“How—how are you able to do so much work?” Vala asked as I lifted more cubes of stone into the wheelbarrow.
“I exercise. Have you ever considered it?” I asked her.
It was the final batch of stone cubes. After another couple hours of work, we managed to not only gather a hundred and twenty-two more stone cubes but also fifty more wooden logs. Having the gloves and tools that Window gave me made it easy. All I had to do was run around, chop down a tree, run to the next one, chop it down, and repeat. When I needed more stone, I used the PickAxe on every single large rock that I could find.
We may have given the forest a bald spot when it came to trees and rocks, but we had enough materials to get some towers built which was all that mattered.
“No way! That’s way too much work,” Vala said, genuinely looking scared at the concept of considering exercise. “Besides, look how cute I am! Muscles are nice and all, but I don’t want any.”
“Why not?”
“Because. What if I dropped something? Or what if somebody put something on my back? My muscles would get in the way and make things more complicated! And they’d weigh me down which would make moving around a pain. Life is already hard enough without muscles.”
“You’re not going to get muscles so big that they would inconvenience you if all you do is workout. You would just get, you know, more energy so that you don’t have to take two naps in a day and then still be tired. Unless you’re lifting some seriously heavy weights, you won’t turn into some hyper bodybuilder.”
“You’re forgetting the fact that exercise takes time away from vidya and sleeping.”
“No, I’m not forgetting it, I’m just telling you to take time away from those.”
“Wh-why would you say something so horrible to me? You’re going to lower the love points if you say something like that!”
Despite her complaints about exercising and lowering love points and all of that, she still seemed like she was having fun with me in the forest as we gathered wood and stone. Maybe it was the fact that we were gathering materials for our “game,” but all that physical labor didn’t seem to bother her.
I had to admit it, though. Chopping down trees and mining rocks in the forest for a couple of hours with a lazy dragon girl was pretty fun—relaxing, even. Maybe it was because I thought she was good company or the fact that I was just out and spending time in nature, but I enjoyed it. It was something I would do again even if my muscles were sorer than I was letting her know about.
My only worry was that I was going to wake up the next day with pulled muscles all over my body. That wouldn’t be as easy to hide as some simple soreness.
Well, I figured I’d deal with that when it came to it. After all, if she could make the sun blue, she could probably get rid of all pain and soreness.
That meant I could go all out without worrying.
“So, am I ever going to get hear about your own stories? I’m sure you have more interesting stories to tell me than me telling you about that time I accidentally threw a corn dog at somebody,” I asked Vala.
“Oh, no, that was like the best story I’ve ever heard! I don’t have anything to compete with that,” she answered.
“Come on. You’re a dragon. You’ve been alive for how long?”
“Hmm… I dunno. I lost count a long time ago, but it’s definitely at least… I–I don’t want to say it now that I’m thinking about it.”
“It’s not like a few hundred years or so are going to matter. I’m already figuring you’re at least five hundred given how long the tales of you go back for.”
“It’s… a lot more than that.”
“It’s not like it matters. Seriously. Nothing changes if you’re suddenly two thousand years old instead of five hundred. You’re still way older than me either way.”
I looked over at her since she went quiet.
She was tapping her fingers against the handles of the wheelbarrow and looking away.
It was at that moment that I became very curious about just how old she truly was. Her reaction made me think she was far more ancient than just being hundreds or maybe a couple of thousand years old.
Part of me was tempted to tease her by calling her a grandma or something similar to that. The other part of me knew that doing so was most likely going to result in, as she would put it, “losing a ton of love points.”
Really, I just didn’t want to get slapped.
I got slapped just for calling a girl two years older than me “grandma” back in high school. I wasn’t about to call a dragon potentially hundreds, thousands—millions of years older than me a grandma. If my face stung from a high school girl, I didn’t want to know what a slap from a dragon was going to feel like.
“Anyways, you mentioned thinking up strategy earlier. Got any ideas?” I asked.
“Some, but what about yours?” Vala asked back.
“Well, I know that the meta strategy for tower defense games usually ends up being stacking the highest damage-dealing AoE towers while having a few specialized towers to deal with anything strong, but this is just the first night here, so it should be like a first level, right?”
“Probably! I’ve got no idea what Window will end up doing, but I told her to make things fair and to scale normally and stuff.”
“Then we’ll probably be fine with one bow tower and two melee towers. They’re going to come from two different paths, so we could have the melee towers locking down each path with the bow tower between them so that it can support both sides.”
“I see, I see! That should work. What about us?”
“What about us?”
“We’re the only two heroes available, and two heroes can be chosen!”
“Right. I’m guessing… that makes us like the super strong units or something that are stronger than the towers?”
“We will be after we level up more. Right now, we’re probably a bit weaker than the towers are.”
“So, we’ve got levels?”
“Yup! Try asking for your ‘Character Information.’ That should work!”
“Alright. Uhh… Character Information?”
|
Drake Hunter (lol)
Level: 1
HP: 100%
Damage: 2
Defense: 4 (+1)
Some loser virgin who abuses cute, innocent, informational status windows and will probably stay a virgin forever because he’s—STOP SHAKING ME!
|
“So, I do two damage and have four defense. Or is it five?”
| Five. The +1 is from wearing the gloves. Now stop shaking me or I’m going to throw up! |
“You don’t even have a mouth.”
Window created a mouth where her text was supposed to be in order to stick her tongue out at me.
“You have to eat or drink to throw up.”
| What? You think I don’t eat or drink just because I’m an informational status window? Wow, you continue proving how much of a windowist you are. |
“Alright, then what’s your favorite food?”
“Favorite drink?”
“Not bad, Window. Not bad at all.”
| It’s about time you realize how amazing I am. |
“At the very least, you don’t have a bad taste in alcohol.”
| I would offer to drink with you sometime but— |
“Wait, are you even legal?”
“You’re like a sassy, bratty teenager. I’m not sure if you’re mature enough to be drinking.”
| I—I was given the intelligence of a mature adult! |
“You know what? I don’t even care. This world doesn’t make sense and it’s not like we’re back where we used to be, so it’s not like those laws apply here.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyways, if you’re going to be here, can you at least tell us what sort of enemies we’ll be fighting?”
And with that, she vanished.
“Do you know anything about our enemies?” I asked Vala.
“Nah. It wouldn’t be fun if I had spoilers. Don’t you think spoilers are the worst?” Vala asked back.
“Depends, but in a situation like this, some spoilers would be nice.”
“It’ll be okay. Probably. So! Back to my question. What about us?”
“Right. The hero thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, there’s no point in only choosing one hero if we can choose two and we’re the two available ones, so I guess we’re both… going to be fighting, too? The problem is that I have no idea how to fight.”
“Just swing your PickAxe at everything. Chop chop!”
“Wait, we’re not going to be fighting anything living, are we?”
“You’ll see.”
“I’m not going to fight and kill anything that’s alive.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m going to worry about it.”
She looked up at me and smiled before saying, “I promise you don’t have to worry about it.”
I was still suspicious, but I decided to trust her. “Alright. Then, if we’re the heroes, we’ll just be on standby behind the melee groups to help out wherever is needed.”
“I wanna fight though.”
“You can fight after we figure out where we need to fight.”
“I guess. Hey, you’re not like, one of those super duper meta gamers are you? The kind of person who min-maxes everything and is super boring and takes all the fun out of things. You’re not like that, right?”
“I mean, I’d rather not be like that, but I figured that’s what kind of person you were looking for if you wanted some virgin to play games with.”
“Oh, nah. I like you how you are! That sort of tryhard stuff is super boring. Anybody who actually takes games that seriously is why most games aren’t fun anymore since everybody has to develop around the people who are just going to min-max everything and not try anything fun but suboptimal.”
“You’re probably offending people again, but I don’t care. I agree with you. It’s like how MMOs never offer people unique, fun builds anymore. Classes are always forced to be played the same ways, and even if there are choices to play them differently, everybody is just going to choose whatever the top players have decided is the best way to play.”
“Right?! MMOs used to be so fun! Now they’re all just clones and so boring!”
“Yeah. That’s why I stopped playing them. They were only any fun if you had a good group of friends to play with, or a really active guild or something, but… anyways, it’s getting dark and we’re finally back. Let’s get these towers ready.”
“Right! Then, once we’re done defending, it’s bedtime!”
“I was going to tell you that we don’t have beds to sleep in, but it’s not like we haven’t already slept in the grass anyways.”
“Exactly. Plus, I can just use you as a bed again. Or a body pillow. Either works for me.”
“Yeah, yeah. Anyways, ‘Tower Building.’”
We were lifted into the air again and those glowing circles appeared around the paths once more.
A single, dirt road led from my greenhouse toward the forest before splitting into two. Those glowing circles with the build icons floating above them were lined up along each side of the road, and then there were three circles between the two roads where they were split.
To follow the plan from earlier, I “clicked” the air in the direction of one of the building icons near the right, split road and then selected a Warrior Tower. A blue circle appeared around the tower on the road, and if this was like any other tower defense game, then that would be where the troops could deploy to.
Those same beavers from earlier popped up out of the ground around the glowing circle, put up construction signs, and put up a large tent over where they were building. The tent itself was only about as tall as a two-story house, so I guessed that the tower wasn’t going to be too tall after all. It looked like it would be more of a base of a tower rather than an actual tower.
Next, I built a Bowman Tower between the two paths right where they split. A blue circle showed up around the tower that covered both sides of the road, so that meant it could target any enemies coming down either road even if they tried hugging the far sides of the roads.
“Want to do the honors for the last tower?” I asked.
“Sure,” Vala answered, selecting another Warrior Tower to be built for the left road. “All set!”
I looked down at the ground and noticed that all of our gathered materials were gone. Either we had the exact amount, or those beavers decided to take some extra stone and wood as tax. Regardless, it felt bad seeing all of our gathered materials gone after we spent so much time gathering them all. Then again, the whole point to gather them was to build the towers, so I couldn’t feel too bad about it.
“Have any idea what our towers are going to look like? The troops?” I asked.
“Nope,” she answered.
“Do you know anything that I don’t about this world?”
“Nah, not really. I just know that it’s going to be a ton of fun with you!”
“It’s not going to be fun if we’re killing living things.”
“You really don’t have to worry about that.”
“I’m trying not to, but I’m still worried.”
“That’s okay. That just means you’re a really good guy. This world is supposed to be like a game but you’re still worried about hurting others. I like that about you!”
That might have been the first compliment I was ever given by somebody from a girl—from anybody other than my parents or teachers. I wasn’t able to resist turning away because I knew that there was an embarrassing color on my cheeks. Being complimented so genuinely like that—from a dragon—was just…
It was nice.
While we were still up in the air, I selected both of us as the heroes but didn’t notice any changes other than it showing us as the selected two. We were then lowered back to the ground as the three crews of beavers got to work.
“Anyways, I’ve got my PickAxe. What about you? You can use the wannabe spear I made earlier,” I said, looking over at the spear—the Pointy Stick.
“Ooh, I can use a weapon you made? That’d be fun! I’ll be… I’ll be like some sort of hybrid class! Like, I’ve got a spear, and then I’ve also got my claws, my breath, and my magic. I’m gonna be totally awesome.”
“What was that about using your claws and breath?”
“You’ll see,” she answered with a confident smile.
That confident smile of hers only made me even more worried.
“Wait, what are we going to do about food?” I asked.
“You like gardening, right? Just grow some for us! I’ll maybe hunt, and you garden.”
“You know gardening takes time, right?”
“You know that magic means that gardening can happen super fast, right?”
“You know that I’m not used to these things and am not always considering that I’m now in a world where magic can just make anything conveniently happen, right?”
“You know that you should just stop worrying and instead think about how to have more fun, right?”
“Focus on having more fun… right.”
“Right!”
“If I starve to death, just know that I’m going to come back as a ghost to haunt you.”
“Woah, you can do that? I—I don’t even know how to do that and I’ve been alive for—”
I looked down at her face only to see her zipping her own lips.
Literally.
She was actually zipping her own lips.
Where once were lips was instead a closed zipper.
“I’m guessing that you’re basically applying cartoon laws to this world?” I asked.
She mumbled against the zipper and nodded her head.
“You’re ridiculous.”
She unzipped her lips and said, “Thanks, onii-fam. Being ridiculous is fun.”
“What the heck is an ‘onii-fam?’”
“Come on, you’re a virgin! You should know memes and weeb references.”
“Would you stop insulting virgins everywhere?”
She giggled and then a lightbulb appeared above her head. Again, it literally appeared above her head. “Oh! Try saying something that will make me really excited.”
“Like what and why?”
“Trust me, just do it.”
“Alright, but I have no idea what I’m supposed to say.”
“Come ooooonnnn. You can do it.”
I sighed and said, “Full-Life 3 finally got a release date.”
Her eyes grew wide and… despite the fact that she was a dragon, a pair of cat ears matching her hair popped up on top of her head to twitch with eager excitement.
“Sweet, it worked!” Vala said, reaching up to grab and squeeze her own cat ears. “I saw this one really cute manga where a girl was drawn with cat ears whenever she was excited, so I thought it’d be cute to try it myself.”
“So, now you’re copying comics for your own world? Isn’t that lazy?”
“Are you forgetting who you’re talking to?”
“The laziest dragon in all of existence?”
She let go of her cat ears, letting them disappear, to shoot her finger guns at me with the usual, “Pew pew,” sound effects.
“If you’re going to have cat ears, can I have a tank?”
“Like, a paladin?”
“No. I mean like a giant pew pew kind of tank that blows things up and runs things over.”
“If you build one, probably. Maybe one is in the building menu somewhere but it’s hidden since you don’t have all the parts yet.”
“It was just a random thought for fun.”
“Perfect! That’s what we need more of! More random, fun thoughts! Window can add all sorts of random, fun things for us that make no sense and serve no purpose other than to be fun.”
“I have a feeling that this world is going to end up having a ton of different themes and genres mixed into it if that’s how it is.”
“Sure, why not? Who cares as long as it’s fun?”
“Fair enough. Anywa—”
The sky turned several shades darker, the road glowed to illuminate the paths despite there not being any obvious light sources, and a tall, metal tower with a flashing, red light popped up from behind the trees.
Floating, white text appeared in the sky next to the tower that read, “Wave: 1/5.” Three hearts floated below the text.
When I looked behind us, I saw three, large, red hearts that looked more like the emoji kind of hearts than literal hearts on my greenhouse door.
Monstrous noises came from behind the trees outside of our sight. To make matters worse, the towers still had another couple of minutes on them before they were done, meaning we would be forced to fight ourselves if we wanted to protect my greenhouse and the hearts on its door.
“Looks like it’s starting!” Vala said, flinging the spear I made into the air with her tail, grabbing it in one hand, and then spinning it around before striking what looked like a cool battle pose.
It would have been a cool battle pose instead of like one if it wasn’t for the fact that all she was wearing was my oversized shirt. That, combined with her messy hair, kind of took away any seriousness from how she looked.
As for me, I picked up my PickAxe and held the axe end of it forward.
“Ready, partner?” Vala asked, looking at me from the corner of her eye as she spoke in some sort of wannabe cool, confident voice.
“Wait, what happens if we get hurt or if our health drops to zero percent?”
“You worry too much!”
And so, rather than relieve any of my worries, she charged forward using her wings to give her a speed boost.
I had no idea just how crazy the first battle of our “game” would turn out to be.