"So this is a VR game, huh... It feels so real..."
After running for about a minute, putting enough distance between us and the two would-be pick-up artists, Miyabi and I slowed to a stop.
They shouldn't be able to follow us this far.
As if to reaffirm her senses, Miyabi was stretching her arms and taking in the surroundings with visible wonder and interest... When she suddenly raised a quizzical voice, her dainty finger pointing at something hovering in mid-air.
"Huh? What's that?"
Floating around her were small spheres, roughly baseball-sized, orbiting her in a loose cluster. At least a dozen of them. Each one had a tiny lens on its face, all trained on Miyabi with what could only be described as keen interest.
"Hmm?!"
What surprised me was how familiar they looked.
'That's... the God's Stream Camera?!'
Except—it couldn't be. Nobody from the old timeline had ever mentioned God's Stream being present at launch. What I knew was that it had only started following me around five years in, after I was the last player left. And looking more closely now, the design wasn't quite the same. Similar, but different. The ones I remembered weren't mechanical like these—they'd looked more organic. Like flying eyeballs, if anything.
'So these aren't God's Stream Cameras. Something modeled after them, maybe. Or the other way around.'
[FriedLiver: LoL, they don't know that Heaven's Path allows live viewers to control cameras?]
[CharaOu: Hey, beauty~! Can you do this pose for me~? [link]]
[NoLifeKing: ☠☠☠]
Chat bubbles floated above each camera just like God's Stream—which settled that question well enough. Whether this inspired that, or vice versa, I couldn't say.
"Looks like we've got an audience," I said, clarifying. "Pulling off the first PK right after launch probably drew some attention."
"Oh! So there are real people behind these things?" Miyabi blinked, then went slightly pink. "That's... a little embarrassing, honestly. I'm still in newbie gear and everything..."
Basically, everyone had the same attire. Nothing but underwear and a white cotton shirt and brown short pants. It was the very definition of not looking presentable!
[MeatyBun: It's fine, it's fine. It was a feast for the eyes~!]
[Granger: Jiggle~ Jiggle~]
The cameras had already drifted as close as physically possible to her chest—limited by the system to about 2 meters away from her.
"..."
I mean. I admit she is quite well-endowed, so I couldn't entirely fault the logic. But still...
"Ignore them," I said, shaking my head. "We need to focus on leveling up."
Right—no time to waste.
Legendary classes were first-come-first-served, and every minute spent standing around was a minute closer to someone else claiming what I was after.
"Hunting~! Let's go, let's go~!" Miyabi lit up immediately.
However, we were both currently empty-handed, which made hunting a fairly rough prospect.
Not entirely hopeless, though. We "could" beat monsters with our fists, too. But...
"If I recall correctly..."
I waved my right hand down to pull up the system panel, tapped on the mail icon, and found exactly what I was looking for: the Newbie Support Package. Something that all players should receive upon entering the game.
I hit claim and started explaining to Miyabi what she needed to do—only to find she'd already equipped the sword from her own package without prompting. A plain, rough-smelted blade with no decoration, offering an underwhelming 8-10 damage.
Small boost, but more importantly, having a weapon in hand made the feel of attacking much easier to internalize.
I opened my own inventory next.
Extracting the bundled package gave me five bread, three water bottles, and a single weapon selector ticket. The ticket covered a wide range of options—a plain sword like Miyabi's, or something considerably more niche.
"For my weapon..."
I scrolled through the list, looking for a specific entry.
One that almost nobody would think to pick, because at a glance it didn't even qualify as a weapon. But it was exactly what I needed to unlock the secret Legendary class I was aiming for.
"There it is." I tapped the name.
Blue pixels began materializing in front of me, assembling themselves piece by piece into a long shaft. I reached out and took hold of it as the rest followed—the butt with its slightly pointed tip, and then the long flag unfurling from the top roughly three meters from the butt.
A War Banner. Attack correction: zero.
"Is that... a spear?" Miyabi asked, squinting at it.
"No." I held it up with some pride. "It's a banner. A weapon with literally zero damage."
"Then isn't it useless? Why would you pick that?"
"Well—"
"GRAAAH!"
At the far end of the forest path, something short and green came barreling into view. Roughly the height of an elementary schooler, ugly as sin—a goblin. The weakest, most common enemy in the game's entire roster.
I smiled.
"Showing you is probably faster than explaining." I pulled up the system panel again with a wave of my hand. "First things first—let's form a party."
I sent Miyabi the request. She accepted immediately, and her status frame appeared at the top left in my peripheral vision. Just below my own HP bar.
[
Name: FleetingCloud Lv. 1
HP: 100/100
MP: 10/10
SP: 76%
]
FleetingCloud. A tasteful name.
"You're... WhiteGod?" Miyabi's lips curved into a thin smile. "Isn't that just your name flipped around?"
She wasn't wrong.
Kamishiro. Kami plus Shiro, God plus White—flip the order, translate it, and there it was. Lazy? Sure. But it was the name I defaulted to in every game I'd ever played, and I wasn't about to change it unless someone had taken it first.
"Leave it," I said, nodding pointedly at the cameras.
Miyabi caught on without needing the rest of the sentence. She nodded and raised her sword toward the approaching goblin. "Right, no time to chat anyway!"
The goblin was almost in range.
Miyabi stepped forward, raised her blade high, and brought it down with a sharp, practiced motion—no hesitation whatsoever despite how realistic it seemed.
"MEEN!"
The shout rattled my eardrums from two feet away.
The goblin was too slow to even flinch. The strike landed cleanly—a textbook Kendo vertical slash, straight to the head.
CRITICAL!
25!
"It's still up—stay sharp!"
In reality, a hit like that using a bladed weapon would've ended things on the spot.
But this was a game, with enforced damage caps and HP systems that didn't care about anatomical logic. A critical to the skull still only carved off a quarter of its health!
Meanwhile, the floating cameras around Miyabi had gone semi-transparent—a built-in feature to avoid cluttering the player's view mid-combat. God's Stream had done the same thing, I recalled.
And notably, not a single camera had so much as glanced in my direction.
Perfect.
I planted the War Banner into the ground with both hands, driving the tip roughly a foot deep into the earth. A golden pulse of light bloomed outward from the base—a steady wave that stretched roughly five meters in every direction.
Miyabi's buff notification appeared immediately.
[Received the buff War Banner's Bravery: Attack +50%, Defense +50%, Recovery +10%]
"What?!"
She turned to stare at me, visibly startled.
Understandable.
When Kiki had first described this to me, I'd felt the same way.
A 50% increase to both attack and defense, plus 10% HP recovery per 10 seconds—on top of a base party member who was already swinging for criticals.
The only real drawback was that I couldn't move from the banner's position, and the effect radius was limited to those five meters... For now.
"DOOOU!"
Miyabi turned back to the goblin before it could shake off the first hit and swung again—this time horizontally, catching it across the side.
No critical marker, but the number was close to the initial damage: 21!
"FleetingCloud—go for the head only!"
From years of experience, I knew that critical hits triggered on vital zones. The head was the easiest to target consistently. Hitting anywhere else was just burning time. Of course, depending on the enemy's toughness, it could fail to be categorized as a critical hit, though.
But a goblin is too weak for that to happen.
"MEEEN!"
CRITICAL!
38!!!
The goblin stumbled backward, already past its HP ceiling, and dissolved into particles of light. Its maximum health had probably sat somewhere around 80—nowhere close to surviving that last hit.
The light particles drifted toward both of us, followed by a soft chime.
[You have defeated a goblin!]
[You gained experience points!]
Split evenly between the two of us, the EXP bar nudged up by about a quarter.
I smiled.
"Alright," I said. "Let's get to grinding!"