[No Title] [Kaede]

Lv 18 HP 250/250 MP 48/48

STR [0 + 7] VIT [145 + 94]

AGI [0] DEX [0]

INT [0] LCK [//:Maple--wKwsD]

Actual VIT: 5736

Offensive Skills:

[Kicking] [Tail Whip (Equipment)] [Implosion] [Chaos Eater]

Support Skills:

[Provoke] [Shameless] [Red Herring (Attached to Shameless)] [Pressure Chamber] [Temperature Regulator] [Starved]

Passive Skills:

[Giant Killing] [Absolute Defense] [Tough Skin, Tough Soul] [Meditation] [Diving X]

[Poison Immunity] [Paralysis Immunity] [Filth] [Disgust Ignorance] [Dangerous Sleeper] [Pressure Immunity] [Careless]

Misc Skills:

[Kin II] [Swamp Girl] [Greater Skill: Sin Fragment: Vanity]

Equipment

Head [Greater Slime (Kin)] Vit + 5

Body [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Right hand [N/A]

Left Hand [Horn of the Horned Rabbit] Str + 7

Legs [Dire Wolf (Kin)] Vit + 9

Shoes [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories [Horns Of The One True Lord] Vit + 10

Accessories 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Accessories 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 1 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 2 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 3 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 4 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

Extra Slot 5 [Horned Rabbit (Kin)] Vit + 7

The world isn’t satisfied.

The world shakes with power.

…

It defies all our will

And tramples asunder

Crushing us under the heel of farther

…

I won’t bear you the torment

That they think you deserve

For falling victim to a game

Of their burdens and glee

…

Be aware in the future

We will meet together

In a place most call evil

But for beings like us

We call it home

…

Make haste even if you don’t know

My true name and power

Because the gods wish to strip you

Of life and honour

Binding you on display

In their game, their world, their treasure

"Uwah…" Kaede yawned.

Slowly, the sounds of snoring stirred at her consciousness, the resonant and grating sounds edging her out of the comfort and warmth of her sudden nap. Then, as her mind slowly began to drift out of the false sensations of dreams, her drowsy but waking mind registered a distinct smell, something oddly familiar. A sweet aroma that almost smelled exactly like...

It smelled like grass jelly.

She liked grass jelly!

Quietly, she blinked once, then twice, slowly registering the world around her as her senses finally began regular function.

Her eyes, wet and bleary, blurred her vision like a window in a storm.

Slightly annoyed by this, she closed her eyes and let the morning tears stream down her face, her eyes which had been mostly closed for the last few months, cried off the buildup of impurities, preparing her eyes to face the morning air. With her muddled morning drowsiness fading away and her awareness rapidly returning, she slowly opened her eyes.

Now open, Kaede's eyes were greeted with the plush forms of her friends, her monsters, piled up around her like a pile of plushies, their bodies shifting with each breath. She practically squealed at the adorable sight. The awkward pile of monsters surrounding her reminded her of the many cute pictures of cats sleeping together that Risa was so fond of sending her back when she first got a mobile phone from her parents for Christmas.

Of course, it wasn't quite the same, considering these monsters were either poisonous or built for combat, with horns and sharp claws everywhere. But Kaede wasn't complaining. The nice sensation of their warm and fluffy bodies on her practically naked self easily made up for those visual imperfections.

Now awake and aware, Kaede, noticing her upper body was free, pushed her arm over her head and stretched, shaking her head in the process. Considering her head was still that of a slime, the motion jiggled her hair oddly, sending an alien sensation through her, causing her to stifle a few cute giggles. Then, she slowly sat up, cringing slightly at the stiffness of her neck and back. She hadn't felt it at the time when she woke up underground, but the atrophy and stiffness caused by her previous extended slumber were clear to her now. Still, she bit her lip to stop any involuntary moans of pain from slipping out, not wanting to wake up the snoozing pile of monsters that blanketed her.

As she sat on the ground, mentally chastising herself for falling asleep again just after taking a multi-month nap, she silently opened up her menu to check the time.

A slight glance at the glowing blue screen in her eyes told her that it was 3:00 in the morning, though Kaede didn't feel too muddled by the awkward waking time, considering she had already slept for months, so it wasn't as if she lacked the sleep she needed at the moment. However, she didn't think the same applied to her living and breathing blanket, who, despite her not-so-subtle movements, kept snoozing away, likely still in a deep sleep. So, as the benevolent master she was, she decided to allow the crew of monsters that dutifully waited for her to rest after waiting for so long. With her decision held, Kaede lay back down onto the damp floor, not wanting to risk getting up and waking them all up.

Thinking to herself, Kaede reckoned that it would be several hours before her posse was fully rested and ready to wake up without her needy prodding, so she figured that she had some time to kill. Though what to do during that time was the question Kaede needed an answer to. As she lay on the floor motionlessly, she looked up and stared at the ceiling, noting the poisonous moss that covered the damp and humid ceiling seemed to produce a small but noticeable amount of ambient light. The moss didn't produce enough light to interfere with sleeping, but it was enough light to allow Kaede to look around without needing some form of night vision.

She sighed as she mulled over the fact she had just deduced. It was one of those mysteries that Kaede kept in the back of her head as she adventured through the dungeon. Unlike those that appeared in video games, the dungeon she had inadvertently entered had no torches or other alternate sources of light that could explain her ability to see perfectly while inside of them. It was one of those reasons why she didn't actually want to enter the dungeon at first, as she had no method to create light at the moment, which meant that if she did enter the cave, she would be entering blindly. However, at the time, her nostalgia-bound and absentminded self had forced her in anyways. Thankfully, that never ended up being a problem, thanks to the power of bioluminescence.

She closed her eyes again and tried to doze off again, though her body seemed to have other plans. The warmth and fluffiness of her friends did not feel nearly as comfortable as it had when she first piled up with them during her daring return from being buried alive. Her body, now awake and alert, had no intention of falling to the lull of warmth and comfiness that she once fell for, back when she was weary and tired from escaping her muddy predicament.

Grumbling at this, she reopened her eyes, looking around the cave for something interesting she could use to distract herself with. As she moved her head around, a whiff of a faint but familiar scent came upon her. Her eyes widened as, at that moment, she remembered the sweet and pleasant scent of grass jelly that had tickled her awake in the first place. Though faint, the scent was still around. So, she began to look around the cave for the source.

Unfortunately, that search quickly began to look fruitless, much to Kaede's chagrin. With her limited range for searching, it was immediately clear after a few look-arounds that wherever that smell was coming from, she wouldn't be able to find it in her current state.

With the scent of grass jelly stuck on her mind, Kaede sighed. The ghostly pangs of hunger struck her mutedly, reminding her of the fact that she hadn't eaten for months, let alone had a proper, warm meal. She drooped down dramatically at the thought. "Uu.." she quietly moaned.

Then, as her mind swirled with thoughts about food, she perked up as she remembered that she had stored some food inside of her hair prior to her false funeral. Invigorated at the thought of eating again, she pinched her hair to see if any of the "edible" flowers she had come across were still in her hair. It was at that moment that a massive whiff of grass jelly entered her nostrils.

It turned out that the petals of the flowers that she had stored in her head had changed in the boiling temperatures she exerted while using [Implosion]. The flowers naturally contained the oxidising agent, potassium carbonate, as the flower could magically produce a poisonous gas by using the chemical in conjunction with several others. In addition, aside from the other odd chemicals inside the plant, which mainly consisted of actual poisons, the plant itself bore a considerable resemblance to the mint-like plant that was actually used in the production of grass jelly. So when Kaede used [Implosion] for the first time, the flowers trapped inside her slimy hair boiled in the heat. And as Kaede shifted her temperature back to room temperature using [Temperature Regulator], the faux grass jelly stopped boiling and began to solidify into a gelatinous state. The end result was that all of those ingredients trapped inside of her hair managed to coincidentally reach a point where they could produce the same reaction used to make grass jelly. Although the end result was actually a slightly modified grass jelly with only a few minor differences, one of which being the fact that 30 different deadly poisons had ended forming inside.

Of course, Kaede knew none of this and just saw that there was suddenly grass jelly in her hair, and so she ate it. Without a care in the world, Kaede had unintentionally consumed something that would have actually melted her insides had she not been literally immune to all poisons due to [Poison Immunity]. Though considering her track record back in NWO of eating literal bombs because she thought they tasted like carbonated popping candy, this was expected of her.

As she finished her snack, she reclined back down onto the muddy ground, staring up at the ceiling. Then, with boredom back on the menu, she mentally cursed her body for not allowing her to rest despite the fact she was already very clearly rested. But as her thoughts moved towards why she ended up resting in the first place, she idly remembered the damage that her [Implosion] skill had caused mere hours ago, a skill she didn't remember acquiring but had anyways.

She quickly pulled out her menu and stared at the list of skills she currently had. As she expected, there was a boatload of new ones she didn't recognize. It seemed that for some odd reason, she only ended up checking around half of the skills she had earned from being lazy and sleeping in an odd location.

Why did she do that again? Oh right, the skills were being sassy.

Pouting at the memory of her skills criticising her, she scrolled down the list of skills, hoping there was a skill among that list that could let her rest her already rested body beyond the power of regular rest, so she could fall asleep and wake up when everyone else was awake. But for now, at the very least, perusing her skill list was amusing enough to pass the time with.

The first new skill she decided to explore was [Pressure Chamber]; while not a skill that would aid in her journey to attain more rest, it was a mystery skill she had no knowledge of aside from the fact it was the parent of the two new skills she had used to get out of her tomb of dirt and mud, [Implosion] and [Temperature Regulator]. So with that in mind, she quickly scrolled down the list of skills, selected [Pressure Chamber] and began skimming it over.

[Pressure Chamber]

User can automatically adjust body functions based on the surrounding pressure. User can also adjust internal and external pressure within a radius based on INT.

Requirements: Survive intensive pressure for an extended period of time without using equipment to defend yourself with.

"Ha…. Pressure, huh?" Kaede whispered to herself, a tiny bit of confusion in her voice. Pressure? What exactly did it mean, the ability to adjust pressure? She felt a slight twinge of pressure around her head as she tried to figure out what this "pressure" meant, though that pressure was more mental pressure than any actual physical pressure. Digging up the remnants of her memories from her barebones Japanese schooling, she remembered that pressure existed as a factor on gases and liquids. She also remembered that messing with pressure when humans are around usually meant death, whether from an exploding pressurised container or an environment with either too much or too little pressure, causing problems with the liquid and gas components humans used to stay alive. That information in itself brought more questions to the table about the skill's limitations. Could she use this ability to mess with the surrounding pressure in combat, thus incapacitating enemies via exploding their lungs? Or, perhaps she could create a vacuum around her to filter out and isolate substances like poison gas? Could she exert enough pressure on water to cause it to boil? From the vague description she was given, several ideas came to Kaede's mind, ideas she would have to try later when she wasn't a bed for a pile of monsters.

Metaphorically shrugging to herself, Kaede went back into her menu. She quickly skipped past another new skill, [Pressure Immunity], as the meaning of the skill was evident, making the nonexistent movements involved with pressing that button pointless. However, as she skipped past that skill, another interesting new skill piqued her interest.

[Starved]

User is permanently considered "Hungry". User gains a bottomless stomach. User gains access to Dark Magic. If user does not eat for an extended period of time, user will become more aggressive. Skill can be turned on or off.

Noting that the skill was currently turned off, she wondered for a second if it was a good idea to turn the skill on. She considered her current situation, staring around at the various monsters surrounding her. It was already an established fact that she had been asleep for a significant amount of time, which also led to the deduction that she hadn't eaten a proper meal in that amount of time as well. Adding the fact that she was already hungry before she fell victim to the lizard's daring plot meant that if she turned it on, she would probably leave no survivor behind, friend or foe. So with logic as her sponsor, she decided to keep the skill off… at least until she found a place where a bottomless stomach would come in handy.

Then again, she also wondered how the "bottomless stomach" the skill provided would end up functioning. Would it end up making her fat when she ate, or would it instead digest her food automatically through some magical means without affecting her appearance? Maybe both?

She also noted that there was some tactical value to waking up with this skill enabled alongside an empty stomach before facing a potential fight in the future with some enemy that she couldn't beat alone. In that hypothetical situation, increased aggression and access to Dark Magic would be quite the boon.

She ended up giving the skill a few minutes of her time, paid in thoughts... and sticky notes on her metaphorical fridge that metaphorically existed in her mind. Metaphorically.

After eventually vowing to experiment with the skill later on, Kaede moved forwards down the list of skills and located another new one.

[Chaos Eater]

Dark Magic that sends magical shadows of hungry faces at the opponent, inflicting rot and also consuming them if possible. Damage is dependent on INT. 4x damage when hungry. Consumes 15 MP.

Requirements: Learn via Dark Magic, or obtain [Starved]

This skill was clearly the "Dark Magic" that [Starved] alluded to in its short description. However, this fact didn't mean much to Kaede due to the fact that the skill depended on INT for damage, making the "4x damage when hungry" element useless to her as she didn't plan on sparing any points for her INT. She did, however, note that the spell inflicted rot damage, a type of damage she didn't exactly know about, as she had never heard of it back in NWO.

In NWO, there were many types of damage programmed into the game, and some of those sounded close to "rot damage", but none of those sinister soundings skills ever actually mentioned "rot damage" in their texts, usually alluding to some form of dark or decay damage or in rare cases, poison damage.

She mentally noted that this was something else that she needed to experiment with in the future. Perhaps she could simply use the element of rot the skill provided without inflicting regular damage.

With that in mind, she moved on to the skill underneath it. At this point, Kaede was pretty happy with the new skills she had obtained. They were all pretty helpful, and more importantly, not a single one of the new skills insulted her very being! However, as she moved to open the next new skill, she felt a sense of dread come upon her. "Oh no… is it one of those?" she thought to herself as she read the name of the skill, [Careless].

...

...

...

And she had been on such a great streak. Was this going to end it?

Kaede mentally braced herself as she opened the skill's description, making sure she wouldn't accidentally activate any of her newfound skills in the presence of her posse.

[Careless]

You are careless, so very careless. You jump into danger like an anime protagonist opens doors with changing women on the other side. Clearly, your parents don't do good at their job, so we will do it for them. Your menu will now bonk you when you make a stupid decision that may result in fatal consequences.

Requirements: Put yourself in mortal danger and do nothing about it for an extended period of time.

"..." Kaede stared at the offending skill in question, a blank expression plastered on her face. "Eh… It's just like Risa scolding me..." she silently exclaimed.

It was a pretty well-known sight back at her old school to see Risa spouting long lectures and scolding sessions at Kaede, sessions that Kaede was not exactly a fan of. As a generally klutzy person with a disposition for adventure, Kaede often found herself making decisions that Risa thought were dangerous and moronic. It even got to the point where Risa was able to read the signals that Kaede gave off when she was up to something adventurous, giving her plenty of time to catch her before anything happened, leading to more scolding sessions that Kaede had to sit through. Though as Kaede reminisced her past memories a bit closer, she realised in hindsight that around the time she began playing NWO, Risa was beginning to scold her less and less.

With this new information, she silently cheered to herself, figuring that Risa was probably laying off the scolding because she was growing up.

In reality, Risa really did stop trying, partially because her adventures shifted from the real world to the in-game world and partially because she just couldn't keep up with Kaede's wandering anymore. There was only so much good athleticism and fitness could do when trying to quell a force of absolute curiosity.

Shifting her focus back to the present, Kaede pouted as she reviewed the new skills she had checked over so far. Unfortunately, while she did appreciate the new skills she had obtained, none of them she had looked at so far could grant her wish of a peaceful night rest after a peaceful night rest. Instead, it seemed that she had no other choice but to give up and find some other way to amuse herself for the next few hours. Before that, however, she took one more careful look at the skill list, skimming over the many skills in her roster, looking for anything out of place. There was still a possibility that she missed something after all. As she scrolled down the menu for the last time, a slight difference caught her eye. Although not technically a new skill, she noticed beside her [Kin] skill, now laid a small Roman numeral that represented the number 2.

Kaede was a bit surprised when she noticed it at first. Back in NWO, specific common skills, usually ones related to some form of regular activity that people would commonly end up repeatedly doing in a typical session, had the option to be upgradable over time. To signify which skills could be upgraded, Roman numerals were attached to the ends of those skills.

Now that she saw Roman numerals on her trusty [Kin] skill, that meant it was an upgradable skill, and somehow she had managed to reach its second tier, despite not knowing how. Intrigued by this new information, Kaede selected the updated skill and read it over.

[Kin II]

Obtain all abilities [Kin] gives you. In addition, you can now store your allied monsters in a "Creature Box" which can be summoned at any time. You also gain notifications if something happens to one of your monsters.

Requirements: Use Kin to get over 50 monsters. Have many of those monsters engage in combat. Treat your monsters well.

"Uwaaa…" Kaede exclaimed. The evolution of her beloved [Kin] skill was shocking, to say the least. Although it was disappointing that she wouldn't get any new slots for equipment, the "Creature Box" the evolution provided was totally worth it. Free access to free storage for her massive fluff pile of monsters, with a guarantee of their safety? It was everything Kaede wanted!

Although this skill didn't aid her in her search for sleep, it did make that point moot as the reason she wanted to sleep in the first place was that it was the only way to pass the time quickly without boring her to death. However, now that she had [Kin II], she could simply place all of her sleeping friends inside an interdimensional box and do something else while they sleep.

It was a perfect solution, barring any unknown consequences that happen when plans face the enemy. But jokes on you world, Kaede doesn't have a plan in the first place, therefore making this a perfect solution despite the fact she clearly has enemies.

Without wasting a moment, Kaede triggered [Kin II].

The moment Kaede triggered the skill, an odd feeling began to run through her. It wasn't an unpleasant feeling, just a strange sensation that felt like ice and needles running up her arm. Responding to the odd feeling, Kaede looked down at her right hand. To her surprise, she saw it glowing brightly, with a small translucent prism floating above her palm.

Instinctually, Kaede flicked her wrist, and the prism shattered. As the pieces broke apart, they began to rotate simultaneously, slowly forming a portal. Then, Kaede began to feel the odd feeling crawl up her spine and then in her mind, as if it was prompting her to do more. Mentally, Kaede accepted the prism's prompt and looked at her friends surrounding her.

As if understanding Kaede's intentions, the void that swirled above her palm opened up and slowly but surely, the sleeping monsters that covered her began to disappear. White pixelated particles surrounded them as they seemed to freeze before disappearing. Then, when they were gone, a notification appeared on her menu.

In addition to confirming the safe passage of each of her monsters into the creature box, each notification showed several new details about the monsters in her care, such as their levels, equipment, affection status, and most importantly, their health statistics. With a quick glance, Kaede checked over the monsters that she had stored in the creature box, noting that all of them were still fast asleep and perfectly healthy. However, she also noted that one of the Horned Rabbits seemed to have a different status attached to him, currently greyed out. Unfortunately, pry as she might, Kaede's attempts to get the status to react to any of her inputs resulted in failure.

Upon closer inspection, Kaede realised that the Horned Rabbit that seemed to have been singled out from the rest of her monsters was the one wearing the armour she had obtained earlier in the dungeon. In fact, now that she thought about it, that particular Horned Rabbit was also the one that greeted her first when she returned to them after her harrowing underground ordeal.

Was this particular rabbit special for some reason? But, aside from the armour Kaede had provided him, she didn't notice a single difference between him and the others. Quickly, she took another look at the statistics screen, willing the prism that held the creature box to appear in her hand. Once again, she confirmed that the Horned Rabbits in her possession were all the same level with only minor differences in statistics and affection.

Perplexed, Kaede decided to explore this puzzle later, preferably when the Horned Rabbit in question was awake.

With the weight of her monsters released from her legs, Kaede stood up and stretched her legs. She groaned as dreaded pain spiked up her slender rabbit feet into her wolf legs, a clear reminder that while some of NWO's rules were in play, things like fatigue and internal pain were still very much real in this world. Nevertheless, she soon shrugged off the minor pain of muscle aches and turned back towards the giant stone door in front of her. She eyed the door carefully, remembering the defeat she had received months ago.

At first, to Kaede, a prideless being, this didn't really invoke any kind of particular emotion in her. If anything, she was still in awe at the fact that she had been outmanoeuvred by a bunch of monsters in the first place. Then, she remembered that it had been months since the last time she had a meal, and even then, she didn't even have anything proper to eat. All this time, she had been using [Swamp Girl] to maintain her energy, but as she was still a human, her stomach didn't really like this.

Although she had a muted sense of hunger, something likely caused due to [Swamp Girl], the fact that she had not eaten for months was beginning to get to her. Thus, psychologically, she felt phantom hunger pains crawl within her despite her skills negating the need to eat regular food. At the end of the day, a few poisonous petals and some jelly can't replace the gaping void that persists after months without a nice, warm, cooked meal. There was also the fact that she was in a completely different world right now, and she was still coming to terms with having left her previous life behind.

Kaede would never admit to it, but most of her friends knew that spiritually and emotionally, Kaede was a strong individual. So if something went wrong, she would be last to break down. This trait of hers seemed to amplify with the presence of others. But as she stood in front of the cold, stone door that she had crossed many times, her legs failed to move forwards.

She stood there eyeing the door, unsure of herself. At the end of the day, Kaede was human, a human that had been through quite a lot. Although it had been months since she had been transported to this world, she had only been a conscious member of the world for a few days. The reality of the situation, though very much delayed, was finally settling in.

With no witnesses to see, Kaede's smile faltered. It was a sobering feeling, realising her life's basic needs and loves were no longer freely available to her. Throw as many harems and bullshit magical powers as you want at an isekai protagonist, but at the end of the day, most will never feel their parent's love again. Most will remember the guilt of leaving their loved ones behind. Most will have to learn to fend for themselves without the gifts of modern, sterile life.

Hell, even the internet was a pipe dream away. Thousands and millions of content and information that most people took for granted, no longer within reach. It was the truth of starting over. Memories and information from another world could only do so much to balance the fact that isekai’s throw people into a new world. A world where you don't get the vital experience of childhood.

You become a new person.

Your sense of your old identity will have to fade to fit in.

Your childhood wisdom, things like common sense will be overturned.

[Skill (Existential Crisis) has been acquired]

[Skill (The Internet) has been acquired]

...

...

...

"Eh?"

Excuse me, but WHAT?

Risa was calm at first.

Having known Kaede for as long as she did, she was well-versed in the young lady's adventurous side. So, when she turned to her right, expecting to see Kaede snoozing about in the middle of their Japanese History lesson, she wasn't too surprised to see the seat empty.

While Kaede was never one to skip lessons or school in general, Risa had expected it to happen eventually. But, of course, there was no telling what the girl would do nowadays; puberty at its peak had turned Kaede's old predictable fun self into an even more fun Kaede, but with far more randomness. After all, there was a reason she ended up as the poster girl of NWO.

Still, it was weird to be staring at an empty seat in the middle of a class, but it couldn't be helped at this point. She would have to scold Kaede later.

Of course, the sensation of calmness is usually indicative of control, so much that when control is lost, calmness follows suit. So, when Kaede didn't turn up to Math, English and P.E, Risa began to suspect something wasn't quite right.

Usually, she would be perfectly okay with the scenario, considering there were many possible explanations for Kaede's absence. She could be sick or caught up in a family emergency after all. But the looks of confusion on her teacher's faces when she failed role-call, and the fact that her things were still scattered across her desk put doubt in her mind that it was as simple as that.

Still, she told herself that Kaede was probably fine and that all the signs she was seeing of the opposite were nothing but paranoia. But, of course, this sentiment didn't last long.

It was now deep into the evening, and Kaede had still refused to answer her calls. All she received was Kaede's peppy voicemail jingle, telling her to leave a message for later. Later on, Risa quickly learned that Kaede's cell phone was left at the school as nobody had bothered to pick up her things despite the girl's noticeable absence. But when she rang up the home phone number and asked Kaede's parents, she learned that they were in just the same amount of panic she was.

At this point, Risa was more than concerned. Her brows scrunched up as scenarios milled through her head at lightning speed, each fueled further by her rapidly growing anxiety. Had Kaede been kidnapped? Certainly, she was an attractive high schooler, one that Risa had to push away from lecherous college students more than once before. However, there was also the fact that she was probably one of the most well-known NWO players in the world, so a targeted kidnapping was undoubtedly possible.

However, considering there wasn't a ransom note in sight, Risa decidedly shut off her thoughts about that possibility, as if it was true, then it was a worst-case scenario. Running through other possibilities in her head, she also rationalised that Kaede could have simply gotten lost while adventuring.

Sure it was a stretch, considering that Kaede had mysteriously disappeared in the middle of class, but it was still a possibility. The only problem with that theory was that the tracker she had secretly attached to Kaede was gone, unlike everything else she owned. This tracker was the latest edition piece of technology that was directly attached to Kaede's hairclip and was designed to be resilient to removal by anything other than removable by human intervention while being able to output a tracking signal from even the deepest caves on the planet. Unfortunately, this meant that its removal and flat-out disappearance were more likely to result from human interference by someone who could recognize and negate the tracker.

Furthermore, if it did come off by accident, that would imply that Kaede had ended up in an accident in the first place, an accident with enough force to cripple the sturdy tracking device. Even worse, no such accident was being reported on the news and Kaede's parents had received no calls from the hospital either, which meant if she did end up in an accident like the one she was imagining, she was likely lying down somewhere, injured and unable to get help.

Wanting to get that gruesome possibility out of her head, Risa rationalised that Kaede wasn't airheaded enough to go adventuring without her mobile device... wait, no, she is.

...

Thinking harder, Risa also decided that there was also the possibility that Kaede had spurred a secret relationship with someone and had simply eloped, which honestly was even worse in her opinion. If that was the case, then not only had Kaede failed to tell her best friend about it, but again, she left during the middle of class which meant that this hypothetical boyfriend was "available" outside of school hours, which made Risa shudder.

Lying down in her bed, she sighed to herself. Maybe having Kaede practically glued to her for the majority of their lives was starting to take its toll on her. Kaede was 16, and she was perfectly capable of taking care of herself for the most part. She was probably fine; not responding to her parents or getting her school supplies were probably easily explained by some form of incident, and there was no conclusive evidence that pointed towards her being in danger.

Breathing in and out to ease her anxiety, Risa fell asleep, holding onto that hope that she was missing some obvious piece to the puzzle of Kaede's disappearance. Weirder things have happened after all.

...

...

...

That hope eventually faltered into despair, deep despair.

Months passed after Kaede's disappearance, and Risa had to face the facts.

Kaede was gone.

On her second day missing, Kaede's frantic parents filed out a missing person report to the police. Risa found this out after her phone woke her up in the middle of the night, blaring out an Amber Alert corresponding to Kaede's disappearance.

That day, she didn't go to school. Knowing she was friends with Kaede, her parents understood and even supported her decision. With kidnapping being the leading theory to Kaede's disappearance and Risa being one of Kaede's closest friends, her parents were worried that she may be targeted next.

Although no explicit or even circumstantial evidence led to the kidnapping theory, police could only rule the disappearance as such, even though that theory had many complications and contradictions.

The evidence was horrendously odd. Police had gone through all of Kaede's items and meticulously combed through them for evidence and fingerprints, but none of the items had anything suspicious. Certainly, there were the odd fingerprints or two, but they were all traced back to other students who went to the same school she did and thus, each of them had solid alibis.

Moreover, the evidence got even odder when one considered the fact that Kaede, herself, had a solid alibi seconds before her disappearance by multiple witnesses in her class. It was as if she had vanished from thin air. Which, funny enough, despite being a theory that defied all known laws of logic, was plausible enough for consideration because of the fact that among the items recovered as evidence was literally everything she brought to school that day, including the clothing she was wearing, with the exclusion of a single hair clip.

Now Risa wasn't a conspiracy theorist, but even she ended up considering some of the wacky and common theories that her fellow classmates claimed were the truth. The students had come up with many different theories that ranged from Kaede deciding on the spot to play ninja and streaking across the school nude, somehow unseen by everyone, before suddenly remembering she was naked and hiding in the wilderness until she found enough garbage to pass as clothing, to theories that claimed that she had pissed off the boogieman, which she by pure luck had discovered to be real and was now in a dungeon 1 kilometre underground, being tickle tortured for a life sentence.

The sad thing was that no matter how batshit the theory was, Risa couldn't outright deny them because no logical explanation that didn't involve some stretch of the imagination could explain the disappearance.

And this led Risa to where she is now. Sitting down in the Maple Tree guild in NWO, watching over the twins Mai and Yui with glassy eyes.

Maple Tree had changed significantly since Kaede's disappearance. At first, many of the guild members didn't even notice Maple was gone, as players going offline for a bit wasn't uncommon and easily explained. But as weeks passed and the investigation got bigger and bigger, the news ended up revealing officially that the girl who vanished was also the poster child of NWO, Maple.

By that point, most of the other guild members had already asked Sally about Maple at least once each, usually for something game-related. She would reply back with offhand comments each time, dodging the request before logging off.

When the news broke that the missing girl was actually Maple, the guild members were hit hard.

Kanade and Chrome hadn't logged in for months.

Mai and Yui spent hours in the guild house, crying onto each other's backs. They rarely ever left the house and even skipped school in real life.

Iz, who turned out to be one of the police officers on Kaede's case, logged in rarely, always seeming tired. She never spoke about the case to anyone.

Kasumi only logged in every day for a single minute before leaving. Risa felt like that minute was to check if Maple was online.

But, the reaction from the fanbase of NWO was even bigger.

Forums ran rampant with different theories by different people, pointing fingers at everyone, from the police to the school to even the game developers. With conclusively lacking evidence released to the public, people spent hours speculating on Maple's disappearance, causing even the forum website itself to crash twice during the passing months.

Fanart depicting Maple sprawled out of control on art websites like KissIv and DeviousArt, with many showering the guild with condolences in their descriptions and asking others to look out for the young girl who was spirited away.

Many influential individuals of the community, from streamers to Jutubers, made hundreds and thousands of videos and streams, promoting awareness of the situation and providing their tributes to the Maple Tree guild and their missing leader.

And from the developers of the game came a whole sweeping network of reactions. One week after the reveal of Kaede's disappearance, the Maple Tree guild house was gifted a marble statue of Kaede with the inscription: "No other player will ever be like the great founder of this guild. If she has truly left this world, we all as a community will miss her."

A week later, a charity was formed by one of the game's lead developers, dedicated to funding the efforts of finding missing children like Kaede. It was one of the most successful charities of the century. Risa herself, donated the winnings she earned during the last gaming competition before Kaede's disappearance.

Later on, as hope within the community faded as the months passed, more easter eggs continued to surface through updates, from missing posters depicting Maple, to an impregnable boss that sat in a new secret passage of the Hydra Cave.

Overall, the game was hit hard. People were miserable, and everyone's morale had hit its lowest, including Risa.

...

...

...

*plonk*

Sitting on her bed in the middle of the night, Risa sighed to herself as she stared past the window of her room at the stars outside. She winced as the feeling of vibrations reverberated around her nether region, no thanks to the lazy placement of her phone on her inner lap.

Tiredly, she picked up her phone to check it, idly wondering who would dare disturb her when she had already told her other friends not to talk to her. Months after Kaede's disappearance, she was still in a state of shock, borderline mourning. But she refused to mourn because she was convinced her friend was still alive. Even if the evidence wasn't showing it.

As the phone lit up, she noticed that she had a new message on her phone from one of her friends, Maple. She gritted her teeth in anger as she closed her phone, not bothering to read the message.

Tears beaded on the edges of her eyes as she looked back out the window. She just wanted to be alone right now. Kaede was still missing, and no matter how much she got her hopes up, every day blew by without her ever showing up. Just like how hopeless the investigation was becoming, so were her own hopes of finding Kaede alive.

She was trying her best to remain strong, but the futility of the situation was tearing her heart to pieces.

...

...

...

Eh.

Hold up.

MAPLE????

Risa immediately jumped to her phone and turned it on.

A/N: The plot thickens. Also, there was going to be another segment this chapter, but since I left you all for a month or two, I decided to release the chapter after I finished the Risa segment - v -

[Existential Crisis]

You can modify the mechanics of this world by swapping them with their equivalent version in NWO. Only usable once a day and wears off at exactly midnight of that day.

Requirements: Self-Explanatory.

[The Internet]

You have a powerful 5G connection to the internet of your homeworld. Activates by thought and appears in the menu. However, the connection is powered by your MP, so use in the middle of combat might be a bad idea.

Requirements: Be a good girl and ask the world nicely for some internet.