10 days until the anniversary - Trip Summery
Returning from their long training trip, the Ravens bade farewell to Sheko until the time would come for the anniversary.
Kai had dismissed Tsuno so many times in a row now that she stopped bothering him for the moment. Sometimes she still shared with him her build and progress, though after pouring over dozens of job descriptions, researching secret skills to unlock, and testing them whenever the opportunity came during his expensive training trip with the Ravens, he couldn't bother caring that much about her very traditional tamer/enhancer hybrid build.
He'd mentioned how easy it would be for a stealth build to prioritize her in the backlines—or just a tamer build to distract Achilles long enough to get to her and eliminate them both. He left it unsaid that he could also just rush at her and finish the fight before Achilles could close the speed gap. She had tried to argue with him until he broke and fought her around a week before, only to have her leave more angry than she started when the fight ended exactly like he said.
Achilles was getting fast, especially with her buffs, but it was still completely one-sided. Once he got around Achilles and killed her, it was over. Maybe if she focused more on her Earth Priestess job she could hinder him long enough... but no, even then, Sheko had grown accustomed to such tactics from his fights in the arena.
One of the Ravens—Pheonix—had an embryo that was objectively much better than the grasping vines spell, being both invisible until it struck its target and much more durable. It was one of his worst matchups admittedly, and without going above and beyond—and while he still had his full kit—he lost 6 out of 10 fights. But against the simple plant magic Tsuno could call upon, Sheko could avoid it in his sleep.
Sheko took a moment to go over his inventory. He was broke financially again, the only notable items he had left now being one complete advanced homunculus, which he used the last of his funds to get a monster gem to store it in; the four other incomplete homunculi; and his life-saving brooch, which he kept in the bank instead of on his person.
It wasn't all doom and gloom. While on their training trip, he gathered all kinds of materials from monsters, but the best of the materials went to the various Ravens—under his urging—to help them catch up to him. Even though technically they weren't that far apart in level, while some of the Ravens had just gotten their first high job, Sheko had already got his second. Total level was really not as important as the quality of your build, and right now, in truth, Sheko's build—save for his four combat-focused jobs—wasn't perfect, but it was very potent when used with Odysseus.
Nothing like one of the rising stars of Infinite Dendrogram, Kashimiya, one of the few players dubbed pre superior by the community. He was a pretty good reason for why Sheko chose to keep his Knife Juggler, or more accurately, he kept it so he could unlock Gale Knife Juggler. Kashimiya was a horrifying force condensed in the form of a 9-year-old Iaido prodigy. He was actually a pretty public pre superior, mostly because of his growing fame, spread by his PK guild that proudly told the story of how they attempted to kill Kashimiya and got wiped out easily—asking him afterward to join their existing guild and become their leader.
Sheko hoped that it wasn't too big of a delusion that he saw himself a bit in Kashimiya. Their embryo's main ability was reminiscent, and their types as well. Inaba was a Type Rule/Arms embryo, while Odysseus was a Type Arms/Territory. Type Rule was simply an advanced and more specialized type of Territory, affecting only its user. Inaba allowed Kashimiya to move in complete freedom based on his AGI, while Odysseus let Sheko spin at incredible speeds based on his AGI. His movement had none of the finesse and ease Inaba granted, though.
As Sheko tried to think what he should do with his time, the answer being obvious—that he needed money, and fast—Mai updated him that she would be back in about two weeks.
She finally unlocked the Dark Knight job. It was quite a disaster in the end. The idea of self-afflicting herself with curses was good in theory, but in practice it didn’t work out. Unlike mutagens and potions, the benefits of self-afflicted curses were part of the debuff they inflicted rather than two separate effects. Meaning that while Mai could cleanse away the curses, she wouldn't keep the benefits.
Dark Knight also gave her incredibly high curse resistance, which meant the chance of weaker and cheaper-to-cast curses working on her was very low. But it did mean that she could easily survive the effects of more serious curses. Mai did sound happy to explain how she unlocked the job, as apparently Dark Knight was somewhat special in that regard—requiring a royal member to approve the applicant once they fulfilled all other requirements.
Mai earned her job by protecting a knight convoy against a party of bandit players all by herself. It was an incredibly close match, which left her in a similar position to him—flat broke, save for her life-saving brooch. She even had to use most of their stockpiled Raggedy bombs they were planning to use against Kaizo.
And when that wasn't enough, Raggedy threw herself in the way of a finishing blow aimed at Mai. It should've meant nothing—but instead of dying, Raggedy evolved, automatically activating her Ultimate skill to change the tide of the battle. With her new transformation, they defeated the bandits together.
After all of that, at least as part of agreeing to pledge allegiance to Altar in a time of great need, she had been officially knighted and given standard-issue plate armor and sword.
Sheko did find it hilarious that she had to file a special request for Paladin armor instead of Dark Knight armor. The reason she did that was because she didn’t want to walk around in the edgy Dark Knight armor. Walking around with the Ravens was bad enough—but she didn’t want to be confused as one of them. They were nice kids in the end, but the impression they left on others wasn’t something she wanted to reflect onto her.
After saving the Tian knight convoy, she felt proud of standing her ground and protecting the less fortunate Tians with her. Knowing he would have to share with her all the info he gathered on Kaizo, he knew she wouldn’t take it well. Kaizo was helping criminals to abuse Tians in broad daylight. Even if Kaizo beat him, Mai probably wouldn’t let him escape.
For now, Sheko would take a note from Kashimiya’s book and also start gathering materials for a surprise for Mai. At the same time, incidentally, he knew a perfect spot to begin his "farming."
It was disappointing that he couldn't welcome her back like the others, since that day was fully preoccupied by his real life—but it couldn't be helped.
8 days until the anniversary - storming a fighting ring
Apparently, attempting to storm an underground fighting ring and steal incriminating evidence on its participants was a lot harder than Sheko assumed. He didn't even make it into the viewing area before getting caught.
Last time he went, there was a single guard at the entrance who simply asked why he came to the ring. At the time, it was just so the guard could give him instructions. But this time, when Sheko told the guard he came to watch the fights, the guard immediately shouted, "LIE!"—with such smugness that Sheko thought he'd transform into a dragon and bite down on his head in a moment.
Instead, a much more mundane response came: a barrier arose between the guard and Sheko, and projectiles shot at him. The guard had misjudged his safety, however, as Sheko ran toward the wall, jumped over a sconce while blocking more projectiles with Odysseus, and leapt over the rising barrier before it fully closed the entrance to the ring.
The patrons quickly funneled into hidden paths, doors closing rapidly behind them as more serious reinforcements arrived. The guard noticed Sheko's hesitation to attack him—his goal wasn’t to endanger Tians, but to help those held against their will, after all—and took the chance to down an invisibility potion and escape while Sheko was pelted by bullets and arrows. He already realized his main objective had failed, but if he could find some evidence to give the authorities, it wouldn’t be for nothing.
Sheko was about to launch his counterattack when three more enforcers joined the fight, attempting to kill him. In many ways, they were a disappointing bunch—barely capable of punching through Odysseus’s force field, which was a great boon. It made sense: a player working security for a shady, back-alley fighting ring likely wasn’t the most ambitious type. They were probably just enjoying the free show.
Kaizo sometimes worked there, but he was an exception—he had an ulterior motive, including using the ring to communicate with his real employers.
Sheko wasn't expecting to win from his position. The situation he’d dropped into wasn’t favorable. He originally planned to scout the area and take down one—maybe two—enforcers before raising the alarm. And yet, even though he knew he could likely pierce the barrier blocking the exit with one of the stolen projectiles his enemies had so graciously supplied him to escape, he hesitated.
He felt something.
A faint smell in the air—iron and kindling. The sound of a battle hymn. A beat enveloping him.
He remembered when he’d felt it before. He was on the cusp of evolution. Holding it back—probably just like Mai had against the bandits—he just needed a push.
But Sheko didn’t want to gamble on Odysseus breaking and reforging itself stronger. Instead, he charged in a suicidal attack, jumping into the air before the three melee enforcers could strike him and spinning Odysseus to launch himself at one of the two shooters who’d been pelting him from a viewing booth.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Even though Sheko was moving at about Mach 0.5, thanks to the Red Cape stacks the enforcers unwittingly gave him, both shooters were able to launch arrows at him midair. First blood was drawn as Sheko threw back an arrow and dodged another. His arrow pierced right through the opposing projectile and then through the archer's shoulder, not stopping until it embedded itself in the wall behind them.
The archer Sheko landed in front of was stunned by their ally’s wound and failed to defend themselves from Sheko’s follow-up—he grabbed their face and spun their head backwards so quickly that they died instantly from the backlash.
The remaining enforcers gave up any pretense of protecting the building and unleashed their full force with vengeance, engulfing the entire booth in fire, bullets, and acid.
When the smoke settled, Sheko revealed himself—dusting himself off, completely unharmed. His chest was now fully consumed by Odysseus's dark metal. With Odysseus’s new ultimate skill, he made short work of the remaining enforcers before reinforcements arrived. Then, working off memory, he correctly guessed the location of the ring leader's office.
He had to pause for a moment when he saw the ring leader again—not with a handshake and a reward for a job well done like last time. This time, the man glared at him from behind a line of ten shackled Tians wearing high-quality armor and wielding pristine weapons.
It was sickening—even in a game—to see an NPC hide behind a meat shield of seemingly sentient beings.
Sheko saw the reinforcements pushing through a collapsing barrier and made his move. He threw an arrow at each of the two guards closest to the ring leader, hoping it wouldn’t kill them—after all, they were the very victims he was trying to help. While the guards were distracted, he ran forward and threw them aside before the others could react. Without pausing to let the ring leader speak, he killed the Tian slave master just like he had killed the enforcers.
With the ring leader’s power gone, the ten Tians stood stunned as the control over them disappeared.
Sheko didn’t have time to search the desk. He shoved everything he could into his inventory before collapsing the doorway behind him to delay the reinforcements a bit longer. Then he tried to rouse the slaves into action.
One of the freed slaves suggested collapsing the roof, hoping they could survive and dig their way to freedom. With no better option, Sheko stretched his AGI—boosted by High Speed Speculation and Odysseus's new ultimate skill—and did exactly that, collapsing the entire room just before reinforcements broke through.
From there, using the high-quality weapons of their captors as makeshift picks, the former slaves and Sheko escaped the underground tunnels.
Sheko was struck once again by how stupid his plan was. He had nowhere safe to take the freed slaves. In the end, all he could offer was a slightly better-than-nothing chance of escape—scattering like rats off a sinking ship.
He felt conflicted. He had gotten what he wanted—the fighting ring wouldn’t recover anytime soon, hopefully never. He helped the worst of the victims he could. He had a mysterious desk’s worth of paperwork and a vault’s worth of unknown contents from the deceased ring leader.
At least, he hoped it was the ring leader, and not just some clerk for the real monster behind these twisted false arenas.
But he had also probably endangered countless other Tians still under the ring’s influence. Their patrons would heighten security, making another rescue attempt leagues harder. And as weak as those enforcers seemed now, Sheko had been weaker than any of them not long ago. He couldn't ignore the giant target he'd just painted on his back.
5 days until the anniversary - Recruitment Interview
Kai woke up at 6 a.m. in a cold sweat. He was never one to stress about cleanliness and rarely showered more than every other day, but today was too important—and he was too anxious—to lose his chances because of a bad smell.
He hated how out of control it all felt. He knew he had good chances before the external tests. He knew his teachers had all vouched for him, even if he didn’t actually hold a similar opinion of them. He felt shaky about the online test because of how odd it was, but his practice carried him through the first half.
The algorithms section felt like a freebie after the cruel tests of previous years, and the low-level programming section was an insulting memory test. It was infuriating and given little time on purpose—but it was done now. His project went swimmingly. All that remained was to present himself in front of the recruiter.
He rode public transit for three hours to what seemed like the edge of civilization. All that existed within a 50-kilometer radius was the base and a fuel station. He passed through the checkpoint, got a little lost inside the unnecessarily large base, and finally arrived at the waiting room—an entire hour before his interview.
To soothe his nerves, he went over all of his files, momentarily panicking when he couldn’t find his latest grade sheet. After a frantic search, he found it slightly crumpled in his backpack. Every few minutes, someone would come by and ask what he was doing, and he’d reply that he was just waiting for his interview.
To pass the time, he started catching up on news—he had been so preoccupied with Infinite Dendrogram and the tests for the past month. Most of the articles were boring, though one caught his eye: “Researcher Went Missing, Suit Against Publisher of Popular MMO Infinite Dendrogram Dropped.”
Opening the article confirmed it was talking about the same researcher who had luckily escaped a deadly fire a month earlier. Whether it was a conspiracy of enormous proportions or just the news spinning a story out of an unfortunate researcher's life falling apart, it was odd that they gave Dendro so much focus in the title.
On a lighter note, there was another Infinite Dendrogram article—this one a translation of an interview with the creators of the recently taken-down Infinite Dendrogram movie, "Slayer of the Earth Dragons VS. The Earth", along with a review from a private screening before the entire project was sued out of existence by the game's publisher for flagrantly violating the Terms of Service.
Apparently, the company was fine with small individuals making money off streaming the game, but using the game as a movie set to market in the real world was so severe that the article abruptly stopped halfway through the obviously generously written review to include testimonies from actors in the movie. They had received personal emails warning them against any further violations of the Terms of Service.
Naturally, the article shifted focus away from the review and toward that aspect of the story—calling for further investigation into the publishers for what were, frankly, obvious threats against individuals.
Just as Kai expected, both articles were written by the same author. He set the conspiratorial thoughts aside for the moment and returned to reading his book until the recruiter opened the door and let him in. The recruiter requested that he leave his phone turned off and place it in a locked mailbox outside, then handed him several documents to fill out.
Kai wasn't sure if he was already being evaluated somehow, but he calmly went over the documents, asking directly and confidently about several of the questions. Most of it was standard. He’d never had to answer questions about his international travel history before, but he was sure there was nothing to worry about.
He paused for a moment when he reached a question about personal hobbies and projects. The interviewer noticed and asked what made him stop. Kai simply asked how specific his answers should be, and the interviewer told him to be as specific as possible wherever he thought it might be useful.
Kai debated whether to include Infinite Dendrogram, and ended up adding it in at the end—slightly inflating his experience with the game. Similarly, he expanded on his personal projects more than they were worth, without directly lying. The interviewer took the documents, noting Kai’s large but readable handwriting.
The interview went on for another 30 minutes, grilling him on his answers in what felt like an attempt to catch him in a lie. Toward the very end, the interviewer switched to a much more friendly tone before hitting Kai with a programming question. He solved it easily—it was a general knowledge question with a slight twist and a widely available solution online. Before finishing his answer, Kai asked if he should also provide the other two solutions or if the most efficient one was enough.
The interviewer laughed it off and said it wasn’t necessary. He shook Kai’s hand and turned toward the door—then paused and asked him one last question:
"Are you a Worlder or Ludo?"
"Eh... what, you mean in Infinite Dendrogram?"
"Yes," the interviewer answered, with less levity now.
"It’s a complicated philosophical question, respectfully. I think I’m somewhere in the middle, leaning toward Worlder. At the very least, there’s the question about the Tians in Infinite Dendrogram. They seem to be incredibly advanced. I don’t think it’s something ridiculous like another world, but at the very least it has the most impressive tech I’ve ever heard of—especially the AIs."
"Very well. Follow-up question: have you committed any crimes in Infinite Dendrogram? Any crime at all?"
"Is this still part of the interview?"
"Assume it is. I’ll decide if it’s noteworthy."
"Okay, so—I’m not on any wanted list. Between players, I stole a raid reward from another player, but only after they did the same to me. I know it’ll sound pretty bad, but I also participated in an underground fighting ring once. Didn’t kill anyone. I’ve since gone back there and killed the ring leader. Like I said, I don’t know how to feel about the Tians, but I think I did the right thing. He was a slave dealer, forcing people into battles to the death."
"Hmm... fine. I think I’ve heard enough. You made sure to turn off your phone and leave it outside, yes?"
"Ah, yes. I have an e-book—sorry, I forgot to mention it."
"It’s fine. I’ll now give you a list of several in-game names. Please tell me if you’re familiar with any of them."
"So this is part of the interview?"
"Yes. Please answer if you’re familiar with any of the names, as I said. The names are organized by last known country in nametag and Embryo name. We had to find a way to weed out duplicates."
"This is all very weird... are you, like, looking for people using the game as a platform for inciting violence or something?" Kai asked as he went over the list, noting Prismo’s name and trying not to give away that he recognized it.
"No. Though we do try to monitor such conduct, our efforts have borne no fruit. The company is a black box—we have no clue except for very public instances. These are people we confirmed have worked in research into Infinite Dendrogram under their previous employers—mostly now-defunct game studios. So, do you know anyone?"
"Eh... yes, barely. Prismo. I played with him and talked to him a bit."
"We’d appreciate it if you could get in contact with them. That is all. I’ll give you my contact information. Return to it if you succeed in contacting Prismo. Please refrain from giving any info about this meeting. I think you’re not stupid enough to share your identity online anyway—but this is doubly so.
You are correct about one thing for certain: Infinite Dendrogram’s tech is advanced beyond anything we know of.
But we hope to change that."
Kai left the interview confused in every way possible. It sounded like the military was trying to steal Infinite Dendrogram's tech, and the recruiter didn’t sound like he was joking one bit. If it earned him his spot, Kai would make sure to contact Prismo if he could—but after the articles and what the interview hinted at, he was put off from diving back into Infinite Dendrogram again.
Maybe some more information would come up during the likely investigation into the missing researcher and shed some light on the situation. But right now, it sounded like the military was taking security precautions against Infinite Dendrogram's publishers. And if the fire that destroyed the lab was somehow caused by them, there was genuine reason to worry.
