Kono Sekai ga Game da to, Ore dake ga Shitte Iru Vol 1 Chapter 1.3

The second day of my life inside a game.

After leaving the inn, the first place I headed to was the item shop.

Melipe’s treasures contained large amounts of gems and accessories. From within them, I quickly equipped the rare Max Stamina Up and Stamina Recovery Up rings, and sold everything else without a second thought.

Being unable to come up with any safer way of carrying them around, I ended up heading to the shop with Melipe’s treasures inside their original chest. Only when the last gem had been sold and the appropriate amount of Elements had been transferred to my crystal was I finally able to calm down.

Every time I rounded a corner, I had worried that a bandit was about to jump me, and every person I saw seemed like they were scheming about how to take the chest from me. With feelings like this, I really shouldn’t have been laughing at Maki.

Even when I made it to the store, I was worried that the shopkeeper would be overtaken by greed and assault me, or that I was going to be scrupulously interrogated about how these treasures came into my possession, but nothing like that happened.

I received an amount of money that seemed to match roughly what I remembered from the game, and was seen out from the item shop by the owner saying, “Thank you for your visit!” with a perfect business smile.

By the way, in Nekomimineko’s world, currency is stored in specialized crystals as magic power known as “Elements”, and using this one can make purchases and conduct transactions.

With the advancement of magic in this world, it had reached a point where magic power was essential in making things or even starting a fire.

It was only logical that in such a world, the existence of a type of magic power that held a stable value would become the common currency, as it was much more practical than rare metals or jewels.

In other words, this was a system that was designed with the history of this fantasy world in mind… is what I would have liked to say, but I heard that it was the only way they could think of to somehow bring the payment card system that we were so used to in the modern day into the game.

In this day and age where paper money and coins were starting to go out of fashion, to have to count out the number of gold coins and silver coins to buy something would be unpleasant.

At least, I would find that annoying. Being able to buy something just by touching a crystal to something and having the correct amount deducted would be the best.

Even more importantly, the biggest advantage of this system was that there was no need to worry about theft. You would have to always keep an eye out if you were carrying gems, but once the money is in your crystal then it is impossible to steal your Elements without your permission.

In other words, I was finally able to rest easy.

Actually, to be technical, if the owner of the crystal died then that limitation was also removed, and there were also people who would be willing to kill to steal your money, but I decided not to think about that.

With this, the amount of money I hold is now 175000E.

Considering that I started out with 500E, this was a rather large improvement.

Quest rewards were generally determined based on the difficulty of the quest. Being a quest from the mid game, and requiring navigating three dungeons and solving puzzles to clear, the reward from Thief Melipe’s Legacy was orders of magnitude bigger than what beginners would be used to.

Still, since this was Nekomimineko you couldn’t always count on the game balance being sane, and there were quests where for a large amount of trouble you would get barely anything in return, but for Thief Melipe’s Legacy the reward seemed reasonable for the amount of effort required.

Also, this is completely unrelated, but isn’t setting the starting amount at 500E a bit too low?

Just staying a single night at the inn last night cost 400E, so it would mean that I set out on a journey with only a bit more than a day’s worth of lodging. How reckless.

“Now I can buy some equipment… but first I have to pay a visit to Old Tuto, huh.”

Old Tuto refers to a retired adventurer, and, as you can tell from the name, is a tutorial character. He’s a useful character that teaches players about the rules of adventuring, and at the same time, provides adventurers with essential items, so the choice to not visit him was, well, nonexistent.

There are three items that Old Tuto gives.

Acting as your inventory in this world, able to hold way more things than looks possible, the Adventurer’s Bag.

Acting as storage, almost unlimited in what you can put in it, the Item Box.

Finally, the quest item Mysterious Scrap of Paper.

Each and every one of them was an indispensable item for playing the game.

Especially if I was going to buy equipment, I would need the Adventurer’s Bag. The Adventurer’s Pouch that I had from the beginning was similar, but its purpose was for commonly used consumable items, and could only hold a total of 6 different types of items. To add on to this, it’s also impossible to put large items like equipment in the Adventurer’s Pouch.

Even the Adventurer’s Bag has a limit on what it can hold, so when it comes to it, an Item Box is desirable. To be precise, what you obtain is the right to use one of the Item Boxes in town, and it is extremely useful for storing equipment and stuff that you can’t use.

The last item, the Mysterious Scrap of Paper, is also quite important.

Though it looks just like an ordinary piece of scrap paper with some undecipherable scribbles on it, this was a required quest item for progressing through the story. Because it doesn’t appear to be that important, it becomes tempting to throw it away when the player’s bag gets full, but doing that would result in the player getting stuck in the middle of the storyline.

What’s even worse is that after a set amount of time after an item has been discarded, it disappears. Once that happens, it becomes impossible to clear the game.

The item had garnered quite a bit of attention when the patch released to fix the issue brought the problem to the players’ attentions.

“…Mmm.”

I really have a hard time dealing with that old man who was meddlesome, talkative, stubborn, and, only when it’s convenient for him, hard of hearing, but there was no other choice than to go.

Yeah, I know it’s quite presumptions to be complaining when I’m the one getting free items…

In the end, I changed direction, and headed straight towards Old Tuto’s house.

A bit later, I successfully obtained the items from Old Tuto’s place. There wasn’t any particularly interesting new pieces of information, but let’s just say that even in this world, Old Tuto was still Old Tuto.

“At last I can start assembling my equipment.”

I lightly tapped the Adventurer’s Bag that I just received.

In the same way as the Adventurer’s Pouch, I was able to insert and remove items from the Adventurer’s Bag. With this, I can shop for equipment without any more worries.

Still, what should I do?

None of the shops in Ramlich sold any useful pieces of equipment. Still, they were much better than the beginning equipment I had, and even with just them I think it would greatly reduce the time needed to gain levels, but if I was going to get something I might as well try for something better.

In that case, I would have to aim for either a quest reward or a monster drop, but the monsters around Ramlich are all low level, and the quests available are all quests from the early game. However, there were also exceptions like Thief Melipe’s Legacy. As an extreme example, the hidden dungeon on the outskirts of the town that only opens after the main storyline had been cleared contained the game’s top class enemies.

Obviously, with my current level and equipment, it would definitely be impossible to clear such a dungeon. But, depending on circumstances it may not be impossible to suddenly come across some strong equipment.

“In that case, I guess I should go to that place.”

After drifting through all of that, my thoughts settled on a particular residence.

“To think that I would be coming here again…”

Guided by my vague memories, I arrived at a normal house that was situated slightly away from the town center.

However, what lay sleeping in this seemingly inconspicuous house was the unique weapon Shiranui that would probably even make it into the top three of my best weapons rankings. Though the words “unique weapon” sound strong, all that it means is that it was a one-of-a-kind item that could not be obtained through any other way.

Since Nekomimineko was not an online game, honestly, there was no point to having multiple copies of the same weapon, so it wasn’t actually all that rare for a weapon to be unique.

As an example, the Rusty Longsword (ATK 3) that I had equipped since the beginning could also not be obtained again, so it was also categorized as an unique weapon.

“This brings back memories…”

In this house lived an old man named Lang, and in contrast to Old Tuto, he was a calm and quiet person.

At the end of the Lang’s quest chain I would be able to obtain the blade I wanted, Shiranui, but this was again quite a troublesome series of quests.

First, after visiting Lang multiple times and getting close to him, Lang entrusts you with a letter to his son in the capital. →Deliver the letter to Lang’s son. →The son then asks you for a favor, and you complete it. →Obtain a reply to the letter from the son, and deliver it to Lang.

Or so the story goes, and eventually at the very end, after receiving his son’s letter,

“It seems that there were some weapons in my old man’s collection. I have no need for them so feel free to take one.”

is what you’re told, and from within those weapons, finally you could get a hold of Shiranui.

This was far beyond just a slight inconvenience.

Still, even without the strongest weapon in its level class – Shiranui – as a reward, this quest was worth doing. That’s because, surprisingly, for being one of Nekomimineko’s quests, this had a good story.

The consideration and a faintly visible love that the socially awkward Lang held towards his son who left for the capital, and the guilt and conflict said son felt towards his father for having left for the capital. Seeing the two’s passing feelings resolved through the letters I delivered was so satisfying, and at the same time so touching that before I realized it the corners of my eyes became wet. It was a magnificent quest that, after clearing it, I genuinely was glad that I chose to do this quest.

At the same time, if you asked me whether I would like to do it another time, I would put my foot down and say no.

To begin with, even becoming close to Lang was exceedingly tough. To get close enough to be entrusted the letter requires listening to Lang’s stories a minimum of five times, but that was very difficult to do. If I recall, during the game I had to visit this house just over ten times.

It isn’t that Lang has a difficult temperament, he’s just quite reclusive, so if you don’t follow up properly then the conversation just fizzles out. When that happens, the event stops there.

When he says “please come again”, he’s actually driving you away, and the next day you end up having to listen to the same story again. While playing the game I thought this person was messing with me by repeating the same things, but I wonder if it’s still the same in this world.

I did want to give it a small test, but at the very least I had no intentions of actually going through with it. My top priority right now was obtaining Shiranui. Right now what I should be thinking about above anything would be how to get Shiranui into my hands.

“Still, what do I do…”

I paced around in front of Lang’s house.

Honestly, this was a highly difficult mission for me.

Due to my lifestyle playing games all day as a shut-in in university, my current communication skills should have deteriorated significantly. Even if that was not the case, honestly, I was bad at negotiating. I wondered if I could properly talk with Lang.

“Come on!”

Stop worrying. Didn’t you even manage to get Melipe’s treasures?

This time too, everything will be fine.

“…deep breaths.”

I took some deep breaths.

As with anything, the first steps are key. If I make a good first impression, then I should be able to get Shiranui in one push!

Preparing myself, I knocked cheerfully on the door of Lang’s house.

“Excuse me! I heard that there was a famous blade here, would you sell it to me?”

And then, a few minutes later.

In front of me was a certain sword.

The weapon of my dreams, Shiranui—I have it!

Truly, money is power!!

Chapter end