3 - Noble Son, Inquire

The summer! The sea! The swimsuits!

That is to say, Iris and her friends had made it to the beach!

Manyfish Beach.

There were quite a lot of people around there — naturally, since it was a recently-opened field — but only about half of the players had gone to the trouble of buying swimsuits to enjoy the fictional reality seaside. The rest were adventurers wearing the usual boring metallic and monster-hide armor, and the comparative skin exposure between them approached the absurd.

Iris and Felicia were both dressed in swimsuits that Iris had designed and created before they had headed out. They were two-piece bathing suits based on a flower print, and she’d created them after doing careful research on all the latest trends. Still, there was nothing especially interesting about them. Felicia had given them high praise, but Iris regretted that they weren’t more inspired.

Even so...

Iris looked over the beach with hands on her hips.

The male avatars outnumbered the female ones overwhelmingly. Perhaps that was a reflection of the demographics of the player base: it was easy to lie about one’s gender in a game, but it looked like not many men were perverted enough to disguise themselves as a female avatar and then put that avatar in a swimsuit, as well. Naturally, there were no women wearing flashy original swimsuits like Iris and Felicia, which meant the two girls got a lot of attention.

Negative attention.

“Oh, Iris. I don’t like... the way they’re staring...” Felicia said, hiding behind Iris.

“Y-Yeah... I think... yeah...” Iris stammered.

Was this how it felt to be undressed with the eyes? In the real world, Iris worked hard to keep her slender form and nice legs, and she’d felt the gazes of men on her at the beach or the pool often enough. But here at Manyfish, there were far, far more.

Iris’s body in the fictional world of the game had added Elvish stature modifiers to her real world proportions, which meant that she was taller and more willowy than the Airi Kakitsubata of the real world. She didn’t look like herself, either, so it wasn’t as if it was Airi’s own body that was the object of the attention...

...but it still didn’t feel good to be stared at.

“Hmm.” Sir Kirschwasser let out a heavy hum. The silver-haired elder Knight was there on his master’s orders, acting both as their protector and as the young heir’s proxy. He was wearing Full Plate Mail, which was surely not appropriate fashion for the beach in midsummer. “This... This atmosphere reminds me of... that.”

“Huh? Of what?” Iris asked.

“The thing held every year in August and early December... ah, no, it’s better if you don’t know. Let us just say that there are always people who get the wrong idea about the cosplay booth,” Kirschwasser said, then drew the Knight Sword that was hanging from his hip. He turned towards the characters leering at Iris and Felicia and thrust the sword’s point at them. “I beg your pardon, but photography is forbidden. Close those screen capture apps this instant.”

Did he really need to draw the sword? Iris wondered, but perhaps that was part of the roleplay.

Most of the players closed their holo-panels under the weight of his stern gaze, but one enthusiastic camera brat balked at it. “Come on, give us a break. It’s just a game.”

He moved to take a picture of Iris and Felicia in their swimsuits. The two of them quickly hid behind the heavy-plated Kirschwasser.

The Knight let out a small sigh. “Indeed, it is just a game. If you refuse to comply, then, shall I be forced to use force?” The Knight Sword glinted in the midsummer sun, and Kirschwasser’s fighting spirit gave off a similar shine.

Iris wasn’t entirely sure, but she was under the impression that Narrow Fantasy Online was a game that tolerated PvP, and perhaps even had a tendency to endorse it. It meant that you occasionally saw situations like this, where minor disputes would be solved with violence.

The camera brat wore a mohawk and spiked shoulder pads, attire which spoke volumes about the kind of person he was. He clucked his tongue lightly and pulled a knife from his belt.

“Hee hee hee hee! Well said, old man! Then I’ll take you down and get as many sexy photos as I want!”

Iris wondered what kind of character he was supposed to be playing.

“Hey, my little brother drew his knife... Kyee hee hee hee hee! Now we get to see blood!” Behind the man with the knife stood a similar-looking post-apocalyptic punk, who let out a mad laugh as he watched.

Most of the players walking back and forth along the beach began to gather around what was looking like a duel. Not a single person seemed eager to try to stop them.

Thus, beneath the blue sky, white clouds, and summer sun on the water’s edge, the post-apocalyptic spiky mohawk punk and the silver-haired elder Knight faced each other and prepared for battle. Due to some playfulness on the designers’ parts, perhaps, Manyfish Beach did not forbid inter-player combat.

“Ah, Iris, shouldn’t we stop them?” Felicia ventured.

“I’m not sure...” Iris said. “I don’t even know if this is something we can stop...”

Iris and Felicia seemed to be the only ones at a loss for what to do.

The mohawk man standing across from Kirschwasser began threatening him with a piercing voice as he licked his blade like a hooligan. “Hee hee hee hee! Let me warn you, my knife is coated with poison!”

Immediately, a noxious purple visual floated up from his body, and he fell to the ground before his mad smile even had time to fade. Then his body dissipated into particles of light, which dispersed into the sky with a shining, mystical shimmer. He was dead.

“What was he even trying to accomplish?” Iris exclaimed.

“Everyone has their own way of enjoying the game...” Felicia murmured.

As the two girls gazed at the poison knife and spiked shoulder pads that had fallen on the beach, the rubberneckers hoping for a fight dispersed with an air of disappointment.

The other mohawked man clutched his “little brother’s” knife and shoulder pads to his chest, then ran off crying. It was clear he couldn’t possibly be serious, but even as roleplay, it was a hard thing to understand.

“I have driven off the offending ruffians,” Kirschwasser said, turning back to Iris and Felicia with a subservient air.

“You didn’t really drive them off,” Iris said. “More like they self-destructed...”

“You see men like that sometimes,” Kirschwasser said. “They enjoy playing the villain.”

“You were pretty rough with him, still...”

“Well, he was a hooligan, after all.”