The night was at its peak. An unearthly, enormous moon shone in the sky. In a forest clearing at the starting location of a new Korean grinding game, two low-level game characters sat by a campfire.
Race: Yokai
Type: Kitsune
Class: Illusionist
The first was an anthropomorphic fox. She was dressed in a revealing Asian dress that accentuated her luscious, furry curves. Sitting on a stump with her fluffy tail gently laid across her lap, she thoughtfully stirred the fire with a twig and occasionally sighed sadly.
Race: Yokai
Type: Bakeneko
Class: Martial Arts Master
The second looked like an Asian girl in a kimono with a characteristic bob haircut. Sitting in a pose reminiscent of Rodin's "The Thinker," legs spread wide in uncomfortable Japanese sandals, she nervously massaged her forehead with her right hand while the fingers of her left hand drummed on her knee.
The silence was broken by the kitsune; her enchanting, velvety voice filled the clearing:
"Actually, the deeply rooted opinion that a male player who plays a female character is gay is fundamentally mistaken. In reality, such a player is a strict heterosexual and a keen aesthete. When entering a new game, the first thing he does is look for the most attractive female character, sometimes even out of pure curiosity trying to undress her or peek under her skirt, because he understands that he'll be looking at her back and backside most of the time. Similarly, a gay player picks a male character. An immature schoolboy who doesn't separate his own identity from the game chooses the most brutal war—"
She was abruptly interrupted by the second yokai, who now clutched her head in both hands:
"Yura, cut it out. Do you even grasp our situation? We're stuck in this darn grinding game! How to get back—heck if I know. Yura! I have a wife, kids, a grandchild about to be born. And you're spouting some online folklore at me. I couldn't care less! Though, the sensations are... strange."
The kitsune managed to form a semblance of an apologetic smile with her fox muzzle and, sighing, replied:
"Alright. I won't do it anymore, Mr. Gennady."
***
Everything started that evening when Yuri was meticulously browsing new additions on a hentai booru site on his laptop. Actually, he had more important things to do—Yuri was a second-year student, and exam time was approaching. However, the very thought of cramming induced such melancholy and despair in him that if he opened anything at all, it wasn't his notes but a window of one of his favorite MMORPGs—to unwind. So now, he was relaxing, gathering strength, preparing for adventures in a recently downloaded grinding game.
Yuri's attention was drawn to a messenger icon, signaling that someone had decided to distract him. Seeing who it was, Yuri pulled a displeased face and hesitated for a few seconds, wondering whether to reply or pretend he wasn't there. In the end, his better nature prevailed, and he made perhaps the biggest mistake of his life. Even bigger, perhaps, than enrolling in the music department of a pedagogical university.
"Hello, Yuri. Do you know a game called 'Grind Hell RPG'?"
Yuri did. And since he couldn't look into his own future, at that moment he was slightly surprised and very pleased. He was happy that he might soon have a party member in this Korean spawn of hell. He was surprised by the person asking.
It was Mr. Gennady—a master of rushing in "Bounce Simulator Online" and an expert on builds in "Killboard Online," games he hadn't left for years, if not decades.
"Yes," Yuri replied honestly.
"Can you help me a bit? Let's hop on voice chat. It'll take about ten minutes—get in and get out." The message was text, but Mr. Gennady's charisma was so compelling that it pressed through the pixels of the screen.
Subsequent events unfolded rapidly and indeed didn't take more than ten minutes. The acquaintances entered "Grind Hell," met in the starting location. And Yuri, in the form of a fox, was circling around Mr. Gennady, already preparing to answer his questions when suddenly everything went dark before his eyes.
And when the darkness lifted and senses returned, our heroes found themselves not peacefully sitting in chairs by their monitors but standing in an unfamiliar place, suspiciously similar to the starting location of "Grind"—a blooming meadow around a gigantic tree. Apparently, not only the friends had been "sucked" into the game, as the space around the tree was quickly filling with beings appearing right out of thin air, very similar to the classes available to players.
As he watched the bestiary appearing out of nowhere, a terrifying realization flashed like lightning through Yuri's mind, and looking at himself, he nearly lost consciousness again: instead of his usual tracksuit, he was wearing a colorful kimono, noticeably bulging in the chest area!
Bewilderment and panic engulfed not only the unfortunate student—surprised exclamations sounded from all sides, and the noise was only growing.
It seemed the shock was total, but there was a person in this crowd who kept his composure and prudence—Mr. Gennady. Or rather, he simply didn't understand anything. But being a down-to-earth person, he didn't start feeling himself up, and seeing the ever-growing mass of creatures, he made a decision prompted by years and common sense—he grabbed the hand of a fox-like creature that was nervously clutching its chest.
"Yuri, is that you?"
"Uh? Me?"—the answer was incredibly informative, but the intonation convinced Mr. Gennady that it was indeed his familiar gamer friend.
"Let's get out of here before we're trampled!"—and they rushed away, pushing through the indignant bestiary.
That's how our duo soon found themselves in a clearing.
The silence after Yuri's apologetic speech didn't last long.
"Darn it!"—this time, the silence was broken by the girl, who had finally been distracted from thoughts about her family and grandchildren—"I'm not even wearing underwear!"
The kitsune sighed again, throwing a stick into the fire:
"They're traditionally not worn with kimonos or something like that. According to the game lore, we're not humans but demons. Yokai. Maybe that's why."
"Nonsense. Darn it..."
No, Mr. Gennady's remarks didn't fall victim to excessive censorship; he really only swore in exceptional cases, usually replacing profanity with various euphemisms. However, it would be wrong to consider the retired military man a saint: when telling stories about his youth or illuminating the nuances of relationships between the sexes—which, in his case, was one and the same—the soldier resorted to such elegant expressions that composers of bawdy folk songs would envy.
Be that as it may, these "darn its" testified that Mr. Gennady had calmed down. He began to ponder:
"There's no menu, and how do you open it without a mouse? No interface. No inventory. No weapons."
Yuri shook his head regretfully:
"Apparently, we're at the first level. And they give out the basic gear after talking to the Tree of Wisdom... Don't you know, Mr. Gennady?"
"Just Gena. Yuri, this isn't even my account—my daughter asked me to do some quests. So I did... So what's next?"—the girl looked questioningly at her friend.
The kitsune didn't answer. Instead, she furrowed her brow, strainedly grinned, and suddenly, trembling, transformed into a regular red fox. After hopping around a bit and yapping like a dog, the fox joyfully announced:
"It works! Magic works!"—with these words, the fox returned to her previous anthropomorphic form, adding, "Quite a strange feeling. Try it!"
After reverting back, the kitsune began to carefully examine herself from all sides. She paid special attention to a paper lantern in the shape of a physalis, which after the transformation ended up in her hand. The thing is, she had the exact same lantern from the moment she appeared in this world. But the small demonic flame burning inside the lantern turned out to be suitable for lighting a fire, for which the whole construction was used.
Both the kitsune's clothing and the lantern were part of her image—that's exactly how she was depicted on all the promotional posters and in the game where appropriate. The student didn't yet know what to do with the apparently immortal lantern. But he remembered the fact. Thoughts swarmed in his head, still unclear but intriguing. His brain was already working, so to speak, in a new way.
And apparently very effectively—Yuri was clearly very excited. The fox tail of his new body was furiously whipping against his legs. Anxiety was leaving him, rapidly being replaced by excitement. He began to get used to his new body and his situation in general. Since childhood, he had been thrilled by magic and adventures, and apparently, they meant more to him than a certain missing organ. Perhaps, an important role was also played by the fact that there was simply no one here to whom he had to pass exams in pedagogy and accordion playing!
Therefore, his imagination was already painting large-scale epic scenes of future events. One after another! Between the scenes slipped more modest images, suspiciously similar to those the student had been viewing before the ill-fated conversation with Mr. Gennady, but they were swiftly replaced by new visions of heroic achievements.
Excited by the emerging prospects, the kitsune turned to her fellow sufferer—you could say, her future loyal friend, even comrade-in-arms—to share with him their common exciting future, but was suddenly interrupted by the crackle of breaking bushes.
Well, the dreamy student had discovered magic within himself, and as for adventures—they, in turn, had discovered Yuri and Mr. Gennady themselves.
Out of the darkness of the forest thicket, three creatures emerged into the clearing.
Race: Human
Type: Barbarian
Class: Berserker
Two of them were over-muscled athletes in loincloths and all that stuff, their appearance evoking associations with Conan the Barbarian or Hercules. There was nothing surprising about that. In fact, in "Grind Hell," half of the male players of the human race resembled bodybuilding champions. The other half looked more like K-pop celebrities than men and were deservedly considered somewhat dubious on the local server. Alas, such were the limitations of the character editor.
Race: Beastman
Type: Lion-headed
Class: Tank
The third was a creature of utterly incredible build and three heads taller than his not-so-small companions. And while he timidly looked around at the edge of the clearing, the barbarians were leisurely approaching the campfire.
Yura, as someone accustomed to trouble since childhood, had a very bad feeling. The last thing he wanted was to interact with these types in a private setting—what if they asked about anime? Visions of heroic exploits instantly folded up and disappeared somewhere. The thought flashed that the exam in playing the accordion wasn't so scary after all.
"Are you looking for something? H-hi," the kitsune asked, trying to hide the tremor in her voice.
One of the barbarians spent some time shifting his gaze from the flat-chested girl to the curvy furry, back and forth, making a difficult choice. Finally, having figured out the Escobar's theorem for himself, he leisurely headed toward Yura.
"Looks like we've already, like, found it," he smiled wickedly, stopping so close to the kitsune that she had to step back out of a natural reluctance to sniff a hairy chest. "Hi."
***
The night is dark and full of terrors. Sounds of blows, groans, and muffled curses spread through the forest. In a clearing, under the light of a campfire, two yokai are beating up some clueless barbarians.
Mr. Gennady, whose frail body was surrounded by a faint otherworldly glow, was vigorously kicking his fallen opponent in the solar plexus. Yuri, gripping the log he had been sitting on moments before, watched his opponent expectantly. The barbarian lay motionless, drooling—he no longer needed Yuri; he needed a doctor and bed rest.
The student's first battle didn't take much time. However, it presented both sides with many surprising discoveries.
When the barbarian approached the kitsune and grabbed the unresisting fox by the shoulders, he thought everything was already decided. He was wrong. Getting what he wanted in the game turned out to be no easier than in real life.
Perhaps, instead of reading jokes and adult fanfiction while sitting on the toilet, he should have read something else, like Eastern folklore or at least the manual for "Grind Hell." While the barbarian was groping the coquettish and shyly averting her eyes illusion, Yuri, who had summoned it, grabbed a log and, circling around the victim from the side, landed a solid hit on the shaggy back of his head. Several times. Of course, in the pearls of Eastern mythology that have come down to us, cunning fox shapeshifters dealt with their enemies more elegantly. But Yuri was an amateur fox—and only for a few hours!
In critical situations, when victory and defeat are separated by seconds, the human brain works with fantastic efficiency—some call for their mother, some invest all their money in rubles, and Yuri—he remembered his basic skills. An incredibly effective combo of "Create Double" and "Distract," he recalled and correctly associated it with his recent experience of transforming into a regular fox. In desperation, he tried—and the skills worked!
As for Mr. Gennady, he simply acted as he was used to. Realizing that things were getting serious, he pulled himself together internally, not even noticing that he had activated some skill, and plainly struck his opponent. Then, hitting him in the stomach and finishing the fight with the kicks described above, accompanying them with remarks between breaths:
"Thought you walked into a fairy tale? Darn it."
The beast-headed creature stood at the edge of the clearing throughout the fight, increasingly realizing that he was unnecessary here. At some point, both of our heroes remembered the lion-headed one and simultaneously turned in his direction.
"Um, I'll be going then?" the giant mumbled, visibly flinching under their gazes and starting to back into the bushes.
"Oh, well, see yа~" Yuri replied automatically, trying to catch his breath.
For a while, he and Mr. Gennady listened to the crunch of branches, followed by rapidly receding footsteps.
The silence that settled over the clearing was broken by the bakeneko:
"Yuri, we should leave too."
And the kitsune agreed with her. The rest of the night, the yokai spent trying to get as far away as possible from the ill-fated clearing and find shelter. Either the night was particularly bright, or their eyes saw better in the dark, but they soon managed to find a tree whose branches could offer relative comfort. However, climbing the tree turned out to be a non-trivial task. Standing between sleep and Mr. Gennady were: his annoying lack of underwear, inability to climb, and fierce reluctance to transform into an ordinary cat. Yura thus found himself in the middle of the night with a heroine plucked from an ecchi manga. He had to summon his double again to jointly overcome this problem. However, the illusion turned out to be physically strong enough to toss not only the screaming girl onto the branches but also its furry original.
Mr. Gennady fell asleep immediately, fortunately, his dimensions allowed him to settle comfortably on the branch. Yuri spent some time before sleep trying to open his inventory. The attempts were accompanied by magical gestures and quiet cursing, though "hocus-pocus" or "abracadabra" might have been more appropriate here.
In the end, he opened the status window, which appeared before him, illuminating everything around with a faint blue light. It trembled and distorted as if from interference and generally looked unhealthy. Besides, it differed in some details from the usual one but still provided some information about the kitsune:
Race: ?kai
Ty#: Kitsune
Class: Illusionist
Level: ?
Sk#lls:
Life Dr#in
Master of Transformat#ons
Master of Illus#ons
Master of Mind Control
????
? ??/#
Everything else was drowning in a mass of special symbols and was absolutely unreadable. Perhaps it heralded the coming of ZALGO, but the student was too young for that meme—forget it. Yuri shook his fox head regretfully, tried to get comfortable on the branch, and soon fell asleep. He could not know or even guess about the amazing magic, by the standards of this world, that had just occurred.
Magic is not about exact numbers, at least not in the first place. Magic is about faith, will, imagination, and luck; by correctly applying them to a source of power, one can create a miracle.
In the world where our heroes ended up by fate, there was plenty of power, and very recently, there also appeared a great multitude of subjects who had definite ideas about what a miracle should look like…