Assassin Shiki — The Summons

A Colony can be manufactured by spending an enormous sum of chips.

What it becomes is up to its creator, and so is the kind of nation you raise there. Building one on a single person’s fortune is impossible, of course; it almost always takes fifty to a hundred thousand players pulling together.

It’s a tremendous amount of effort, and that’s exactly where the romance lies. You get to build a whole world, after all. Me, I think I’d give my Colony a post-apocalyptic look. Not that a loner like me could ever team up with tens of thousands of people, needless to say.

“It’s a ways from here, so it’ll take about three minutes~”

“Yes!”

I board a rocket-type ship with ChaCha, who takes the controls for me.

“Alright then, let me run you through some super-basic stuff, Shikki.”

“P-Please do!”

“The number-one feature of a Colony is that every player who enters it gets assigned a ‘class.’”

“A class…?”

“It’s like a rank. You could call it a role, too. Which classes a Colony sets up is up to that Colony’s king, but there are basically four kinds: Police, Citizen, Criminal, and Invader. Oceanus is built on these four as well. Police are the ones whose job is to protect the Colony, Citizens are the ordinary folks living in it, Criminals are the ones who’ve committed crimes, and Invaders are the ones who entered the Colony illegally.”

“They’re exactly what they sound like.”

“Yep~. Okay, here’s a quiz! When your class changes, what changes with it?”

Your ability scores, maybe. Slap a debuff on a Criminal’s stats and it’d be harder for them to do whatever they pleased. But if the king could rewrite ability scores at will, I’d think that would throw the game balance off. In that case…

“Rights, maybe?”

Police getting a discount when they shop, say, or the run of every facility. Criminals the other way around, unable to buy anything inside the Colony, shut out of certain places. A difference in rights like that would make sense.

“Rights do change too, sure. Police have the right to flip a Citizen’s class to Criminal, for instance. But that’s not the crux of it. The real answer is: when your class changes, your death penalty changes.”

“The death penalty… huh. That’s a surprise.”

“For Police and Citizens it’s the same as usual — the minimum death penalty: half your chips gone, one hour of lowered stats, and then the loss of any items you couldn’t carry back to a My House or a base. Buuut, when Criminals and Invaders get killed, they’re force-respawned in the jailhouse. After that, they’re judged by the Colony’s rules. However unreasonable the punishment handed down, you don’t get to complain about it. Plenty of people delete their accounts the moment they’re arrested.”

That’s not what I expected. But it’s a good system. If they can confiscate your items by force, seize every last chip, or lock you up for months at a time, that’s a serious deterrent.

“So that’s exactly why it’s safe.”

“Exactly! In a Colony, it’s possible to gun down someone sleeping in a capsule bed. But on Oceanus, that’s a serious crime. If it comes to light, your class gets flipped to Criminal.”

So the law protects your peaceful sleep. No different from real life, in that respect.

But… doesn’t that mean even if you commit a crime, as long as you can escape outside the Colony, you’re in the clear?

However grave the crime, get away clean and there’s no problem. Class only applies inside the Colony, after all. You could even say the more confident someone is in their own skill, the easier it is for them to end up a Criminal.

“Oh. We’re here.”

A spherical world sheathed in a transparent membrane, like Earth with one of those capsule-toy bubbles stretched over it. That’s the 3rd Colony, Oceanus.

Directly above it floats a massive glass orb, glowing red. Is that… sunlight?

“What’s that glass orb?”

“Hmm, the short version or the full-size version — which do you want?”

“Umm?”

“The explanation of that glass ball. Whether I give you the gist of it or spell it all out.”

“The detailed one, please!”

Because I’m a total sci-fi nut, after all!

“That’s a mirror ball that stands in for the sun. Its official name was… the ‘Solar Diffuser,’ I think. It gathers sunlight and uses it in place of the sun. There are several suns out there, but there are tons of Planets near them, so it’s hard to build a Colony close to one. That’s why they set up around twenty Solar Collectors near a sun — devices that gather its light. The Solar Collectors fire a concentrated beam of that sunlight at the mirror ball, and—”

“—it diffuses inside that thing and serves as a stand-in sun. Is that it?”

A thin beam of light reaches that mirror ball from somewhere far, far away. That must be the sunlight the Collectors carried over.

“Bingo. A Colony’s way smaller than something like Earth, so a mirror ball that size is plenty to light the whole thing up.”

Just like a lightbulb. Power flows from the Sun (the mains), out through the Collector (the cable), and into the Diffuser (the bulb).

“Right, we’re heading into the Reception Center.”

Reception… the front desk, then.

“See that spherical facility linked up to the Colony? That’s the Reception Center. If you go into the Colony without registering as a citizen at Reception, your class turns into Invader. ChaCha’s already registered, but you haven’t yet, Shikki.”

The ship slides into the Reception Center’s hangar. I climb out and make my way into the reception area.

The place has the feel of a city ward office. I pull a number ticket, and after a few minutes’ wait my number is called, so I head to the counter. A Guide Girl attends to me at the window.

“Please enter your account code, your player name, and your purpose in coming to the Colony here.”

I’m handed a tablet, so I sit down and fill in the necessary details. One of the fields is a ‘Referrer’ box, so I enter ChaCha’s name.

“Your submission has been accepted. Please wait a moment.”

“With this, you should be able to get a three-day visa (an entry permit).”

ChaCha explains from beside me.

“Once the visa runs out, does my class change after all?”

“Yep. You become an Invader. But if you get yourself a My House inside the Colony within three days, you’ll be granted a six-month visa, so no need to worry~.”

“I see~.”

It’s all so meticulous you’d never take it for a game. I’m fond of this kind of fine detail myself, though I’m sure there are people who can’t stand it.

“Thank you for waiting.”

The Guide Girl hands over a metal card.

“This will serve as your visa. It is valid for three days.”

“Thank you very much.”

“It stays in effect even while it is in your item pouch, so you may digitize it as you like.”

I convert the card to data and tuck it away.

“My apologies, Lady Shiki, but please do not use the ordinary gate — take this orbital elevator to the Mother Base.”

“Mother Base…?”

“The headquarters. The heart of the nation — where the king and the main army are.”

“Does everyone who comes to the Colony for the first time pass through there?”

ChaCha shrugs.

“As if. If anything, first-time arrivals are absolutely never let in. It’s the nerve center, y’know? A treasure trove of top-secret intel, y’know? No way they’d let in some sketchy player nobody knows a thing about.”

Huh? Then why…?

“So who is it that’s calling for you, Shikki? — Hey, Guide Girl.”

“It is Lord Rikusen.”

“Whaaa?! No waaay!!”

ChaCha is so startled she shoots to her feet.

“Huh? Huh?? Who’s that?”

Rikusen? Never heard the name.

“Rikusen is the third King of Oceanus. And more than that — Rikusen was the leader of Yggdrasil, the strongest team Shii and Tsubby originally belonged to.”

So that’s the one who got hold of the Infinity Arts and left the team.

“For you, Shikki, I guess that makes Rikusen a rival of yours too, huh.”

“A rival? Wh-why is that?”

ChaCha, thoroughly delighted, tells me.

“Because that person is—the strongest Sniper in this entire game, y’know.”