Chapter 11 - Nine words for a Tournament

[Keiko Kobayashi POV]

Sitting in my armchair, I watched my website while drinking a very hot cup of black coffee. Even though I wasn't exposing myself as an actual public figure, my alter ego Hikari was becoming more famous than I expected. Due to a connection between YGGDRASIL's database and my news blog, people were able to choose between sending anonymous messages or commenting on things using their own accounts. That's when I realized, my fame was really high among new players, as if those who had had a little help from me decided to stop interacting in fact, even if officially any novelty in the game could be found there.

"Argh… I can't complain, usually people just need a little boost to start and then they're on their own…" I ended up complaining to myself, while, with another window open on my monitor, I watched the long list of incoming emails from the game developers.

They always rewarded me with salaries and free purchase cards or consumable items for my character, but until now I had never activated those advantages within the game, I just left them accumulating, to use them in moments that were really necessary for me. It made me smile a little to think that, even though it wasn't officially, I was a member of their group, just in marketing and Dev-Player relations.

"Oh… true, there is this little thing… should I let the others know?" I whispered to myself, cracking a laugh as I looked through one of the emails.

It was "confidential" information about an event they were going to have, a championship in each realm, to name the 9 most powerful players in the entire game. For this to be possible, the championships themselves would take place on a separate server, but they would be broadcast live on all the others through holograms. Also, there would be a limited number of players that could participate, in order to have a chance to enter, they had to be among the top 200 of each world, register for the event, and be chosen by the Devs. That way, the best of the best would enter there, having the average between the number of Kills of NPC monsters, number of dungeons/quests completed, number of assists, amount of EXP, Levels, JobClasses… among others.

"Yeah, maybe it would be good to give them a little spoiler…" I started to think about the new group that was slowly forming.

After having met Bukubuku and Pero, I started to notice something strange, even with the encouragement of the Devs, there were still players wanting to abuse everything and everyone, always being the winners and leaders with countless betrayals, using the fact that they were Human Players, as an excuse to go after Heteromorph players. I made this comment with Great-o Doll and TrjegulFreyjaha, they told me they were going to organize some kind of update where there would be a punishment mechanic against this, but I knew there was a chance it wouldn't work...

Therefore, we created a group of players that would help heteromorph players in annoying situations like this. For now there were only 8 players who decided to join me in this, namely:

-[Bukubukuchagama], who decided to change her race to be a Slime and focus on being an awesome defense wall;

-[Peroroncino], who would work as our member focused on long distances as an archer, and for that having changed his race to a Birdman, thus allowing him to have more combat space;

-[Touch-Me], the person who first came up with the idea for our group, being our Paladin;

-[Luci★Fer], who after many conversations, decided that he would work more as a Mage and Summoner, giving up on evolving the JobClass of Martial Artist;

-[BluePlanet], a plant monster that prefers to fight indirectly, always creating traps themed with trees and roses, in addition to being a support, a true novelist. Luci★Fer was the person to introduce him to us;

-[Warrior Takemikazuchi], a giant, more specifically a Nephilim, being a samurai we encountered on one of our free-for-all dungeon adventures, having been drawn to us due to my hit-kill techniques, something he also seeks to obtain;

-[Ulbert Alain Odle], a demon player who was completely focused on being our Sorcerer. He ended up meeting me and Peroroncino when we were in a PvP area of Múspellsheim, saving some Heteromorph Players from an organized attack by 3 Human groups, for some reason he said he was intrigued how we were destroying our enemies with uses of weapons that are not in the store. Although my weapons are all rewards given by the Devs, he is right about the fact that they are not for sale in any store;

-And the last member we found for that group for now, [Punitto Moe], a Plant Player who proved to be a complete strategist who seemed to find information everywhere. He ended up agreeing to join our group right away, because of me and Touch-Me, apparently he already knew a lot about our strict method of facing human PKs, and because he had a red nickname, it was obvious that he killed a lot of human players. One of the reasons I accepted him was to limit his killing level a bit.

Most are above level 60 right now, due to some exploits I've let them know about areas where enemies give more EXP. We still needed one more member for us to enter the question of officially creating a clan, and not only that, we hadn't even thought of a name yet!

"Yeah… I'm going to prepare them for this tournament… besides, finding possible candidates to be the tenth member would be easier if we were known to participate in this event… I'd better say it soon…" He said already taking the virtual reality helmet.

As if it were some crazy coincidence, a new email popped up in the home tab of my inbox. I opened it immediately, realizing it was an email from Great-o Doll's account, after all he has higher priority for me due to all the work.

...

———————————————————

Hello, Th3Unkn0wnF0r35T.

Due to a slight calculation error regarding the schedule of all Staff members who will be busy with the Extra Server for the participants of the Great Event that we are organizing. We need to get the information exposed as quickly as possible.

We won't be able to make a public announcement in video form today, so we ask that you get things moving quickly if possible by informing players via your website about the Big Event: The World Champion Tournament.

As for the start date of the event itself, it will occur exactly 1 month later than expected, thanks to technical problems found in the very system that the Extra Server will have. The deadline for you to publish this news is until tomorrow (May 9th 2137) at 4 pm (IRL Japan Time).

Signed, The Greatest Puppeteer.

———————————————————

...

That made me burst out laughing, it was as if the world really wanted me to reveal this "secret", and not only that, I was buying even more time so that everyone in our group could have a chance. As we are now 9 players, the insane possibility of all of us winning this championship was incredible. But I knew it was a very far-fetched imagination, as not all of them are focused on intense fights and why would we have a lot of exceptional players facing us.

I quickly replied to the Email, saying that I would do it right away. And so I started to slightly modify the draft of the post that I had previously made, with the necessary changes, after 2 hours of re-reading to see if everything was right, I clicked on the "Enter" button and went straight to the virtual world of YGGDRASIL, putting on my virtual helmet.

-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-°-

[Hikari POV]

"So, this is the scheme that will happen… what do you think about it?"

I was sitting at a bar table in the starting town of Múspellsheim. All the other 8 members of the group we wanted to form were online, sharing the same table with me, with the exception of Peroroncino who wanted to stand while drinking a full mug of beer. I had just been talking to them about the basics of the event that was going to happen in the middle of the year. Some seemed excited, and others didn't even seem to care, knowing that they wouldn't survive that long.

"So, in addition to being on a separate server, will the system on that other server prevent players from losing levels when they are killed?" Punitto Moe asked, so that everything would be clear.

"Exactly. They will be doing this so that there are no problems with people wanting to lower the level of certain participants too much before the competition actually starts. The extra server is just to make things easier for Developers to control, making the competition fair." I replied, taking a sip of my Butterbeer.

"You only say that because you have direct contact with 1 or 3 developers, Hikari… But you never know if they will really want to control the results…" Ulbert was the one who spoke, slamming an empty mug against the table.

"But the fact that they're known to him doesn't actually make the results in Hikari's favor, IF they really cheat? Hihihihi~" Bukubuku said in a super adorable voice, as she filled Ulbert's mug with a bottle of blue wine.

"I don't want to comment further on these possibilities, as there will be judges outside of YGGDRASIL for cases where it ends in a draw or the fight time expires." I said, getting up from the chair and snapping my fingers, thus changing my armor set to the simplest one, focused on agility. "Anyway, who among you wants to try and get into this?"

When asking this, I saw Takemikazuchi, Touch_me, Peroroncino, Ulbert and Bukubuku raising their "hands", making only Blue Planet, Luci★fer and Punitto Moe not interested. It was understandable, seeing as the two Plant Players were much more assured in strategies and traps, while Luci★fer had just given up on being a Martial Artist, it wouldn't be good to enter a competition still unused to the other skills.

With 6 of us wanting to participate in this, the best idea was that we would each participate in a world, but that would be bad if any of us had discomfort with the common players there. So I asked Punitto Moe to make a report of possible players that entered each of the tournaments, so we would have something to look forward to. Because now the focus of all who were going to enter, was to gain more levels and strength.

"Okay, with that all said, we still need a name for our group… Even though we're still looking for one last member to make the clan official, we'd better have something in mind…" Luci★fer said while stroking his own chin metallic.

We were all in deep thought trying to come up with ideas for this. Punitto Moe came up with the idea of calling ourselves "Monstrous Revenge", but everyone turned it down right away. Blue Planet thought of "Nature Warriors", I even liked it, but most turned it down. Even Peroroncino talked about calling us "XHuntersX", I was confused trying to understand what that name meant, but Bukubuku beat up his younger brother, after saying that in a "smart" way, Pero wanted the name to mean "Hunters of Women" and because of that Luci★fer and Ulbert also hit our Archer Birdman with everything.

But finally Touch_Me came up with an interesting name. "How about we call it 'Nine Own Goal'? It would be interesting and makes a lot of sense."

"Explain the meaning then, please…" Blue Planet asked, interested.

"Simple, 'Nine' because of YGGDRASIL's 'Nine Realms', and our main 'Goal' is the survival of heteromorphic races. And that means…"

"We would be saying on our behalf how great our goal is…" I ended up finishing Touch_Me's sentence, smiling broadly. "Excelent! Mainly because I, a Human, is in the middle, so we're really representing the pursuit of peace in the nine realms, in our own way."

Everyone seemed satisfied with the last idea, but with the meeting finally over, Punitto Moe logged out to carry on with the research, while others left the bar, whether they were going to train alone or just have fun out there, like Blue Planet, who would possibly visit some places again. forest areas to be inspired. Inspiring what? I don't even know, that was the answer he always gave.

For our training, we decided to do trios, each one taking turns each week. Thus, we could learn from each other's criticism, in addition to being able to have friendly battles between us, with the rules being not to use parts of the environment and that the person was already considered defeated when they reached 5% of HP. This rule ended up backfiring against me, due to some of my skills activating with the low HP requirement, but that didn't stop us from creating our own strategies.

In order to increase our Levels, we all decided to go into Great Dungeons in deep areas of some realms. These dungeons were considered "Great" due to being separated by floors, rather than the common dungeons that the game provided before. Because of this separation, we made our own challenges, where each one of us had to try to defeat each floor individually, and if someone couldn't complete the challenge, the person could no longer participate in the fights, until everyone had had their moment. This method of turning EXP gain into personal competition made everyone that much more incentivized to keep going…

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{3 months later…}

It was the day... after so much training and gaining levels, the most anticipated moment of all YGGDRASIL that year finally arrived. The list of players who had their applications accepted would be posted in the center-squares of all major cities in the realms.

The anxiety of the people around me only increased, among my friends, only Bukubuku and Touch_Me decided to wait for the announcement in the same square, with the two by my side. Not only was there a sort of giant scroll in the rolled up sky, waiting to be opened in the center of the square, but there was also a sort of pop-up, taking the countdown. Some might think I wasn't looking forward to it, but the idea of participating in such a tournament was always interesting.

Because I decided to sign up, the Devs were no longer talking to me about the event, and they said that, in case I actually participate, one of them would be responsible for writing the news about it. I would only receive at the last minute to send directly, without a considerable amount of time for me to gain some "advantage".

"AAaawn! Come Oon!!! I'm about to explode!!" B.B was exclaiming, with her gelatinous body moving a lot and also that cute anime girl voice, unfortunately, or fortunately, this made some players not get so close so as not to get dirty with goo, thus gaining a little space so that I could breathe.

"Don't worry, there are a few minutes left according to the notification." Touch_Me tried to calm our gelatinous friend, but she seemed to move more frantically.

I was impressed seeing this, even though she had low agility and had evolved her race level into a "Flesh Slime", she still moved as if she were more liquid goo than solid, a property I would only see in stress balls. But soon my attention returned to the counter that was getting closer to 0.

After those few minutes, trumpets started playing as that scroll in the sky was descending, there were names on it, but as expected, the counter pop-up disappeared, becoming a message icon. I clicked without thinking twice.

[Congratulations Player Hikari! You have gained the invite to be in The World Champion Tournament!]

[Due to this, with the agreement made through the rules delivered before the registration, you, after 4 hours in game from the time of this invitation, will be forced to participate only in the Extra Server that will be created for the event, going in another server to any time while the event is going on equals dropping out of the event altogether and losing around 80% of the EXP and items gained during your stay.]

[Reminder: When logging into the Extra Server, any item you have in your inventory will be evaluated and given a rating. And because of that, don't even try to cheat with debug mode items or things created based on external programming, the player who does this will be automatically expelled from the event and will have its account suspended for at least 6 months irl! Reasons for having "ratings" will be explained within the server.]

My eyes lit up with the first of three messages that came upon clicking that pop-up. Taking a big jump, which due to my agility level reached 3 meters high, I screamed excitedly. "HEELLLL YEAH! LET'S FCKING GOOOOO!!"

I looked to one of my sides, seeing Touch_Me turning his helmet slightly, nailing his sword into the ground while seeming to say some kind of low prayer. But from what I could hear, he was wishing luck on what he would face in the tournament with me. Meanwhile, on my other side, B.B. didn't seem all that excited, in fact she turned to us, her voice confused.

So we found out that her application had not been accepted, and that in fact only the accepted people received a pop-up message, the others were completely left out, without even a notification saying that they had not gained. I felt sorry for her, but there really was nothing I could do about it.

I wasn't just sad that she wasn't in the tournament itself, but because she and I had already become quite close with our interactions within YGGDRASIL. She always tried to get online at the same time as me, just so we could chat endlessly in some quiet areas that had no Players or NPCs, I could feel that she really wanted to be my friend, more than a person on my contact list or a member of a group that I am part of. Did I know why? No, but at least I understood that my relationship with her was different from the relationship I had with anyone else in YGGDRASIL.

We decided to gather all the members of our still unofficial clan, so that we could talk about the information and to find out who had managed to join. Apparently, only me, Touch_Me, Takemikazuchi and Peroroncino were accepted. It wasn't bad at all, after all there were 6 people who signed up among us, and 4 got it. Ulbert didn't seem all that affected by being left out, apparently his pessimism had helped him to expect it, and B.B. she looked mildly depressed about the fact that I was going to be gone for a while, but she looked like she was hitting and beating Peroroncino with a lot of rage since he was going to this instead of her.

20 minutes in game, before my connection to the Extra Server, B.B. decided to say something to me. Because we were inside a tavern at that moment, I went to an NPC and paid for a room, so we stayed on the second floor, inside that simple environment that only had a single bed.

"So what do you want to talk to me about, B.B.?" I asked, closing the door with the key, thus a protection system was activated.

Her Flesh Slime pink body seemed to get slightly redder, with a shy emoji on top of her, she always looks like this when I use her nickname in moments when we are all alone. "I just wanted to ask for a little something…" Her slime body crawled closer to the window, she seemed to be using a more mature voice and not all childish and adorable like she usually did around the others.

"And what would that… little something be?" I asked again, standing there listening to her, but fully aware of the timer I had set to see when I'd be transferred from server to server.

"Well… chatting with you was something that… made me really happy and excited… and I don't want it to stop all of a sudden, not even for something as amazing as an event… so… I wanted to ask… if we could exchange contacts? Like… really contacts… telephone and such…"

"B.B. It is very dangerous to keep exchanging contacts like this."

"I know that… I just… I want to keep talking… okay? Can you trust me? We know a lot from the subjects we talk about."

"You're saying that, even though I know you work as a voice actress, you never tell me what you dub, not even if it's anime, games or movies." When I made the comment, she shrunk into a tiny sphere.

"B-But… it's embarrassing…"

"If you want to talk to me that much outside of the game, then we'll exchange contacts between us, but the first subject will be what you dub. What do you think?"

"W-What!? B-bu-bu-bu-bu-"

"It's this or nothing... and 10 minutes until I literally get yeet'd out of here." I simply gave the final word at that moment and I could see parts of her slime body melting due to nervousness. Some might call me a monster for that, but for some reason I find that cute about her.

"O-Okay! Here it is!" With time almost up, she exclaimed and handed me a system notepad, which had her number on it, but upon seeing the phone code, my eyes widened.

"Eh? Some problem?" She noticed my surprise and I just did the same, writing my contact number and handing it over. "Are you kidding me… Are we from the same city?!?"

"Apparently yes…" I shook my head a little and even laughed. "Well, I'll call you when I leave the game later."

"O-okay, see y-!" I barely heard the rest of her sentence, and a system message popped up.

[Warning! You are being transferred to another server.]

"Wow…to think there would be such a coincidence… Sheesh…" I took a deep breath.

After a few minutes of waiting in the loading area, I appeared in front of the tavern I was in, but now being a complete parallel server, with another message appearing in front of me. Unlike the bluish color, this one was quite golden.

[Welcome to the server made specifically for "The World Champion Tournament" Event! We'll leave you free for a period of 1 irl day, so walk around and look to see what's different here!]

[Player Hikari, your inventory has been analyzed by our Staff, nothing has been withdrawn since you are within the regulations, your items have been ranked for the tournament, tournament ranking rules will be explained in the future.]

I was quite curious about these classifications, so looking at items like [Kuwoi-Muramasa] and [Bow-Bifrost], I noticed that they had an 'S' symbol marked on them. For items like Low or Mid Potions, there were marked letters 'E' and 'D', my shield gauntlet was marked 'B', my greatsword was 'B' and my whip was 'C'.

Clearly it was some rank related to power or something like that, but I better not assume things too quickly. It was time to explore this new server a bit, and the first thing I thought of was trying to meet up with the other 3 members of my group. Then decide to walk towards the lobby, hoping to find them quickly.

But nothing takes away the impression that something wrong can happen...