Chapter 45: “Nurse Yoichi”
Yoichi absolutely loved nurses.
Since he used to get sick a lot, he was a regular at the VR clinic. Whenever he got anxious before an exam, the kind nurse ladies always kept him company. They were probably actually specialized AIs, and ideal nurses like them didn’t exist in real life, or more like the “nurse” profession probably didn’t even exist anymore period, but regardless, Yoichi loved nurses. He loved them so much that whenever he was able to choose his clothing in games, he always went with nurse outfits. These outfits could only be found in historical literature now, but even still, the overall aesthetic remained popular in games and other creative works. However, Yoichi didn’t want to lie about himself, so he never posed as a different sex or became one of those “nekama” people. Therefore, he always played with a male avatar using his real name, “Yoichi,” whenever he played any games.
In deference to Yoichi’s pride, people thus dubbed him:
Nurse Yoichi.
Yoichi was quite taken with this nickname, so in order to live up to it, he preferred playstyles that specialized in archery[1]. As long as there were bows in the game, no matter how unpopular it was for any reason, he would prove that he could nevertheless reach the top ranks with it. He was even experienced in archery in real life; the present Yoichi was unrecognizable from the sickly child of the past. In this game, bows weren’t particularly bad or anything, so aiming for the event championship should have been a suitable goal. Since the start of the game, Yoichi stoically chose to use nothing but the bow. Considering the skills he learned, his stat values supporting those skills, and his archery ability in real life, then not just with bows but even in terms of weapons in general, not many could match up to Yoichi.
Since that was the kind of person Yoichi was, then it was a matter of course that he would make it through the preliminaries. Not only that, but he emerged victorious with quite a bit of time left before sudden death. However, after Yoichi was transferred to the spectator seats, he only saw 30 monitors displaying preliminary fights; two of them were already blacked out.
—Someone cleared the prelims even faster than I did…!
He was shocked. To bring out the best in the bow, he had learned the [Enhanced Vision], [Enhanced Hearing], and [Enhanced Smell] skills. With them, he was able to find enemies faster than anyone else could and snipe them with arrows. If there was a duel in progress, he could use sound to determine their locations and kill them at a distance. If they were hidden, he needed only a whiff of their scent to find an opening through which to fire an arrow. If they were coming after him themselves, he would wait until they exposed themselves and shoot straight at them. Therefore, the person who had earned the most kills was Yoichi himself.
Since Yoichi had killed players with maximum efficiency, he thought he naturally had to have had the fastest clear time.