IGTL Chapter 59

Chapter 59 – Emergency Quest “Monster Interception Battle”

“I actually came…”

The next day, I was at Kanda Myojin in Akihabara, one of Japan’s top power spots.

Kanda Myojin was famous as an anime pilgrimage site, but apparently it could also perform rituals to ward off bad luck.

When I passed through the torii gate that served as the shrine’s main entrance, I saw the magnificent Zuishin Gate further ahead.

The Zuishin Gate marked the entrance to Kanda Myojin’s sacred grounds.

Apparently, everything beyond that point was considered holy territory, but honestly, I didn’t really get it.

“Cold…!”

The water at the purification pavilion was freezing.

It was strange. Washing my hands there really did make me feel purified.

After cleansing my hands at the purification pavilion on the left side of the Zuishin Gate before entering the sacred grounds, I passed through the gate and went inside.

Once I entered, the main sanctuary sat directly in front of me.

According to what I’d read online, this sanctuary embodied Kanda Myojin itself, and the bad-luck warding ritual was apparently performed inside it. Did that mean I was going inside the god’s body to be purified or something?

I didn’t really get it.

After passing in front of the somehow divine-feeling sanctuary, I entered a brand-new building that didn’t feel like it belonged in sacred shrine grounds at all, the Culture Exchange Hall, and signed up for a bad-luck warding ritual.

Apparently, Kanda Myojin didn’t require advance reservations for bad-luck warding rituals, and they accepted applications on a rolling basis at the prayer reception desk.

The offering fee for the ritual started at 10,000 yen.

That was quite a steep price.

Still, if it could drive away my bad luck, then it was cheap… or at least, that was how I chose to think of it.

I went into the Culture Exchange Hall, headed to the ritual reception desk, and said that I wanted to receive a bad-luck warding ritual.

“Excuse me. I’d like to have a bad-luck warding ritual performed…”

“Yes. A bad-luck warding ritual, correct? Please fill out this application form at that writing desk over there.”

“Okay. Got it.”

I took the form, filled in the prayer request, address, name, and so on at the desk, then submitted it along with the offering fee.

“Then please put on this purification stole and wait in the visitors’ waiting room. We’ll guide you in roughly every twenty minutes.”

“Understood.”

Just as the shrine maiden instructed, I put on the purification stole and entered the waiting room. There were already two other people sitting there besides me. Apparently, they were there for the same ritual too.

While I sat there waiting, a shrine maiden came to call us.

“Thank you for waiting. I’ll now guide you inside the main hall.”

Guided by the shrine maiden, I removed my shoes and entered the main hall, then took a seat in the worship hall.

After that, a drum was struck, and the bad-luck warding ritual began.

I had no idea where I was supposed to do what, but apparently they explained things as they went along.

A Shinto priest recited a short prayer called an oharae-kotoba and purified me with a hemp wand. Then, on behalf of the worshippers, the priest conveyed the prayers to the deity in traditional Japanese.

I bowed my head quietly and waited for the prayer to finish, and then the shrine maiden rang a blessed bell.

Guided by the priest, I proceeded from my seat to the altar, offered my prayers with a tamagushi (sacred branch), bowed twice, clapped twice, bowed once, and returned to my seat. After the priest’s greeting, I drank sacred sake (Japanese rice wine) imbued with the power of the gods, received the offerings, and left the main hall.

Apparently, that meant the bad-luck warding ritual was over.

The ritual had been conducted in a solemn atmosphere.

I didn’t really understand it, but somehow, I felt like my bad luck had been lifted.

I put the offerings into Item Storage, then left Kanda Myojin.

“Alright. That should’ve taken care of my bad luck…”

And sure enough, I made it back to Candeo Hotel without anything happening.

That was major progress.

When I entered the room, the mattress pad and bath towels had all been replaced with fresh ones.

Even the toilet paper.

Magnificent. I really had been right to go get my bad luck warded off.

If anything bad happened again, I’d go back to Kanda Myojin for another ritual.

“Now then, what should I do next…”

I’d confirmed that the paid items still worked, and I’d dealt with my bad luck too.

There were still plenty of paid items sleeping inside Item Storage, but now that the Yggdrasil Shop was gone, getting more would be difficult.

That said, just because they were hard to get didn’t mean they were impossible to obtain.

“For now, maybe I should check whether the Adventurers’ Guild can buy them…”

A lot of the players trapped in the world of DW were short on money.

If I put out a request, I should be able to gather a lot of paid items.

“—Connect ‘Different World’.”

After logging into the world of DW, I left the Drowsing Inn and immediately headed for the Adventurers’ Guild.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!

“Hm?”

As I reached the main street, the sound of bells rang throughout the entire royal capital.

Could that be…?

“T-This is bad! A stampede broke out in the forest near the border with the Ligion Empire!”

“The Adventurers’ Guild just issued a compulsory request! All adventurers A-rank and above, hurry to the border at once!”

“Right… Now that you mention it, this was a thing. Emergency Quest ‘Monster Interception Battle.’”

Put simply, it was a multiplayer event where a huge number of players worked together to intercept the monsters pouring out of the forest along the border near the Ligion Empire.

“But man… I’m not really feeling it…”

After all, this was an interception battle inside a game that had become reality.

Back when the stampede interception battle was just a multiplayer event, you could join without worrying too much since your life wasn’t really in danger. But now that the game world had become reality, that wasn’t the case anymore.

What should I do? Maybe I should fake a stomachache and bail?

But it was compulsory, so…

If I’d known this was going to happen, I would’ve lowered my rank to the bottom rank.

I mean, nobody would normally expect something like this, right? Not in a game world that had become real…

…No, wait.

Wasn’t this, in a way, actually a chance?

When this world became reality, Odin reset every player’s stats back to zero.

In my case, that wasn’t a problem since I could level up easily by using the paid items I’d stored in my My Room warehouse, but for players stranded in this world, getting past level 100 in two weeks should’ve been extremely difficult.

And honestly, I couldn’t imagine the players trapped inside the game wanting to participate in an interception battle like this.

On top of that, if you performed well in an interception battle, you could get a decent reward from the Adventurers’ Guild and the kingdom.

I had the Elementals with me. This was an opportunity.

Stampedes also spawned a lot of pretty rare monsters.

Some of them were the kind that normally only appeared in the deepest parts of dungeons.

“Yeah… I’m going after all.”

My resolve was set.

All that remained was to hurry to the scene and wipe out the monsters.

Using the paid item “Move Yggdrasil,” I teleported near the border via Transfer Gate “Yggdrasil,” then took out the scooter I used all the time in the real world from Item Storage and sped toward the battlefield.

“H-Hey! Where do you think you’re going at a time like this!? If you go outside, you’ll die!”

A soldier called out to me while I was passing through the gate.

“It’s fine, it’s fine! I’m an S-rank adventurer.”

“Huh? An S-rank adventurer? In that case, the gathering point is…”

“I know, I know!”

In emergency quests, the basic rule was usually gather on site and exterminate on site.

Saying that, I passed through the gate, only to see an army of monsters of every shape and size kicking up clouds of dust as they came this way.

“Whoa, whoa, what is going on here?”

There weren’t any adventurers outside the gate.

Hadn’t all the A-rank and above adventurers headed for the border?

In the game, it was always on-site interception, wasn’t it??

Thinking something was off, I looked toward the fortress walls protecting the Central Kingdom and saw soldiers shutting the gate. They must have decided that keeping it open was too dangerous now.

Up on the walls, the adventurers and soldiers were preparing to intercept the monsters from safety, readying their weapons.

“…Y-You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

So that was what that soldier had meant.

I’d rushed all the way to the front lines thinking I was joining a multiplayer event, but apparently I’d come to the wrong gathering point.

When I thought about it, that was only natural.

There was no way anyone could process that tidal wave of monsters out there on site.

It was way too dangerous, and attacking from the top of the walls was obviously safer.

That said, the gate had already been shut.

I stopped the scooter, put it back into Item Storage, and let out a sigh.

If I wanted to survive, I’d have to fight, but if things got really bad, I could always log out.

Having made that contradictory sort of resolve, I turned a blazing gaze toward the Elementals.

“Alright. I’m counting on you, Elementals. You’re my only hope. I’ll support you as much as I can too. Go wild!”

The moment I said that, the Elementals began glowing in a rainbow of colors.

Still, was it going to be rough taking on that many monsters with just four Elementals and me?

I stole a glance toward the border and saw the monsters charging this way. It didn’t look like I had much time to think.

Desperately, I scrolled through Item Storage, searching for anything useful, anything at all that could help turn this situation around.

And then I found one item that looked like it might actually save me.

“T-This is it!”

Its name was “Elemental Evolution Ticket.”

As the name suggested, the Elemental Evolution Ticket was a paid item that existed for the sole purpose of evolving Elementals. It could only be used when an Elemental had already been raised to its maximum level. After this item was released, because of how absurdly hard that requirement was, it became a tragic paid item that no one had ever used even once.

I selected “Elemental Evolution Ticket” from the menu bar, designated the Elemental I wanted to evolve, and tapped “Use Item.”

The moment I did, changes began to appear in the Elementals.

The body of the flying red orb, Salamander (Fire), suddenly burst into flame, and that flame took the form of a bird, transforming it into Phoenix, the higher fire spirit.

As for Undine (Water), water overflowed out from the blue orb, and just when that overflowing water took the shape of a giant octopus, it transformed into Kraken, the higher water spirit.

“O-Oh damn…”

This was bad. Seriously bad…

The visual effects for the Elemental Evolution Ticket were just insanely flashy.

More than that, they were huge. This whole place was like a gathering of all the Ultraman monsters!

But the evolution of the Elementals still wasn’t finished.

Sylph (Wind) blasted out smoke wrapped in lightning from its green orb form, then transformed into Djinn, the higher wind spirit, a burly, tough-looking old guy wearing a turban, while Gnome (Earth) rapidly swelled up from its earth-colored orb into Behemoth, the higher earth spirit, a giant hippo.

They had gone from palm-sized orbs of light to giant monsters in one insane leap.

Having witnessed that utterly ridiculous evolution right in front of me, I slumped my shoulders in defeat.