CH 69

FLFO – Chapter 69 – After Summer Holiday, Maintenance

T/N: Chapter 68 will be temporarily skipped. Like the previously missing 16 and 28, it is a spoilery chapter that focuses on the game developers.

….Is it before the maintenance? Let’s play the game a little.

Shall I do some light crafting?

“Hmmm…mmm? This icon is…communication loss?”

<The connection is unstable>

“Not only the icon, but it also appears in the log? What happened?”

<The connection with the server has been lost. Returning to title>

“It’s down…”

Shut it down and off to check the LAN.

It’s plugged in…isn’t it? And the router…Oh, there is no connection. Can’t help it, I might have to wake someone up.

“Hey, good morning”

“Good morning. Dad, is the network alive?”

“No, it’s dead now.”

Dad and I check the router at the side of the room.

The light is on, but…the part that should be shining is off.

“We can try a reboot.”

When Dad presses the button, all the lights go out… After a while, the lights…the lights..?

“Not working, huh?”

“Mm? It won’t wake up?”

There is a faint smell of burning. Smoke is quietly rising to the ceiling…

“Oh! Damn!”

Dad had to unplug it, so why don’t I bring some water and a fire extinguisher? I didn’t expect it to burn.

When I return with it, I look at the dead router with my dad.

“You’ll have to give up on the game for the day.”

“It’s a full day’s maintenance today, so there are no problems with the game.”

“Huh…this router is old and it was not going to give us the full performance of the contract, so I thought I’d change it…..? But I don’t remember buying a new one.”

“Isn’t it too soon to be losing your memory?”

“Hahahaha, let’s buy the latest.”

Despite the flustered activity with Dad this morning, I’m glad it ended with just a little smoke.

The router is dead though, so best just go get ready for school.

“Have you forgotten anything?”

“I have nothing to forget!”

“Alright. Be careful on your way.”

“I’m going.”

“Okay.”

Today is just the first day opening ceremony, so there is no need to take anything with me.

Mom sends us off and I go to school together with my sister.

“Paradise and the router have fallen…”

“Is the next paradise winter holidays?”

I arrive at school for the first time in about a month. I part with my sister and head to the classroom.

“Oh, good morning.”

“Good morning, Ichinomiya-san.”

It’s our class rep, who goes by Lapis in-game.

When I turn my attention to the surroundings, there seem to be a lot of people talking about FLFO.

“I bought a steel weapon.”

“So you bought it. That’s enough for the level 20’s, so next is armour.”

“Which do you think is better, cloth or leather?”

“If you’re a melee attacker, leather is better. As for their characteristics…”

Cloth has a high magical defence, but the physical defence is like air. There is almost no noise when moving. It is often used by rearguards such as the pure magic types.

The leather is a balanced type, providing more physical defence. It still has more magical defence than metal armour…. The noise when moving is not too bad. If in doubt, go with leather.

Metal armour has high physical defence, but the magic defence is practically air. It is noisy when moving. This is mainly for tanks.

“What about Koto-neesan’s dress?”

“Mine is ‘light armor’. The material is special and has both physical and magical defences, but it has the weight of heavy armour.”

“Is that so?”

“It seems to be made of metallic thread, and it’s quite heavy. The sound is at the same level as light armour. Between the racial characteristics and equipment weight, my movement speed is rather poor.”

If it is not undead, a normal riding pet would probably be crushed. I would have had to buy a very good horse.

“So leather is better than cloth if you need to be up at the front?”

“Yes. Though if you are going to avoid everything, you can wear cloth.”

“Yeah, I can’t. I think I should use leather …”

I have heard that insect-based armour and the like can be used as a substitute for leather or metal.

If there is a problem with it, it would be that it retains the weaknesses of the creature it was obtained from. You may be able to eliminate the weaknesses, but it won’t be all that easy.

On the other hand, if it has a resistance, that will be retained too.

Well, I would basically take it as is. I’m not going to change the equipment …

While talking to the class rep, more people have arrived, including Tomohiro and Suguru.

“Hi.”

“Morning.”

“”Good morning.””

“Even if I get home early today, there’s maintenance.”

“I’ll watch the live broadcast.”

Yamamoto-san said he’d be broadcasting live. Well, when I get home the router will still be dead, so I’ll have to watch it on the board.

“I was going to craft a bit this morning, then the router died while smoking.”

“Seriously? Should I say that it’s good timing?”

“Well, it’s good…isn’t it?”

“Was everything okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just glad the sprinklers didn’t go off…”

If the sprinklers had started and flooded the house, I can’t even imagine…

“Even if a fire breaks out in your house, in the worst case you could just take the cord and throw it in the pool and it should be fine.

“I have a small fire extinguisher, so I’d probably use that…”

“By the way, we didn’t go to the pool this year.”

“That’s because we’ve been playing the game like crazy.”

I used to play in my pool every year. However, if you just want to play, you can go to the south in FLFO.

There was also a camping event this year…

I tend to go to the pool for exercise and training, so the purpose is different.

“Sit down”

The chime rings and the teacher arrives, so we patter to our seats.

“Oh, everyone is here. Today we’ll have the opening ceremony, but we’ll do it in the classroom. No need to move around! It’s finally implemented in our school.”

Hmm? It’s just a blackboard type display, but has it changed in terms of functionality?

“Well, as you can see, it doesn’t look any different. There are more features that make the teachers happy though. In other words, it’s easier for me! It’s really good.

Anyway, go to the bathroom now if you need to. Don’t make a lot of noise on the way.”

The explanation was over quickly, so we have a little free time.

When the time is up we return to our seats and the headmaster is shown on the display. It’s the broadcast room.

It’s pretty easy because I’m seated. The rate of falling asleep is likely to increase though. Well, there is no need to gather together with the entire school…

After listening for a while, it’s over.

“Yeah, it’s nice and easy. Now, after this, I have nothing to say to you about the second year. I know you were briefed on the events after the summer holidays in your first year, so don’t need that, do you?”

“Cultural festival and tests?”

“Yeah”

“‘Yeah, no thanks'”

“Then it’s free time until dismissal. Others may need things explained, so be quiet.”

“”Okay~””

This school only has a school festival. I wonder what they’ll do this year.

“Oh, it’s started. Let’s see. Hmm..”

Yamamoto-san was shown on the display, with strange proportions.

“Oh, did I make a mistake?”

『Hi everyone! The great person! Hmm, the proportions are weird…hmm? Oh, maybe it’s because of this guy…. That’s right, okay– 』

“So that was the problem.”

The image is normal now.

The people who would be playing the game start to gather in front of it. Of course, Tomohiro, Suguru and the class rep. I’m going to go too.

“Oh…there’s a lot happening in the back.”

“This time it seems to be at the level of moving.”

『I’ll explain the long hours of maintenance today. As you can see behind me, it’s because we’re going to be working on the server equipment as well as the development environment. To be honest, I’d rather be praised for finishing in one day.』

『Uoooooo! Amaziiing~! It’s real! 』

『Mm? …Why are you taking it apart all of a sudden?　There’s a piece of paper with the specs on it!』

『Look at this! GPU’s costing over 300,000 each linked in 3-way, Yamamoto-san!』

『Seriously? 』

『Nfufufufu … Goodbye to the days of frightening freezes!』

The tension…is high. ….Though I can understand the feelings about the 3-way.

“300,000 jee~pee~you, in 3way?”

“It means that there are three graphics boards, that cost over 300,000 each, linked together. That means there is over 900,000 in GPU’s in there alone…”

“A GPU is a graphics board?”

“It’s also called a graphics card or video card. Let’s see, Kotone. What does it stand for?”

“A GPU is the graphics processing unit. It’s an expansion part for a computer specializing in image processing.”

“Um…it’s different from the CPU?”

“The CPU is a central processing unit. The CPU is the main unit for handling complicated processing. The GPU is a sub-unit that handles the video processing, so it’s a different thing.”

The CPU performs the process like a person carefully drawing a picture, one stroke at a time, whereas the GPU is closer in comparison to a seal or stamp.

When it comes to calculations, the CPU is a single function calculator, while the GPU is just a number of calculators. They are different in what they are good at.

The CPU is faster for one, but it’s only one. In terms of images, which require a lot of processing, a GPU is faster at processing multiple images simultaneously.

“To put it more simply…The brain is the CPU and the body is the GPU, the CPU processes the senses, sends commands to the GPU and the body moves.”

“I kind of understand.”

The GPU is not good at complex, priority-based movements. That’s the job of the CPU. On the other hand, the GPU is good at doing a bunch of arithmetic operations.

“Well, anyway, the tension is rising because three insanely high-performance GPUs are stacked.”

“I mean, they really cost 300,000 each?”

“It’s for companies, or for professionals.”

While we were killing time watching the live broadcast, the time for us to break up for today has come.

“Okay, you can go home.”

“We’ll stay here and watch the live broadcast.”

“No, go home.”

In spite of the teacher’s efforts, some people stayed to watch.

I’m going to watch it too.

“You guys are staying too…”

“The router broke this morning. It’s a little inconvenient to go home…”

“It’s a good thing…it’s in maintenance.”

“Onee-chan, coming home?”

“I’ll watch this here, okay?”

“Oh, okay.”

My sister brought Aina-san and Karen-san to join us.

The official bulletin board is also under maintenance, so it’s nice that everyone can see it.

“Right, can you sell me some bless potion, Onee-chan?”

“S-grade?”

“Yeah, I want to have one for each party member.”

“Oh, I’ll have one too, please.”

The resurrection potion was tested after it was released, as expected.

You can’t use it on yourself, so you need to have someone else it on you. It’s necessary to douse them with it, and without [Potion Pitch] of «Throwing», throwing it is useless. If you do have it though, you can throw it.

The timing of getting up is optional, but there is a time limit, in which case you will be forced to resurrect. The moment you choose to resurrect, you can be hit, so you need to watch your timing. No invincibility time.

What’s more, it can be used on the undead. Well, it doesn’t say that it can’t be used on Immortals, after all.

According to Sophie-san, it’s a medicine to ‘interrupt the forced transfer of Outsiders to the underworld’, so it doesn’t matter what race they are.

As a result, the revival by the resurrection potion is, “Safe! I’m not dead!” and it seems that there is no death penalty.

Well, the cooldown time is 10 minutes in real-time, so it’s hard to bear when I’m getting flattened all over the place. But it’s not like 10 minutes in action game is fatal.

You can’t move until you’re revived, and you won’t get experience points while you’re dead. Of course, since you’re not fighting your skill levels won’t increase either.

Basically, the aim is to not die in the first place. But even so…it’s better to have it than not.

It is still better to be allowed to die at least once. It’s mainly an insurance item for bosses. Spend 10 minutes sleeping and the battle will already be over. ….Whether it’s victory or annihilation depends on who remains alive.

If they win, you’ll feel like an unneeded child. It would be pretty awkward.

『Is the floor tasty?』

『Floor’s delicious!』

『I’m going to smack you.』

The top group naturally wants an S-grade with 100% HP resurrection to eliminate accidental deaths and recovery actions immediately after resurrection.

Is it 10 for my sister’s group and Tomohiro’s? In the end, the price of S-grade has doubled, so it’s delicious.

『Now, it’s past noon and the number of people has increased, so let’s get into the update information.』

“Oh, it’s starting.”

『The biggest change is unlimited domestic access. Congratulations and welcome. We’ll be shipping the new VR devices as soon as we can, but though some functions will be limited, you can still use the old model. Of course, if you’ve been using the old model, you can switch to the new one, now that it’s available.』

『Do you want the first and second batches to stay in other towns for a while, if possible? I’m not worried about the hunting grounds, because there is the instance dungeon. The biggest problem is the size of the town. Do we make it bigger, or divide it into channels….We’ll see how it goes.』

『Next…we’re planning to show the basic status rating of race. They are graded on a scale of SSS, to S and A to F, but there is still a range within each rating, so this should only be used as a guide. There are 11 categories: HP, MP, Strength, Dexterity, Vitality, Agility, Intelligence, Spirit, Resistance, Special and Physique. The standard is human.

Resistance and Special is F and Physique is small. The rest are D. 』

『We’re also changing the rules for rebuilding. Instead of allocating points, you can swap skills in the same genre. You can’t trade production skills for combat skills. Unnecessary skills will be converted into skill points. In short, it’s no longer possible to pour levels into skills that are difficult to rebuild.』

“So it’s sealed in stone now. You can’t do a full rebuild often though..”

“Did you do it, Onee-chan?”

“I poured it into «Appraisal» first.”

“I see, that certainly won’t go up…”

『After that….we’ll also add an avatar tab to your equipment. Only the appearance and effects will change, not the stats. The weapon type will need to match.』

“Oh, it’s finally here.”

“We can hide the appearance of the weapon.”

This is a system that allows you to keep the look of a weapon or armor that has become weaker…but you like the look of. It’s something that often shows up in games.

Rather, without this system, everyone would end up looking the same, making it rather uninteresting to see.

There will certainly be demand for being able to rearrange the original appearance of an item. It can also be used…to hide rare equipment.

When I finished listening to the changes we were kicked out by the teacher, so I decided to go home. I’m hungry anyway.

After I finish eating, it’s a good opportunity to kill some time by exercising in the pool.

In the evening, Mom and Dad came home and a new router was set up.

It feels like this is the first time in a while I’ve spent a day not playing games. For some reason, I spent the whole summer holiday playing.

“Game time!”

The following day, after returning from school, I see off my sister as she charges away to her room. I’ll change my clothes and log in to the game too, now that the maintenance has finished.

I did a lot of skill building towards the end of the summer holiday. I’ve grown up so much, but my «Kokon Musou – Single Sword Style» isn’t going up at all…

«Spatial Awareness Ability Expansion» doesn’t increase either, but it is still better because it is passive.

I learned [Taft Chrono] at level 30 of «Slender Sword». The moment it pierces, you get 9 follow up attacks, so it has even more instantaneous firepower than the 6-strike [Regenreit]. The cooldown is long, so making it fully compatible is troubling though. Well, there is not much in the way of melee arts.

I learned [Magic Barrier] at «Magic Catalyst» level 25, but I don’t need it. The secondary skill is coming soon.

«High-Class Magic Ability» is still strengthening life magic, so let’s not worry about it.

«Shadow Magic» has passed level 10 and I learned [Shadow Dive]. You can hide in the shadow and move through it, but if you are within the effective range of an area attack, you will be hit. Moreover, the damage of light increases during the dive, so be careful about [Light Burst] and similar.

And what’s a little interesting is «Necromantic Secrets». [Necro Dancer], which is learned at 40, can instantly use the corpse of an enemy. It’s not counted as part of the party, but stops working after a certain amount of time. And of course the drop disappears too. In short, it’s a disposable meat shield.

I’ll just say that interesting does not equal use.

Anyway, so far it was summer holiday.

The quickest way to find out more about the update is to visit…and get swallowed by the crowds in the Starting Town, but I do not have such a hobby.

I don’t even use the avatar tab for my equipment at the moment… But there’s the race evaluation.

Aversa Princess

HP: A MP: A

Strength: E Dexterity: C Vitality: B Agility: F / F Intelligence: B Spirit: C

Resistance: A Special: A Physique: Sma

Hmm..? They said humans are D. Why are their two agility?

Oh, help has been added.

*What is race evaluation?

From the top, it is displayed in the 9 stages of 『SSS, SS, S, A, B, C, D, E, F』

However, even if the evaluation is the same, the numerical values are not always the same.

The categories are as follows.

HP: When HP becomes 0, you will be incapacitated.

MP: If you do not have enough MP, you will not be able to use special actions…arts and magic.

Strength: Also known as Str, it mainly affects physical attack power.

Dexterity: Also known as Dex, it affects the quality of your creations and the accuracy of the bow.

Vitality: Also known as Vit, it mainly affects maximum HP and physical defence.

Agility: Also known as Agi, it mainly affects movement speed. It is displayed as ground aptitude/air aptitude.

Intelligence: Also known as Int, it mainly affects magic attack power.

Spirit: Also known as Spr, it mainly affects maximum MP and magic defence.

Resistance: This is the overall rating of your resistance to abnormal conditions.

Special: This item is mainly for non-human species. The higher the value, the stronger the trait.

Physique: The size of the body. Human size is small, displayed as ‘Sma’.

Minimal: Min, Small: Sma, Medium: Med, Large: Lar, Extra Large: Max

The standard human being has F for resistance and special, Sma for size, with everything else as D.

In terms of physical performance, humans are weak. But we live with the use of weapons, techniques and tactics. Make the most of what you have to offer.

So the contents of the status are finally disclosed. HP is not equal to Vitality, and MP is not equal to Spirit.

I don’t think the management are likely to help by sharing everything…..I don’t expect such kindness from the management here.

For the time being, I understand that agility is aptitude on the ground and aptitude in the air. And both are dead. Basically, neither one is better.

There are only humans to compare to, but it’s plain to see that is far superior.

The problem…Or concern…?

Aversa Princess is currently restricted because the base level is not high enough, but it is essentially a late-game race, right? Despite this, the stats that are described as the basic status have not reached A. It doesn’t even say what the restrictions are, so it’s hard to think that it is showing a restricted status…

Will it reach A after evolving from a princess to a queen? Perhaps S and above are exclusive to Outer Ones.

….Well, that’s fine.

The status evaluation is a guideline for choosing an evolutionary destination and for strengthening weaknesses. Dexterity and Spirit being C, they can be considered for strengthening, while Strength and Agility are a lost cause and should be abandoned.

As long as I have the Protection set, I don’t have the option of changing it. ….The rest would be enhancement through accessories and skills.

Equipment slots and skill points are limited, so it would be futile to try and enhance them if there is such a difference. I feel like it is more meaningful to take advantage of the strengths.

Accessories…Housing….Money… Ugh, my head.

Anyway, I’d like to fill the empty accessory slots sometime soon. The kitchen is tempting, but I should prioritise equipment.

In the field, on the same side as the ore vein, I talked with the gardener and planted some plants that recover MP, and some saplings for tea, which I got in exchange for event points.

I picked up some weeds and mixed them with Pure Soil to make fertiliser. The fertiliser was then mixed with humus to make a high quality fertiliser. I gave it to the gardener and left the rest to him. As for the water, we have the Water of Recollection.

It is now possible to collect high-quality moonflower, the ingredient for MP potions, and, one step higher, high-quality evening primrose, the ingredient for high-MP potions.

[Material] Moonflower Rare: No Quality: A

A magical plant that contains a lot of magic power. If the conditions are right, it will grow in abundance.

[Material] Evening Primrose Rare: No Quality: A

A magical plant that contains a lot of magic power. It blooms when the moon rises and stores the power of the moon.

That’s really good. I don’t use it myself, though …

The saplings haven’t grown up yet. I want them to grow up quickly.

<Akirina has come to visit>

<Tomo has come to visit>

Hmm, oh. It was for bless potions.

“Onee-chan, resurrection potions!”

“Heya. Sell to me!”

“2,800 apiece”

“Aye~”

“Here you go.”

After they finished trading I see them off as they go hunting. Rather than the Starting Town….I’ll go to Felforge. Let’s head to the Merchants Union.

I collect the consignment sales, and deposit the money. In terms of making money…is jerky the strongest?

As a player, I would like to mass-produce resurrection potions and put them on the market, but considering the Nether fund-raising, I definitely want them to die.

Oh, it’s all going to increase from now on. The infinite sized third batch has arrived.

Hmm….Third batch? More people…..Consumables….Is it the time to make money? Should I lower the material rank of the meat and make more jerky? Anyway, new cooks can’t make jerky right away, because of the required arts.

Alchemy…Hmm…I don’t feel like doing that one for the third batch. It’s a waste to use the A quality Moonflower, and I’d rather sell it to Salute-san than use it myself.

Yeah, there’s nothing else in particular. Let’s say production is after dinner and before going to bed.

Since I came to Felforge, I’ll go do some digging while hunting.

Now that summer holidays are over I’ll do some hunting when I get back home, and craft a little before bed….right.

Then, let’s get on with it.