.u.miko, don’t get too close to that rat.”

“Eh, it’s just a rat. I’m not scared of something like a ra… kyaa!!”

The rat dived towards k.u.miko, bloated its body and exploded with a loud noise. One could think it was just a regular fat rat living in the underground labyrinth but I never expected it to be just a regular rat.

“It’s a monster called “Exploding Rat”. I remember seeing it in a game I can’t remember. It doesn’t deal high damage on its own, but commits suicide to scare people into accidentally stepping on a trap or something.”

“It’s the worst kind of creature.”

k.u.miko, who was covered with chunks of meat and innards from the exploding rat, wiped her face with disgusted expression. At a glance, it was just a harmless rat that exploded in front of your face and didn’t do anything else, but the fact even small animals were coming at us with such annoying attacks sapped everyone’s mental strength.

The way the traps were positioned and the patterns of appearing monsters. I felt a deja vu. I wondered where I had seen it before, but a male student to the front made a loud noise.

I wondered if another one lost his mind, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.

“Of course! This is the world of “Geno-Real”!”

A slightly chubby student with s.h.a.ggy hair and a potato like face made a sharp sound while celebrating like a madman. I breathed in deeply at the words of that student, who had been deemed useless and was being used as meat s.h.i.+eld for the traps along with the weak girls.

Is that so. Geno-Real….

Was this Genocide Reality’s dungeon?

I was suspicious of that s.h.a.ggy student because he was saying something like “Status open!” a while back…. but it seems he was a gamer like me.

He was trying to open a status window in case this was a game world.

That was well and good, but to notice that this was similar to Geno-Real in situations like this. Unlike his appearance, he was pretty smart. He was someone to take note of.

“Everyone listen to me, there’s the ‘Door to h.e.l.l’”. This world is the world of the game called ‘Genocide Reality’!”

That s.h.a.ggy hair was explaining away, but people around him were ignoring as if they thought he was crazy. I suppose that was to be expected since high school students these days wouldn’t know of an old game like Genocide Reality.

Even if he tried to grab everyone’s attention, it was obvious that n.o.body would listen to him. There was a girl who suddenly started laughing and had committed suicide by jumping into a false floor trap , so they all probably thought he went cuck-coo.

I moved up a bit forward to take a look at the “Door to h.e.l.l” that s.h.a.ggy hair pointed at. I looked at the large fissure carefully with a torch and noticed an iron plate with “Entrance to Tartarus” written on top of it.

It seems like it’s the real deal, though I’d still wait a bit more just to make sure….

I put on an inconspicuous expression so others wouldn't notice and let out a deep sigh. “Entrance to Tartarus” also known as “h.e.l.l” was the very first of Genocide Reality’s trap.

It might be a stretch to call it a trap because it looks like just a large fissure in the ground, but if you fell in here, it led straight to 10th Floor. It was probably made with the mythology that you would fall for 10 days to reach the bottom of Tartarus, but it was still unreasonable.

At the bottom of the h.e.l.l, there was fall damage dampening system, so you wouldn’t die from falling. For experienced players, it was a convenient way to get to the 10th floor, but newbies would be attacked by stronger monsters and die.

Since it was a game, there were a lot of people who had died to it. It was a trap for idiots who wanted to fall into a trap or to mercilessly kill off newbies.

“Please believe me. There’s a stairway to the surface ahead of us. It’s a safe zone there. I know all about it!”

Putting the raving s.h.a.ggy hair to a side of my mind, I sighed again while looking at the hole leading to h.e.l.l. I definitely realized I’ve seen the traps somewhere. It was my lack of attention that I didn’t notice earlier.

But seriously, who would believe that they’re in a game world. Game world, game world…. I repeated it again and again, but it wasn’t realistic. But considering everything matched up to this point, it was logical to a.s.sume that this was the case. The s.h.a.ggy hair was probably right.

I murmured “Status open” as well.

Nothing came out… Well, I guess that was to be expected. Geno-Real was a game that didn’t have quantifiably measurable status.

Around 1987, Genocide Reality was announced in the US, and it was a revolutionary real-time 3D dungeon RPG that broke the conventions of an RPG. Just like the t.i.tle, Geno-Real emphasized “reality”. So there was no information like a status bar or levels displayed for the character.

If you wanted to know your status, you needed to go to the temple in the city on the surface. Even then, the only thing you would find out was your job and proficiency rankings in the Warrior, Acrobat, Monk and Mage categories.

Since it was a game, there would be quantifiable data somewhere, but to keep a sense of realism, most of information on the character couldn’t be checked. Instead, there were gauges showing health, stamina, mana, hunger, thirst and tiredness.

It was straight forward. If you didn’t eat, drink or sleep, your stamina bar would drop, which would lead to your health bar dropping and you would eventually die. It was probably intentional, but the system worked in real time and didn’t stop. Players would quite literally live, adventure and die in the game.

It was a revolutionary system at the time and could be referred to as the most realistic game. It saw huge success in America and across the world. They began to make sequels of Genocide Reality and soon, there was even a MMO of it.

It left an immortal achievement in the gaming industry, but there was one country it didn’t sell well despite the worldwide boom.

It was j.a.pan.

Of course, Geno-Real was rated highly in j.a.pan as well and there were several games that were translated to j.a.panese. But just like its name “Genocide”, it was abnormally difficult. In other words, it was a game that you needed to die repeatedly as you played. It was a dungeon filled with unreasonable hordes of monsters that came after you and traps that you would die to if it was the first time that you encountered it.

It was not to say that players elsewhere were particularly better, but in North America, there was a culture that didn’t mind using cheats. If you died, you could reset the game before it autosaved and play from the save point again, or even hack the system to weaken the mobs and boost the player stats. For North Americans, there were many players who played with cheats like that.

There were also versions with lowered difficulty, so many players worldwide enjoyed Geno-Real. There were probably not as many m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic gamers who played it properly to the end.

But games are serious in j.a.pan. A game so insanely difficult that couldn’t be cleared via ordinary means became a s.h.i.+t game in j.a.pan.

Plus, even though it was world famous, it was still an old game. Thus, it meant unless you were an extreme gaming otaku like me or that s.h.a.ggy hair, there was n.o.body here who would know about Geno-Real.

“Should I stay quiet…”

“Is there a problem?”

I had an inconspicuous face on, but as if feeling something was off from the way I was looking at the h.e.l.l, Seki came up to me.

He was sharp as always.

For a moment, I thought about spilling the beans to my only friend, but I decided against it. There’s a saying that “words are the source of a disaster”. Nothing would change with Seki knowing about it and it might even put him in a dangerous spot.

It wasn’t wise to tell everyone it’s Geno-Real like that s.h.a.ggy hair (I should find out what his name was later). Showing off knowledge could involve you into something annoying. Since there are multiple players, this wasn’t the offline version.

There were multiple people here. Perhaps the rules of the MMO version applied here. If so, there were rare items that were limited to the person who found it.

I didn’t want to share this precious information with others yet. I would have felt bad if others died because I hid information, but that s.h.a.ggy hair would guide other students on that.

I’ll get ahead of others and take all the advantages to survive in this world. I will savour all the cheats.

What is this? I’m starting to get happy.

“What is it, s.h.i.+njo-kun? Are you laughing?”

“It’s nothing. Let’s go.”

A cheer broke out from the front of the group. That s.h.a.ggy hair probably lead everyone to the stair that lead to the surface.

I felt excited at the light that shone through the stairs. Monsters couldn’t go into the city ahead and even players couldn’t commit negative acts towards each other.

I put my hands in my pocket to check the time on smartphone. The time we were in the dungeon was only 3 hours.

Just in that much time, we had such a high number of casualties.

<script>