CH 27

Chapter 27 – Ehe

“By the way, are you two doing anything to prepare for the upcoming update?” Hime asked us.

“Is anything going to happen?” I asked. Obviously, an update would have something happen, but why should I need to prepare for it? I don’t think I saw any announcement about the content of the update?

“The highway.” Hime answered vaguely.

“You mean the thing of the Demon Trees blocking the way?” I asked her.

“Yes. Most people think the update will put a raid boss there.” Hime clarified.

That would make sense. We do know that there are four problem areas near Capital Sabrina, but most of them are too high level and can only be accessed by NPC Pioneers right now. The one that the players did reach is the Highway that is blocked by the Demon Trees.

It would be strange if the update made an event in the areas that the players didn’t reach yet, so assuming that a raid will happen in that highway is pretty sensible.

If we go by that idea, the event would probably spawn a really tough boss that would require multiple parties to be beaten… Perhaps this is why my ‘Magical Formations’ suddenly started selling better? People might be preparing for the raid in advance. Even Mika started ordering them to me directly, after all.

Though well, I only accept production requests from friends. I made this very clear in the shop’s information, and I also made sure that the clerks were aware of it… And yet some people keep trying to make specific requests to me.

Of course, the clerks always refuse those requests, but some people are really persistent and have a very bad attitude. There were even cases of people threatening the clerks, forcing us to call the guards on them.

Luckily enough though, one can’t harm others while within the store. Also, the shop has a recording function, so it was easy to obtain detailed evidence on the crimes of those annoying people, which made them promptly get arrested and banned shortly after.

Though those horrible cases aside, there were also people that tried waiting inside the store until I came back to try making requests to me directly, so I had to implement a time limit that didn’t allow anyone to stay inside the store for more than 1h.

It’s a good thing that the clerks can also make use of those systems if need be, so I can rest assured that they can deal with troublesome situations when they occur… Of course, we ideally would never need to use those tools, but it can’t be helped at times.

“What about you, Lalalu? You preparing something?” Hime asked her.

“Not really. I’m putting all my effort into crafting clothes and establishing the clan right now.” She replied.

“On the note of crafting, do you have anything new to show? I’ve been going out in disguise lately, so I’d like to be able to change my appearance regularly.” I asked Lolita.

“Of course! How about these!?” She then started showing off a lot of the clothes she had crafted recently… Out relaxed cake-eating chat time suddenly became a lot more lively after I made this question.

It can’t be helped because Hime really likes the designs of Lolita though.

Personally speaking, I’m not too fond of the overly frilly designs myself, but Lolita is aware of that and takes my preferences into consideration when crafting, so she always brings some stuff that better suits my tastes when she comes here.

******

“How about this one?” Hime asked as she tried out a dress that Lolita had made. Right now she was doing a bit of a fashion show of sorts, showing off basically everything that Lolita brought with her… Which was a lot.

“You’re amazing, you know? Being able to make this many clothes is quite something.” I told Lolita.

“Come on, I can’t really be compared with you and the ‘Official E-mail’.” She replied.

“Eh? That was just a way of dealing with an annoying, persistent idiot…” I answered.

“Wait, what is this about?” Hime suddenly sat down next to us and asked.

It wasn’t that much of a big deal though. It was mostly an issue that came after I sold the ‘Bronze Bucket Helm: Lily’. There were quite a few stalkers trying to find out about the method I used to create the item, which was a bother, but was manageable.

The problem, however, was that some people thought that I had used some cheat to make the item… Or rather, a decently large number of people sent official queries to the management team of ‘Frontiers’ about this matter.

And since they investigate any sort of activity if they get enough in-game reports, though they only count one report per person, I ended up being the target of an official investigation by the management team.

I had done nothing wrong though, so I wasn’t worried in the slightest… And before long, the management team came to this exact conclusion. I was clean.

However, since I was the target of the investigation, they ended up letting me decide if my character name should be revealed when making the announcement of the conclusion of the investigation, and they also let me decide when the announcement would be released, though I, of course, couldn’t just tell them to wait forever.

But in this meantime, the stalkers started getting really annoying, and I wasn’t using a disguise yet. The result was that one particularly troublesome person started being really loud and shouted in the middle of the street about how I was a cheater and was ruining things for everyone and whatnot… He pissed me off, so I decided to answer the e-mail, telling the management that they could publish the investigation results right away, and that they could release my name in it.

I didn’t expect the management to see my reply as soon as I sent it, but they actually did. They saw the reply and released the announcement a few seconds after I had sent the e-mail to them… And then, the announcement was delivered to all players by the word of the god NPC, with a guarantee that I had not done anything unfair when creating my products.

When this happened, everyone in the surroundings started giving strange looks to the annoying complainer, who eventually realized that something weird was happening, so he checked the announcement too… But by then, it was too late. He was arrested for the crime of accusing me, who was deemed innocent by this world’s god… It was quite the heavy crime, apparently.

Due to this, there aren’t people that try calling me a cheater anymore, but that didn’t really stop stalkers from annoying me, hence why I started wearing a disguise.

After I explained all this to Hime, she said, “I see… You worked hard.”

“It was only because of some really annoying people though… That said, you have it rougher yourself, don’t you?” I asked her.

“Eh? Hime does?” Lolita seemed to be surprised by my statement.

But yeah, Hime is a celebrity of sorts in ‘Frontiers’. There’s even a dedicated thread in the forums for her.

Also, differently from me who stays all day in the ‘Rental Production Facility’, she actually goes out and meets up with players all the time. There’s no way she doesn’t have trouble with stalkers.

Though well, seems like I was overworrying. Hime told us that she actually handles those issues in a bit more direct way than me. She doesn’t quite attack them, as she could get penalties from attacking other players, so instead, she uses her threads to sneakily change the targeting and movement patterns of nearby enemies, to make them ‘accidentally’ move closer to the stalkers.

… I don’t think there is anyone other than her that can do this kind of thing with her threads, but it’s still a totally valid way of getting rid of stalkers, I suppose. You only get the penalty from attacking other players if you deal damage to them or use harmful skills aimed at them, so… Pushing mobs their way is fair game, apparently.

And because of this, some rumors about Hime stalkers having a natural mob-attracting aura started surfacing.

“Oh, so there was some truth to those rumors after all…” Lolita commented after Hime finished her explanation.

“You’re really amazing, Hime.” I told her.

“Ehe.” Was her reply.

I really meant it when I said that Hime and Lolita were amazing people, and I honestly don’t think that I compare that well with them, but I’m sure they’d just deny this claim if I made it, so I kept it to myself.