She Professed Herself Pupil of the Wise Man Vol. 1 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Color Inserts

  Title Page

  Table of Contents Page

  Copyrights and Credits

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Creator Profiles

  Newsletter

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  Prologue

  AT THE DAWN of the twenty-second century, society found itself transformed by the emergence of practical VR technology.

  Students no longer attended classes in person. They connected to their schools from dedicated terminals in their homes without the hassles of commuting and early morning wake-ups. School districts benefited as well, channeling precious funding into quality education programs instead of facility maintenance and upkeep.

  The corporate world also adopted VR, allowing companies to interact with clients and customers remotely. The reliance on automation and computer systems streamlined business and eliminated legacy paperwork filing systems. Like the education system, it was cheaper to do business in the virtual world on a rented server than it was to maintain brick-and-mortar offices and storefronts.

  As the paradigm shift occurred, the rate of technological advance accelerated. It became commonplace for young adults to receive the latest VR setup as a graduation gift. While the intent of these gifts might have been to allow them to enter the workforce smoothly, the reality was that few sectors of the economy reaped the benefits of this change like the video game industry.

  Sakamori Kagami was a young man who worked for a small company using his VR kit. He had no commute, he worked very little overtime, and he still lived at home and enjoyed his mother’s cooking. He had no complaints.

  And Sakamori Kagami was a gamer.

  ***

  One night, Kagami was perplexed by a late-night commercial. It was a silent static image, just a VR access code with the words Ark Earth Online printed below. Hardly anyone noticed it at that time of night, but he managed to grab a screenshot before it disappeared.

  His curiosity was piqued, and he logged into his VR kit to enter the code. A white virtual void greeted him with the title of the game floating before him. Two buttons hovered just below the title. His choices were:

  Begin Open Beta

  Download

  He liked the game’s unpretentious attitude, so he clicked Download. After agreeing to a boilerplate EULA, the status bar began to fill, and he passed the time by wondering what kind of game this would be. Something about it called to him. Deep down, he knew that it would be life-changing.

  Fifteen minutes later, a home screen with a photorealistic background of a fantasy-world landscape appeared. Kagami clicked on Begin Open Beta and stepped into the world of Ark Earth Online.

  ***

  For such a low-key launch, the game caught on like wildfire, and soon the servers had populations that rivaled those of big-studio releases. This was a testament to the game’s quality, considering the total lack of advertisement. No full-page spreads were purchased in any gaming publications, and no banner ads littered websites. It was an underground phenomenon entirely spread by word of mouth.

  Adding to the mystery was the total media blackout around those who ran the game. Who was the dev team? What new features were planned? No one knew. There was no official website, and the updates occurred without warning. Players just logged in to find patch notes and enhanced features.

  Ark Earth Online’s basic premise was nothing new—pretty orthodox medieval/fantasy fare. But what made the game stand out was the overwhelming degree of freedom that players were allowed. The hands-off approach by AEO’s developers extended to nearly every aspect of gameplay, and the players adored it.

  Most importantly, though: it was bug-free.

  Kagami spent hours just crafting and maintaining his character’s appearance each week. He had white hair and a long beard, befitting his image as a powerful elder sorcerer. Flowing robes of exotic fabric clothed his distinguished form. Even his name was chosen with the utmost care and attention. He drew his inspiration from the great magicians of two literary classics: the headmaster of a certain school of wizardry and the gray eminence who organized a quest to destroy an evil ring. Everyone at work knew him as Sakamori Kagami, but to the players of Ark Earth Online he was known as the Summoner, Danblf Gandador.

  From the very beginning, Kagami had chosen the mage’s path. The problem was that AEO was an incredibly free-form game; there were no tutorials that detailed how to use or learn magic, and the learning curve was brutal. No matter how many enemies he killed, no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find a way to learn new spells.

  Finally, someone on the message boards made a brief post that pointed him in the right direction. A mage could learn a summoning spell either by forming contracts with the spirits of slain enemies or by completing a chain of quests that started with burning a piece of inscribed paper using the beginner’s Flame technique. With those humble pearls of wisdom, Danblf would forge himself into the game’s preeminent summoner.

  The game delighted in providing players with a great sense of accomplishment through hard work. At times, it was fraught with hardships, but many opportunities awaited those who stuck it out. Through work and diplomacy, a player could become a king, develop a city, muster an army, and invade other countries.

  Possibilities were limitless, even for those without the ambition to rule. One player founded a dojo to teach a system of martial arts developed wholly within the game. Spies and merchants, adventurers and cultists, assassins and farmers—everyone was fully engrossed in the idea of being the author of their own story.

  Players speculated that anything possible in real life could also be done in the game. They began to make names for themselves as craftsmen and artisans. Certain blacksmiths became so well known for the quality of their work that a single sword from their forge would sell for millions of ducats, the in-game currency. Others mastered carpentry and masonry, developing architecture and building techniques that allowed for the construction of mighty castles.

  There was even a player who became obsessed with digging holes. They stumbled across a hot spring and turned it into a lucrative in-game spa and resort.

  The only limit to what a player could do was the time they were willing to invest discovering and honing their skills. Those skills were cataloged by yet another player, who conducted a census of the player base. His encyclopedia of techniques became an instant in-game success, earning him a small fortune.

  Danblf had even developed an entirely new class. Through a regimen of standing under waterfalls and hanging upside down from trees, he unlocked the Sage profession and pioneered the practice of Dual Classing. It was a breakthrough born of necessity—summoners and other magic users were woefully unequipped to deal with hand-to-hand combat, and that made their early progression very difficult. By Dual Classing as a Sage, Danblf was able to use mystical punches and kicks to handle opponents when they got too close for comfort.

  As long as he was playing Ark Earth Online, Kagami was in his element. Four years after he read a cou
ple of hints on a message board, Danblf Gandador rose to become one of the leaders of his country—one of the Nine Wise Men.

  ***

  Leadership came with responsibility.

  One evening, Danblf was tasked with wiping out a group of monsters that had appeared near the border of his country. The Wise Men took turns handling these occasional outbreaks, and it was his turn to do the chores.

  Leaving his wizard’s tower, Danblf began meandering his way to the border when he heard a tone announcing an incoming message from the real world. It was suppertime, and the high-pitched voice of his younger sister called him downstairs to the dinner table. With a sigh, he logged out and removed his headset before joining his family.

  Upon his return, he found an email waiting in his inbox. It was a reminder that he still had a balance of 500 yen in the game’s cash store that was set to expire the following day.

  Like most other games, AEO seemed to make most of its money though a premium store where players traded real-world cash for a variety of in-game goods and services. From cosmetic enhancements to indispensable utility items, nearly every player in the game used the cash store sooner or later.

  The problem with the cash store was that a player could only deposit money into their accounts in 1,000-yen increments. It usually worked out because most items were sold in 1,000-yen increments. For instance, a Floating Island sold for 2,000 yen. It was a flying piece of land, roughly twenty-five meters on a side. It could be decorated however the player saw fit, and many players used it as a sort of vehicle to cross over impassable terrain with ease. Players could then buy buildings or terrain features for their island, which sold for 1,000 or 2,000 yen each.

  But not all items sold in exact multiples of a thousand yen. Somewhere along the line, Kagami had purchased an oddly priced item, leaving him with a dangling balance that would expire if unused.

  He had three options. He could add more money to the account and buy something with a nice round price, but that would just kick the can down the road and leave him another 500-yen balance. He could let it expire and write it off as the cost of playing the game. But as much as he loved AEO, he didn’t feel like giving them money for nothing. The only remaining option was to spend some time finding an item that cost exactly 500 yen.

  “Well, that’s how they get you,” Kagami muttered, looking over his choices.

  There was only one—the Vanity Case.

  While the basic character creation system gave a player a thousand ways to modify their character’s look, the Vanity Case gave ten thousand cosmetic options for a measly 500 yen. It was common for most new players to simply choose a default avatar, then spend an entire day tweaking and sculpting their ideal hero with a Vanity Case.

  That was how Kagami made Danblf, and it was why there was 500 yen left over in his account to begin with. He sighed, clicked on the item, and watched his balance drop to zero.

  Manipulating his armband terminal, he opened the item menu. Inside was a small lacquered box containing the Vanity Case. Four years ago, he’d been so focused on making the ideal distinguished wizard that he couldn’t remember any of the other options offered by the creation system.

  He was curious. Despite the pressing matter of monster hunting, he couldn’t help but open the character editing menu.

  In addition to the buttons and sliders, there was a drop-down menu with a number of presets categorized by the attitude they conveyed—Lively, Stoic, Cheerful, Mysterious, and so on. As Kagami looked over the list, it reinforced his belief that he’d nailed it on the first try with Danblf. There was simply no way to improve his current avatar.

  But as he gazed contentedly at his masterpiece, an option caught his eye: Male.

  The avatar’s gender stared back at Kagami from the menu, and the imp of the perverse began to whisper in his ear. Sure, he’d perfectly created his ideal male form…but what about the ideal female form?

  He flipped the toggle and Danblf promptly turned into a woman with all of the summoner’s features. It was uncanny and uncomfortable to look at. AEO might just be a game, but it was still embarrassing to find himself confronted with the female version of his grizzled wizard. Shaking off the cringe, he began to pick through the interface for other options. He selected Confident from the presets to see how that looked. Then he kept going.

  ***

  A while later he gazed in satisfaction at his creation, and a smile crept over his face. His ideal female form stood before him, posing in a looping routine of emotes to show off his handiwork.

  Then he heard his sister’s voice call him down to breakfast. Checking the clock, he was shocked to see that it was already 9 a.m. Without realizing, he had worked with the Vanity Case all through the night.

  A wave of intense drowsiness overcame Kagami. He fumbled for the Log Out button in the main menu before fading out.

  The world slipped into darkness.

  Chapter 1

  HUH, MUST HAVE fallen asleep before I could log out, Kagami thought.

  He looked up at the sky before rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, but it couldn’t have been that long. His little sister would have barged in to wake him up if he’d been napping for more than a few minutes.

  Sitting up with a yawn and a stretch, he found himself deep within a forest. Flowers dotted the landscape, and through the swaying trees, he could see the outline of a mountain range. At the foot of the towering peaks, a series of burnished silver towers glinted in the sunlight.

  Kagami gazed out at the scenery with his chin in hand as thoughts slowly formed in his foggy mind.

  Firstly, why had he passed out while gaming? It was rare but not unheard of. When players fell asleep, the game registered them as AFK and their avatars stopped moving. But under normal circumstances, the game would force sleeping players to log off automatically after a few minutes of inactivity. He’d never heard of anyone waking up inside the game.

  And yet, here he was—wide awake and looking at the Linked Silver Towers, home of the Nine Wise Men. He was unmistakably in AEO. It might have been a bug, but that would make it the first one that he’d ever encountered.

  Another concern that was much more pressing: he could smell! The unmistakably natural aroma of a forest’s growth and decay tickled his nose on the passing breeze. His VR system could replicate touch and tactile sensations, but taste and smell were still beyond its technical limits as far as he knew. He breathed in through his nose again and marveled at the new, unexplainable sensation.

  This called for an additional test. He tore up some nearby grass and gave it a chew. It filled his mouth with the bitter, astringent flavor of grass, and he quickly spat it out before wiping his lips with the back of his hand. The awful taste made him salivate, and even the consistency of the drool was painstakingly reproduced.

  Wonder and surprise aside, he couldn’t understand how herbivores could stomach such food. He dropped down to take a closer look at the foliage when the high-pitched squeal of metal grinding against metal echoed through the trees. The roar of battle filled the forest and the earth trembled beneath his feet.

  This was the AEO Danblf recognized!

  At least this was easy enough to make sense of. He’d come to the border to subdue a pack of monsters, but someone else had been unlucky enough to run across them first. Or maybe another Wise Man had been assigned to finish the task he had failed to complete last night.

  “Ho ho! Not likely,” he chuckled to himself as he ran toward the noise.

  The woods gave way to a grassy plain where he saw a knight proudly flying a familiar coat of arms. The armored warrior raised his sword and cut down a small green creature wielding a knife. Two or three more goblins bum-rushed the knight as their compatriot fell.

  The battlefield was a riot of silver and green. The Magic-Clad Knights charged forth in their gleaming armor with battle cries on their tongues. They were the elite forces of the Kingdom of Alcait, and they descended like
an armored wave against the opposing horde of goblins.

  Based on the scene before him, Danblf realized he might have slept for longer than he thought. The knights would only be dispatched if he’d taken too much time. It wouldn’t do to show up late to a fight and not pull his weight, so he prepared to cast a spell.

  [Evocation: Dark Knight]

  A dark portal opened above the grass and a large armored form rose from it. The knight was fully encased in chill-inducing jet-black armor, and ominous dark flames flickered about its body. It had no face, just two glowing red lights where eyes should have been. The Dark Knight had arrived.

  The monsters stopped in their tracks and shrieked threateningly at Danblf’s minion. That was unnerving—they shouldn’t be programmed to do that. Goblins were cannon fodder. Perhaps they could be described as daring, or at least oblivious to impending danger. They always charged headlong into fights regardless of the odds. But these goblins chittered away in what could only be described as fear.

  No matter. There was a time for pondering game mechanics, and a time for action. Danblf gave the Dark Knight the order to attack.

  The battle became a massacre. His minion’s gigantic sword cut through the air like an arc of lightning. Each violent swing rendered a handful of goblins into bloody chunks and scattered their death cries to the wind. In seconds, the war whoops of the nearby monsters became desperate shrieks. Though they tried to flee or surrender, the Dark Knight’s wrath was merciless.

  After purging the creatures in its immediate vicinity, the Dark Knight moved to intercept another group of larger goblins wearing bulky armor. Against most assaults, the armor would have been quite resilient—but when the Dark Knight fell upon the pack, their shrieks of terror blended with the shrieks of the summoned knight’s sword cutting through the thick metal of their armor. Other goblins had crowded around their larger brethren in hopes of finding safety in numbers, but the Dark Knight cleaved through armored and unarmored monster alike. Their morale broken, the mob began to break ranks and run from the Dark Knight’s insatiable bloodlust.