Another game.
“Well, let me get right to the point. In Runark Online, Shushu-san appeared… as a ghost.”
“Yeah.”
“I thought this world was a different game.”
“……… Huh?”
“Rosalia, who called Rin over, was a certain game’s villainess.”
“V, villainess!?”
“Yes, she was a villaines who was harassing and aiming for the heroine’s life in a Otome game called ‘Let’s Make a Wonderful Love☆Heart-throbbing Magical Academy☆A Wish-fullfiling Beneficiary☆’”
“… Se. Ri. Ously?”
“Se. Ri. Ously. By the way, Dirk was a minor character. The key character that you cannot get no matter how many times you clear the game.”
“Seriously… You are serious. However, isn’t that game’s title quite embarrassing?”
“I bought it in a bundle, and later regretted it when I saw the title.”
“… Minor character?”
Dirk tilted his head in puzzlement, cute. It’s fine, you don’t have to know. That’s not important.
“By the way, my Elder brother was a capture target. And also, Jash… my servant, and my cousin who is currently not here, as well. I’ve already confirmed all the targets except for the last one. I’m not sure if I’ve overdone it or not, but some of the targets are far from their original form… or rather, they have become someone else.”
“………… What did you do!?”
“One of them has been dyed black.”
“… Yeah.”
“One has become black-heartedly pitch dark.”
“How many more people did you turn dark!?”
“One of them turned pure white from a selfish prick… or rather, he became a shining white prince.”
“You did something right! What do you mean by white, though! Decolorization!?”
“I made three assassins stop.”
“Wait! We are talking about an Otome game, right!? Isn’t this too dangerous for a game that is supposed to give you an enjoyable romance!? On top of that, don’t sweet-talk it like it’s nothing!”
“One of them was probably able to prevent his parents from dying of overwork and avoided living in a brothel after being abused.”
“This setting is too heavy!”
“… Eh? Is that Jend!?”
“Keep it a secret from him.”
“… Yeah. You really did a lot, Rosarin.”
Dirk hugged me tightly.
“Yes, I’ve been working on it since I was little. That’s why I was certain that this world was that of the Otome game.”
“Well, I think you got almost all of the capture targets.”
“It seems that Runark Online is even further ahead, though.”
“… Is that so?”
In Runark Online, players are sent as Beneficiaries to a world that has been devastated for some reason. It is a game with a high degree of freedom, where you can either restore the world, travel at your leisure, or search for the reason why the world was devastated.
And it’s there that Shushu-san, Cidar-kun and Milfi appeared. And Dirk’s cousins, the pipsqueak twins most likely too!
I didn’t recognize them because they were originally all older, in their late twenties as I recall, and Cidar-kun in particular was in a rough spot. But I guess it’s understandable. The Cidar-kun of the game didn’t have a family. If you don’t have one, you’re going to have a rough time. They are called NPCs, and they assist solo players and act as substitutes for party members.
“I was mainly a farmer and a dairy farmer, so I didn’t get into the mysteries.”
“Yeah, you were really much into raising Alpacas, Rin-chan.”
“Right. Bunnies, sheep, Alpacas… it was the mofu farm of my dreams.”
“Now this is the mystery… the story seemed to be about a hero and Evil or something…”
It had been at least five years since Kanata-san came here, and his memory seemed to be a bit hazy. He promised to tell me when he remembered. Now I might know a little bit about the Evil.
Furthermore, if we could identify the ruins we explored in Runark Online, we might be able to find new clues. That’s what I thought.