Let's be honest here, I have no idea what's going on in Gamindustri right now.

It could be the apocalypse.

I could be minutes away from Conquest End.

Whoever's in charge of the game could have turned on all of the Add Enemy plans, meaning that if I make one misstep, I'll die horribly to some end-game-level abomination.

It could even be the events of the real first game, meaning that I'm going to have to deal with random encounters, rather than on-screen mobile critters. God, that'd be horrible, and anxiety-inducing.

I mean, I've been walking in this forest for god knows how long, and I haven't bumped into any monsters.

I mean, besides the Dogoo-on-a-stick I'm still carrying. I think I'm going to name him… her… it.

Yeah, let's name it Seamus. Seamus the Dogoo on a stick. It… He hasn't made much noise since I've started walking, and seems to be accepting his new place in the world quite well.

I don't know when it'll die, nor do I particularly care. After all, it's just some trash mob, something that is slain in the dozens without any effort at all. What I do know though, is that he's probably going to confuse the hell out of whoever I bump into, and that alone is probably worth the effort.

Inventory check time!

On me, I've got a wallet, with a few gift cards, about forty bucks in un-activated Steam gift cards, two hundred dollars Canadian in cash, and various miscellaneous coins. I can tell for sure that, of those things, I'm pretty sure only the Steam gift cards will do anything. I jingle the coins a bit, debating if I can use them for anything, before I just shake my head and plop them back into my wallet.

I've still got my black winter coat, although it feels sort of strange to not have my phone tucked into it. Still, it's covering me and keeping me warm, and that's definitely something.

Weapons wise, I've got… um. Seamus.

"Dogoo!"

And finally, it speaks. It's somehow still alive, despite the trauma I've done to it - meaning it's somehow either much stronger than the average Dogoo, or I'm much weaker than the average human. Either way, at least it's not going anywhere. I'll let it stick around, but if it tries to attack me, I'll put it out of its misery. For now though, I can't say I don't enjoy the company, as weird and inhuman as it is.

So now, the main question.

What do I bring to the table?

I mean, this is a video game world. If you're an NPC, you're either quickly forgotten, or you do something. I don't know how to craft fancy items. I don't know how to cast magic. As far as combat goes, right now all I've got is a stick, and the ability to turn off my sense of reason in combat.

Right now, I'd say, what, level 1 is a good guess? Or is it 5? Either way, I'm either not bound by turn-based rules, or no-one is.

"Goo!"

"Shut up, Seamus." I murmur, jostling the stick a little bit. I'm trying to think. Don't make this harder than it already is.

"Goo."

As the forest starts to thin, I take a deep breath. Regardless of where I am, I am stepping into something I can't possibly step out of. The world is dangerous, especially to a normie like me.

"Screw it, Seamus, let's go."

"Dogoo?"

Purple.

Welcome to Planeptune, I guess. I mean, Leanbox would've been nice, too, but I guess Planeptune is the only place with trash-level Dogoos.

I have no credits, and no way of storing credits.

Dammit, if I need to take a loan, then someone's going to have to pay. Actually, considering how credits are needed to pay, that'd probably be me.

First things first, swing Seamus at nearby garbage cans! Because that always, always works in games.

Alright. So.

The first garbage can, rather than be full of garbage, like expected, had a full, still-warm chicken in it. I don't know what sort of crazy bastard throws out a full chicken, but I'm still not crazy enough to eat garbage-chicken. Maybe I'll give it to an elf or something.

I wonder what sort of invertebrate the Dark Elves worship here. Eberron has Scorpions, the Forgotten Realms have Spiders…

I wonder if they worship tapeworms or something.

God, already I'm missing my medication. Focus, man, focus!

Anyway. Second trash can: empty.

Third one, a button, which I'm pretty sure is one of the escape button things that I always carry 99 of, because I'm too lazy to walk my way back to the entrance. Cool, now I have a way to save time. Too bad I need a lot more of them.

After the third (and final) trash can, I'm still without a real weapon. No one has noticed the commotion, of course, since crazy people attacking your trash with weird weapons is sort of commonplace here. Either that, or Seamus is doing its job admirably, creating a field of 'do not mess with the crazy'.

Maybe I can find a pottery store or something. Oh well, that'll come later.

Well, time to bite the bullet. Let's ask some random schmuck where the guild is.

"Hey there! My name's Derek, and this here is Seamus!"

"Goo."

Seamus was definitely a good choice.

The random guy I asked took one look at the 'weapon' slung across my shoulder, and pointed me towards the guild without another word.

Time to make some money so I can eat.

Wait,

"Seamus, I'm curious, are you edible?"

"Goo. GOO."

I'm assuming 'Yes, but if you do, I'll kill you.'

So much for that.

Again, crazy-guy act gets me to the front of the line, since no one wants to argue with me. I mean, it'll definitely cause problems later, but who cares? It's not like I'm any weirder than the usual cast of freaks.

So uhh, now that I have the quest board in front of me, something else pops into my mind. In the games, only the CPUs have the power to affect shares, right?

What happens, then, if I do a quest? Does it affect the shares?

I guess I'll just take one that lowers Arfoir…

Oh. Second game. In the first remake, those quests lowered "Other", not "Arfoire"

Here we go, a fast, quick quest. Kill a couple of fodder mobs, get a hundred credits, a healing item, and a pat on the back. Didn't even need to sign up, or anything.

I really need a real weapon.

Okay, so I'm apparently headed back to the forest, to kill some uhh…

Real Gamers.

Damn, I wasn't reading what I signed up for! Oh well.

I don't consider myself a Real Gamer, anyway.

Let the bludgeoning begin!

I think I needed to kill five.

Did I kill five yet?

Probably.

I mean, maybe? I don't know how to open the quest screen

I don't even get those popups telling you that you've completed the quest.

All I've got is the pseudo-sense of entitlement that you can only get by beating something into a not-so-bloody pulp.

I don't know if equipping Seamus increased my attack damage or not, but the next bunch of critters I encountered (probably since I joined the game through a different method, they just weren't flagged to spawn, or something), died in some-odd five hits.

They didn't go down instantly, of course, and they did in fact try to fight back.

Unfortunately, as potentially-dangerous as these things are, they just aren't very fast.

I've always had long legs, and I'm over six feet tall. I've been told I'm two-thirds leg, and when I'm going for it, I tend to outspeed people more often than not.

Thus, outrunning these things, which barely move a foot per six seconds, is easy.

All I did was back away from them, occasionally abusing my longer reach to club them to pieces.

Killing monsters, however, went differently than expected.

I don't know what makes Seamus different, but the Dogoos I took down all but exploded into clouds of binary and logic, leaving behind nothing but a chip each, and occasionally a bottle full of goo.

If my guess is right, then the chips can be redeemed for credits. Too bad I don't have anything able to redeem them… I guess I'll just carry them around for now. My jacket has six pockets, so I'm entirely fine stuffing it full of chips.

Can I even level here? I mean, equipment-based progression would be fine too (it's definitely been done before), and I can definitely come up with new combos, but really, that'd be more tied to my imagination, than an abstract sort of "Level" thing.

Also, when do I plan on ditching Seamus? I mean, it's a fun gimmick, but it's basically a light sledgehammer, and that's not my favored sort of weapon. If anything, I'd want to go the spear route. Either that, or grab myself a handgun, set of knives, or just steal Uni's favored weapon and go with a rifle.

Still, after all of this bludgeoning, I'm finally certain I've killed enough, and it's time to head home.

Home? Uhh… I guess I mean back to town.

Yknow, this'd be so, so, much faster if I had Symbol Attack and Symbol Attack Gain, but that'd just take the fun out of all of this. I mean, it'd be less work, but sooner or later, it'd be monotonous, and really, do I want that?

Man, this forest really doesn't have much ambience as I walk back to town. I'd expect birds, or the sound of a stream or something, but it's mostly silent. I know that in-game, there's always music playing, but without the music, it's sort of eerie.

Yuck.

Back to the town, I guess.

Actually, I haven't heard anyone speak yet, besides Seamus.

"Goo."

It'd be sort of a deal breaker if everyone here spoke Japanese: I don't speak a single word of it.

If I could turn on subtitles, or something, I guess I could read them, but seriously, it'd give me a headache. I NEED to know what people are saying when they speak, otherwise I get pissy.

Back to the guild, I guess, time to grab myself an end reward.

Actually, I don't know how they track kills. Couldn't I just take a quest, wander off to a bar somewhere (since everyone in this game is, what, obviously a pre-teen, I don't think I'd need ID to get in), then show up an hour later to get my reward.

Nah. Killing things is fun.

Wait, there's someone else redeeming a quest.

Purple hair.

Crud.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it appears I've stumbled over the plot.

Updated to current version early 2022!