Dark clouds, as if liquefied, drifted below us.
　The heavens are dark. As if God regretted his mercy.
　At times, a blue-white lightning bolt rushed up from the sea of jet-black clouds towards the darkened heavens. In the midst of an unorthodox scene, the vision speeds along.
　In the distance, floating on top of the jet-black clouds, is a huge collapse.
　A huge building made of crumbling marble.
　Rows of columns, corridors, stairs, spires, temples, as if madness had created them. The endless connection of the enumeration.

　Suddenly a sword of fire was wielded.
　A blood red logo appears in the air as if to announce the end of the world.
　--The cultivation of the noosphere.
　What on earth does he want to cultivate? What is to be gained? The end is nigh at hand.

　In the roar of the raging wind, the temple of illusion of madness is pregnant with a nightmare and begins to pulsate. It is hundreds of souls. Visited in this world - the martyrs of the other world.

　◆

　The awakening of consciousness had almost the same implications as the reconstruction of the world.
　A visual abnormality that resembled a violent noise left behind a twitching ringing in his ears. Along with an uncomfortable feeling of forcibly reconnecting things that had once been disconnected, Shiroe was huddled on the outskirts of Akiba's city.

--like glass.

　The first sharp-edged "something" that struck me was light. It was the kind of dazzling sunlight that Shiroe had never seen so many times before. Shiroe breathes heavily in an almost thoughtless conditioned reflex, and tries to touch his own body.
　Her own limbs. He couldn't feel any damage, and there didn't seem to be any injuries.
　They move properly, and everything feels as it should.
　But that "moving as you wish" is what makes Shiroe feel unbearably uncomfortable. That's the reason for this extraordinary situation.

The best thing about this is that it's not just a matter of time.
Oh, me. That's funny, what the hell is this?
Hey, somebody get out here!　Hey, director!　I know you hear me!

　A scream like a dying animal can be heard from the side.
　A scream that was too pathetic. In hindsight, it was Shiroe's biggest piece of luck of the day.

(Ugh. .........uncool.
　That's what Shiroe thought of the owner of that scream. People in the same situation as himself, crawling into the street without a care in the world, checking their bodies as if in a panic, shouting out in a pitiful, empty shout.
　At a cursory glance, there are more than a hundred of them within sight.

(Not that I'm uncool either. .........as expected of me, I'm not going to yell out all of a sudden.

　Shiroe's superficial thoughts are of little use even now. She is in a state of panic, just like the people around her. But inside, the part of Shiroe that should be called the main body has regained a little bit of its composure.
　I'm not sure if I want to do this, but I think I'm getting old. It's not that I want to, but something inside my brain has gone cold.

　It's all about looking good.
　I'm sure you'll be able to find out more about this in the future. The people around him must have thought he was a calm and collected man.

(There's a story about being turned into a fox or a raccoon, but.... It's amazing. It's so ridiculous that I can't even feel the danger.

　The palms of your hands are held and opened. Your own hands that move as you wish.
　But those hands are slimmer than the ones Shiroe is used to seeing, and they seem more dexterous. The proportions of his body are also slightly different from those of his own, and he is clad in what looks like a loose-fitting tunic that he should have never worn before. I can't remember what the garment feels like to wear at all, but the color itself is familiar to me.

(The body moves as it wishes. (I'm glad it's not a big difference, though.)

　The city of Akiba spreads out in front of us.
　A number of abandoned buildings are tangled up in ivy growing vigorously here and there on the asphalt, fused with old trees blessed with spirit power, and are the home base of many players. The Elder Tail, the largest city on the Japanese server, is now a nostalgically familiar place.

Where is this place.........
Akiba?　--Don't be silly, VR?　You've lost my mind.

　The men who had been huddled around the area as well as Shiroe speak up. Every one of them looked like the inhabitants of a medieval fantasy world, dressed in plentiful cloth garments or armor.

　And that's as it should be.
　Elder Tail is one of the world's largest massively multiplayer online games and is inspired by a world of sword and sorcery.
　But it was supposed to be a game in and of itself.

　Shiroe shook her head and remembered.
　I was playing Elder Tail.
　I can remember sitting at my desk at home, enjoying the game on the LCD monitor.
　Elder Tail is an old-school title that has been around for over 20 years. Of course, the game's content and the game's depiction engine have been upgraded many times and replaced with the latest versions, but the deep data and gameplay elements that come from 20 years of accumulation are what have made this game so popular among users, and it has gained tremendous support from heavy users, especially those with a "proclivity for professionalism".

　Today should have been a memorable day when the 12th additional pack was released for Elder Tail. The Elder Tail world will have new items, new zones, new monsters, new battles, and most importantly, new level limits, so many players will be connecting to the Elder Tail world and trembling with anticipation. He is a veteran player in the Elder Tail.

　Shiroe is a veteran player in Elder Tail.
　I've been playing this game for eight years now, counting from junior high school.
　Of course, it wasn't that he wasn't excited about the extra pack, but he still didn't want to get carried away like a rookie, so he was practicing hunting in the beginner's area with the twins, who he had recently taken care of, in order to do what he usually does.
　-- as it should be.

　But the memory shows a disconnect there.
　I do remember seeing a demonstration of some sort.
　A black screen with glowing flame letters.
　A sky filled with sticky darkness like fast-scrolling asphalt, and a white moon that seemed to cut through the jet black.

　But that's it.
　And now Shiroe is cowering on the outskirts of Akiba, checking his limbs. As a player with a real body, who has been captured in the game world.

(For now, the body can move freely--)

　Shiloe stopped thinking about anything else.
　If she thought about it, she would be stuck.
　If panic swallowed her up, the last thing she wants is to be one of the uncool people around her. I don't want to do that under these circumstances.
　I try to stand up. My body is light.
　It looks thin, but it seems to be an agile body. My head is filled with panic-inducing questions, but I force them to compress them into one place to silence them.

(This body must be a little taller than I am. So my vision is different than usual.)
　He focused his mind on the knowledge he needed to move for the time being and checked his brain. Otherwise, he was going to be drowning in too much of a situation.

　Next to his height, he felt the wind.
　The damp smell of the gentle, warm breeze that carried me, and the cool tones that passed through the treetops of the trees. And a dazzling light.
　It was a dazzling early summer light.
　In the cool breeze, rather than the heat of sunlight, it is the pure, overwhelming amount of light that just brings a white, sparkling glow to the air.

　The city is illuminated by that early summer light, and the black earth and asphalt-covered boulevards are shaded black by the shadows of huge old trees and buildings. Its a beautiful contrast.

(It's been a long time since I've been outside.) -- Outside?　(Is it outside, this?)

　Shiroe thinks so. For someone like Shiroe, who is quite a recluse in the eyes of the public, "pure sunshine" is something she rarely feels. However, the moment it occurred to her, she realized that this was not a dream, but a joke.
　This is not a dream or a joke.

　If this were true, he would be screaming and rolling around in a panic, and in fact, there are still people cowering in silence in his field of vision, and people pressing him for an explanation.

　What is clear is that Shiroe doesn't know the answer to that question at this point. It's not very cool to just go around claiming out loud the answers you don't know. You can call it childish.

Why?　What am I doing in a place like this? Hey, didn't I just eat a bunch of chips?
　-- what an abomination like that guy over there who is ranting. Please don't let that happen.

(But by the looks of them, I wonder if there are a lot of other players involved. I thought of the players. Now I am. (I'm still not even sure if this is Akiba's town or not.

　If you think about it, Shiroe's vision right now is just like the real world.
　If this is the world of the game, then it could be a bar that shows HP or a display field for various icons...well, since there are all sorts of things on the screen, the lack of such information is also strange.

　It's possible that this place is very similar, but it has nothing to do with the world of Elder Tail. When Shiroe pointed a fingertip to her chin, as is her habit when thinking, a series of menu screens appeared as if they were superimposed on her field of vision.
　To be precise, it seemed to exist inside the field of vision, or rather consciousness. Shiroe gasped at the phenomenon, but in the next moment he began to observe with interest.
　It was as if she was diverting her attention away from the scene in front of her, and as she focused on her forehead, she seemed to see a familiar group of data. No, not that I can see it, but I "get it" if I wanted to describe it more correctly.
　It shows the character's name (well, Shiroe), appearance, and equipment slots that he uses in Elder Tail. Various icons are also carefully displayed.

''It's confirmed........''

　I suspected this was the case from the moment I saw the streets, but it looks like I'm going to have to believe it now. According to the data, this is the world of the Elder Tail. Even if it's not, it's a very similar world.
　The person here is Shiroe, not Shiroe, who was playing a game in her room.

　Many of the people in the vicinity have also noticed this and are ranting their cries of surprise and questions.

　Shiroe looks around to the left and right and then walks away.
　If this is the place as Shiroe knows it, there should be an abandoned building around the corner that he can get into. This Akiba city........in that sense, like everywhere else in the Elder Tail world, is full of abandoned and derelict buildings.
　It's not that I have anything to do with abandoned buildings, but I wanted a place to sit down and relax for now.

　From what I saw from earlier, it seems like quite a large group of people have wandered into this world. It may be a good idea to work with them to resolve - or at least clarify - the situation, but Shiroe can't move like that.
　It seems terribly out of place, and I'm not good at it.

　I don't have enough information.
　In addition, there is a complete lack of information about the most obvious things.

　If I try to collaborate with someone now, it seems impossible to even have a proper discussion with them due to the lack of information, and if it's not done well, it will only infect them with panic and make them all feel hopeless.

(I just don't like the noise, actually.)

　He recalls the look of disorientation on the man's face that he saw earlier.
　Maybe the reason Shiroe is able to stay calm is because of that man's unexpectedly distraught presence next to her. Human beings are able to redeem themselves in their own way if there is someone else in the immediate vicinity who exposes them to a more disgusting state than they are.

　First and foremost, there's something you have to try first and foremost.
　Shiroe sits down on one of the debris in the eaves of an abandoned building and tries to call up information in her brain to manipulate it.
　He only needs to focus on his forehead to call up the display, it seems. It's similar to the feeling you get when you're thinking in a train car.
　However, it takes a lot of concentration to operate the menu. It's hard to move the menu cursor with my mind alone. It would be nice if I could move it with my finger, I thought to myself, and then the menu opened up like a flower petal.

(It's much faster to operate this way.)

　What I was looking for was a "reporting function". Elder Tail is an RPG in which thousands of players access the server at the same time and have adventures in a vast world. The "report function" includes a function for notifying the operator of any problems or bugs that occur in the process.
　If there were a quick fix for this joke of a situation, the only way would be to use the "report function" to report a problem.

　But as a matter of course, the "Trouble Report" section of the "Report Function" was left blank.

.........of course.

　Shiroe slid up his glasses and fell to his own feet. However, I wasn't expecting that much. If such a ridiculous situation could be solved with a single report to the management company, then this raid on the other world was an event set up by the management company.
　It means that such a realistic virtual reality can be technologically recreated, and it's a major global invention. Even today, in 2018, when Shiroe lives in Japan, I've never heard of the completion of an immersive, full-sensory system like the one in a science fiction novel.

(At least, I can't get in touch with the company that runs it.
　This is more likely to be an insurmountable situation.

　Shiroe continued to manipulate the menu as it was.
　Shiroe........the status of this character, which has become Shiroe himself now, was the same as it was before this incident occurred. There may be some minor changes in the detailed numbers and so on, but there's no way to confirm it since I don't remember that much. At the very least, all the numbers are within the same range as Shiroe's memory.

　Elder Tail is a level-based RPG. Shiroe has level 90, the highest level in this world.
　However, that's nothing special.
　Less than half of the players are level 90.

　Elder Tail is a game with a long history. Like most online games, it has a history of hundreds of patches that have added many elements to the game.
　Although Shiroe hasn't experienced it first hand, when Elder Tail first came out, it was at a maximum level of 40. Fans enjoyed the Elder Tail, and when they got it up to maximum level, they wanted to continue the adventure. They voiced a request for the game.
　In response to the wishes of many such players, an expansion pack was released and the level cap was raised to 50.
　The current maximum level is now 90.

　In the game Elder Tail as a game, the level limit is raised and new adventures are added to the game. Throughout the adventures, the player strengthens his or her character to reach the new level limit. Then, after a while, often a year or two, a new expansion pack would raise the level limit again. That was the cycle.
　Shiroe had heard that the level cap would be increased to 100 once the new expansion pack, Cultivation of the Noosphere, was released. At this point in time, right before or just after the release of the expansion pack, it was no wonder that the majority of players had the maximum level.

(And it's not like they just need to level up in the first place.

　Check your abilities and look at your skills. I don't see anything wrong with any of them. It's just like the game.
　Shiroe's profession is enchanter, a type of sorcerer-type profession. The Elder Tail has 8 races, 12 main occupations and numerous sub-occupations. The most basic of these are the main professions, with three warrior types, three weapon attackers, three healers, and three sorcerer types, for a total of 12 professions.

　It is said to be the most unpopular job in the world of the Elder Tail.
　The reason for this is obvious: the Elder Tail is not suitable for solo adventuring due to its low offensive power and the fact that it is used to protect others. The Elder Tail encourages multiplayer adventuring, but of course, any player will be on their own if they don't have time for their companions.
　It didn't help that warriors with good survival skills on their own, or weapon attackers, or recovery systems that could heal themselves and get out of a pinch, were the most popular.

(I like them, so there's nothing wrong with that.)

　Shiroe sighs a little.
　It's a good thing that you're not the only one who thinks that being a 'grantor' is a bad profession. It's annoying to say the least, being looked at and ridiculed by people who look at you through the lens of coloration for being an unpopular job is annoying.

　After checking all that information, Shiroe finally came up with the "telephonic function". The "Telephonic Function" is a function that allows you to contact your friends who are currently accessing the server. If you are in front of them, you can call out to them. If you are in front of them, you can call out to them, and they will be able to do the same. If you can't do it, you're in trouble.

　On the other hand, this 'telepathic function' is like a cell phone, so to speak, that allows you to communicate with your distant acquaintances. Shiroe calls up her friend list and scrolls through it.
　The friend list contains the names and main occupations of the people Shiroe has registered. The names are dark gray, which means they are not currently on the server. It's likely that those people were not able to log in to the Elder Tail world for the big, once-in-a-years event, the moment when the new patch was added.
　It must have been very frustrating for them.
　But as things stand, we can say we're lucky not to have been involved in this incident.

　The glowing white display is connecting. Shiroe chuckles at herself for thinking of a connection.
(Connection is a weird thing to say. Under the current circumstances, I guess that means I'm in this world...)

　As long as I look at the menu screen, I feel like I'm connected to the game. But the smell of the wind, the warmth, everything about it tells you that this is the one and only place in the real world.
　Of course, even if Elder Tail is a great game, it's still a game, not the wind on your cheek or the smell of dust in the ruins.

(I wonder if it's really true.) -- maybe if you sleep or die in this world, you can go back to your world?　(Or maybe it's just a dream before that.

　Shiroe can think of something like that, but he has to reconsider the fact that it's not a good idea to sleep, but it's not a good idea to die. Of course there is a possibility that you can return to your former world, but there is also the possibility that you will actually die.
　No, when you have a real sense of reality to this extent, I think that possibility is more likely.

(Well, we'll get to that later. Right now, it's a check on Frey.)

　Shiroe is still a pretty old hand at the Elder Tail, and he has a few acquaintances. I'm not very good with people, but that doesn't mean I don't like them. So the list is not short. It's not short but who do we contact then?　If you ask me, that's a problem.

　It's not that he doesn't admit it, but - he's not very good at relying on it. I'm not very good at relying on them. You can say I'm not very good at it.

　It's a good idea to have a calm, understanding, and informative partner. It's not always easy to find someone to talk to, although Shiroe tries to picture them in her head. It's an online relationship, so most of them are shallow.

　An online game is a virtual space to play in.

　Shiroe doesn't think so, but there are many players who think that this is a one-off relationship and that trust is an illusion. Of course, Shiroe doesn't have any friends in her friend list, but even so, most of them are not in a deep relationship with her.
　Shiroe would be surprised at the number.

　But when I say that there are not ten people, I mean that there are a few of them. It's a good thing that there are a few. If that's the case, then it's very ... blessed.
　Shiroe is well aware of that.
　For "normal" players, other players are not someone they can trust, but rather someone they happen to be around at the time and can play with at their convenience. That kind of relationship is more common.

　My fingertips stop gesturing at the list.

'Why is Naotsugu here?'

　I felt my eyes brighten.
　Hazekawa Naotsugu.
　That's one of the first people Shiroe thinks of when he's asked who he can rely on in this game. He knows Shiroe's real name, which means that Shiroe has given him his real-world contact information in person, and he's even met him face to face in real life as well as in the game.
　Naotsugu is one of the few players who has done so.

　Naotsugu and Shiroe have fought side by side over many days and nights, in many frontier zones, and on many adventurous journeys at the Tea Party of the Prodigal, the Devocherie Tea Party. He is one of the closest players in the Elder Tail.

　I activate the telephonic function without even checking. The distant sound of a bell signaling a call. You wait patiently for your opponent to answer and then call out to him without confirming the connection.

It's a good idea to be able to have a look at it. You're back?

"What?　Huh?　What the hell. Who's that, talking to you?　Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah. Maidie Maidie, this is a mythical situation.
It's me. It's me.

　Naotsugu's voice that I've missed. The low, calm voice of Alto. The best warrior in the Tea Party of the Prodigal, who was unfazed by any pinch...and a joker.
　Even in this situation where everyone is panicking, Shiroe is relieved before he even gets into it, because of the silly stuff that is exactly the same as in the past.

'Shiroe, huh? What's going on? Did the Elder Tail come this far in my absence?　To be honest, it's so amazing that I'm going to pull it off. Hasn't it gone beyond particles and improvements to the rendering engine?
'I don't think it's progress. It's more like a mutation or a catastrophe or a disaster.
Yeah. It's an awful mess. It's a real-life festival. It's a reality festival. Reality overdose, reality overflow. A mega serving?　Terra?　I'm so full.
　A lighthearted exchange of nostalgic remarks.
　It gave Shiroe a sense of reality far stronger than the other world he was caught up in, far stronger than this unfamiliar body.

'Where are you, Naotugu?'
　From behind Naotsugu's voice, you can hear the sounds of shouting and noisy noise.
　Apparently, this telephonic function can even pick up the voice behind you, just like a real cell phone.

''Station square. Ah. Is this the area where there was a medicinal herb vendor before?
We'll meet up with you anyway. ...Remember Syden's Tavern?　There's a busted building behind it. On the second floor.
Okay. I'll be there in a minute.
I'm in Akiba, too, and I can join you in five minutes.

　Shiroe told him and immediately slipped out of the abandoned building.
　He was convinced that it was important to join his old friends now.