chapter3 · 032-ep32

While the World Goes Wild Over Levels and Dungeons, This Hardcore Gamer's Just Gonna Keep Hunting Achievements Nobody Told Me Unlocking Achievements Came With World-First Rewards

Kogaryu

Chapter Three: Black Gate's Clandestine Activities Arc

Episode 32: One Month Since the Expedition

A month had passed since the expedition into the Central Park Gate.

The world had continued changing, little by little, in that time.

Or rather, I wasn't sure if “little by little” was the right way to put it.

School still happened as normal.

Convenience stores were still open.

The trains still ran.

The morning news still covered celebrity weddings, and midday variety shows still introduced newly opened sweets shops.

In that sense, daily life continued.

But the words mixed into that daily life were clearly different from three months ago.

『Today, the government announced additional regions where the Awakener Development Program will be implemented.』

『Unregistered Awakeners have repeatedly entered Gates, and the National Police Agency is urging caution.』

『Regarding the illegal trade of materials believed to originate from dungeons, experts—』

『In response to the growing number of Awakener-related incidents, disparities in each municipality's response have become an issue.』

Every term coming from the TV felt unreal.

Gates.

Awakeners.

Dungeons.

Levels.

Jobs.

Skills.

Just three months ago, those were words you'd only use talking about games or manga.

Now they got used in the news like it was normal.

Getting used to things is scary.

Even words that made me think the world had bugged out when I first heard them gradually became familiar when I heard them every day.

Still, there was no way I could take them in with the same level of feeling as the weather forecast.

No way, but hearing the word Gate on the news didn't surprise me anymore.

Humans are pretty adaptable creatures.

Though I wish I'd put a little more of that adaptability toward studying.

On Saturday morning, I was watching TV with my elbows on the living-room table.

The screen showed the area around some Gate.

Temporary fencing.

Security guards.

Police vehicles.

No-entry signs.

And people holding up their phones a little ways away.

Rubberneckers.

I couldn't say I didn't get it.

All of a sudden, something like an entrance to another world had appeared in the middle of town.

There had to be people who wanted to see it.

I went in at first, too.

...I did go in.

Just went right in.

『The government also plans to tighten restrictions on approaching or filming around Gates without authorization.』

The anchor said it flatly.

Beside him, a university professor who looked like an expert nodded with a serious expression.

『The current problem is not Gates themselves alone. People are beginning to gather around the new value Gates have created. Awakeners, dungeon materials, XP, Skills. These have spread faster than society can build institutions around them.』

Makes sense.

I got what he was saying.

Gates themselves were dangerous, but so were the people gathering around them.

Awakener-related incidents really had been on the rise, apparently.

Assault, extortion, robbery.

Funneling dungeon materials out the back door.

Unauthorized entry into Gate perimeters.

Awakeners attacking other Awakeners.

The news didn't disclose the detailed methods.

But I knew.

At least when it came to Awakeners attacking Awakeners, it had happened close to home.

What Sakagami and the others did.

Targeting Awakeners at the same school to gain XP.

That happened inside a school.

But if similar things were happening across the country, that was no laughing matter.

“...Yeah. Of course it would come to this.”

I muttered softly.

Gates appeared.

Awakeners showed up.

There were Levels, Skills, and Jobs.

With all that in place, there was no way everyone would just behave themselves because of laws and common sense.

Unfortunately, human society wasn't built that cleanly.

Once people knew they could get stronger, some would try to get stronger.

Once people knew they could make money, some would try to make money.

And there'd probably be people willing to step on others to do it.

Thinking about it that way, I could understand why the country was expanding the Awakener Development Program.

Teach them the bare minimum of knowledge and train them.

Keep dangerous people out in the open as much as possible before criminal organizations or shady adults got their claws into them.

Officially, it was protection and education.

In reality, it also included control, statistics, and surveillance.

That was probably it.

It wasn't a pretty story.

Only three months had passed since dungeons appeared.

In just three months, the world had changed this much.

Or rather, it had been made to change.

I turned off the TV and picked up my phone.

There was no Awakener Development Program today.

Because of the nationwide rollout, the schedule for our program, which had started early, was being adjusted a little too.

Apparently they were short on people.

Well, obviously.

Gates and Awakeners kept increasing, but the number of people to teach them couldn't just suddenly grow.

Saeki-san and the others had seemed ridiculously busy lately, too.

Apparently Kujō Masaomi had been sent to help in other regions, so I saw him a little less often.

Not that it was exactly in exchange, but I'd been doing more independent training in my free time.

Of course, I wasn't just training diligently.

Like I'd do something so wholesome-high-schooler-ish.

Well, training itself was wholesome, I guess.

It was just that my goal leaned pretty heavily toward achievements.

I went back to my room, sat down on my bed, and opened my Status screen.

The familiar translucent display floated into view.

Name.

Level.

Job.

Skills.

And achievements.

Lately, I had clearly been spending more time looking at the achievements field.

I couldn't deny it if you said I'd always spent a lot of time doing that.

But since the Job-Exclusive Achievements had unlocked, it had gotten even worse.

Whenever I had free time, I looked at them.

I wanted to look at them during class, too.

I held myself back from that much.

I still had the bare minimum of reason left as a high schooler.

From the achievements field, I opened the Job-Exclusive Achievements section.

【Job-Exclusive Achievements: Enchanter】

【B: Maintain an Ability Grant on yourself for 3 or more minutes】

【Completed】

Since clearing my first Job-Exclusive Achievement in the Central Park Gate, I'd been trying all kinds of things with my Enchanter abilities.

This was one I got along the way.

Maintain an Ability Grant on yourself for three or more minutes.

Just looking at the condition, it seemed pretty plain.

It wasn't about landing some flashy blow.

It wasn't about beating a powerful enemy.

It wasn't about anyone praising you.

Just use an Ability Grant on yourself and maintain it for over three minutes.

That was all.

That was all, but actually doing it was normally tough.

At first, honestly, I figured I could manage around three minutes.

But I was naïve.

The first time, I didn't even last a minute.

Just moving my body a little while keeping a Strength enchant on myself made the back of my head gradually grow heavy.

I could feel my MP dropping.

Or rather, leaking out.

Like there was a tiny hole in the bottom of a water bottle, it kept dwindling away, bit by bit.

When I forced myself to maintain it, my vision went a little dark halfway through.

I honestly felt like I was about to black out.

No, this was scary.

Skills are useful, but use them wrong and they're normally dangerous.

At the time, I sank to the floor and couldn't move for a while.

After that, I tried little by little.

Thirty seconds.

Forty seconds.

One minute.

A minute and a half.

Two minutes.

At first, even extending the time was hard.

But as I repeated it again and again, the feeling gradually changed.

It wasn't that my maximum MP suddenly increased.

But the rate at which it dropped changed.

I should've been maintaining the same Ability Grant, but it wasn't leaking away uselessly as badly as at first.

Like I was starting to understand how to apply the force.

Like I had gone from cranking a faucet all the way open to gradually letting out only what I needed.

It got more efficient.

That was probably it.

No.

In game terms, should I call it proficiency in a case like this?

No proficiency was displayed for Skills.

But I did feel like I was getting better at handling them the more I used them.

Learning a Skill wasn't the end of it.

It was about how you used the Skill you learned.

How efficiently you could handle it.

That made a difference too.

Obvious was obvious.

Just like picking up a sword didn't make you a swordsman, just gaining a Skill didn't mean you could use it well.

That part was strangely realistic.

And on my umpteenth... no, hundred-and-somethingth attempt, I finally made it past three minutes.

At that moment, a display appeared.

【Achievement Unlocked】

【B: Maintain an Ability Grant on yourself for 3 or more minutes】

【Achievement Reward】

【Exclusive Passive Skill: Enchant Stabilization】

【When maintaining an Ability Grant targeting yourself, MP consumption is slightly reduced and fluctuations in the effect are suppressed】

Plain.

Incredibly plain.

But I knew by now.

The plain ones like this were the ones that paid off later.

Off-Hand Strike.

Posture Control.

Enemy Observation.

Contact Perception.

Every one of them was stronger in actual use than my first impression of it.

Enchant Stabilization was the same.

It made maintaining self-enchants easier.

And it worked well with Enchant Echo.

Maintain a self-enchant.

Switch.

The previous enchant stays active.

Then stabilize the next enchant on top of it.

In other words, a fighting style where I buffed myself and moved to the front had become a little more realistic again.

Enchanter.

It should absolutely be a support Job, but in my mind it was steadily becoming something like a self-strengthening Job.

Wasn't that occupational fraud?

No, the system was telling me to get up front through achievements, so I was probably not at fault.

I had better not be.

If I told Nanami-senpai, I had a feeling she'd clutch her head again, though.

I went on to open the Unique Job evolution conditions section.

【Unique Job Evolution Condition Progress】

【Conditions met: 2/3】

【Fixed Condition】

【B: Perform Ability Grants a cumulative total of 6000 times】

【Achieve one more Job-Exclusive Achievement to fulfill the conditions for evolving into a Unique Job】

“...It says fixed, huh.”

The words slipped out.

Well, I'd cleared two Job-Exclusive Achievements now.

One more.

Clear one more, and I'd fulfill the conditions to evolve into a Unique Job.

That's what I thought.

Find an easy-looking exclusive achievement and clear it quick.

Then evolve into a Unique Job.

That was the plan.

But apparently it wasn't going to be that easy.

The last one was fixed, of all things.

【B: Perform Ability Grants a cumulative total of 6000 times】

Unless I cleared this, I couldn't advance to a Unique Job.

Six thousand times.

That's just a heavy number.

I wouldn't want to do six thousand reps even for strength training.

No, achievement system.

Are you the type to suddenly demand a grind at milestone points?

But I got it.

Annoyingly, I kind of got it.

If I really wanted to evolve as an Enchanter, it probably meant I should use Ability Grants themselves over and over.

No idea, though.

Not one flashy use, but plain, steady accumulation.

Six thousand times.

Looking at the number alone, it was a pain.

But on the other hand, the condition was clear.

Use Ability Grants.

Keep using them.

In training, in daily life, in battle.

Each time I used one, I got a little closer.

Thinking of it that way, maybe it wasn't so bad.

Then I sighed once and shifted my eyes to the regular achievements field.

And there was something else bothering me.

【C: Perform a cumulative total of 10,000 jumps】

【Completed】

【Standard Reward: Agility increase】

Standard Reward.

...What's a Standard Reward?

When I'd earned achievements before, that display had never shown up.

The rewards I'd always gotten were passive Skills.

But this time was different.

And it wasn't a World-First Reward either.

Standard Reward.

That meant someone got this achievement before me.

Well, it had been three months.

Awakeners were increasing too.

If you told me I should've just hurried up and jumped ten thousand times, that'd be that.

No, I seriously should've done it sooner.

I'd completely let my guard down.

And clearing this achievement had completed another item too.

【B: Unlock 10 or more different achievements】

【Completed】

This one wasn't a Standard Reward.

That didn't make it a World-First Reward, either.

What was displayed was text I'd never seen before.

【Limited Reward】

【Acquisition Slot: 7/11】

...Limited Reward.

Acquisition slot, seven out of eleven.

What was that?

No, I got the literal meaning of the words.

Of eleven slots, I got the seventh.

That was probably it.

But slots for what?

Who decided how many slots there were?

Or rather, there were already six people ahead of me?

At that point, it was clearly different from a World-First Reward.

It wasn't a first-come, first-served first place.

I was seventh.

That meant at least six people had obtained something of the same type before me.

And yet, the reward wasn't treated as a Standard Reward.

Limited Reward.

Just from the name, it sounded seriously bad.

Or rather, it normally was seriously bad.

The World-First Rewards so far were plenty weird already.

They were passive Skills, after all.

The kind that did their job on their own from the moment I got them, whether I was doing something or not.

How could I not be happy to get something like that?

Or rather, normally speaking, that was already pretty unfair.

But this one was a little different from such easy-to-understand strengthening.

More than whether it was strong or weak, the basic premise itself changed.

That was the kind of reward it felt like.

The moment I saw it, I briefly thought:

Maybe I didn't need World-First Rewards anymore.

No, that was a lie.

Of course I wanted the others too.

Obviously I did.

But to me, it was that big.

And what that reward was, was—

Bzz, bzz!

In the middle of that lonely one-man brain meeting, my phone vibrated.

I looked at the screen.

The name displayed was Mibu Iroha.

I took my eyes off the Status window.

It was incredibly rare for Mibu to contact me.

I'd gotten more chances to talk with Mibu since the Sakagami incident, but I could count on one hand the times she'd contacted me through my phone like this.

I opened the message.

『Do you have time tomorrow?』

Short.

Still no wasted words.

That way of just throwing out the business was very Mibu-like.

I thought for a moment before replying.

『Depends on what it is.』

From the outside, it might look like an enviable situation.

I mean, a girl people made a fuss over like, Mibu Iroha's a little weird, but she's insanely cute, was asking about my schedule.

It was marked read right away.

Fast.

I didn't know if she'd been waiting or just happened to see it.

A few seconds later, a reply came.

『Just going out with me.』

Just going out.

Did that count as explaining what it was?

It didn't feel like it did.

Was this going to be okay?

I had a bad feeling about this somehow.

No particular reason, but

as long as I didn't understand what kind of person Mibu Iroha was thinking like, I couldn't help having a bad feeling.

『Training or something?』

『No.』

『Going to a dungeon, maybe?』

『Not that either.』

『Then what are we doing in the end?』

There was a short pause.

『Looking at clothes, going into a café.』

Then another reply followed.

『In other words, um, it's a date.』

I froze, still looking at my phone screen.

A date.

So it came to date.

No, wait.

This was Mibu.

It probably didn't mean anything deep.

A boy and a girl going out together on a day off, entering a café, looking at clothes.

By classification, that was a date.

There was a good chance she was making that kind of dictionary judgment.

A good chance, but

whether the brain of the person receiving it could immediately accept that

was a completely separate problem.