The Runaway Demon Queen

“Ugh… what the hell was that?!” I cursed even before I got my bearings.

For a second, I thought my habit of skipping meals to save on food had finally knocked me out cold. That at least would’ve made sense. But unless malnutrition came with vivid hallucinations, that wasn’t it.

An alien-looking forest spread all around me. Every tree, every leaf, and even the ground was nothing but shades of monochrome. This gave the entire forest a rather strange mood—serene, yet fully dead. A static, frozen world with no color—definitely not anything existing in the real world, that’s for sure. So this had to be a VR game. But I couldn’t remember putting on a headset, much less booting up Arcforge or anything else.

But that forest wasn’t static. I could see a faint black “mist” rising from just about everywhere if I squinted, making every object look blurry. It was, frankly, quite unsettling.

“Great. Someone decided to play a lame prank on the washed-up dev. What a terrible sense of humor,” I quipped out loud.

But serious, a phishing email? I can’t believe I fell for that. Nostalgia does have a nasty way to fry your brain.

Once again, I got burned from trusting too much.

Sigh. Par for the course at this point.

There was no point in staying around this sorry excuse of a joke anymore. I made the hand gesture to pull up the system menu of every VR headset and—

Nothing.

I did it again, but nothing happened. Guess what—I did it a third time. Definition of insanity, I know. But my logical thinking had already boarded the shinkansen to Kyoto.

When I realized that no matter what, nothing was going to happen, a chill ran down my spine.

“Am I… trapped…?!”

It was nigh-impossible to trap someone in a VR world—there were safeguards in place, after all. If the menu wouldn’t open, that meant either someone strapped a headset on me and hacked the hell out of it, or—

“Don’t tell me this is one of those ‘transported to another world’ scenarios…”

There was no way this was actually happening—but my logic had since returned from that trip to Kyoto, and it told me it was somehow more likely than the alternatives. VR worlds were ever increasingly realistic, yes, but nothing like this. The dead forest looked ripped straight out of a dev’s monitor—but the slight breeze in the air and the smell of soil emanating from underfoot were way too realistic for a VR game.

So yeah, guess that stupid email was the trigger, no doubt about it. But who yanked me in here, and why? And more importantly… what the hell is this place?

The heavens themselves decided to respond to my call for answers. Something materialized from the air itself in front of me and fell to the ground before I had a chance to grab it. I crouched down, shuffling through the desaturated grass until I found the small metal canister, whose shape—a hexagonal bipyramid—I immediately recognized.

And then everything clicked.

“Wait… is this Arcforge?!”

It had to be. After all, I knew this thing like the back of my hand—it was a Divine Letter. As Arcforge strived for realism, there was no in-game menu. Divine Letters were the internal way to send messages, give quests, and all that stuff.

“Eh-eh. Eh-eh-eh…”

I started laughing to myself. Yes, the world might be all sorts of messed up, but I was here, in the very game I helped make.

And it was real.

“Oh man…!”

Was I lucky or what? Forget that stupid “real world”—here I could leave all that baggage behind and start fresh. Even my body looked ten times better than it used to. Forget the pudgy look raised by instant ramen and potato chips—I looked straight out of a boy band magazine.

And I was gonna make the most of this chance.

Carefree life in another world surrounded by beauties? Count me in!

First things first—how the heck did Iditath—Arcforge’s world—become “real”? Why does it look so weird? And how could I return it to the Arcforge I knew? I just had to find out, one way or another. And my only clue was that Divine Letter that was so graciously given to me. I opened the canister and pulled out the rolled-up letter.

<From: Worldbender>

<I’m so glad I could reach you! I’ve summoned you, Hero from another world, to take on this most important quest. The Demon Queen infected and absorbed the life of the world with the White Death you see around you. We have managed to weaken and corner the Queen to this area, but only a Hero can kill her and save the world. Please, you are our last hope! Attached to this letter is a knife you can use to deliver the final blow. After the Demon Queen is defeated and the White Death is vanished, you will be able to enjoy this world for all it has to offer.>

Apparently, this “Worldbender” was the one who summoned me here.

So where are they? Where’s my welcoming party?

“And the first quest is to kill the Demon Queen…? Are they really expecting a washed-out programmer to do this?”

This situation stank to high heaven. The Demon Queen did not have some secret power to bleach the terrain—the design team was kooky, but not this much. And there was no way anyone from Iditath managed to make the Queen so weak that a fresh spawn could kill her.

There was something else inside the Divine Letter—a small transparent sphere, about the size of a marble, with a miniature knife inside. This was the method used to store items—the appropriately named Divine Canister.

If this works like Arcforge, then—

I pressed on the sphere, and it immediately started glowing, then increased in size until it became a palm-long knife. Whether I would need to use this or not, I didn’t know. But at least one thing was clear—I wasn’t going anywhere by just standing around.

Might as well play into their hand for a little bit.

Luck seemed to smile upon me, as I suddenly noticed something colorful in these dead, white woods. There, slumped against a dead tree, was a girl I instantly recognized.

“Damn. She looks… real…!”

The girl had long cyan hair, and was dressed in a black top and black shorts—a ridiculously skimpy design, but blame the artists for that one. Oh, and a pair of black horns on her head, a thin tail, and a single bat-like wing. The crown she usually wore was absent, but that didn’t really matterr

My heart was pounding with excitement. Can you blame me? This was the secret final boss of Arcforge—the Demon Queen Yzara—in the flesh. She had uber-high stats and extremely difficult requirements to even get to her lair. No player in the beta ever managed to figure out she was in the game outside the lore, much less defeat her.

But I had to play this carefully; after all, Heroes were the natural enemy of the Demon Queen. She would find a way to destroy me if she had the chance. For now, I decided to use my slight advantage to get information out of her rather than being out for blood.

Wanting to store the knife somewhere, I reached out to my belt for my Hero’s Bag, an item every player—or Hero, in Iditath’s terminology—started with. It was basically a magic bag to store items in. As I reached inside, my hand brushed against something already there.

“Huh? What’s this…?”

The item I switched the knife for brought a smile to my face.

“This brings back memories…!”

It was a futuristic laser gun, with a small screen and two concentric rings at the front that were purely cosmetic. This gun felt so out of place in this world that it was almost comical.

Of course, as a developer of this game, I knew exactly what this was.

It was the absurd “debug tool”—more affectionately named the Debuggun.

I said it was a debug tool, but really, it was more of a practical joke. It started life as a prototype for an in-game way to check the stats of mobs. That turned out to be a bust, but it still proved useful for the devs while debugging and testing features, so it just hung around our inventory right until the end of development.

There was only one way to find out if this “Debuggun” was the real deal or not. I immediately pointed it at Yzara and switched the Debuggun into Appraisal Mode. This is what it said:

<NPC: Yzara

Class: Dark Ruler [Sealed]

EXP: 52,894,586 (Lv. 255)

Profane: 99,999,999

HP: 1/4,194,304

MP: 9999

Skills: None

Status conditions: Weakness X, Poison X, Slowness X

Titles: Demon Queen>

Ooof, that’s rough. Is this even Yzara?

Seems like the Worldbender wasn’t lying, after all. They had done a serious number on her.

They sealed her class? She has no skills whatsoever?! And all three status are all at max rank?

Not even the hardest boss battles in the game got this cruel. Sealing classes was no easy feat, and to do it on the unique class that made her queen of the demons was even more impressive.

Before I could ponder much about these questions, though, a low, scratchy voice filled the air.

“So yer the latest ploy to kill me, huh?”

Before I noticed, Yzara had woken up. She was still unmoving, but her yellow, goat-like eyes shot open to reveal a piercing gaze, filled with malice.

“A Hero? It’s been a while since I’ve seen ya lot. Guess that would do it.”

By all accounts, she couldn’t hurt a fly like this—but my legs still shook like a newborn fawn’s, and my heart rate spiked uncontrollably. That’s how powerful her gaze was. However, she soon broke eye contact, adopting an almost melancholic look.

“Ya know what? I’m tired of runnin’ around. Just end me already. But know that ya’ll be responsible for the demise of this world.”

“W-what do you mean?” I managed to force out, despite my crackling voice. Can you blame me? She was terrifying!

“Listen to me, O Great Hero. This, around us, the White Death? That wasn’t me. Just seein’ it all around me makes me wanna puke,” she said with a grimace.

Her words broke the spell she had on me, and I managed to crack a smile.

“Eh-eh. I figured it wasn’t you already. You don’t have that sort of power.”

I could see Yzara sneering at my comment, but I decided to ignore her.

Well, now what do I do?

Obviously, I wasn’t one to take the words of an NPC at face value. The letter says the Demon Queen was responsible; meanwhile, she says she wasn’t the one. And neither was particularly trustworthy. After all, Yzara was known to be a lying, cunning woman, who did all she could to get what she wanted. That’s how the writing team made her, after all.

Luckily, I had a way to find out. I raised my Debuggun again and pointed it at the so-called White Death all around me.

“Is that gun yer weapon of choice, Hero? If ya want to kill me, yer pointin’ it the wrong way ‘round.”

“Don’t worry, this can’t hurt anyone. Now shut up and let me debug this.”

What the debug screen said made my heart stop.

<¢※⁂§&¢&>

What the hell?!

I had never seen something like that before whenever I used the Debuggun. It was something whose name could not be displayed properly, with the symbols glitching rapidly. I pointed the Debuggun around other things, like the trees and the ground, and the results were more than a little disturbing—<Tree (Infected by ƒ%Þ‽‡&◊¿)>, etc.

What the hell is this thing? This infection.

“Ya look frightened, Hero. What did that little gun tell ya?”

“That there’s something deeply wrong with this world,” I said with a dark smile.

This wasn’t just a weird geometry test or a whitebox level. It was for sure a glitch. The Arcforge beta had its fair number of glitches, but never something like this that corrupted even the debug menu.

But that wasn’t what made me pause.

No, this was a real “glitch” in a real world.

She seemed genuinely surprised at my realization, as her eyes shot open. “Oh yeah? Yer the first person to say that, so cherish the fact that I have the tiniest shred of respect for ya now. Not that that that will help ya.”

Before I had the chance to understand what she was saying, the forest began shifting. No, not the forest—that black electronic mist that permeated everything suddenly increased in intensity, as if it was angry.

A moment later, I could feel a presence approaching us. No, not one. Multiple. The snarls that accompanied that feeling, along with white glowing eyes peaking through the forest, forced me to take a step back next to Yzara.

Before I knew it, we were surrounded by a pack of wolves, snapping their maws and snarling. These were Dire Wolves, a large species of wolf—but they were too big, their eyes vacant and empty.

“Infected too,” Yzara answered my unasked question. “It can also infect living beings and control them. My Horde was taken over before I noticed, and that’s how they got me. Controlin’ other beings is my domain. Pisses me off. So yeah, it’s all ya. Good luck, Hero!”

“Huh?! You think I can do anything about this? You’re the Demon Queen, not me!”

“That’s a no-brainer… except my Dark Ruler class is sealed, and all my skills are gone, so I can’t use magic anymore.” Oh yeah, guess she has a point. “I’m more useless than a baby right now. At least ya could toss one of those to give the wolves a little snack. They can’t kill me because I can only be killed by a Hero, but they sure can kill ya. So again, good luck, Hero!”

Oooohhh boooy.

Now that was a problem. What could I do? Well, there was that knife this “Worldbender” very generously gifted me. However, this was just a plain old knife. I had just spawned, so I had beginner stats; and Dire Wolves weren’t exactly beginner-friendly. Could I even fend them off?

I didn’t have much time to ponder that, as one of the wolves finally decided it wanted less barking and more chomping. It lunged at me with the speed and ferocity of a Dobermann, maw wide open and ready to turn me into mince meat.

Without thinking, I shoved the knife horizontally into its maw, stopping the bite in its tracks.

H-huh? How did I even do that? Guess that must be those reincarnation power boosts.

“Wow! Impressive work, Hero. Maybe ya ain’t that spineless, after all.”

The wolf kept biting the cold, hard metal of the blade, and it took all my strength to keep it in place. Its deranged eyes told me it wasn’t happy its prey was fighting back.

Then, a searing pain shot through my lower leg.

“Arghhh! What the…?!”

“Guess the other wolfies got bored with watching.”

When I looked down, there it was—a Dire Wolf gnashing on my leg. The pain wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected it, but it still shot up my spine and completely overloaded my brain.

Damn it, this hurts! Things weren’t supposed to go like this!

I got furious. Here it was, my ticket to a brand-new life, and before I could even get my bearings, I was tricked and attacked by stupidly powerful mobs.

You know what, stupid Worldbender?! I’m not going down without a fight!

As the adrenaline rushed through my body, I forced the blade into the wolf’s maw, hoping it would slice its head off. Instead, it was more like I swatted it away. I used that chance to strike at the wolf clamped on my leg. Only after a few hits did I managed to get it away from me. My leg oozed blood from the deep holes left by its teeth.

This looks bad…!

“Yer never defeatin’ all these wolfies with that puny knife, Hero. Might as well give up and join me and Baelrak down in Hell.”

Yzara had hit the nail in the head. I barely managed to scratch one wolf. If all of them lunged at me at once, I’d get out of here as a burger patty. So then, if the knife couldn’t do anything, then what could?

That’s when a light bulb shone in my mind.

I had another thing on me—the Debuggun. I pointed it at one of the wolves, using the Appraisal Mode.

<Mob: Dire Wolf (Lv. 25)

HP: 200/200

MP: 0

Status conditions: Infected (⁋Þ¤§%‽◊$)>

As expected, this guy was infected by whatever this White Death thing was. I changed the mode of the gun, and pulled the trigger. A laser beam shot out, hitting the wolf squarely in the forehead. Almost immediately, it went stiff, its eyes return to their normal blueish gray color, and it even visibly shrunk a bit.

“Yes! It worked!” I said as I did a little fist pump.

Meanwhile, the “cured” Dire Wolf seemed to be quite confused by its surroundings and its deranged pack mates.

“What in Baelrak’s name is this… what did ya do, Hero?”

“Less questioning from you, miss! I gotta deal with these guys first!”

I fired the Debuggun at a few more wolves, all of them going through the same transformation. When about half the pack was turned, they apparently began seeing each other as enemies, and started barking to establish dominance—ignoring little me and Yzara.

“Alright, this is our chance to get the hell out of here.” I couldn’t very well leave Yzara behind. Not that I really cared about an NPC getting Prometheus-ed by those wolves. She was a valuable source of information about what the hell was happening in this world.

“Can you run?”

“For a Hero, yer really dim, ain’t ya? I’m on the verge of death over here. I can’t even stand.” Somehow, she managed to muster her strength to shoot me a smirk. “Yer gonna have to carry me.”

“Wha—How?! Have you seen how my leg is?”

“Oh, shut up! That little injury is nothin’. Now stop the pointless drivel and let’s get out of here, pronto! Or are ya that nervous about touchin’ a woman?”

“Fine! I’ll do it, okay? Geez!” I said as I crouched down next to her.

I let myself get roped in a bit there. Despite looking forward to my carefree life surrounded by beauties, she was definitely not the kind I wanted to entertain.

“Here. Get on already.”

“Hmph. Imagine that, the Demon Queen being carried by a Hero like a child. What a pathetic end for me,” she complained.

I felt her arms wrapping around my neck as I grabbed her legs and got up. She was lighter and way softer than I expected, much more realistic than VR ever had been. Only then did I realize just what sort of position I put myself in. If she wanted to, she could strangle the life out of me.

Eh. Better than dying by wolf bites.

The wolves were by now full-on fighting each other, and I didn’t fancy being the peanut gallery.

“Okay, let’s get the hell out of here before reinforcements come.”

I forced myself to trudge through the monochrome forest despite my leg injury.

“By the way, what’s yer name?” Yzara asked. “Havin’ to call ya ‘Hero’ all the time leaves me nauseous.”

“Takashi,” I replied.

As light began peeking through the trees, it dawned on me just how ridiculous of a situation this was.

Two natural-born enemies—the Hero and the Demon Queen—having to rely on each other to survive.

Eh-eh. Not even the lore writers could come up with this scenario.