Chapter 345 - 46: Bad Cat Yimi

Chapter 345: Chapter 46: Bad Cat Yimi

ALO was a fairy-themed game, and what set it apart from others of its kind was that you could fly, with PvP making up the bulk of its content.

Compared to SAO, where simply stacking levels let you steamroll other players, the skill-based ALO was at least a little fairer—though having to rack your brain memorizing spells just to play a game was, frankly, a bit much.

Yimi hadn’t understood the first thing about what a full-dive game even was. Then again, the parents in most worlds wouldn’t let her touch video games anyway. But with Yui’s explanations, she’d picked up a rough idea of what it involved.

"This one, taller."

"This one bigger. You can knead it like dough yourself."

"Clothing options..."

And just like that, a character-creation screen managed to get her genuinely interested in the game.

She’d dutifully chosen the Cait Sith, but she didn’t go with the default appearance at all. First she cranked her height straight up to a hundred and seventy-five centimeters, then padded out her chest to about Asuna’s size. She went with golden hair, and gave her face a mature onee-san look that shared nothing in common with her own.

Finally, a leopard-print dress.

Young as she was, Yimi was still a girl who cared about looking good—at least she hadn’t sculpted an Elder God into existence.

Body data entered. Log in to ALO.

"Mngh."

Yimi looked down at her not-quite-familiar new height and gave a couple of experimental hops, feeling a bit like a cat becoming a human for the first time.

Seeing her like this, the other Cait Sith around the territory shot her the friendly—and slightly baffled—looks people reserve for a total newbie.

This world had all sorts of fairy races, each with its own specialty, and what the Cait Sith excelled at was agility, scouting out monsters, and beast taming.

Beyond that, the bigger reason most players chose them was that the cat ears were adorable. Female characters, to play up the cuteness, usually made themselves petite—because really, who else would pick leopard print?

Yimi looked down at her own slender fingers, a little lost. She had no idea what she was supposed to do next.

"Are you a newbie? That outfit’s way too weird." A kind soul, spotting her standing there, came over to say hello.

"Newbie?"

The cat girl circled around her once, curious. "First time playing this game? Or first time playing a full-dive game at all?"

"First time playing, a game." Yimi answered her honestly.

"Liar." That was the cat girl’s first reaction—then her little mouth fell slightly open. "Hey... you’re not actually a little kid in real life, are you?"

Yimi’s stilted way of talking had given her away. A kid diving into a game and getting a thrill out of suddenly being tall—that was pretty normal, really.

"I’m taller than you." Yimi leaned in on purpose, wanting to stress the height difference.

The cat girl scratched her head, at a loss. "So there’s no anti-addiction system, huh? The nasty side of PvP is going to corrupt little kids. Whatever. Do you even know what this game’s about?"

"No."

"Figures. Well, I’ve got nothing better to do anyway. Listen up—what makes this game popular is that you can fly around freely. For beginners, you can usually pull up an assisted-flight controller in the menu to practice, though for us Cait Sith, being able to tame dragons kind of takes away from the whole flying experience."

Every game has those veteran players who love dragging newbies all the way down the rabbit hole.

"Dragons!" Yimi was stunned.

"Yep, dragons. The Cait Sith are most famous for our dragoons, after all."

A kid, all right.

The cat girl tilted her head up at Yimi and patted her shoulder. "If you put in the effort, you could join the dragoon corps too."

Probably not, though. She couldn’t imagine what would happen if you let a child serve as a clan’s main fighting force—kids being the kind of creatures who might turn their spears on their own allies the very next second, just for fun.

"What we do is keep making our clan stronger to surpass the other fairies. As for a main quest, I guess the only one is flying to the top of the World Tree?"

"World Tree?"

"Yeah. If you fly up, you should be able to see it—there’s this huge, huge tree over there. Word is, if you reach the top, you can meet the Fairy King and have him reincarnate you into an ALF. But this game’s flight time is limited, so that height is basically impossible."

She’d said a whole lot, and Yimi hadn’t listened to a word of it.

"I want to see a dragon." Yimi stated her one demand.

"You like dragons? Then you really did reincarnate into the right clan. Fine, let me give you a little demonstration." The cat girl cleared her throat—but instead of shouting anything, she recited some kind of spell Yimi couldn’t make sense of.

The next second, a massive dragon appeared in front of Yimi.

And Yimi had long since darted far away, glaring warily at the giant dragon before her.

The cat girl pressed a hand to her forehead, exasperated. "What’s with the loving-dragons-in-name-only act? Weren’t you the one who just said you wanted to see one?"

A child’s moods really were hard to cater to.

"Hey, don’t go summoning dragons out on the clan street for no reason!" A hand clapped down on the cat girl’s shoulder.

The cat girl knocked a fist against her own head and gave a sheepish little "ehe." "Sorry about that, Alicia. I was just showing the newbie what we’re good at—the only way to keep beginners around is to let them see something they’re interested in."

The Alicia she’d named was, in fact, the Lord of the Cait Sith clan. But since everyone here was just a player, getting too formal with honorifics would’ve felt off—it wasn’t a life-or-death death game like SAO, after all.

"Newbie?" Alicia looked over at Yimi.

The cat girl gestured toward her. "Let me introduce you—this is our clan’s Lord."

"...Lord."

Yimi looked down at her with a touch of awe. "Have you tamed Diego yet?"

"Huh? Who’s Diego?"

Alicia looked completely blank, both hands cradling the back of her head. "But if you like dragons, you’ll have a chance to become a dragoon someday too."

"Diego is the boss of all the dragons." Yimi looked at Alicia with disdain.

You ride dragons and you don’t even know that?

Where in the world had this never-before-heard setting come from? And that attitude on top of it...

Alicia lowered the hands cradling her head. "Listen up, newbie. This may just be a game, but you can’t tame beasts without a calm, peaceful heart."

"Plenty of people in the dragoon corps treat their partner dragons as friends. They can only carry out simple commands, sure, but every now and then you can feel a kind of ’unspoken understanding’ coming from these guys."

"You’re friends with Diego!" Yimi was stunned all over again.

She’d assumed this was some fierce character who could tame Diego—only to find out she was a villain who was in cahoots with him.

Yimi crouched down in this unfamiliar body and, making full use of her long legs, delivered a clean leg sweep to this shorty Alicia.

What she’d actually been going for was a bratty little downward whip-kick, but she’d sculpted her legs too long, so it came out as a sweep instead.

"..."

...

"Yimi. Yimi." Yui was pushing at her from outside.

Interrupted, ALO popped up a warning telling Yimi she was being disturbed from outside, and asking whether she wanted to log out.

Yimi took off the headset.

"You’ve been playing for a while now—it’s my turn, right?" Yui hadn’t gotten to try playing a game from a player’s perspective yet.

Yimi had spent far too long on the character creation—she really had held things up for a good while.

"Here."

Yimi handed the device over to Yui without a fuss, being a good child who loved to share.

Yui put the device on and lay down, logging into the game.

Worth mentioning: games like SAO and ALO basically run on a single server, which means there’s no such thing as restarting an account in a different region. And a lot of items, skill proficiencies, even sculpted faces might catch someone else’s eye—so in full-dive games, account-selling is a thing too.

After the automatic login, Yui inherited Yimi’s account directly.

First she was startled by the suddenly heightened viewpoint, and then—before she could even look herself over—her attention was seized by the strange scene in front of her.

Alicia was watching her with a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

"Since you’ve reconnected, I’ll pretend I didn’t see that little disconnect just now. And I’ll take your nerve in coming straight back to challenge the Lord as guts worth respecting. Draw your sword. Seeing as you’re a newbie, I’ll give you one free move."

Yui: "?"

"Not going to attack? What a cocky little newbie. Don’t blame me, then!" Alicia whipped out her claws and lunged at Yui.

"???"

...

"So noisy."

Kyouko, who’d been getting ready for work the next day, furrowed her brow, walked over, and opened the door to her two new residents’ room.

She found Yimi and Yui kneeling face-to-face on the bed, whaling on each other with pillows.

Yui was convinced Yimi had done it on purpose.