Episode 7: The Birth of the Army of Hell (Up to Ten Members)

“Sera, hold up. There’s something weird.”
As we hurried along, making pointless small talk, Kiryu-san suddenly raised a hand to stop me.

“What in the world is that?”

“Ah, that’s…” I narrowed my eyes.
Ahead of us, there was an unnatural crowd of people.

A crowd of people… or rather, a crowd of zombies?

It was a single middle-aged man, standing there so blankly he looked like he was just waiting to be attacked, and around him, three zombies stood politely upright, not attacking him at all.
Their slight sway suggested they were breathing, but they showed no sign of trying to attack or even walk.

“Hmm… They’re all surprisingly stock-still… Could it be a civilian NPC (Non-Player Character) scheduled to be attacked by zombies, and three zombies meant to attack said NPC?”

“Ah, the thing you were talking about earlier?”

“Exactly. In this game, you can often rescue people being attacked by zombies along the way. They’re called ‘Rescuees,’ you see.”
With that, I pointed to the unmoving group.

“I think that middle-aged man is one of those Rescuees. During gameplay, he’s always the old guy getting attacked by zombies in that spot, you know. But I’ve never seen him just standing there like a log before. Maybe it’s a bug.”

“Maybe the flag hasn’t been triggered?” Kiryu-san said, skillfully crossing his arms while still holding the crowbar.
“We’re, so to speak, ‘running the official route in reverse,’ right? Maybe those zombies are programmed to attack that NPC only when the protagonist gets within a certain distance ‘from the official route,’ or something like that.”

“Ah, I see. So that’s it.”

“I can’t say for sure. It’s just a ‘maybe.’”

“No, I’m sure your way of thinking is right, Kiryu-san.” Kiryu-san sure talks in a strangely cautious way, doesn’t he? I thought, as I readied my machine gun.

“…If they’re not attacking, that’s convenient for us. Let’s take ‘em out.”

“Hey, you should probably hold off on killing too many.”

“But I want to save that old guy.”
I quickly took care of the zombies.
Then, I approached the (probably) NPC old man who was standing stock-still. When the old man started talking, staring blankly into space, Kiryu-san tilted his head.

“…So they speak English, huh.”

“Well, the official language of Confi-City is English, you know.”

“It’s a monotone delivery.”

“The ordinary people in Confi-City, due to the voice actor quality, all speak in a remarkably monotone. …This monotone, this thank-you message just like in the game… He’s a genuine Rescuee NPC, alright.”

I tried running around the old man and then moving further away. When I did, he followed me, keeping a certain distance. He was mostly expressionless, but when he stopped, he’d sometimes shake his head as if tired or look around fearfully.

“Alright, just like the game!”
When I handed him a piece of concrete I found on the road, the old man’s expression turned a little more resolute, and he started swinging the concrete piece around.

“—Alright, alright! Just like the game!! With this, we’ve successfully taken the first step towards forming the ‘Army of Hell’!”

“Huh?!” Kiryu-san let out a bewildered cry.
“This completely ordinary old guy… is the Army of Hell…”

“…”
An odd silence fell between us.

“…I told you, it’s just the first step! We’re going to rescue a ton of people like him and rapidly increase their numbers. In this game, rescued NPCs start following the protagonist. And you can even give them weapons and make them fight! If we keep rescuing people and adding them to our ranks, that’s how the Army of Hell will be completed!”

“Are you really sure about this? This old guy looks like an ordinary civilian with no combat experience whatsoever…” Kiryu-san said, pointing at the old man NPC.

“…He certainly is thin and doesn’t look like he’d be good at fighting, does he? But don’t worry. Rescuee NPCs, just like us players, level up the more you make them fight. In the game, you could only bring along up to five, but maybe here we can keep increasing that number. Even just having five is a huge help, but if we can increase it, it’ll truly become an ‘army,’ you know…”

While I was lost in rapturous thought about my future Army of Hell plans, Kiryu-san made an indescribable face for a while, looking back and forth between the old man and me.
—But then, as if he’d thought of something, his eyes widened, and he snapped his fingers.

“…Alright. I’ve thought of something good too.”

“Eh?”

“From now on, we’ll use this Army of Hell as an ‘Item Box.’”

“Item Box?”
As I blinked and tilted my head, Kiryu-san smirked, one corner of his mouth lifting.

“My clothes had pockets too, but this guy… look here. Anyone wearing pants has pockets on the sides and in the back, without exception. If we stuff all the medicinal herbs we can in there, can’t we use them as ‘walking item storages’?”

“Huh, Whaaat~?”
So, his idea was for everyone to stuff their pockets full of things, just like him.

“Isn’t that a bit too awful looking, no matter how you slice it…?”

“Awful or not, if it’s usable, anything goes, right? …Besides, how long do you plan on clutching your own smartphone?”
With that, Kiryu-san pointed at the NPC he’d just rescued.

“Your clothes don’t have pockets, do they? You should put it in one of his spare pockets.”

“This old guy… if he happens to die, his whole body will disappear, so I don’t want to entrust my smartphone to him.”
I clutched my smartphone and shook my head vigorously. Kiryu-san saw this and nodded.

“Then you can use my empty pocket. Lend me your smartphone.”

“That’s a great help. If it comes down to it, please toss it over to me, okay?”

“Of course.”

Chatting like this, we pressed on.
Along the way, we rescued the stock-still NPCs we encountered from the clutches of zombies.
A pale-faced white woman, a grumpy-looking middle-aged white man, a lanky, nerdy-looking white man…
…
…There are a lot of white people in this game.

“…They’ll probably get killed by zombies soon enough anyway, but let’s give names to the troops to tell them apart. Uh, from the left, Be×os, Ga▽es, Job○s, Buffe□t, Zucker〇erg…”

“Do you have some kind of grudge against super rich people?”

The Vital Watch was just a little further.
The conversation never stopped… or rather, we consciously kept up the pointless chatter.
We figured it was a good way to distract ourselves in this horror-like reality, and in fact, it was working very well.

—Yes, it’s a distraction.
Even in such an abnormal world, it’s important to remain human.

While running, we’d stop whenever we saw people being attacked by zombies and rescued them one after another.
Then we’d give them weapons like iron pipes or hammers and let them fight zombies to gain combat experience. …It’s going smoothly.

“Once we got over ten people, they stopped following us, huh…” I murmured sadly, looking at an NPC who, after saying thanks, just stood there rooted to the spot and wouldn’t follow.

“Maybe we’re being treated as player characters? Is there a limit of five people per player character?”

“Speaking of which, I wonder where the protagonist of this game is,” I said, vaguely looking around.

“Maybe we can meet them at the game’s starting point…”

As we walked and discussed this, a watch was lying conspicuously on the road.

“Ah! That’s the Vital Watch!”

“Why is it just lying on the road…”

“Who knows? In the game, it’s always lying in this spot, but I never really thought about why it’s lying there,” I said, picking up the Vital Watch.

“We don’t have time, so let’s use it later. For now, we need to hurry.”
With that, I wrapped the Vital Watch around the part of my forearm close to my upper arm. Medically, it’s called the proximal forearm.

“…Why are you putting it on such a weird spot?”

“Huh? Because, isn’t it unhygienic? Wearing a watch on your wrist is dirty, you know.”

“Huh?”

“Huh?”

…Sensing the gap in common sense between a medical professional and an engineer, we had at least succeeded in obtaining the Vital Watch.

“Phew, we walked a lot, didn’t we!”
We finally reached the area where the game starts.
It was a parking lot spacious enough for about eight cars, surrounded by concrete walls, with broken cars emitting black smoke and overturned trucks strewn about.
And there were about two zombies there.
Originally, they were the zombies scheduled to attack the protagonist at the beginning.
However… perhaps because the trigger for the game to start hadn’t been activated, they just stood there, not moving.

“Ah…!”
And then, in the center of that parking lot, I made an astonishing discovery.
Standing stock-still… no, frozen in a posture with his hands slightly raised, was this ‘game’s protagonist.’

“What’s wrong, Sera?”

“That’s Nick! Nick is here!”
I cried out and ran towards ‘him’ in the center of the parking lot.
The Army of Hell (about ten of them) were holding their respective weapons and systematically beating the stock-still zombies to death.

“Nick… huh. I’ve seen him at game events. He’s the protagonist of this game, right?”

“That’s right. But, why on earth…? Nick’s in a pose like the default state of an M☆D model.”

“☆MD?[^☆MD likely refers to MikuMikuDance, a freeware animation program where 3D models often default to a T-pose or A-pose. The star is likely a form of light stylization similar to the censored names of the rich individuals mentioned earlier.] …This is a pose called an A-stance,” Kiryu-san corrected me, shaking his head.

“This… what should we do? Nick isn’t moving on his own…”
I tried grabbing Nick, pushing and pulling him, and even slapping his cheeks, but there was no reaction at all.

“Hmph, just a scarecrow, isn’t he?”

“Using incomprehensible net memes again…”

For a while, we moved Nick around, pushing and pulling him smoothly, as if he had no weight.

“More like an object than a person… at this point.”

“Well, isn’t it fine to just leave him like this? If we leave him here, there’s a chance we can prevent all sorts of troublesome event flags from triggering,” Kiryu-san said with a shrug.

“Um, so does that mean we can avoid things like boss battles? I wonder if it’ll go that smoothly…”

“No idea. In reality, just like the protagonist, we’ve been able to rescue town residents and make them our underlings… If we trigger an event flag, there’s also the possibility that even we could trigger a boss battle just like in a normal game.”

“I see. I guess we won’t know until we actually try it, huh… Oh. That’s right, Kiryu-san. I guided you to the ‘place where the game begins’ as promised, didn’t I? We can get outside the game’s boundaries from here, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right. My memory’s fuzzy since I only saw it in a bug testing video a while ago… but it’s the kind of thing you can definitely find if you don’t give up looking, so I think it’ll probably be fine.”
With that, Kiryu-san walked towards the back of the parking lot… and then suddenly, he started jumping and hitting his head against the wall.

“Uwaaaah, it hurts!!”

“Of course it hurts! What are you doing, Kiryu-san?!”

“Well, I was trying to find a place where the physics engine is bugged…”

“A bugged place?”

“Yeah. In a bugged spot, your position before you jump and your position after you jump and get repelled by the wall are misaligned,” Kiryu-san explained carefully, even while wincing in pain.
“If you repeatedly jump towards the wall in a bugged spot, your body will gradually clip into the other side of the wall. And eventually…”

“You can get outside the wall, you mean…”
To think such a bug exploit existed.

“Come to think of it, I remember writing about a bug like that on my own strategy blog. …But to think he was trying to use a bug-finding technique that looked so painful you’d surely give up halfway through…”

“…”

“Kiryu-san, I think you’re an amazing person, but… could it be that you’re also an amazing idiot…?”

“…Shut up…”

While I was silently marveling at him for various reasons, a scream suddenly came from near the parking lot exit.

“Huh… What?!”
When Kiryu-san and I turned around, there…
(Uwah… Wawa, this is bad!!)
The Army of Hell (about ten of them) was being taken down by a horde of strong mooks that were automatically spawning!!

[Unhelpful Character Introductions That Won't Help You Understand the Main Story at All]

■ Doom
A retro PC game, total bait for American millennials or Gen X-ers, where you slaughter monsters with guns.

It's a flagship title of the FPS (First-Person Shooter) genre.

The game features an overly energetic scenario where a buff protagonist unleashes a massive arsenal of firearms to relentlessly slaughter hideous monsters (often translated as "Army of Hell" or "Forces of Hell") erupting from Hell.

This work is packed with merciless depictions of blood and flying chunks of flesh. Back then, in American "bad kid" culture, the gorier it was, the more "Cool!" and enjoyable it was considered, firmly capturing the hearts of children and overgrown children alike. It smashed sales records, exceeding 10 million copies. Ports appeared on every game console imaginable, naturally, and even on mobile phones and scientific calculators. Outside of games, its reach extended widely to movie and novel versions.

Its relentless, realism-striving gore has been continuously criticized, from its release until now, to the point where it's the first name that comes up when discussing outrageously violent games. However, it's also a game beloved by many for a long time, with users creating various expansion packs, and many variations known as Doom-clones also emerged. It's an extremely important game both technologically and in terms of game history. When it comes to this kind of trivia-laden talk, Kiryu is more the type to go on and on about it than Sera.