Luribel, the Safe Haven – Part 2

After walking in silence for a little bit, I finally spotted Luribel in the distance. In the game, it was a fairly ordinary and idyllic little village, built around a river. It even had a church where Heroes could respawn when they died. As we approached, however, the true scale of this menace made me want to cry.

“This is awful…”

The entire village looked like it had been doused in bleach, frozen in time, with all its life sucked right out of it. The white was so overbearing that it made it hard to distinguish what was a building and what wasn’t.

“Most of the world looks like this now. Get used to it, Hero.”

“Ugh.”

Well, no point in sulking around.

I technically could set the Foundation Crystal anywhere, but its area of protection for a brand-new settlement was quite small. It would be advantageous to do it right at the center of the village so we could be safe wherever we went. With Yzara still on my back, I went directly to the central square.

“Guess it’s time to bring this village back to life.”

I gently—well, as gently as I could—let Yzara down, and started my work. Brandishing my Debuggun, I zapped every single square meter of surface I could reach without exerting my leg too much. The areas hit with the Resetting Beam instantly returned to their original, colorful and beautiful medieval look. Each zap didn’t restore much area at all, but I pulled that trigger so much that even that little area was starting to stack up.

“There, that should do it.”

“Not bad,” Yzara said, still resting where I left her earlier. “To restore such a large area in so little time… that little ‘gun’ of yers is no joke.”

“Of course it’s not. So now to find the best place to put down the Foundation Crystal…”

The crystal was a magical object, so it could piece any type of terrain without any effort. Still, considering its small area of effect, I wanted to make sure I found the exact perfect place to put it. But someone wasn’t having any of it.

“Why are ya shufflin’ around so much for? Just put down the damn thing already!”

“Don’t rush me. I need to carefully consider the best location—”

“But ya’d better hurry up, unless ya want yer noggin’ to be turned to dog food. Those wolfies are comin’ our way.”

“Ah, shit!”

A pack of Dire Wolves was making its way to us from the woods we had just left. There were way more than before, too; easily twenty of them.

Never mind the best location, at this rate we’ll have no location!

To found a settlement, every monster in its area of effect needed to be cleared; the activation would fail otherwise. If those Dire Wolves got to us, we couldn’t found a settlement anymore, and obviously we were too weak to kill them all, either.

“Aww, screw it. Here should be good enough! Hya!”

I shoved the crystal into the ground; immediately, a light dome burst out from the Foundation Crystal, washing over us and the majority of the village. When it reached its apex, the light dome dissipated, as if it was never there to begin in.

Moments later, the pack of Dire Wolves got to where the edge of the light dome had been—and stopped. They snarled and barked at us angrily, but they weren’t coming any closer.

“Phew. That worked.”

My legs almost gave way, but I managed to stay upright. Seeing as they couldn’t come any closer, the wolves apparently decided they had better things to do, and went away.

“Congrats, Hero. Ya seemed to have survived for now.”

“Ironic hearing that from the Demon Queen.”

“Eh. Now where should we bunker down?” She asked as I helped her get up.

The immediate threat of the White Death was behind us, and we really needed somewhere to sit down and recuperate. It really was more about picking whichever of these houses we fancied the most.

“How about this one?” I said, point at one of the houses. “Seems like the biggest, so they should have places to sit down inside, at least.”

“Pro’bly the Villager Chief’s former house. That’s better than nothin’, I guess.”

“Sorry if you can’t have a massive castle all to yourself, your highness,” I said as we made our way inside.

“Hmph.”

Despite apparently being the Villager Chief's abode, the house was still quite small and sparsely decorated; this was a medieval world, after all. But even Yzara noticed something was off.

“Doesn’t yer gun restore things to how they were supposed to be? Where’s all the stuff?”

Right. She has a point.

Although the house structure and some of the furniture were restored just fine, the actual items that used to be inside it were nowhere to be seen.

And I knew exactly why that was.

Another consequence of a programming quirk…

Some basic furniture was spawned in alongside structures, and so it was considered part of it. Only at a second stage did more personalized items—like valuables or food—get populated in, and thus could not be restored. And that meant that I couldn’t use the Debuggun to cheese my way out of this situation by duplicating items.

Now the question is how I can explain this to Yzara.

“Yeah, unfortunately, the Debuggun can’t restore stuff that isn’t furniture.”

Oops. I just said it’s name out loud. Not that she has any idea what it means.

“Huh. Strange logic right there, innit? Well, whatever. I’m not one to question how that thing works. It’s powerful enough as it is.”

I led Yzara to one of the sofas and plopped down across from her. I wasn't used to this much exertion, and my leg was still hurting quite a bit, so I definitely needed the rest as much as she did.

“So, what do we do now, Hero Takashi? Still intendin’ to kill me?”

“Nah. I believe your story.”

As much as I can believe Yzara, that is. The question now is what I want to do from now on.

If this truly is Arcforge, I might as well accept my situation and “play” the game in a way I never did as a dev. My mind drifted into fantasy land—I could found a settlement, get an economy going instead of doing gig work, go on adventures with my own party, maybe fall in love with a cute girl—

But then reality came crashing like a derailed train. I was just barely hanging on, wasted my freebie Foundation Crystal to save my own skin, and who can forget the white elephant in the room—that’s the stupid White Death, bleaching half the world and trying to kill me the moment things don’t go its way. As long as this glitch is around…

Hey, wait a second…

I brought out the Debuggun to marvel at its overly engineered, useless form.

“Hey, what’re ya doing with that?”

Somehow, this in-joke became the ticket to fixing everything. If I could just get to the source of the infection and reset it, the entire world should go back to normal. I’ll go there, leave my thanks for isekaing me, and then have my revenge for that ambush.

Goodbye, White Death, hello carefree life in another world!

The problem was exactly how to get to the infection source—sealed inside a certain Demon Queen’s castle. As I was, I was way too weak to even get out of this place.

So what should I do…?

I glanced at Yzara. Her eyes looked as sharp as ever, but she still looked exhausted. As she was now, she was useless. She couldn’t be killed, yes, but she was so powerless she couldn’t hurt a fly.

“Too bad Restoration can’t be used on people, though, otherwise we could get out of this situation pretty easily,” she said, sulking a bit.

She was right—<Restoration> couldn’t be used on NPCs, and she was under the assumption the Debuggun worked like that magic. Things weren’t quite that simple, but I decided to keep that misunderstanding to myself.

When Yzara found me looking at her, though, she shot me a rather evil-looking smile. “That leaves us with no other choice. Hey, Hero. What about we team up?”

I could barely believe her words. “Huh? And you expect me to believe you’re not going to trick me?”

“Very untrustin’, aren’t ya, Hero?”

“You are my natural-born enemy, after all.”

“Neither of us is gonna make it out of this situation alive on our own. We might be fine for now, but this thing’ll surely find a way to hit ya when ya least expect it. I have the knowledge ya need, and the potential with my Dark Ruler class. And ya have the power to combat the White Death with ya gun. We can build a mutually advantageous partnership here.”

“Isn’t helping you a bit counter the whole ‘Hero’ thing I have going on?”

“Ah! If I wasn’t so weak, I’d be laughin’ my ass off. Yer a Hero in name only. Ya would have killed me already otherwise.”

She does have a point.

“So let’s team up,” she said, extending a hand my way. “Help restore my class and eradicate the White Death.”

“Heh.”

Obviously, I didn’t trust Yzara for a second. But I was in what you could call a “real pickle”. So I had to get stronger—strong enough to be able to dispatch the White Death, then deal with Yzara before she had a chance to betray me. I would use Yzara’s knowledge and latent power as much as possible before then.

A smile bled into my face.

“Alright. Let’s work together, Demon Queen Yzara.”

“Very well, Hero—no, Takashi.”

I extended my hand, and she grabbed it with an oddly girly smile.

That’s how the unlikely alliance—a Hero and the Demon Queen—was forged out of mutual interest.