Dragon X The Exile

The starting village of Alharth might have been big enough to entirely encircle the orchard hill where I had first spawned in, but the actual buildings were spread pretty thin. A few small farmhouses were scattered aimlessly among flat golden fields, spreading out in all directions as far as the eye could see. Between these larger farmsteads, small stores and cottages dotted the sides of the four main roads that led in towards the town center from each cardinal direction, like the spokes of a great wheel.

As I walked down one such road, it really started to hit me that I wasn't in my own world. That might sound a bit cheesy, or like I'm just stating the obvious, but what can I say? Even for all of my experience in VR, suddenly waking up in a whole new reality just wasn't something you ever really got used to.

At least, I still hadn't. But then again, it had always taken me a while to adjust to new scenery. In that regard, this foreign world seemed almost nostalgic.

Seeing a horizon free of buildings and a sky not caged in by power lines brought me back to the earliest memories of my childhood, adventuring with my friends over every last inch of my grandpa's farm way up in the boonies in Hokkaido. I wondered how Yuuto and the rest of my friends back home were doing. I hadn't heard from any of them since the move – let alone since I came back to Japan.

...Well, any of them except her. But I was trying not to think about that.

That said, rather than the scenery of my early youth, this rolling landscape looked more like the views I'd seen during my more recent stay with my mom's family in the United States. Replace the gently waving fronds of grain with stiff green stalks of corn, and spread a bunch of cows everywhere, and this place would be pretty much indistinguishable from a good 99% of the American Midwest.

What, surprised? I might still be in high school, but I've been places. Regular world traveler, I am. And now that I was back in Japan and stuck in Tokyo, here I was exploring an entirely new world to sate my wanderlust.

Yeah, right.

At any rate, Alharth wasn't half-bad as a vacation spot – if you discounted the small issue with it not actually being real. The town square was nice and cozy, with a quaint little water fountain surrounded by pleasant rural shops run by NPCs and small street stalls rented out to itinerant player-merchants.

But I wasn't here as a tourist. I could still hear Hiroshi's nagging voice in the back of my head, lamenting my refusal to re-roll my character as a different race.

Don't get me wrong – I get why he was so hung up on it. I really do. Nobody wants a sandbag in their party, and it wasn't like I was really that attached to playing as a Dragonkin, specifically. The only reason I had even picked it had been for looks, and, well...

To be perfectly honest, his first guess had been right on the money. I had chosen “HakuryuuK1” to be my virtual alias because I remembered an old conversation I'd had about my name – my actual name, that is – and I'd sort of gotten attached to the idea after that.

Well, rather than a conversation, it was almost more like a bit of dark history – but you could get at least a little nostalgic about anything once it was over, even the cringey stuff.

At any rate, since I was set on the name, I wanted my appearance to match it. I mean, who calls themselves “Hakuryuu” and then doesn't play as a dragon?

So, since I had stubbornly insisted on playing out the garbage character I had made for myself, he had finally relented. If he couldn't convince me to switch to a new build, then at least he'd help me salvage the one I had.

I had ventured into this world with nothing but a stick and a dream – but now, I had in my inventory a nice, hefty sack of 5,000 Gold.

Now, that wasn't actually a lot in the grand scheme of things. Even just buying a full set of basic armor was probably still outside my price range. But even if I could get one, I'd just end up outgrowing it within a few levels. Besides – where we were going, I didn't need armor. After all, Hiroshi had a plan.

Yeah. Didn't he always?

“Have some faith,” He had told me, adjusting his glasses with a villainous smirk. “The entire early game is basically optional, provided you have enough game knowledge and firepower. And with me on your side, you've got both.”

Well, I wasn't exactly too keen on being carried, but admittedly, spending my first few days of gameplay futzing around in the starter areas surrounding Alharth didn't exactly sound like a thrilling prospect. In eight real-world hours, I was going to have to wake up and go to school, and I wanted to thoroughly enjoy myself and clear my head before that happened.

But “real-world hours” moved pretty slow. Even though I had experienced almost an hour and a half ingame, time in the real world had only advanced by about ten minutes.

That was the biggest upside of Oneiric VR gaming: inside your dreams, your subjective perception of time is malleable enough that you can experience an immense amount of content within a very short timeframe.

Or, in layman's terms, time moves faster on the inside. Why? I dunno. It's some kind of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, neuroscientific mumbo-jumbo. I could have probably asked SiLVA to explain it, but that'd take time, and even with nine times more of it to kill than usual, I still didn't care enough to sit through that lecture.

The point being, I had three virtual days left to explore and enjoy myself before eight hours passed and I woke up tomorrow. So, in the interest of making the most of that extra time, here I was, looking for two things: a proper sword, and however many healing potions I could still afford once I got one.

...The sword, at least, was easy to find. There were a few players selling weapons I wouldn't even be able to wield for another nine levels, but even leaving that issue aside, I somehow doubted a level 10 sword was worth a million gold, no matter how many upgrades you stacked on it. So, after a little bit of hopeless window-shopping, I quickly learned to disregard the player-blacksmiths who had set up shop in the square, and instead sought out the nearest NPC store.

1,000 Gold later, I was the proud owner of a shiny new Iron Sword. The stats might have been disappointing compared to the overpriced player-made weapons, but it did at least three times the damage of my Cypress Stick, so I wasn't about to waste any time feeling jealous. An upgrade was an upgrade, and I could always replace it with a more permanent weapon later once I earned some gold.

The next step was making sure I didn't die before that happened. I might have had three days, but I wasn't about to waste any of it waiting out death penalties.

So, I needed potions. But just as Hiroshi had anticipated, the NPC apothecary and general store were both totally sold out. That's not to say nobody had any potions to sell, though. I was approached by no less than three players outside the apothecary, each of whom just so happened to be selling potions...

...For three times the market price, that is. I guess that was where all of the NPCs' stock went.

I still wasn't quite desperate enough to settle for such an obvious rip-off. Surely, there must have been someone who was still selling at a reasonable price. Maybe I just needed to look in less crowded places?

No, that was stupid. I mean, the entire point of setting up a shop was getting people to notice you and buy your items. What reason could a shopkeeper have to make themselves deliberately harder to find?

...And while I was wondering things like that, I also began to wonder about other things. For example, why was some girl sitting tucked away in the very back of the alcove between the apothecary and the general store, with a plethora of potions arranged neatly on a small mat in front of her?

And why was there a giant emblem floating over her head with a skull in the background and three blood-red strikes carved across it?

...Well, never mind the fact that she looked even shadier than the duo of guild recruiters who had accosted me outside of the orchard. It wouldn't hurt to look and see if her potions were at least cheaper than the resellers out in the square.

So, I stepped into the alleyway, and the white-cloaked figure slightly raised her head at the sound of my footsteps. Try though I might, I couldn't make out her face beneath the voluminous, fur-trimmed hood of her mantle. More alarmingly, a nameplate didn't appear over her head, even when I examined her.

Instead, all I got to see was her Title: [Exiled].