Chapter 79: Character Introductions Part 2

Name: Kuon Amane
PN: Orcelott
Age: 15
Gender: Male
Special Skill: Acting like a tough guy.
Likes: Going full Musou and stomping everyone.
Dislikes: Situations where he can't stomp everyone. Girls who approach him just to get to his sister.
Favorite Game Category: Action games.
Least Favorite Game Category: FPS.
Playstyle: "I'm OP" power-fantasy style. Grinding levels to completely crush opponents with a sheer stat differential—which, in a certain sense, is a perfectly valid and correct way to play RPGs.
It's not that he's completely garbage at games, but he is fundamentally terrible at games that operate on the premise of dying multiple times. Taking it a step further, since he absolutely hates playing a supporting role, he's the exact type to charge straight into the vanguard in an FPS. The guy who rushes in, gets sniped, gets flamed into oblivion by his teammates, and calls it a set. The exact type of guy who dies by getting caught in the blast of a Rainmaker[*1].
Details: Towa Amane's younger brother. Because his sister is a massive celebrity, he has the standard inferiority complex of constantly being compared to her, but more than that, his sister is such an absolute monster of a human being that his feelings are an incredibly complicated mix of envy and a desperate mental note of I must never become like that.
He is fundamentally unsuited for online gaming. He would casually pick up various MMOs, realize he couldn't just "Ore TUEEE" stomp everyone, and quit—repeating the cycle endlessly. He hates FPS games to the point of actively spitting on the genre, vowing never to play them again after being flamed so hard it gave him genuine trauma. I mean, yeah, if you go 0 kills and 20 deaths as a solo rusher, of course you're gonna get flamed.
Unable to just sit back and watch her brother quit Shangri-La Frontier without even properly enjoying it, Towa—who originally had zero intention of joining the same clan—stepped in to help, and as a result, the "Ashura-kai" was born.
At first, he was caught in a decent loop of winning some and losing some, but after repeatedly PK-ing players and acquiring the Unique Weapon "Demonic Sword of the Slaughterer: Slaughter Bringer", his ego twisted in all sorts of wrong directions.
Failing to realize that the other members were enjoying the process of PK-ing, his subsequent actions to fiercely protect the results of their PKs caused all the veteran PKers of Ashura-kai to bail, turning the clan into a literal nest of low-quality landmine players.

Name: ?????
PN: Animalia
Age: ??
Gender: Female
Special Skill: Accurately guessing the exact breeds of a mutt dog's parents.
Likes: Animals, critters.
Dislikes: Her own body.
Favorite Game Category: Fantasy, games where you can physically pet animals.
Least Favorite Game Category: Games that reek of iron, games where no animals appear.
Playstyle: Entirely specialized in neutralizing rather than killing. She has mastered a massive arsenal of debuffs and hexes that restrict enemy actions. While her actual combat power is low, when it comes to purely incapacitating monsters, Animalia alone possesses enough technical skill to surpass the entire first-string lineup of Black Wolf.
Details: The female Clan Leader of the monster photography clan "SF-Zoo", commonly known as the "Director". Her excitement levels reach slightly concerning, off-putting heights whenever animals are involved. In real life, she is actually an incredibly polite and refined woman, but she suffers from severe congenital animal allergies—to the point where playing with a dog for just a few minutes will trigger a horrific asthma attack. Thus, she descended into the realm of VR games where she can interact with animals all she wants without triggering an allergic reaction.
Recently, she has sensed infinite potential in the new "Rider" class and is pouring all her focus into it, but she has already steeled her resolve—she is fully prepared to drop into a dead-serious dogeza in front of Sunraku if it means she can return to the Heaven[*2] she once abandoned in absolute tears when she realized permanent residency there was impossible.

Name: Mana Iwamaki
PN: ????
Age: 26
Gender: Female
Special Skill: Fleshing out strategy wikis.
Likes: Fictional romance.
Dislikes: Real-life romance.
Favorite Game Category: Otome games.
Least Favorite Game Category: Horror games (She doesn't like the suspension bridge effect style of romance).
Playstyle: The absolute completionist type who exhaustively conquers every single corner of a game. Platinuming a game is a given; she will grind and grind until she has fully unlocked every single hidden CG and secret route.
Details: The woman who runs GAME-SHOP Rock Roll. A hardcore Otome game addict who temporarily closes down her shop whenever a certain release window hits. Actually married. Will her husband make an appearance or not?
She prefers Otome games specifically because "the happy ending is mathematically guaranteed," allowing her to enjoy romance with absolute peace of mind, whereas she detests real-life romantic drama. To be specific, it seems a whole lot of messy drama happened before she finally tied the knot with her husband. However, she is actively cheering on the idiot currently utilizing 99% of his brain's allocatable memory on Trash Games and the hopelessly-in-love, romantically inept girl trying her absolute hardest to get closer to him.

Name: ???
PN: Dragonfly
Age: ??
Gender: Female
Special Skill: Never giving up.
Likes: The exact moment a game is cleared.
Dislikes: Giving up.
Favorite Game Category: Everything.
Least Favorite Game Category: Puzzle games.
Playstyle: A natural-born RTA speedrunner type who relentlessly repeats trial-and-error to arrive at the optimal solution. Charge in first, experiment second, fail, and then think of the correct answer. Because she relies entirely on intuition, it clashes slightly with her methodical playstyle.
Details: A precious, incredibly rare new player who descended upon a dead game. The very same player who was searching for an opponent while using a hulking, muscular, bearded old man avatar when Sunraku logged into Benpi to practice his Wethermon countermeasures. The intense "kouhai" aura drifting from her entire being naturally makes other players feel like they "just can't leave her alone." However, because her character creation tastes are profoundly unique, she exists as a walking contradiction—a scruffy old man radiating little-sister energy with a cute female voice.

Name: ??? (The guy who used to be Rank 3 in Ashura-kai)
PN: ???
Age: ??
Gender: Male
Special Skill: ???
Likes: Little girls.
Dislikes: Old men.
Favorite Game Category: Games featuring cute girls.
Least Favorite Game Category: Games where you constantly trigger flags with old men.
Playstyle: PvP Specialist. He possesses the raw player skill required to simultaneously dodge attacks and perfectly manage his inventory while fighting against a Bounty Hunter—an entity that essentially operates like a flawless TAS. If restricted to a pure 1v1, he likely possesses enough raw mechanical skill to go toe-to-toe with Sunraku, OiKatzo, and Psyger-0.
Details: A Braver forever engraved into the history of Shangri-La Frontier, who threw away absolutely everything he had built up until that point for one singular purpose: to force the Bounty Hunter "Tias-chan" into a bikini armor. Currently, he serves as the leader of the "Tias-chan Dress-Up Squad", a group of absolute degenerates that stands as the twin peak alongside the "Saint-chan Fanclub". Every single day inside the city, he and his comrades take turns executing and being executed by each other, desperately grinding through the RNG seed in hopes of spawning Tias-chan.

Author's Afterword
The writing bug bit me, so I went ahead and slapped down the profiles for the non-main characters too.

Wait a minute, am I basically updating every day at this point...?

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Rainmaker: "Gachihoko", a reference to the objective-based ranked mode in Splatoon where the item explodes if held too long.

• *[2] Heaven: Kanji = Heaven, Ruby = Rabituza.