Assassin Shiki — The Loner Buys A House

“So hot~…”

I woke to a warmth that wasn’t my own, running the whole length of me from chest to ankles. My right hand, tucked under the towel blanket, met a fall of silky hair.

I peeled it back to find Azuha fast asleep, her face buried in my chest.

“Azuha… you crawled into my bed again…”

About once a week, Azuha sleepwalks her way into my futon. Of the four seasons, spring, autumn, and winter I can live with. But summer? Summer, please, I’m begging you. Our clothes are both damp, stuck together with each other’s sweat.

I stroked her head, and Azuha cracked her eyes open.

“Oh. Morning, Big Sis.”

With that, Azuha wrapped her arms around me again and drifted right back to sleep. Honestly, what an adorable little sister she is. And yet…

“It’s too hooot~!”

I grab the remote by my pillow and flick on the AC.

“Huh?”

Somehow… Azuha’s chest feels a little softer than it used to? She’s on the flat side, same as me. But still… no, wait… there’s definitely a swell there. I can feel it!

W-wait, don’t tell me… have I finally lost out even to my own little sister…?!

I take another investigative grope at my sister’s chest. Yeah. No, we’re still about even. But if she keeps growing at this pace…

Let’s stop thinking about it. No one can know the future anyway.

August 9th.

Three days had passed since I took Tsubasa down in the C-Rank Ranked Match. After leaving Marshmallow Smile, I’d done nothing in particular, just kept grinding levels. At Level 50 my climb stalled, and my experience started pooling in a place called the ‘Overbox’ instead.

A search online told me why. To break past Level 50, you have to kill a Machine Beast of Level 51 or higher. And not just any small fry, either. It has to be a Commander, a boss-class enemy like that giant centipede I took down before. Apparently the same requirement repeats every 50 levels, so at Level 100, then Level 150, I’ll have to beat a Commander of Level 100-plus, then 150-plus, exactly the same way. The current level cap is said to be 200, though supposedly once you clear Level 100 you’re already the cream of the crop.

So the moment I logged in, I headed for a Planet called the Scorching Planet, a world where the ground is nothing but lava, and squared off against a Level 70 Commander: the Scorching Lupus. A giant, jet-black, wolf-type Machine Beast with red energy coursing over its whole body. There was a level gap between us, but I brought it down without a scratch. With flamethrowers on both shoulders and thrusters on all four legs, it kept up a stream of high-speed movement and wide-area flame bursts. Next to Tsubasa or Kurenai, though, it was dead slow, and I handled it with room to spare.

What the fight taught me is that the G-AGE is useless against Machine Beasts in this level range. Each body part had 30,000 durability, and the vitals (the head and the torso) had 60,000. Since the G-AGE does 160 damage a shot, I’d have to land hundreds just to break a single part. Whittling one down with an assault rifle is faster and easier. At the end of the day, the G-AGE is anti-Space-Girl ordnance. It just doesn’t work on Machine Beasts.

Well, if it worked on every enemy out there, it’d be way too broken.

Beating Lupus bumped me up to Level 62.

When it comes to taking on Machine Beasts, what really matters is Thrusters, after all… EN Capacity I can cover by stocking up on EN Bottles, but every consumable means opening the menu, and that leaves me wide open. Maybe it’s about time I sank some points into EN as well.

Now then, on to the fun part… the drop items.

A Burner… a flamethrower.

“Y-yeah, I don’t want this…”

A saber, a handgun, an assault rifle, missile pods, a shield… any of those I could handle well enough, I’m fairly sure. But a flame burner? That’s the one thing I just can’t make work. No, even if I mastered it, I doubt I’d get much out of it. Is there anyone out there who actually runs one of these as their main weapon?

“I’ve saved up a fair bit of money.”

My chips had cleared a million. At this rate… I might finally be able to afford one.

“The My House of my dreams~♪”

Waking up in the Bedroom had been a real source of stress for me. Sure, it’s free to use… but it’s packed! Every time I wake up, I get spat out into that crush of people. I can’t even describe what it does to me…!

I’d looked into housing fairly early on, but it’s complicated, every bit as complicated as real-world real estate. So I turned to a certain someone for help.

She happened to be online when I opened my friend list, so I fired off a message and got an instant OK back. We’d meet up at the Space Station’s Ship Dock.

“Shikki~”

“O-oh, Cha— ChaCha!”

Shaggy brown hair, baggy work overalls, a lively grin, a candy in her mouth. This was ChaCha, Marshmallow Smile’s mechanic and Operator. She’s played Infinity-Space since launch, and as far as I know, nobody’s knowledge runs broader than hers, so she’s surely the one who knows the most about My Houses, too.

“So you want a My House~? Just leave it all to ChaCha~”

“Um, will my budget be enough?”

I’d already told ChaCha how many chips I had.

“Depending on the spot, that much’ll do it.”

“A really good location’s out of the question, though, I guess?”

“Right. Land inside the bases on the various Planets, for instance — no chance. Just buying the rights to the land runs five million, and on top of that there’s an upkeep fee of four hundred thousand a month.”

“Whoa… that’s rough. So then, where am I supposed to…”

“A Colony. A player-built artificial planet. Colonies don’t have bases, but in exchange they have laws, and outside the major cities the land’s cheap, too.”

A base is, so to speak, an absolute safe zone. Training grounds and the like aside, you take no damage inside one, and your capsule bed can’t be broken.

“Huh? But I’m pretty sure the Guide Girl said a My House counts as a base too…”

“Ahh~. Some houses on Planets, or Mother Ships used in quests, are set up as bases, sure — but basically you can figure a player can’t build a base with their own hands.”

Hm. Come to think of it, if players could freely throw up absolute safe zones with their own two hands, the game balance would fall apart, wouldn’t it?

A Colony, huh… I’ve always kind of longed for one, I’ll admit.

An artificial planet. If you’ve got even a little sci-fi in you, of course you’d dream of one.

“I’ll fill you in on the details on the way to a Colony ChaCha recommends.”

“What’s the name of this Colony?”

ChaCha holds up three fingers.

“The 3rd Space Colony: ‘Oceanus.’ The Sea Colony~♪”