5 - The Game Has Begun

I suddenly regained my consciousness, just as it had faded.

Sunlight was shining through my eyes.

From the sensation of my body, I knew that I was lying on the soft ground.

The smell of grass and earth stimulated my nostrils, and a gentle warm breeze caressed my cheeks.

The grass and flowers around me swayed and tickled my arms.

If I didn’t open my eyes, I could sleep.

I heard a faint sound.

It seemed that there were no humans nearby.

I heard the sound of small footsteps crunching through the grass and flowers.

I lifted my eyes when the sound came a little closer…

Puni

「Nya?」

A paw pressed against my forehead.

It’s a pitch black cat.

My eyes met with its purple crystal amethyst eyes.

「Nya, nya」

That’s all the cat said, and then it stepped on my face, my chest, and then passed over me.

For the time being, I get up and look around.

…Apparently, I’m in a place where not many people come.

A large stone building is tangled with long ivy, and is stained in many places. The nearby fence was rusted.

The fountain in the distance was flowing a little bit of water from a crack, and two small birds seemed to have come to drink the water.

….It seems that it was left in ruins for a long time, away from human hands.

I was dressed in the traveler’s style as the avatar I saw earlier, with a knife at my waist and a leather bag lying beside me.

When I opened the bag, I found a small silver coin and three small bottles with green liquid inside.

I have no idea what to do, where are all the other players in the first place?

As I stood up, troubled, I saw the black cat from earlier.

The cat was wagging its tail and was going somewhere.

I have no clue what’s going on, so I’ll just go with it.

I followed the black cat as it slowly walked.

◇

After following the black cat for a while, which I was aware that I was following, the cat walked into an open window of a large building.

The window was so high that I could not reach it. It was an amazing jump.

But fortunately, the hustle and bustle of the city is close by.

As I passed the large building and came to a large gate, I saw people walking down the street.

The road that had been bare dirt and cracked cobblestone was now paved.

The people on the streets were either travelers like me, or mothers and daughters dressed in plain old clothes.

The former were probably players like me, and the latter were NPCs.

But the girl happily pulled her mother’s hand and her mother was smilingly watching her. To put it bluntly, it looked…. like a living person.

I heard the sound of a door opening behind me.

「Oh, that’s unusual. Do we have a visitor?」

When I turned around, there was an old man with a white beard, wearing a gray robe, is he an old mage?

「Looking closely, you’re a pretty girl, why don’t you have a cup of tea?」

The old man smiled kindly and said such a thing, and I could say that he was a good-looking man, but in just a few moments I saw that he had looked at my whole body.

He was looking at my arms, legs and waist with particular emphasis.

He may have sounded like an erotic old man, but he was actually looking at my muscles in my arms and legs, and at my knife in my waist.

The first person who spoke to me was no ordinary person.

「Ah, that’s right, I’m sorry to bother you. By the way, old man, what kind of facility is this?」

「This is a library, and I’m sort of the keeper of it.」

A library, that is books.

A book contains information, and a library is a mass of information.

Taku said that the basis of the game is to collect information.

There’s no harm in going in.

「Old man, I’m a man.」

「Oh, what a surprise.」

When I entered the library, I cleared up the misunderstanding, and the old man said that without showing any particular surprise.

◇

「Ooh…」

「Isn’t it amazing?」

The old man happily said to my surprise.

The amount of books it holds is amazing.

There were books and bookshelves as far as the eye could see, stretching all the way to the back of the large building.

With a smile on his face, the old man walked towards the back.

After following him for a while, I saw a door at the back.

The old man opens the door and goes inside.

I followed him.

In contrast to the quiet library, the room was full of life.

There was a chair, a desk, a closet, a small bookshelf, what looked like a kitchen, and another door near it. Is this a bedroom?

「Sit down and wait while I make you some tea.」

I sat down on a chair at the urging of the old man.

While he was making the tea, I decided to take a look around.

As I looked around, I suddenly noticed a bookshelf.

….The book…is glowing……

I was a book on the bookshelf, glowing white and flickering.

As expected of a game.

The game is strange, come to think of it.

The smell of grass and soil, the shadows cast by the sunlight, and the NPC’s expressions are full of emotion.

Is this really a game? It would be more realistic to say that I was dreaming.

As I was pondering about this, the door that wasn’t the one I came in from suddenly opened.

「Nya, are you back?」

What came out was a bipedal black cat wearing a robe, whose purple crystal amethyst eyes met mine.

Its eyes widened in astonishment…

「Nya, nya~」

「No, you just spoke.」

「Nya!?」

「Ho ho ho!」

The voice of the old man smiling happily echoed.

◇

I sipped my tea and bit into the cookie that was served to me at the same time.

I could feel the tea I swallowed going down my throat and into my stomach, the rustic taste of the cookies made my mouth salivate.

「Zuzu….Wh, why?」

A question without any context, but he’ll get the idea.

「I don’t know what you’re talking about」

「You wouldn’t say it was a coincidence, would you?」

The cat is chomping on a cookie on the desk, not touching the steaming tea, probably because of it’s cat tongue.

「Fumu, just kidding.」

Then the old man began to speak.