Chapter 11

Truck-kun spent game currency to resurrect Nyarin after, well, killing her. I was wondering if she would return wearing her Christmas Special armor. She reappeared next to us in her regular armor, watching Truck-kun with her ears cowed down humbly.

“I trust I’ve made my position clear?” Truck-kun asked.

Nyarin looked down at the ground. “Perfectly, master.”

Truck-kun nodded his approval. “Run off, Hero Seo. Find something to occupy youself in town. The two of us need to talk.”

I didn’t know what was going on. Was this some part of my Isekai that I didn’t know about yet? “I’ve got plenty of questions too. Don’t think you can chase me off so easily.”

“Hero,” Nyarin said, still staring at the ground, “there’s a young and topheavy maiden looking for her lost dog near the clover bridge in town where the two rivers meet. She’ll be inexplicably grateful if you retrieve her lost dog.”

“That’s by the bell tower, right?” I said, already on my way to be heroic.

I sprinted towards the clover bridge, crossing kilometers in seconds thanks to my heroic speed. As I approached the bell tower, I spotted a crowd gathered around in a commotion. I found the source of the excitement – a small, yapping dog had climbed onto the tower's roof.

A woman whose ample bosom made her seem very interesting wrung her hands in worry. “Will somebody save poor Poochi?”

"Hero Seo to the rescue!" I proclaimed, striking a heroic pose. The people cheered. “Now, how do I get up there?”

“Oh, just take the stairs.” One man said, helpfully pointing to a section of the building that had been completely demolished by Nyarin’s rampage.

Okay, the NPCs were getting a bit annoying.

I wandered around, trying to jump. I was strong enough to jump the three stories up the bell tower, but apparently the ledge at the top was not designed for actually being walked on.

How was I supposed to complete this quest with everything malfunctioning?

I tried shooting the building. I had infinite pistol ammo, but it would take a day to break a building. Even if I broke the building, the dog might come tumbling down and get hurt.

Asking the bystanders didn’t help. They were all stupid NPCs. “Oh, just take the stairs.” “That dog can sure climb.” “Have you ever heard the myth of the Baku?” “Oh, just take the stairs.”

I tried talking to the topheavy maiden. She only had a few dialog options. “Will somebody save poor Poochi?” “Fine weather.” “I’d be ever so grateful if you saved my dog!” She did this pouty cleavage squeezing animation when she spoke that last one. I didn’t waste more than four or five minutes replaying that since I was in a hurry.

I checked my inventory, then broke out in a big smile.

I walked up to the building and summoned a menu as I touched it. If Truck-kun could use the rules to his advantage then so could I.

The building disappeared as it entered my inventory. Quite the OP bug. I selected the building and extracted the dog.

“I couldn’t be more inexplicably grateful. However shall I thank you?” The woman said, petting the dog.

A menu appeared. “All in a day’s work.” “Cash please.” “How about something HOT back at your place?”

Don’t judge me.

She winked. “Follow me home. It’s the least I can do after such brave heroics.”

I followed the inexplicably grateful maiden. She seemed realistic enough, except when she walked into another NPC on the street and the two slid across each other. I grew worried as she led me into the completely destroyed triangle of town that pointed directly back to the firing position Nyarin had taken up at the training barracks.

The woman stopped at a point on the street and pointed to a completely missing house. “Well, this is my home. How about you wait on the couch while I slip into something more comfortable.”

She climbed a concrete patio that had managed to survive the destruction, opened a non-existent door, and stepped into the open air. She stood on nothing just beyond the patio and gestured for me to follow before she completely disappeared.

“Why did my Isekai have to be a prerelease with bugs!” I yelled in frustration, cursing Tanuki programmers or whatever it was that Truck-kun had mentioned. This place was supposed to be an adventure, a vacation, and a spiritual cleansing all in one.

At the very least there were supposed to be inexplicably grateful maidens.

I wandered back, following the cone of destruction back toward the mountain of rubble. This was hardly any better than staying alive and going to work. At home I had a level 80 mage to play in a game without glitches. As I walked back I remembered walking along similar streets with Nyarin. But that wasn’t right. We hadn’t walked streets like these before.

The world was growing fuzzy along the edges. Where had I seen that before?

As I trudged back to where I had seen Truck-kun and Nyarin last, my frustration began to mount. This Isekai was turning out to be more trouble than it was worth, and the glitches were ruining any chance of a peaceful adventure. Nyarin had caused more destruction with her gun rampage than even Truck-kun had managed with a reality shattering spell.

Wait, spells? This game world didn’t have spells. It had guns and jiggle physics.

The fuzziness at the edges of the world became hard to ignore. I was hit by a flash of memories, both from my old life in the real world and more. I remembered as far back as elementary school.

I remembered as recently as last year, when planned cutbacks at work sent me into a spiral of depression. My place at the company had survived the cutbacks, to my surprise, but my trust in them hadn’t survived. The idea that the company that I had given my early adulthood to might simply fire me was sobering.

I also remembered Sachiko. She was so happy when I had landed that job.

I pushed those memories away and more recent ones surfaced. I had been to another Isekai before this one? Another world with more catgirls and a dragon?

I had to sit down. How had I forgotten all of that? I remembered Truck-kun talking about how Isekai worked. And he should know. He was the force that brought everyone to these wonderful places.

But hadn’t he said something about people sometimes not liking an Isekai? Their memories were wiped to try one pleasing hallucination after another, until something stuck and they stayed blissful?

I felt like an idiot. Everything in this world was fake. I had thrown myself in front of a truck for what? A poorly programmed video game? A mysterious spirit with a penchant for single casualty auto collisions who liked to talk about tanuki spirits as if they were real?

Other memories surfaced. Truck-kun had shown me with those magic red fire eyes of his. An Isekai was just a figment of my imagination. It wasn’t real. But something about Nyarin was real. There had been something black and white and orange with haunting yellow feline eyes.

The world around me grew even more fuzzy until I could barely see. Like last time there was a series of flashback memories before the world dissolved. I would pass from one Isekai to another. I would forget.

It was the same feeling I had felt with time slowing and memories surfacing as I fell in front of that blue panel truck.

I leaned my head against a surviving brick wall, feeling reality dissolve around me. This wasn’t salvation, it was a disaster. Maybe the next one would be better.

But before the world dissolved and the next one started, everything suddenly snapped back to crisp reality. The fuzziness disappeared.

I opened my eyes to find Truck-kun standing before me. Nyarin was behind him, arms folded and looking away, ears wide and twitching with anxiety.

Truck-kun’s eyes were glowing red. He had stopped the Isekai spell with a flick of his wrist. He smiled. “It’s time we had a chat.”