"Race Value? What's this?"
I was in the middle of making a new character for the game's first update in ages.
[New Large-Scale Update!]
[Surpass the limits of your class while holding a Racial Trait!]
"Human, beastkin, demigod, werewolf...."
Just skimming the list, I could tell exactly what this meant.
This update let you grant a character the traits of various races.
"This update's actually not bad, huh?"
Akris.
An open-world RPG that drew attention at launch for its huge degree of freedom and its gorgeous in-game design.
On top of that, it was flexible enough to let you adjust your class and stats freely even after you'd started playing.
Thanks to all that, I, too, had been playing Akris since the early days, and inside the game I was a veteran in my own right.
It was hugely popular right after release, but as time went on, its popularity had slowly been cooling off.
I'd tried every class line there was over the past 5 years, so I was right on the verge of getting bored.
Playing with a Racial Trait meant, in a word, that you could become that race.
Players would get to use the skills that NPCs and enemies had been using in the game.
"What, I don't get to choose it myself?"
*Race Value traits are determined by your Potential value.
Below the explanation was the Potential value.
"So the race changes depending on Potential...."
The Potential stat was an option you could already adjust in the old character creation screen.
It wasn't all that important, though: the lower you set Potential, the more starting stat points you got, and the higher you set it, the fewer stat points you got.
With this update, though, the stat adjustment screen was gone, and only the Potential value remained.
Probably because every race had its own fixed starting stats.
"Then this time...."
Deciding how high or low to set Potential came with a matching amount of risk.
Give it a moderate value and the early game would go smoothly.
But what if you cranked Potential up?
The early game turned into a literal hell party.
You couldn't one-shot even the most basic trash mobs, and you couldn't even equip the early gear you picked up because your stats were too low.
'You might as well call it a penniless bum in his underwear with a club.'
It was fair to call it a starter pack reserved for veterans or people gunning for a jackpot.
Of course, even I, a self-proclaimed veteran, had once made a character with a high Potential value.
...Of course, a non-combat unique trait like Legendary Blacksmith had popped up, and I'd been disappointed.
Still, it had been a support character that helped a lot with piling up in-game currency.
'In the end, cranking up Potential doesn't mean you'll get something good. It's random.'
It really was no different from gambling on whether you'd draw a lottery win or a chicken rib, too meager to enjoy and too good to throw away.
And yet.
Swish.
I pushed the Potential slider all the way to the right, up to Max.
Every so often, you had to take a gamble like that in a game.
I could just grind through the miserable early game with the veteran skills I'd honed over 5 years.
Besides, this time it was a Racial Trait, so the range of possibilities would be even wider.
Of course, I was bound to land a race with weak physical abilities, but the potential would be that much greater.
What race would I get as my trait?
Probably not beastkin or some warrior race.
If it was a race lacking in physical stats, it'd have to be a fairy or a spirit, right?
I didn't know which races had come in with this update, but they wouldn't have left out the classic ones, at least.
'Mana Affinity? Blessing of the Earth? Mana Control?'
A race like that would most likely come with a trait tied to magic.
I watched the game screen, quietly hopeful.
*Once the Potential value is set, it cannot be modified again.
*Do you really want to finalize your Potential value?
I hit Enter without hesitation and accepted.
[Creating a new character.]
Then, along with a line of text saying the character was being created, a pure white light covered my vision.
Right before that, a line written in small letters at the bottom of the screen caught my eye.
[tip. Whatever the situation, as long as you keep your head on straight, you can survive.]
[So, don't give up.]
Words that felt as if they were meant for me alone.
But before I could even wonder about it, I lost consciousness.
***
Thud.
The shock of falling from somewhere brought me to my senses.
"Hey, newbie. Get up already."
When I opened my eyes, someone who looked like a nutcracker doll with a face covered in stains was looking down at me.
No, a real nutcracker doll was poking me with the spear it held.
"This one really looks like a person. The quality just keeps getting better. Wonder if they'd make me a new body too."
"...Who are you?"
My last memory was definitely of starting a new game.
I'd woken up in what looked like the inside of an ironworks, with a nutcracker doll next to me.
And above me, a pitch-black hole was looking down at me.
Had I fallen out of that?
It wasn't just my surroundings that had changed.
I was wearing a pure white sleeveless outfit, top and bottom, and my body felt strangely thin and fragile.
I might not work out much, but I wasn't this skinny.
"Confused, since you just opened your eyes? No need to overthink it. Go to your spot and work. That's your job."
The nutcracker doll wore a numb expression, as if this happened all the time, and pointed a finger toward the other end of the corridor.
"...What's over there?"
"Every so often we get bastards who toss out questions like that. Bastards like that only come to their senses once you shove them in the furnace. Just shut up and follow me. If you don't want to die."
My head was full of questions, but one look at the nutcracker doll's mug turning nasty and my mouth shut on its own.
In the end, I followed the thing to the other end of the corridor.
Past the corridor, the inside of an enormous factory began to spread out below my feet.
Lava, boiling and bubbling.
Steel, heated red-hot.
Other dolls, shoveling ore into the lava.
"Don't tell me this is...."
I'd never once actually been here or seen it in person, but I knew where this place was.
This was... a region from the game I loved to play, Akris: the Iron Factory.
Everything in my field of view looked exactly like the place I'd seen on my monitor.
"...Holy shit."
I wanted to deny it, but I couldn't.
I had actually entered the game.
"Got dumped for having a foul mouth? Looking like that, you won't last long here either."
Soon the nutcracker doll shoved me straight into the ore-hauling facility.
"This is where you'll work for the rest of your life. You know what happens if you run."
With that, the thing left me sprawled there and walked off.
"A new newbie? We were short on hands anyway, so that's a relief. Hurry up and come help out."
It was a doll dressed in carpenter's clothes.
Besides the carpenter doll, a few dolls of other kinds were sorting ore off a running rail and putting it into large sacks.
This place, the Iron Factory, was run entirely by dolls.
That was because the factory's owner was supplied with dolls and ran the factory with them.
The reasoning was that people needed treatment when they got hurt, but dolls didn't.
Wait, did that mean I'd become a doll too?
"Start by hauling the stuff piled up there over that way."
My head was a mess, but I quickly picked up a sack as the carpenter doll said.
But the sack didn't budge an inch.
"Why are you so feeble? Want to end up like those guys over there?"
"No, I'll move it right away."
Straining, I heaved the sack onto my back and headed for the hauling cart.
But before I got far, the weight crushed me and I ended up slumping to the floor again.
When I barely managed to lift my head, I saw the parts of discarded dolls in front of me.
They were the things the carpenter doll had been shouting about and pointing at a moment ago.
If I didn't do my job properly, I'd probably get thrown away like these guys too.
I'd come to my senses inside a game, and now, without even knowing why, I was doing forced labor in a factory.
I stared blankly at a discarded doll's arm.
Strangely enough, a faint light was coming from that arm.
Just as I couldn't sort anything out in my head, a message popped up before my eyes.
[Old Hauling Doll's Right Arm]
[On attachment – Strength stat increased by 5]
[You can attach the target's parts to your body.]
A message that had suddenly appeared before my eyes. And then.
[Your Racial Trait is "Doll."]
[A new quest has been issued.]
[Mission – Escape from the Iron Factory.]
***
My Racial Trait was Doll.
Sure, with Potential maxed out, my base stats hitting rock bottom was practically a given, but....
Why was something like a doll even on the race list in the first place?
If I'd gone all in on magic, shouldn't it have at least been a fairy-type trait?
Whose bright idea was it to make a doll a race?
It was a relief, at least, that I was a human with the Doll 'trait' and not an actual doll, but that wasn't what mattered.
The problem was that the spawn point where I'd opened my eyes was a dump like this.
In Akris, there were two regions where doll mobs appeared.
This place, the Iron Factory, and the dolls' place of origin.
At least in their place of origin, cute little dolls wandered around freely.
Of course, despite the adorable exterior, that place was plenty horrifying too.
That didn't mean this place was any better, though. Not at all.
"Even so, handing me a garbage trait like this and dropping me in a mid-game region isn't normal."
The one saving grace was that even if the trait looked like trash, parts of it were actually useful.
Namely, that I could attach other dolls' parts to my own body.
[You are using the Old Hauling Doll's Right Arm.]
[Remaining Durability : 43%]
Thanks to that, my body hadn't broken down during the past few days of hauling work.
Carrying the sacks on my back was still very hard, though.
[Character Info]
Name : Enon
Race : Human
Trait : Doll
Level : 1
- Stats -
[ Vitality – 1 ]
[ Agility – 1 ]
[ Strength – 1 ]
[ Intelligence – 10 ]
[ Mysticism – 10 ]
[Unique Trait – Doll]
[Your physical abilities become identical to a doll's.]
[Vitality is replaced by Durability.]
[*You can attach other parts to your body.]
[*When recovering your body, you must go through the doll restoration process.]
[*Stamina restrictions are removed.]
Over the past two days, whenever I had a spare moment, I'd learned all sorts of things about my body.
First of all, it was certain that I'd entered the body of the character I'd created in my last memory.
Also, as I'd expected, the base stats were extremely lopsided.
What I hadn't expected was that my Intelligence and Mysticism stats were at a whopping 10, the base maximum.
'Because I maxed out Potential, probably?'
And although my race was human, thanks to this damned trait, you might as well call me a doll.
'Plus, since it's a unique trait, I don't even get a shot at any other unique trait.'
First off, no matter how much hauling I did, I never got out of breath, and I didn't really get tired either.
Not that I'd want to do this kind of work in real life.
Above all, what was immediately useful was that I could attach and use parts discarded all over the factory.
Thanks to this ability, I'd been spared from having my body break down in a single day and getting tossed straight into the furnace.
"What a relief to finally get a newbie who's worth something. Right?"
The carpenter doll's muscular arm settled over my shoulder.
It must have really liked me; its nasty first impression had vanished, and the smile hadn't left its face all day.
I had no intention of getting close to it, but thanks to it, I didn't have to worry about friction with the other dolls.
Along with the carpenter doll and the other dolls from the hauling crew, I took a seat in the cafeteria.
The doll factory only served a few kinds of food.
"Pig fat today? Don't they plan on giving us some good oil for once? Everybody grease yourselves up good so you don't creak."
The meal for the hauling-crew and smelting-crew dolls, made mostly of metal or plastic, was oil.
Dolls didn't actually need the concept of a meal.
It was just a matter of greasing their joints so they wouldn't seize up and they could keep working.
Thanks to that, the factory always reeked of oil.
I supposed I should count it a blessing that it at least wasn't mixed with the smell of sweat.
"Anyway, newbie, your taste in food is pretty disgusting. You can actually put that garbage in your mouth?"
"I'm the type who'll eat just about anything."
I popped a coiled sausage into my mouth.
It was made from the chunks of meat left over from the process of making the dolls' oil; I'd asked the chef doll for them.
Doll trait or not, I couldn't exactly eat oil or cotton stuffing.
They wouldn't believe me if I told them I was actually human, so I made up some excuse.
The very concept of 'eating' something would be hard for them to understand anyway.
The word "meal" honestly suited the dolls made of cotton or fabric better.
After all, they stitched up their torn or severed parts with thread or cotton and stuffed fresh cotton into their bodies.
'Not that it matters. If they break down badly, they get tossed without mercy.'
When a doll broke down badly, like the ones where I'd gotten the hauling doll's part, getting scrapped was business as usual.
You'd think there was no point in handing out parts like that, but there was a good reason for it.
The number of dolls supplied to the factory wasn't regular, and neither the numbers nor the dates of the deliveries were fixed.
The carpenter doll had said it was the first newbie in months, which alone made it clear the supply was irregular.
'Makes sense. Every doll that comes here was thrown away in the first place.'
In the world of the game Akris, almost every doll was born in a place called the Garden of Dreams.
A place that some, those who didn't know what went on inside it, even called a paradise.
But the place where the dolls thrown away from inside it ended up was right here.
And the dolls thrown away to this place lost their memories of that place, and lived on in the factory having lost even their purpose.
All of them had their own egos and values, but they were beings who could dream of nothing more.
Just like birds in a cage.
But now and then, there's bound to be a bird that opens the cage door on its own and flies out.
I was that bluebird.
"I'm going to step out for some air."
I moved the carpenter doll's arm, which had been wrapped around my shoulder the whole time, and got up from my seat.
Leaving the carpenter doll's flustered expression behind, I slipped out of the cafeteria.
After catching my breath from the pungent smell of oil, I leaned against one side of the wall and sank into thought.
[Mission- Escape from the Iron Factory]
'Just telling me out of nowhere to escape from here.'
I didn't even know why I'd entered the game, and now there was a quest dangling in front of my eyes out of nowhere. It was absurd, to say the least.
Honestly, part of me wanted to ignore the quest out of spite, but....
'It wouldn't have given me a quest for no reason.'
If I stayed here, it was blindingly obvious that my body would break down anyway.
Even now, if not for the doll parts, I'd have been scrapped long ago and become trash dumped around the factory.
When I'd first gotten the hauling doll's part, its Durability had been 80%, but by the second day it had already dropped by about half.
One part couldn't even last me a week, and I couldn't just attach any old thing, either.
It was like how a smithy had plenty of polearms lying around, but not all of them existed as items.
The one difference between parts I could use and parts I couldn't was that I could sense faint magic in the usable ones.
'Must be thanks to my high Potential.'
It looked like a device to mark which parts were usable.
'If I find other parts, I can buy time to find a way out, or whatever else.'
In the end, one way or another, I'd have to clear the quest to find out anything.
The hard part was that other departments collected the discarded doll parts and carried them off somewhere.
I'd asked around, and apparently most got burned or dumped somewhere else.
I couldn't do anything about the burned ones, but if I at least knew where they were dumped, I could somehow track them down—
Just then, I suddenly noticed a faint line on the floor.
The same color I could see in the hauling doll's part I was holding.
I couldn't tell whether my ability had activated because I'd been thinking I needed to find parts, or whether it had simply caught my eye.
Maybe it was showing me the way to the quest location, like in a game.
What was certain was that if I followed that light, I'd get what I wanted.
Not caring that work hours were approaching, I immediately ran after the faint line.
After I'd run along a dark corridor for quite a while, the line soon led past the gap under a door.
Clunk.
Unfortunately, the door was locked.
'Usually with stuff like this, there's a key nearby.'
As it happened, when I lifted a floor tile along its seam, there was a key under it.
The moment I used the key to open the door, a corridor stretching off to one side came into view, and I heard the sound of water.
When I'd walked down that corridor a little way, a large space opened up, with dolls' corpses lying scattered all around it.
Whoosh.
Past the railing, an enormous stream of water was rushing roughly through the gaps in a circular iron grate.
'A sewer?'
There was so much water that the steel floor hummed and trembled.
I hadn't known there was such a massive waterway under the factory.
From the look of it, they'd drawn water in from somewhere to regulate the scorching temperature of the factory.
I studied the darkness beyond the grate carefully.
The end of that passage had to be outside the factory.
But the iron bars on the sluice gate were set so close together that there was no easy way through.
The doll parts caught between the bars showed as much.
They were proof that the dolls' corpses had been dumped through the sewer, and at the same time, traces of those who'd been trapped here without ever finding freedom.
Turning away from the sewer for now, I started searching the parts discarded around the area.
Luckily, there were a few parts here in which I could sense magic.
[Old Doll's Broken Face Guard]
[Durability – 3%]
[Stuffed Doll's Frayed Foot]
[Durability – 4%]
[Aged Doll's Hook Hand]
[Durability – 21%]
.
.
Most of them had their Durability worn down completely or had no tool attached.
Still, there were some that were useful in their own way, so I was searching for more parts when this turned up.
[Scorched Doll's Cutter Arm]
[Durability – 19%]
A cutter?
When I checked the part, my eyes lit up.
That thing might just be able to cut through the iron bars of the sluice gate.
It happened just as I laid a hand on the welder, thinking I'd finally found a truly useful part.
-I can never leave this place.
Someone's voice rang out inside my head.