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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Ruby
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VR Roguelike game, Loop Blood.
The essence of a game where Souls-like and roguelike elements have evolved into virtual reality.
A workplace life that goes round and round like a hamster wheel.
Finding reality rather dull, I was obsessed with this virtual reality game for a while.
The thrill of traversing the battlefield in heavy armor, dancing on the edge of death.
The most appealing aspect of this game to me was the Parrying system.
The exhilaration of deflecting a sword strike that could have severed my neck by a hair’s breadth.
And the satisfaction of creating an opening and slicing through the enemy.
The thrill of reflecting arrows with parries to kill archers with their own arrows.
If you installed the modern warfare mod, it was even possible to parry bullets.
The satisfaction of slicing through soldiers with a sword was incredible.
“There’s nothing left to do now.”
Excluding mods, I’ve cleared the basic story more than 90 times.
It’s only been three months since the game’s release.
Among the speedrun videos floating around on YouTube now, the fastest record was 42 minutes and 39 seconds.
My best record was 3 minutes faster, in the 39-minute range.
Nevertheless, I started the game one more time.
I casually killed the final boss monster, the ‘Immortal King,’ and pressed game over.
There was an email on the Steam site, the digital game distribution platform.
The sender was Miyazaki Hideo, the representative developer of Loop Blood.
You are the first to achieve 100 clears.
For our next work, we’re planning to remove the roguelike elements that inevitably restrict the story, and create our own open-world game.
We’d like to give [Don’tScrewMeOver] one special privilege as a gift.
Because you love our games so much.
Well then, we’ll send you an invitation when we’re ready.
“Oh, that sounds fun.”
Reading the email, I was simply happy.
I felt a simple expectation that another awesome game to kill time would be coming out.
And a week after receiving this email.
Only then could I understand what they meant by sending an invitation.
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Whoosh─
A strong wind blew through the forest.
A man lying in the bushes opened his eyes.
“Oh, this bastard. He’s awake.”
Ash-gray hair.
And blue eyes. Snow-white skin.
A sleek appearance that anyone would call ‘aristocratic’.
“Boss, isn’t this guy a nobleman? He looks too refined?”
At the words of Melau, a skinny man, Aron, the rough-looking man, shook his head.
“Would a nobleman wear such ragged leather clothes? He’s just a good-looking commoner.”
The aristocratic-looking man slowly opened his eyes.
“Where is…”
The man ignored Melau and Aron, who were pointing short swords at him.
“This bastard is looking elsewhere even after coming to his senses.”
The man’s gaze was fixed on the air.
More precisely, he was staring at multiple windows floating in front of his eyes.
A sudden, absurd situation of being thrown into a game.
But was it survival instinct?
Or was it consideration from those who put him in the game?
He immediately recognized the dangerous situation and began to think quickly.
‘Absolute Counter.’
The man was certain about which skill was the most important among the special privileges he received.
It was Absolute Counter.
A reflection technique that can be used after successfully parrying once.
‘I must give up the first attack.’
A body that can only attack after successfully parrying one hit.
It seemed quite inefficient.
But no other option came to mind that didn’t involve using Absolute Counter.
This was because his status window was floating in front of his eyes.
Those lousy stats that showed no potential for growth.
‘Parrying.’
He was confident in parrying at least.
No matter how poor his stats were. In Loop Blood and in previous virtual reality games, it was something he had done countless times.
Trying to show off as a veteran player, he had never dropped his parrying accuracy below 100%, even when naked wearing only underwear.
“Hey, you bastard. How dare you ignore people like this? Take out all the money in that pouch. And your belongings too. If you don’t have any, you’ll have to take off those rags you call clothes.”
Aron pointed his sword close to the man’s neck.
The personality trait ‘Cool-headed’ gave the man calmness.
“Is that sword just for show?”
The calmness to provoke with nerves of steel.
“…What?”
“I’m asking why you’re carrying something you can’t even stab with.”
It was a provocation made after confirming the object hidden in the pouch hanging at his waist.
As he fiddled with it, he could see the information about the dagger in front of his eyes.
At the man’s provocation, Aron’s eyes became bloodshot.
“You bastard who looks fit only to be a nobleman’s servant!”
Swoosh!
The short sword rushed towards the man’s upper body.
He didn’t even think of using ‘Bullet Time’.
[Lv.10], floating above Aron’s head.
A level equivalent to mere cannon fodder if considered as a monster.
It wasn’t an opponent worth using a skill that seemed designed to save one’s life, usable only once a day.
The trajectory of the opponent’s attack was clearly visible.
It was the trajectory he had seen hundreds, thousands of times in ‘Loop Blood’.
Swish─!
He swung the dagger in a reverse grip.
Clang!
The short sword that clashed with the dagger was pushed back greatly.
A golden light impact burst out, signifying a successful parry.
And simultaneously.
Slash───
A purple air current extending from the tip of the dagger the man was holding curved like a sickle and grazed Aron’s neck.
Aron’s head fell to the ground.
Blood spurted like a fountain.
“Aaaaargh!”
Melau, the skinny man, screamed at the death of the man who had been leading him.
Step
The man walked forward.
With his chin raised, looking down on Melau contemptuously.
“Aren’t you going to attack?”
“I, I…”
Melau couldn’t calm his pounding heart.
He hadn’t wanted to mess with this man from the beginning.
Although he was just lying peacefully asleep in the bushes, he somehow exuded an air of nobility that didn’t seem to belong to an ordinary human.
“Then, I’ll go.”
The man raised his right arm holding the dagger, and reached out at an incredibly sloppy angle.
“F-F-Fuck!!”
Melau finally moved his arm.
It was a much more refined attack trajectory than the man’s movement.
Just before Melau’s short sword reached the man’s neck.
Clang!
The man succeeded in parrying again.
His ‘Parrying’ movement far transcended that of an ordinary person.
And once again, the purple air current at the tip of the dagger curved like a sickle.
Slash───
Melau’s head fell off.
Melau’s eyes were wide open.
As if he couldn’t accept his death until the very end.
“……”
The man looked at the two headless corpses with an expressionless face.
“Shit.”
But he couldn’t hold back the swear word from his homeland that had risen to his throat.
“What kind of game have they thrown me into?”
The man opened his status window again.
The name field was blank.
‘I can’t use Don’tScrewMeOver.’
In a way, it might fit the situation better than any other name.
Now that the game had become reality,
He had to choose a name that would be suitable to use here.
“Yuma.”
He chose a name that sounded reasonably plausible among his old nicknames.
As soon as he recognized that he would use the name ‘Yuma’, it was engraved on the status window.
There was no change to the lousy stats, but.
Why did the alignment remain as Good even after taking two people’s heads?
The man, Yuma, could easily deduce the reason.
The alignment of the two guys he had identified with ‘Scanning Eye’ was Evil.
Killing those with Evil alignment doesn’t change one’s alignment.
Yuma concluded this.
‘I should go to a town.’
As the tension eased, he felt a terrible hunger.
Yuma searched through the belongings of the two men.
He found a total of 1300 cents in their money pouches.
Yuma could gauge how much these 1300 cents were worth.
The unit ‘cent’ was also used in ‘Loop Blood’.
It was enough to cover lodging and meals at an inn for about a week.
‘I need to buy some decent clothes too.’
These old leather clothes had to be discarded.
After organizing his thoughts, Yuma slowly began to descend the mountain.
With a very noble gait that he unconsciously exuded due to the Noble Dignity trait.
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Interesante
I always knew that the swamp monster Miyazaki is an interdimensional creature