Ch.22[Chapter 22] My Little Concept

“I envy him. Damn it.”

Donatello looked with envious eyes at Raphael, the dark elf who had taken Kunoichi Hime.

Ninjas! Thinking of all the stories he knew, there was hardly anything as entertaining as ninjas appearing and massacring everyone.

That’s how much ninjas were essentially cheat keys.

“Speaking of ninjas…”

Donatello stroked his bushy beard, lost in thought.

If they’re ninjas, shouldn’t we establish our own character concepts to match?

Donatello glanced at Sir Dominic.

One eye. Sir Dominic’s most distinctive feature.

“Would you consider becoming a pirate?”

The impatient Donatello asked Sir Dominic directly.

Sir Dominic pondered the word “pirate” for a moment, but thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea.

“Let’s give it a try.”

Sir Dominic had experienced naval battles during his time as a knight in Ferrant.

His lord, Lady Alice, would stop at nothing to achieve military merit.

Due to Ferrant’s harsh environment, their ships weren’t large, but their smaller size actually favored Ferrant’s basic hit-and-run tactics.

Though the speed caused severe seasickness, Sir Dominic had enough combat experience to become accustomed to such vessels, so becoming a pirate didn’t seem too difficult for him.

Donatello hurriedly pulled out old relics from the club storage.

They were cheap costumes that senior club members had pooled money to buy.

Finding a pirate set covered in thick dust, Donatello coughed from the rising dust as he handed the box to Sir Dominic.

“Try it on. Don’t worry about the size. Gacharland clothes automatically adjust to fit.”

Sir Dominic removed his Ferrant knight’s formal attire and put on the pirate coat and bicorn hat decorated with a skull.

The musty smell was a bit bothersome, but surprisingly, the clothes themselves were quite comfortable.

“Not bad. No, it suits you very well.”

Donatello burst into satisfied laughter at Sir Dominic’s appearance, which anyone would recognize as a pirate.

“Good, from now on you’re a pirate. But also a knight. A pirate knight, that is. An honorable pirate scoundrel commanding a privateer ship under your country’s orders.”

The phrase “honorable pirate scoundrel” seemed somewhat contradictory, but Sir Dominic was quite pleased with his current outfit and continued adjusting his collar.

“I’m getting inspired. Good. The map concept is starting to come to me…”

Donatello became absorbed in his own world.

Opening a console window, Donatello began loading an empty space and filling it with his own colors.

Meanwhile, the dark elf Raphael who had taken the Kunoichi…

“No, let’s try again. ‘Pleased to meet you. I am Kunoichi Hime.’ Now, give it a try.”

Kunoichi Hime turned out to be a person with surprisingly diverse expressions.

This was fortunate for Raphael, who believed that standing CG for the game was essential.

The ninja’s characteristic flexibility and flashy movements honed through ninja arts were beyond what Raphael considered perfect CG.

However, the problem lay elsewhere.

“Pleased. To. Meet. You. I. Am. Kunoichi. Hime.”

Hime was a master of acting.

A master of bad acting.

Whether due to nervousness or simply being a poor actor, Hime’s delivery was so awkward and strange that anyone listening would burst into laughter.

“No, well- sigh… Let’s take a break. You seem tense, so please rest for about an hour and come back. In the meantime, I’ll work on creating the map.”

Heaving a deep sigh, Raphael pressed his temples and gestured for Hime to leave.

Knowing how terrible her acting was, Hime dejectedly walked out.

“Since Donatello said we could take a break while he works, I might as well visit the convenience store.”

Sir Dominic opened the door and returned to the club room lobby.

Since it seemed like it would take a while, he thought he’d buy something to eat from the convenience store with his spare time.

This was one of the few aspects of Gacharland that Sir Dominic had adapted to without difficulty.

Just then, the door to the adjacent room opened and someone dejected came out.

Kunoichi Hime, was it? The exotic thief-like woman had an effect clearly showing “I am disheartened” above her head, indicating how upset she was.

“Um, Miss Hime, right?”

Sir Dominic was a knight. And knights cannot ignore a disheartened woman.

Hime turned her head at Sir Dominic’s words, offered as consolation to her extremely dejected appearance.

And then she fell into confusion from the tremendous shock.

“Aieeeeeek! A pirate? A pirate? Why?”

Pirate reality shock!

Hime remembered what the older boys who came for volunteer work during her kindergarten days had said.

“Hey, if ninjas and pirates fought, who would win?”

“How could ninjas ever beat pirates?”

“What are you talking about? Pirates would never—”

Coming from a long-established ninja family, Hime was shocked in her young mind.

She didn’t even hear the subsequent debate about whether ninjas were stronger or pirates were cooler.

At that time, adults were wise beings who spoke the truth in Hime’s mind.

Since the older boys, who were adults to her, said pirates were stronger than ninjas, this must be true.

…or so it was engraved in young Hime’s conscious and subconscious.

As Hime’s body and mind grew in the ninja village, the fear of pirates that had already been etched into her instincts grew alongside her.

When you keep thinking about something alone, it grows and grows…

In her mind, pirates had become rum-drinking, fire-breathing monsters who chewed kraken tentacles like tteokbokki while massacring ninjas.

Fortunately, there were no pirates in the ninja village, so her trauma had no chance to manifest until today, when she finally encountered a pirate and all her accumulated trauma exploded!

Even his tier 2 status was useless.

This was instinctual, a type advantage she had created herself!

In the end, Hime collapsed on the spot from the shock.

From Sir Dominic’s perspective, this was absurd.

Suddenly, a woman who saw him screamed in shock and then her legs gave way.

And she wasn’t just sitting down—she was trembling in terror.

Sir Dominic unconsciously pulled out his flag.

The ninja before him was a colleague, an ally, and she was now being treated as having suffered harm.

“Aieeeeeee-! P-please don’t eat me!”

But Hime’s trauma only grew worse.

Currently, Sir Dominic’s flag was affected by the pirate skin and looked like a harpoon with a flag attached.

Hime saw the flagpole overlapping with the harpoon she had once seen fishermen use to catch marlin in Traditional Geographic, and was seized by the fear that he was going to eat her.

Sir Dominic became even more flustered at the words of the ninja who was now having a more severe fit.

“Eat you? That won’t happen.”

Sir Dominic approached with his flagpole to calm Hime, who had now started rolling on the floor.

“Hieek-! Stay away! Don’t come near me-!”

Hime, now a mess from the dust she’d collected rolling on the ground and the cold sweat from her fear, shouted with a strange posture and expression.

“Guk.”

And finally fainted from the overwhelming shock.

For Sir Dominic, this was truly bewildering.

“Hey! You won’t believe who I’ve brought—”

At that very moment, Super Deluxe entered through the broken door.

Super Deluxe momentarily stopped thinking when he saw the scene before him.

Sir Dominic in pirate attire.

Kunoichi Hime collapsed on the floor.

A harpoon in Sir Dominic’s hand.

A ninja who had been thoroughly defeated and fallen.

Having reached some conclusion, Super Deluxe said to Sir Dominic:

“Do you have some grudge against ninjas?”

“Th-this is a misunderstanding.”

Sir Dominic desperately began to explain.

Even to himself, the conclusion that would be drawn from this situation certainly didn’t seem honorable.

“I-I’m sorry. I have a trauma about pirates…”

A little later, Hime, having regained consciousness, said with a sniffle.

She hadn’t completely recovered from the shock, but the cup of cocoa Super Deluxe had made for her had a somewhat calming effect.

“I don’t know what happened to you with pirates, miss, but it’s all in the past now…”

Super Deluxe patted Hime’s shoulder, trying his best to calm her.

Sir Dominic had removed his skull-decorated bicorn hat.

“This could be a problem. We might have to abandon our concept.”

Donatello, who had rushed out upon hearing the screams, covered his mouth with his hand and spoke dejectedly.

“Take your hand off your mouth and speak. What do you really think?”

“Don’t you think it could be interesting if we mix it well?”

Donatello removed his hand from his mouth at Super Deluxe’s words.

Donatello’s mouth twisted strangely as he smiled.

“A kunoichi who fears pirates. And a pirate who is gentle to women. I don’t know what the remaining one will be, but isn’t this alone quite interesting?”

“Indeed.”

Super Deluxe naturally organized the story in his head.

Although everyone gathered here was from engineering backgrounds and knew nothing about romance, they had been trained through dating sims and could imagine it more naturally than expected.

“If we get fans, they might like this chemistry.”

Super Deluxe smiled wickedly as if plotting something.

“By the way, who did you bring? Are they still waiting outside? That would be rude.”

Could it be the last character? The final developer who hadn’t chosen a character yet, the vampire Leonardo, asked.

“Oh right. Yes.”

Super Deluxe hurriedly went outside and spoke to someone crouching on the stairs, not knowing when to enter.

“I apologize. There was a bit of commotion. Please come in.”

At Super Deluxe’s words, the person waiting on the stairs slowly moved.

Finally, the last character entered the club room.

“Initiating greeting protocol. Nice to meet you everyone. I am Code Back Zero. Please call me Zero.”

An android decorated in silver and gold, giving off a sacred feeling, raised its hand with linear movements.