Chapter 78: Character Introductions

Name: Rakuro Hizutome
PN: Sunraku
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Special Skill: Full-comboing rhythm games on mute.
Likes: Games, Sashimi.
Dislikes: Lag, biased RNG.
Favorite Game Category: Pretty much everything (even better if it's a Trash Game. Especially loves games that require moving the body).
Least Favorite Game Category: Visual Novels (Because if it's a Trash Game, it's just an endless descent into hell. Forced multiple playthrough elements make him deadpan IRL).
Playstyle: Omnivore. He can competently pull off any type of playstyle depending on his mood and the situation. But if you had to pin him down, he's an evasion-type attacker who relies on god-speed reflexes and empirical heuristics to dodge and strike.
He also excels at on-the-fly improvisation—building impromptu strategies, searching for breakthroughs, and shifting tactics to match the situation—meaning the longer a fight drags on, the more the strategic advantage tilts in Sunraku's favor.
However, because extreme trial-and-error is the baseline standard in Trash Games, he has the fatal flaw of giving up way too easily.
Details: The protagonist of this story, who was just about to sell his youth to the devil[*1] when a God Game reached out a saving hand to him.
With his freakish reaction speed combined with the tolerance for pure, unadulterated bullshit and player skills cultivated across countless Trash Games, he pulls off mind-boggling performances. He's the type whose performance is directly linked to his hype levels, burning brightest when pushed to the absolute brink. Outside of that, maybe because he's conquered so many Trash Games while weaving together relentless verbal abuse and crushing setbacks, his stress tolerance is sky-high and he's generally forgiving about most things. But he absolutely will not forgive biased RNG.
He's fundamentally positive about widely-hated playstyles like PK-ing—yep, yep, that's just another form of Gaming Activities. But he will kill them. Because that's part of the Gaming Activities, too.

Name: Rei Saiga
PN: Psyger-0
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Special Skill: Splitting a watermelon in a single strike.
Likes: Rakuro Hizutome
Dislikes: People who act overly familiar.
Favorite Game Category: Nothing in particular.
Least Favorite Game Category: Eroges (Just looking at them makes her turn bright red).
Playstyle: An honor student type who flawlessly and perfectly masters what she has—which includes being fully armed to the teeth with numerous Unique items. She does exactly what needs to be done, right when it needs to be done. Having originally learned Kendo and self-defense as part of her upbringing, she leverages those martial arts into her playstyle, making her a powerhouse standing head and shoulders above players of the exact same level.
However, she is utterly terrible at dealing with the kind of absolute lunatics who dodge hyper-speed attacks after seeing them, tie themselves to horses, or completely expend and crush an entire organization just for a single opportunistic strike.
Details: Excelling in both literary and military arts, sociable, born to an old and prestigious family, and impeccably mannered—a flawless superwoman gifted with two, no, three talents by heaven, but as compensation, her romance stats were entirely confiscated. Though, since her two older sisters are equally hopeless at romance, it seems to just be genetic at this point.
Spending her days watching Rakuro look so happy, she naturally grew drawn to him. Desiring to get closer to him, she bought the same games he did, only to be completely crushed by a relentless gauntlet of Trash Games that plunge the unprepared into sheer despair. Unable to watch this tragedy continue, Iwamaki recommended she play Shangri-La Frontier instead.
At first, she chose a hulking male avatar simply because she "didn't want to get harassed in-game," but after her older sister Momo found out she was playing ShanFro, she just sort of went with the flow... and before she knew it, she had become one of the absolute strongest players in all of ShanFro.

Name: Kei Uomi
PN: Modorukatzo, Katzotataki, OiKatzo
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Special Skill: Pulling all-nighters.
Likes: Games, Winning.
Dislikes: Losing.
Favorite Game Category: Fighting games.
Least Favorite Game Category: Mecha games (He just can't get used to the delayed intermediate step of his inputs moving a robot).
Playstyle: Absolute, exhaustive logic. He gathers intel, formulates countermeasures, devises solutions, and irons out the micro-details through actual combat. He can freely shift his style to pure offense or hard counter-focus depending on his opponent. However, he has a massive weak point—or rather, a natural predator: he is notoriously weak against opponents who throw in completely unscripted, impromptu ad-libs right in the middle of a brawl. Even though he has prepared countermeasures specifically for that kind of opponent when fighting Sunraku, the possibility of catching an L still can't be wiped from his mind.
Details: He doesn't love games; he loves winning in games. If it's fun, that's just a bonus. He holds the job that gamers everywhere envy: a Pro Gamer. The undisputed Ace of the fighting game division of the multi-pro gaming team Cyber Battalion, commonly known as the Nitro Squad. The name "Kei" commands respect even among overseas gamers.
He was supposed to be someone with absolutely zero connection to Trash Games. But after laying eyes on a video of Benpi uploaded to a video site, his curiosity was piqued. Buying the "Download Edition" of Berserk Online Passion was the end of his luck. Getting toyed with by Sunraku for 5 losses, getting styled on just as he was getting used to the game for another 5 losses, and then getting stomped by a completely serious Sunraku for a final 5 losses—totaling a 15-loss losing streak—he found himself dragged completely by the ankles into the deepest swamps of Trash Games. By the way, he later abandoned his actual job to relentlessly research Benpi, paying Sunraku back with a 20-win streak as a "thank you."
Incidentally, in private he uses the rougher "Ore" pronoun, but in public settings he switches to the polite "Boku." Combined with his androgynous face and voice, he's incredibly popular among various... deeply specific demographics.

Name: Towa Amane
PN: Pencil Warrior, Arthur Pencilgon
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Special Skill: Striking a flawless pose even when photographed by surprise.
Likes: Fireworks, Thrills.
Dislikes: Boredom, Slugs.
Favorite Game Category: Strategy games.
Least Favorite Game Category: On-rails games (Because there's not a damn bit of room for strategy or negotiation).
Playstyle: Fireworks Artisan type. She painstakingly lays down the groundwork piece by piece all for the sake of one singular, massive explosion. The only thing that matters is "the ultimate thrill at the end"—she actually hates the preparatory stages leading up to it. Her negotiation skills are absolutely off the charts, extending beyond players to even NPCs, leading to scenarios where people who were supposed to be hostile end up taking actions that ultimately benefit Pencilgon.
She excels at flexibly altering plans on the fly to force the situations she's constructed to succeed. Her capacity for impromptu ad-libs is immensely high, but because those mid-course corrections are strictly predicated on achieving a predetermined final goal, if you shatter that foundational premise, her skills downgrade to just "above average."
Details: The shining star admired by today's trendy teenage girls, a top-tier fashion model. Her true nature? The exact kind of absolute monster who would watch someone explode into a bloody mist and casually cheer, "Tamaya〜!"[*2] She is a fundamentalist of living in the moment; she chooses thrills over peace, and hedonism over stability. Doing that in the real world would ruin her life instantly, so she came seeking those thrills in the realm of video games.
She's the type to diligently pave the ground for a final, massive detonation, and the culmination of that playstyle is what's known as the United Rounds [Pencil Dynasty] Incident. Because her live-in-the-moment syndrome is severely twisted, she absolutely loves self-destruct mechanisms. So, naturally, she rigged her royal castle with a massive amount of explosives. The players acting as her subordinates were told absolutely nothing, so they were entirely blown away right alongside the castle.
She uses her real-life face exactly as is for her avatar, but since recreating the faces of famous celebrities in full-dive game character creation is a fairly common occurrence, her true identity has never been exposed. At least, for now.
Her recent dilemma is that the people around her found out she plays full-dive VR games, and keep asking her, "Oh, what kind of games do you play?" Obviously, she can't exactly look at the fans who idolize her and say, "Oh, well today I completely annihilated the clan my little brother was leading by selling them out to another group."
An absolute believer in the ideology that "there is no little brother superior to his older sister."

Author's Afterword
For now, here are the profiles of the main human cast.

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Devil: The Kanji reads as "Devil", but the Ruby text dictates it be read as "Trash Game".

• *[2] Tamaya: A traditional Japanese cheer shouted while watching fireworks go off.