After the game started and Saiki clicked "Start," a mode selection screen appeared. Saiki looked at the Hard mode and the Easy mode, deep in thought.
[Akihisa said this game is already really hard to begin with. If I pick Hard mode, the difficulty will probably shoot up even more. For a newbie, Easy mode is safer.]
Saiki moved the cursor to Easy mode. Just as he was about to confirm, he shook his head and hesitated.
[No! Who am I? I'm Saiki Kusuo!! The guy who can eat three huge bowls of coffee jelly in a row (◍ ´꒳` ◍).]
[What kind of game haven't I played? It's just some option. Based on Akihisa's level calling it "really hard," it's probably nothing to me. If I pick Easy mode now, that'd be way too unchallenging. Yeah!]
Saiki switched back to Hard mode and hit confirm. Saiki arrived at character creation—only male or female, with faces and clothes. Weapons and everything else? Nope, nothing customizable. For the male, just a leaf covering the crotch. For the female, two illusion leaves on the chest plus one big leaf.
[This game's pretty bold with the exposure, huh… but…]
Saiki looked at the wobbly, lopsided character models.
[But with this art style, even if it's fully exposed, it's not like it matters much. It's fine.]
After Saiki chose male, a sealed door slowly opened. Golden light poured out from inside, the screen shifted, and he arrived in a forest.
Saiki controlled the leaf primitive man and took one step. The narrator voice rang out, and a system-like box appeared on the panel.
[Congratulations, brave one, on arriving in this world. Next, to defeat the Great Demon King and save the world, please take your first step: go prepare your equipment. Step 1—chop wood.]
[So that's how it is. It's one of those creation-type games where you even have to make your own gear. Chopping wood, huh? But where's the axe?]
After the narrator finished, the dialogue box disappeared. Saiki could now move freely, but the character in his hands had no weapon or axe.
[No axe, so how do I chop wood? With my hands?]
Saiki controlled the character to a tree, clicked attack, and the leaf man stretched out his right hand, chopping at the tree over and over.
[He really is using his hands. Whatever, it's just an obscure game. The production isn't detailed enough, logic can slide.]
Thinking that, Saiki controlled the character chopping hand by hand. He could even see the tree's health bar—100, dropping one per hit.
But as he watched, Saiki noticed something off. His own character's health bar appeared too—20 points. Every chop deducted one from his own bar as well.
[What the—? No way this ends with me chopping myself to death?]
Saiki didn't quite believe it and kept controlling the leaf man to swing.
After chopping until his health dropped from 20 to 5, the speed deliberately slowed. The leaf man went from one chop per second to, after each chop, shaking his hand and pounding it twice. Bruises and blood appeared on his hand, then another chop—finally hitting zero. The screen gradually grayed out, bang bang.
[Character death. Victory and defeat are common in war. Great hero, please try again!]
[Okay, my bad. This game really has detail.]
Moments later the character revived. Saiki controlled him back to the tree—the chop marks from before were gone.
[What a pain. There should be health regen soon, right!]
Saiki controlled the leaf man to chop 15 more times, then stood still. No change to the health bar. He went back to the respawn spot—bang bang again.
[Great hero's HP is too low. Please go fish by the river to recover HP.]
The screen even kindly provided a fishing rod.
[Fishing as a way to heal? Sure, I guess. I like fishing anyway.]
Saiki controlled the leaf man to pick up the rod, went to the river, cast it, waited just 30 seconds—a fish bit. The character grabbed it and ate it raw on the spot, recovering one HP.
[So that's how HP recovery works. But 30 seconds for one HP, and chopping deducts one HP per hit. That means two HP per minute regen, so I'd need 50 minutes just to chop down one tree!]
After a quick calculation, Saiki stared incredulously at the game in front of him. This could seriously be called trash.
[Calm down. You run into games like this in gaming all the time. No big deal.]
Finally, after recovering to full 20 HP, Saiki went back to the tree and started chopping again. One swing—the screen froze…
Saiki stared blankly for a full 10 seconds before realizing.
[No way… it froze again.]
A classic symptom of trash games—suddenly freezing mid-play.
[It's fine. It's just a game. If a little thing like this makes me lose control of my emotions, then what's the point of playing trash games anyway.]
Saiki kept his cool, restarted the game. Actually, he'd played plenty of trash games before. Playing ones like this was great for training his mindset and temper control—ones that rarely made him break. At home, only two had ever appeared, and he'd cleared both.
In the end, Saiki watched the stinky three-minute, lightning-fast opening again without hesitation, chose Hard mode once more, and continued chopping wood.
Finally, after 50 minutes of fishing ordeal, Saiki chopped down one tree.
After the tree fell, some equipment dropped. Saiki controlled the character to pick it up.
[Ding! Congratulations—you obtained boots, obtained pants, obtained headgear, obtained clothes, obtained wooden club.]
Saiki nodded in satisfaction. After equipping the full set, the character looked way more presentable—at least not as ugly as before. His HP bar had jumped from 20 to 50.
[Congratulations, protagonist, on obtaining the full set. Next, please have the protagonist craft a weapon. The source for crafting weapons is diamond.]
Saiki saw a big arrow on screen pointing a few meters away from the tree—at a huge chunk of stone.
[Diamond, huh? So I have to mine it? Not chopping again, right? But if it is chopping, this wooden club in my hand should boost attack power!]
Saiki controlled the character to the diamond, which was five times bigger than him, and swung—just like chopping the tree.
[Sure enough, it's chopping. But at least it won't deduct HP this time.]
Just as Saiki expected—no HP loss. But a new panel appeared on the weapon: Durability.
Durability: currently 49/50.
Saiki swung once—wooden club durability dropped by 1, diamond had a health bar too—200 total, dropping 1 per hit.
[This is kinda unfair. Diamond having more HP than a big tree is one thing, but why is the wooden club's damage still only 1?]
Unconvinced, Saiki unequipped the club and attacked bare-handed like before—damage 0.5, then his own HP dropped by two.
Total 50, now 48.
Holy crap…