Work was over. I checked the Wiki, and as I expected, it was a scene of absolute chaos.
The game systems were so inconsistent that it was bound to happen. The number of scenario examples under the "Story" tab had grown quite a bit.
The guy who kept dying, Takuro, had finally managed to start his Heartwarming Slow Life on his sixth character (technically his first to survive) after a stint in extreme cold survival.
However, his role was "Graveyard Manager"... a Gravekeeper. For some reason, human bones kept turning up in his Home's Field, so he spent his time building graves and performing memorial services for them. Talk about being loved a bit too much by the God of Death. He had even built graves for all five of his previous characters while he was at it.
Arulu, who had been the first to report a Second Character, had supposedly hired a fourth person. A supplementary note mentioned that these were "subordinates," meaning she might technically still be on her first player character. It seemed the Halos above her subordinates were just simple circles.
Counting them up—herself plus four subordinates—she might actually be on her fifth character. The gameplay styles varied so wildly that even counting characters caused discrepancies. Apparently, she had been with a Second Character—well, a subordinate—from the very start.
The Horse Beastman racing game followed a similar logic. The player was a "Trainer and Runner," and they counted their "Team Members" as their second and third characters. They could even give instructions during races.
If I had picked the racing game for my second character, I wonder if I’d be spending my days surrounded by teammate girls? That sounded pretty fun in its own way. Apparently, other players were on different teams, and they were competing fiercely. Races were split into "Normal Races" with no interference and "Destroy Races" where attacking and interference were allowed.
It all sounded like a blast, but...
"At this rate, they're going to need separate Wikis for every game system just to stay organized."
This game was absolutely mental. Should I write about my Monster Action story too? Looking at the list, I didn't see anyone else playing as a monster yet.
Oh, right. Wasn't someone trying to create a World Map? I checked the "Map" section of the Wiki. It had been updated. There were screenshots of everyone's map screens. They were trying to piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle, matching coastlines, shared Towns, and landmarks to make a grand map.
It looked like a nightmare, though. Just like my colleague said, even when coastlines matched, Towns would be missing, or two Towns with the same name would be in completely different spots. People were posting things like, "I went to meet them, and they weren't there!" or "Are we even on the same continent to begin with?"
The most promising info came from someone traveling the coast to map the whole continent... but they had been killed by a monster while in Auto Mode. They suffered a Lost and gave up. Rough. My condolences.
I wonder if the Republic of Majark is on here... Oh, found it. One of the screenshots used as a puzzle piece mentioned a "Majark District." A District? Not a Republic?
Ah, I see. Another case of same name, different place. It was probably just a naming overlap. The game likely pulled place names from a specific list during procedural generation. Then it just tacked on "Empire," "Republic," or "District" to finish it off.
If the terrain followed a set of patterns too, that would explain why coastlines matched while the towns didn't. I'm betting the map-making difficulty increased as a side effect of the developers cutting corners with procedural generation.
It didn't look like anyone else had realized that yet. Maybe I'd leave a comment about it. Just a theory, though—I wasn't taking responsibility for whether it was right.
What about the time distortion? I searched for "time" but only found people saying things like "time is melting away" or "not enough time" because they were enjoying the game so much.
Then I found a comment: "I won't say what it is, but get to Level 30. Your world will change. You'll be blown away."
That was definitely talking about VR Mode. There were three replies: "I forgot the time and ended up late," "Sorry, that steak was a god-tier item," and "Wait, is this even legal? This is insane."
So there were others who reached Level 30 and entered that "VR" thing besides us. I gave that comment a quiet "Like." Especially the guy who ate the steak.
I really wanted to ask what it was like, but I shouldn't pry. I'd stick to the Like. ...But damn, I really wanted to know what it tasted like! Depending on how things went, I might just blow some SP to eat a steak as Miti-chan just to give her a change of pace!
No, no. Stay calm. Don't waste SP. The Home. I needed to secure a safe spot and then get the Home.
Man, if I could just deploy the Home and turn it into a Safe Zone while I'm playing hide-and-seek in this facility, I'd buy it in a heartbeat. But it needed space and it would stand out too much. Even if I bought it now, I couldn't use it.
There were also comments confirming that SP is shared with the Second Character. No one mentioned the Spirit's name, though... but everyone used handles on the Wiki anyway, so I guess it wasn't a big deal.
Alright, Wiki check complete. Time to go see Miti-chan. Well, "seeing her" might not be the right way to put it, but I was ready to dive back in.