That’s What You Call a Hardcore Gamer!

Translator: Kagura

Editor: Millinia

Read at Watashi wa Sugoi Desu!

Chapter 9: Thank you letter 

As night fell, I alternated between the icons that opened the text chat screen and the letter function screen. I thought about thanking Heath for today, since Heath was the only one I knew the contact information for, but suddenly chatting seemed to be too much of a hurdle. In contrast, a letter can be read at any time of the day, items can be attached as a thank you, and I wouldn’t be shocked if there was no reply.

“Hmm.”

As I was groaning in the room, Nachi came out of the shower and looked at my direction. It’s hard to sleep in our usual avatar’s clothes, so we’re currently wearing the yukata items that were available during the summer event.

“What’s wrong, Neji?” 

“No, you know. I’m thinking of sending a thank you letter to Heath…” 

“Ahh, I wrote a letter to Mao just now, too. I was surprised! I didn’t expect Mao to be such a friendly and good person.”

Nachi laughed innocently. He might have expressed it a bit rudely, but I think it was his true feelings.

“What should I write?” 

“A simple, ‘Thank you very much’ should be fine, right?” 

“That’s true, but…” 

“What is it that’s bothering you? Neji—the hardcore chatter.” 

“That… that’s right… OK! I’ll send it!”

Thus, I ended up sending the letter with a simple message, “Thank you very much,” and attached the item, cocoa. Cocoa is a bit of a high-end MP recovery item.1If you’re a hardcore player, you’re probably hoarding it in your inventory, but it’s not a bad thing to have.

I doubt he’ll reply, but it’ll make me feel better if he does. As soon I was thinking about that—my postbox announced the arrival of a letter. When I checked with a jolt, I found a reply from Heath with the title “Re:”

“Late.”

It’s just a single word. Eh, what? I thought, as my body stiffened looking at the four lettered word for a while. I pressed reply and got a letter back, so it can’t be a misdelivery, so what the hell is late? Don’t tell me he’s saying my thank you letter was late?

“…” 

“Neji?” 

“Ah, no… I’m going to take a bath too.”

I got up and decided to forget about it. I couldn’t come up with a reply from my side. When I entered the bathroom, I reconfirmed that the soap provided seemed to be automatically replenished, just like in the game, and I escaped from reality. The citrus scent is quite nice. When I finished washing my hair and body and went outside, I found Nachi lying by the wall. His eyes were downcast.

A lot has happened today, and he’s probably tired. So am I. Now that I have a general idea of the state of the town, I’ll just quietly stay at the guild hall from now on.

Thus, I went to bed for the night. 

The next day, I provided rice balls and green tea to the guild again. However, today, the table was already lined with white fish croquettes and fried shrimp, perhaps because each person had taken out their own stored items. Ango brought me some pollock roe.

“Master, here you go.” 

“Ah, thank you. Wow.”

Pollock roe can be caught with fishing skills. Ango was a novice, but I remembered that he loved the fishing mini-game. I’ve fished with him occasionally. I’ve since realized that there are many items that can be eaten without having to be processed with crafting skills.

Ango, the gorilla avatar, is now a muscular old man with a trimmed head. He looked strong to me. The other guild members who used to have long hair, now have short hair; those who used to be short, are now tall, and so on. There are many differences, but gradually I’m also beginning to match faces with names.

After the meal, I decided to check my personal house again today.

It’s a small house with a blue triangular roof and white walls, with a garden outside. The garden was lined with paid planter items, and currently I was growing rice. As long as I can grow rice, there will be no problem with rice balls. Rice balls only require rice to be processed with crafting skills. Inside the house, there’s a bed, sofa and table, a shower, and stuffed toys made from crafting. By changing the attributes of the house with objects like stuffed toys, you can change the number of plants that a planter can grow and harvest. I’m trying to optimize the house’s attribute values such that the maximum amount of rice can be harvested—while also creating a comfortable home.

Fishing can be done on various locations on the map, but if you have a pond or river object in your paid house’s yard, you can do it there as well.

“All I can do is craft fishing rods.”

Nodding to myself I sat down on the sofa, leaning my back against it deeply, and opened the inventory window. I have spare logs, planks, and raw silk thread for fishing rods. I think I can make enough for all the guild members. There are some parts of the game that are realistic and others that are not so much. For example, when it comes to fishing, you don’t have to use bait.

“OK. Let’s make fifty of them,” I muttered to myself and headed out towards the garden.

Then, with the materials I took out of the inventory in front of me, I pressed the crafting icon to open the crafting screen. The addition of pollock roe to the rice balls made it feel a little more luxurious, and as long as I had the ingredients, I could process them into whitefish croquettes.

Since we couldn’t get out of the game, I wanted to at least find a way to make the living conditions better for everyone in the guild.  

With that in mind, I had started making fishing rods one by one.

“Master!”

It was then that I was shouted at in the chat.

“Yes?”

It was a whole guild chat, not an individual chat, so it didn’t seem to be a private conversation. Maybe he didn’t have time to switch to a private chat, plus he seemed to be in a hurry. I wonder what happened.

“It’s terrible! We—and when I say we, I mean me, Minami, and Saki…”

The owner of the voice was the guild member, Hiiragi. Minami and Saki are also guild members.

“We wanted to help in any way we could, so we went into town to gather ingredients!” 

“Eh.”

I confirmed to myself that I had told the guild members exactly what had happened to me and Nachi yesterday, and explicitly told them to not go into the city. I told everyone as soon as Mao and Heath dropped us off that they shouldn’t leave because of the rampant crime. They were glad that we were safe.

“And then we got surrounded by weird things—please save us!” 

“Listen.” 

“We are going to be killed!” 

“Location?” 

“In front of the Alice River in the northern section of Clock Town!” 

“I’ll be right there, don’t provoke them. Wait for me!”

I said this reflexively but… I’m not strong enough. And I have no idea what kind of “weird things” Hiiragi was talking about. However, I can’t just abandon my guild members. I closed the house function and went down to make a quick stop at the guild hall. When I arrived, the people who were there looked worried—they must have heard the guild chat. Yeah. I’m worried too.

“I’m off! If something goes wrong, respect Nachi’s decision.”

I tried my best to put on a brave face as I bid farewell and walked out of the guild hall.

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Kagura

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Cherry Boy
Cherry Boy
2 years ago

Thank you for the chapter!
I’m sold to the idea that this whole ‘can’t logout’ thing is just some summer event by this point and everyone’s real body is being taken care of properly by the game company’s staff (dunno, maybe they hire part timer for this event or something)
The farming and fishing content in the game made it seems like living off with in game ‘life skills’ not to mention crafting can be done fairly easily from what demonstrated in making that basic fishing rod
Last is that comment on hoarding recovery item LMAO, yes you can never have enough of recovery items. Even if you begrudgingly didn’t want them (yes I’m looking at you, GBF half-elixirs and soul berries)

A.S.
A.S.
2 years ago

Thanks for the chapter!

Carina, wanderingfujoshi
Carina, wanderingfujoshi
2 years ago

Thanks for the chapter!

black.cat.reading
black.cat.reading
2 years ago

Thanks for the hard work!
This is really quite fun to read. Well, not the crimes, like ffs, it had been 1 night and the thugs are already rampaging?!
Naji is a man of my kind, I always have stuff put aside for rainy days, couse you never know? But I’m also a post-soviet union child, so my mindset is different than that of many westerners that are like ” I can buy anything anytime just nextdoors, why store things?”

natsume142
natsume142
2 years ago

Ohh hopefully some prince can save them hahah

Kimmy
Kimmy
2 years ago

Thanks for the chapter!