The last time he saw Shiro, they were sitting alone in a roof garden.
She was saying something about how the plants and flowers were fragrant in the past, and how she had heard tales of endless greens and clear rivers.
But now, only the cities held remnants of the faded beauty.
And even that was artificial.
Azuma was distracted by the rare sight of the moon that night.
The soft silver shadows carried a strange allure.
"Well..." he heard Shiro sigh, she smiled a little as their eyes met, "time for us to leave."
He simply looked at her for a while. Her eyes were uncertain, her shoulders tense, and he felt like she was hiding something.
But perhaps she was just reluctant to return to the Abyss.
"Goodbye," Azuma replied, unable to look away when he knew he should.
The breeze was gently playing with her long black hair, her deep blue eyes were an ocean of night. It was filled with stars and mysterious darkness.
She slightly tilted her head and smiled further as if she knew what he was thinking.
"Meet me down there when you get stronger."
Azuma glanced away, "I might not get that strong."
"Your will... your heart," she seemed to be searching for words but then gave up since Azuma could have understood her nevertheless, "and your mind."
He pretended to not have understood anything and remained silent.
Her voice was low and distant as she too lifted her gaze at the moon and spoke.
"Strength lies in the will to conquer."
+
〙The Daily Quest has arrived.〘
It has been a week since Azuma seriously followed the codex and the light of determination in his eyes dimmed within the short span of time.
But he couldn't stop, and so he continued to practice relentlessly.
His heart was still heavy when he opened the screen window.
〙Daily Quest: The Dawning Horizen I〘
Goal: Complete the fundamental training regime before midnight.
>> Do 100 Pull Ups — [0/100] Incomplete.
>> Do 100 Crunches — [0/100] Incomplete.
>> Run 10 kilometres — [0/10] Incomplete.
〙 Failure to complete this quest will result in an appropriate penalty.〘
It was the same quest once again.
As Azuma repeated the tiring quests so many times, he gradually became used to it.
His body would still get weary halfway through, and he has been eating a lot since starting the quests. His bank account which was already suffering from unemployment was not really happy with this change.
But at least the exhaustion of each day started to gradually lessen.
〙99 Crunches Completed.〘
Azuma closed his eyes and let out a strained breath as he almost finished his daily quest. Then, he just collapsed on the floor and stared at the plain white ceiling for a while.
There was a month left for the seeker selection and Azuma decided to use the time to solely focus on practicing.
He withdraw from everything and everyone and kept training whenever he was not sleeping or eating.
The money he was left with could help him for one month at least.
Sometimes Azuma felt like taking a long break from the exhausting days, but he couldn't bring himself to do that for much longer.
Living like that was stressful.
He also stopped talking with Zero.
And that strangely felt… odd.
Her voice was beautiful, and Azuma had found it easy to open up to her. He shared things that he didn't share with anyone else.
But that was a given since he didn't really have any friends.
But in the end, she was just an AI he couldn't fully trust.
The things she could do made him uneasy.
But then at completely random times, he will find his favorite meals and snacks delivered to his door. His balance was not deducted, and there would always be a momentarily glitch in the system.
Azuma would then feel guilty for cutting Zero off.
That is until he remembered she could hack into his transaction history and thus conclude his favorite meals quite easily.
He frowned as he thought about that.
Ding!
〙Congratulations! You have completed the daily quest!〘
+ 100 XP
+ 50 Crystal Shard
+ 1 Dark Essence
〙You have leveled up! 24 —> 25〘
Azuma was short of breaths by this time.
He often ignored everything besides the goal he must obtain, but the codex was shrouded in too many mysteries.
This made Azuma leave a post on a forum where he asked if anyone knows about a module that works with strange quests and weird rewards. After twenty-four hours, he received three replies.
『 never heard vr mmorpg looser? 』
『 That joke is not humorous. Try again. 』
『 u frm dark ages? 』
Azuma had really never heard of VR MMORPG.
His life always revolved around military service. Troopers don't spend time in games, and as a beta tester for the seekers, Azuma only saw VR training modules.
He did a little research and asked around to understand what exactly MMORPG was.
But Azuma was still somewhat unused to this and so only after three days did he remember he should check his notifications and his profile.
The codex was programmed to read his thought pattern and hence, as soon as Azuma decided he wanted to check his profile, a cyan window popped up in the air.
〙Codex Lucifer—User Profile〘
Name: Azuma [LCFR/369 Ω]
Rank: E
Level: 25 [Up!]
Crystal Shard: 1459 [new]
Dark Essence: 14
>> Overall Stats [new] <<
>> Talents [new] <<
>> Locked <<
>> Locked <<
〙Exit to Main Menu 〘
Azuma looked at the rank for some time. It was one thing that remained unchanged no matter how hard he trained.
He had no idea what was the use of Crystal Shards and Dark Essence.
There was no shop like the ones he had seen in a few MMORPG games. And nothing else is required to upgrade from these materials either.
Azuma checked some other sections.
〙 Overall Stats [new]〘
Strength: LV9 [Up!]
Speed: LV8 [Up!]
Stamina: LV11 [Up!]
ATK: 21
DEF: 36 [Up!]
HP: 98/100
〙 Skills〘
Basic Skills: Endurance [new], Sprint [new]
Exclusive Skill: The Golden Cicada [0/1]
>> Locked <<
〙Back to Main Menu 〘
Azuma's mind went blank. He thought about nothing, and could not understand what was so odd about that skill.
Yet, something caused a feeling of dread to seep deep into his skin.
He asked for more details about the exclusive skill.
〙The information is restricted.〘
He asked in a low voice, "Zero, are you listening?"
A feathery calm voice spoke,「 Yes, Azuma. 」
"Who made this codex?"
There was no answer, the silence stretched on.
Impatience was brewing behind Azuma's weary gaze, he repeated the question and changed it to ask about the skill, the restriction, or why did the screen show that the one-time usable skill was already used?
But Zero never told Azuma about the questions he asked that day.
He couldn't sleep in the night and the silence he was so used to felt too loud in his mind.
Some days later, the Golden Cicada mysteriously disappeared.
The day of the seeker selection to start arrived soon, along with Azuma's second penalty quest.
〙Penalty Quest Initiated.〘
Goal: Defeat 100 A Ranked Abyssal Beasts.
Time Limit: 100 Minutes.