My First Quest

The choice is obvious. Rex might not know it, but he's basically asking me, "Do you want to do the same thing this idiot did in the game, or do you want to step off the path to the bad ending?" Any sane human knows what the right choice is. All I have to do is accept Rex's request to cancel our duel.

That duel was an unfavourable situation for me anyway, judging from our stats. Sure, losing the Abyssflame will be a bummer, but it's not like it's the end of the world. Fighting Rex and following Rising Hero's story might be.

So, yes, the choice is obvious. It's incredibly obvious.

And yet, I can't make it.

First of all, the Abyssflame is needed to defeat the Dark God, just as much as the Brightflame is needed. If I lose the Abyssflame then who knows when it'll appear next? I could be dooming this world to destruction, and on the off chance that this is all real, I'd be dooming myself to destruction as well—

Okay, no. To be honest, that's all just an excuse.

I just…

"No," I find myself saying, "I'll see you out on the field next week."

I walk past him into the classroom. My reason for wanting to continue down this route towards the bad end is nothing grand. I have a choice: to step off into obscurity, or to have something important in my possession for once in my life. I… don't want to give up the Abyssflame. I don't want to become irrelevant again.

And above all, I want to fight Rex Cranz. This is my game. I've mastered it after playing it dozens of times. I want to see how I do against the protagonist. I want to see if I've still got it, even after all this time.

Students continue entering the classroom, and then so does Rex, along with Claire Weiss. It seems the rest of his party isn't in this class. I deliberately don't look at them, and then the teacher enters as well, and the class begins.

In Rising Hero, the classes were never shown, they were always skipped over, so it's kind of interesting to see the kind of things the students here learn. Apparently, this is a monster physiology class of some kind.

"Some of you are starting to push into level three of the Great Dungeon, so it's time we talked about one of the most troublesome level three monsters," the teacher says, shooting Rex a subtle knowing look, "Today we're talking about the gorgon."

I guess, based on that look, Rex must have made it to level three by now. That sounds about right for where we are in the story.

I've never seen this teacher before in the game, so she must not be an important character. She looks plain, with brown hair in a ponytail and freckles on her face—nothing like all the flashy main characters in Rising Hero.

"The gorgon is rumoured to be able to kill you with just a look. This is only partly correct, in truth it shoots nigh-undodgeable beams with its eyes, so avoiding its gaze is certainly the right strategy. The beams are powerful, and it has the lower body of a powerful snake, so it has both long-range and close-range covered. The only advantage we have is that it has the reflexes of an ordinary human, so two people are needed to slay it; one to distract it, and the other to kill it."

That's actually kind of accurate. In the game, I always needed a party member to draw aggro because a gorgon stun-locks its targets with its attacks.

The teacher goes on to talk about more monsters, and it's actually kind of fun to hear about these monsters I used to fight in a game spoken about like they actually exist. The strategies described by the teacher sort of match the gameplay methods too.

She goes over a few easier monsters like giant rats and goblins, and then the lecture ends. The blue window pops up again.

-

Quest Complete: Attend Class in Two Hours

Reward: 100 EXP

-

The window disappears, and I wait for a few seconds. Nothing feels different. I don't feel smarter or stronger... it must only count when used to upgrade stats.

As everyone begins filing out, I get no new quest to attend more classes. I guess that means this was the only class of the day? Bit of an easy-going school, isn't it?

From what I remember, your score matters more than any attendance in this school. Not just your test scores, but also your activity scores. Basically, how much stuff you did during your time as a student. And the most simple way to increase your score is to kill stuff in the Great Dungeon.

For the briefest moment, I catch Rex's eye as he's leaving the classroom as well, and he scowls at me.

Yeah… I'm going to definitely have to hit the dungeon to even stand a chance against the protagonist of this game. He's destined to win in the original storyline, after all. I check the map again, and follow it to reach the place I want to go.

When I'm there, I look up. Here it is, the Great Dungeon's entrance. I call it an entrance, but it's actually multiple entrances. All of them are innocuous-looking doors that anyone might easily walk through if it wasn't for the woman sitting at a desk in front of them. There's a crowd of students here right now, and the woman at the desk watches all of them like a hawk. She looks old, and her hair is almost done completely greying, but it seems she's still just as sharp as she needs to be, judging by the intensity of her gaze.

The crowd of students has formed a line here, and each of us needs to take a medallion from her if we want the doors to work for us. Those doors may look simple, but they're actually portals that take you down to the Great Dungeon instantly.

When my turn comes, the old lady glares at me, "I thought I heard you loudly boast that you already got enough credits for this semester. Why are you here?"

That's a lot of hostility. This was a very minor character in the game so I don't remember much, but I remember her treating Rex very sweetly, like a grandma. So, what's with the disconnect? Did Thomas do something to her?

"I mean, there's a dungeon here. I want to enter it," I say. Crap, I'm bad with hostility so I ended up making that sound way more sarcastic than I had intended to. My tone made it sound like she's stupid for not figuring out something obvious.

For a second I hope she doesn't take it that way and that I'm just overthinking things, but then her eyes narrow in anger, and I know my hopes have gone unheard.

"Oh yeah? Is this because of that duel you're about to have with Cranz that I've heard so much about?" The woman says. She smirks, "Let's see if your last-minute training does you any good against a person who's been dedicated all his life. Here." She roughly tosses a medallion at me, and I barely catch it before moving on, glad to get away from her. Before I go through one of the doors, I look at the medallion; it's in the shape of a flower, the same white flower as the school's symbol, and it's surprisingly weighty. It's interesting to feel its metal weight in my hands after only seeing it as an image on my screen.

I pocket the medallion and take a deep breath. Then, I open one of the doors and step through into inky darkness. Time for my first foray into the Great Dungeon.