“Tria... Mahariku-san is being so clingy, it’s annoying, o...!”
“Hey, Colleague. We’re in the real world, remember?”
“Hah. Sorry, o! It just slipped out!”
I couldn't really blame him. Lately, we’d been spending far more time over there than in the real world.
Suppose I work ten hours a day here; I spend three days over there, then come back to the real world to sleep. That’s seven times the duration of my actual work hours. At this point, the game is essentially becoming the primary pillar of my life.
I still don't quite understand how time flows when we're with Mahariku-san. Even if we spend an hour with her, once we deactivate VR Mode, only six minutes have passed in reality. Yet, when I managed to sidestep that Mystery Filter and ask her, she insisted that a full hour had passed for her as well.
Are we time-traveling to her past? I don't know. It makes no sense.
...Anyway, I wonder if there’s a way to bring my backlog of anime and games into that world. I know, playing a game inside a game is a bit much, but still...
“So? Is Mahariku-san’s ‘Second Character’ still taking a while?”
“Looks like it, dao. Apparently, she’s a gladiator slave in an arena, but she said she was so weak it was pathetic, so she’s been doing strength training, o. For a mage character, no less, dao.”
“Strength training even for her mage character, huh...”
Sales is a pretty athletic-minded field, I thought. Then again, I remembered that it took Nika-chan nearly a week of real-world time to get through her first day.
“...By the way, how much time has passed for Mahariku-san herself?”
“Looks like it’s been about three days, o.”
“Well, I guess that’s still on the lenient side...?”
“Compared to a week or half a year passing in a single night, it’s definitely lenient, o-.”
“And how is Mahariku-san taking it?”
That was the most important part.
“She hasn’t even noticed, o.”
“...? Wait, how do you manage to not notice that three days have passed in a single night?”
“She’s just stuck in a loop of waking up, training, passing out, and waking up again, so she has zero sense of time, o. She mentioned she hasn’t fainted this much from exercise since her days at the cadet school, o.”
“Man, what kind of insane training is she doing? I thought she was a mage.”
Actually, a Spirit-possessed shouldn't really feel fatigue, so they should be able to train indefinitely... Wait, training to the point where a Spirit-possessed faints? Is that even training anymore?
It sounded like she was genuinely living the contradiction of doing thirty hours of strength training in a single day.
“Well, she seems to be practicing magic alongside the physical training, so the fainting is probably from magic depletion, dao.”
“Ah. Passing out from running out of MP... Was the system always like that?”
Come to think of it, I’d never used enough to actually run out of MP myself.
And since it was VR Mode, time-skips would occur. From her perspective, she’d wake up almost immediately... Yeah, I could see how you’d lose track of how long you’d actually been playing.
“By the way, regarding the magic, she said that if she holds back the activation, she can actually juggle fireballs, o?”
“Juggling fireballs, huh...”
“But she got scolded because they flew off and almost started a fire when she fainted, so now she’s training her MP by making two fireballs collide with perfectly equal volume and timing, dao.”
“That sounds like a pretty high-level technique in its own right.”
I mean, if she could activate two at once, that meant she could use twice the magic. That had to be a skill like Simultaneous Casting or Double Activation.
She probably picked it up with SP.
“But if she’s a gladiator slave, doesn’t she have to fight for her job? Is she okay being that exhausted all the time?”
“She’s already finished two matches, but apparently, she can suppress them with just technique, o.”
“Technique?”
“The person inside Mahariku-san does martial arts, o.”
“Is it Karate?”
“Dao. Or was it Aikido, o?”
“Being able to utilize real-world skills is definitely a perk unique to VR...”
Moreover, in that VR Mode, she’d have total control over her body. As long as her physical specs were sufficient, she probably wouldn't have any trouble using her techniques.
...So that’s why she was training. I see.
“Is the person inside Mahariku-san actually ripped in real life?”
“...Now that you mention it, it’s a mystery where that body would even hide that much muscle, o?”
“Maybe she’s an enhanced human or a designer baby.”
“That’s a possibility too, o-.”
Well, jokes aside.
“If that’s the case, I guess clearing the scenario involves winning the championship at the arena?”
“Maybe it’s being released from slavery while still alive, o.”
“...Ah, but considering how the ‘Second Characters’ have gone so far, wouldn’t clearing it involve killing the person running the arena?”
“If it’s a large arena, wouldn't the state be the organizer, o? Overthrow of the state, o-? I’ll try asking her, o!”
Right, Colleague could communicate with her. In fact, she was probably the one constantly messaging him.
“She says she has a history with the current champion, o!”
“So it’s a revenge-type scenario.”
“Killing the current champion she has a grudge against to clear the scenario... That sounds exactly right, dao!!”
“And once she clears it, she can escape by joining up with her ‘First Character.’”
I hoped they could join up soon.
That was what I was thinking, but—
—Mahariku-san failed to clear her Second Character scenario.