Inside the accessory shop.
The memory that resurfaced made me wince involuntarily.
The proposal event, and the worst event that spawned from it, “Demon King’s Blessing.”
It remains one of my traumas.
One of the game’s selling points is the marriage event, a system where you can marry almost any NPC with a well-developed character.
Whether the world of “Nekomeko” is incredibly liberal or the Author simply found it troublesome to create separate events for male and female characters, the range of marriageable partners in this game is vast.
Gender and race are ignored; as long as they are marriageable, you can marry anyone, as many times as you like, with no basic penalties.
Moreover, you can receive items or skills as marriage bonuses for each partner, making it something you’d be foolish to pass up.
The method to trigger a marriage event is simple.
First, present a ring-type accessory and have the partner put it on.
Once it’s on, if you initiate the conversation at a monolith with “I have something important to tell you,” you’ll move to the confession phase.
If you then utter your confession, and your partner’s affinity is 100 or higher, the confession succeeds.
The proposal is successfully established.
However, a successful proposal does not equal marriage.
This is the game’s particularly nasty characteristic, the very essence of “Nekomeko” being “Nekomeko.”
After finishing the proposal, the event automatically transitions to a vow of marriage. The moment you utter the vows, the Demon Lord’s voice echoes from the sky.
First, the Demon Lord bestows the “Blessing of Immortality” upon the marriage partner.
This cannot be avoided. Characters who receive this “Blessing” completely freeze, becoming as if time has stopped for them.
No recovery method can cure this. They will not die or age, but they become like living statues, unable to do anything.
In other words, the moment the Player tries to get married, their beloved partner is turned to stone. Players witnessing this are understandably stunned.
However, the Demon Lord’s “Blessing” does not end there.
Next, under the guise of “so the Player can remain eternally devoted,” the Demon Lord bestows the same “Blessing” upon all other “marriageable characters” besides the chosen partner, forcibly prohibiting them from marrying anyone else.
Since characters that can be taken along as companions are usually “marriageable characters,” if the Player is adventuring with companions, they too will likely receive this “Blessing.”
Players who believed only their marriage partner was frozen are then struck a second blow upon seeing their companions and familiar characters also affected by the “Blessing.”
Furthermore, the most terrifying aspect of this event is not just that.
As mentioned earlier, the proposal can only be done in front of a monolith, and there’s a reason for that.
The explanation for the proposal event has a casually written notice.
“When the proposal event is triggered, data will be automatically saved. Please note that there is no redoing the event regardless of the outcome.”
This means that once the event is triggered, the data is auto-saved, and there is no retrying it.
Moreover, this game is an MMO with a single data save.
You cannot fail and restart from a backup.
Players are forced to continue their adventure having lost their dearly beloved companions, with most of the major characters rendered immobile.
Naturally, no one could have anticipated such a disastrous event occurring at the point of proposing. Players who hadn’t gathered information online were caught in this trap, their reactions a mixture of shock, despair, and fury.
The backlash was immense, with a dedicated thread appearing on an online forum solely to complain about this event.
Indeed, a penalty for failing an event is understandable, but this is what happens *upon success*.
And to make it impossible to reset? That’s beyond merely being ill-natured.
Count myself among those who fell victim to this. In my shock, I impulsively deleted my save data and didn’t touch “Nekomeko” for three days.
…Though, that also means I recovered by the fourth day and started the game all over again.
Still, the impact lingered, leaving a deep trauma.
One of the reasons I played mostly solo is rooted here.
However.
While the “Demon King’s Blessing” event plunged “Nekomeko” players into a veritable hell, it is ranked third from the bottom, a “C” rating, meaning it’s considered the third least dangerous among the eight hazard levels on the “Nekomeko Wiki.”
Given how much attention this malevolent event garnered, why a “C” rating?
There are three main reasons.
* If you advance through the game with a solo playstyle, the story progression is manageable (with patches).
* If you have prior information, avoiding the event is easy.
* The solution is highly imaginable, with no hidden tricks.
Let’s explain each point.
Firstly, regarding the first point, the detrimental effects of this event are limited to most companions becoming unusable.
Most shop characters are mere background noise, so using shops poses little problem. And the story events proceed (with patches) even if some characters are stuck.
A skilled “Nekomeko” player can easily clear the game solo, so the risk of this event isn’t entirely fatal.
Well, to be precise, at version 1.00, triggering that marriage event early in the game could make it impossible to clear the game. However, there were many other events that caused even worse bugs, so that wasn’t much of an issue then.
You might not grasp this, but if we’re talking purely about risk, dungeons with silly names like “Mino-tan’s Left-Alone Labyrinth” were far more dangerous.
This dungeon, as its name suggests, is a vast maze. As a helpful element, using a quest item exclusive to this location allows you to randomly change the maze. However, until version 1.11, there was no way to replenish the uses of this quest item.
Normally, that would be fine, but the problem is that sometimes the randomly generated mazes are structurally impossible to escape, and the fact that there’s a save point in the dungeon’s rest area leads to the worst tragedy.
In essence, if you encounter an inescapable maze when your quest item has zero uses remaining, and then you save, you are completely stuck.
At this point, the only choices left for the player are to search for the impossible exit for eternity or to delete the save data and start over. That’s heartbreaking.
This quest, colloquially known as “Mino-tan’s Waiting Trap” due to its game-breaking bug, was awarded a “B” rank before the patch.
With the patch, the quest item’s uses can now be increased, so its current rank is “D.”
Now, to explain the second reason: the “Demon King’s Blessing” event will not occur unless you propose. Therefore, if you have prior knowledge, you can easily avoid this landmine of an event.
Like the “Lizardman’s Trap,” this is what’s known as a “first-time killer” type of event. Conversely, veteran players can easily avoid it while humming a tune.
Compared to story quests that are unavoidable for game completion, or the tornadoes that strike without warning while walking in the desert, causing instant death and known as the “Sudden Death Game in the Desert Tornado,” this event’s danger is significantly lower.
And finally, the solution to this event is clear and straightforward.
As indicated by the Demon Lord appearing as an antagonist and providing the hint “it cannot be solved by mortal means,” the way to annul this “Blessing” is to defeat the final boss, the “Doombringer Demon King.”
It might be unusual to find such a straightforward solution, given how the quests become increasingly wicked from the mid-game onwards. For example, the quest “Michael’s Blue Bird” received in the Capital City Richter, despite having good conditions like no bugs, no combat, and good rewards, is treated as a C-rank due to its sheer deviousness.
This quest begins with the protagonist being asked by Michael’s mother to find a blue bird with mystical powers for her sick son. This quest is quite tricky. You visit various places in town, bringing items that might help Michael’s illness. Gradually, Michael gets better, and each time he says something like, “I found this in the garden,” and you receive a blue bird feather from him. At this point, the player believes the quest is progressing smoothly, and continues to “cure” Michael. However, in the end, Michael only gets better, and the quest itself fails.
To complete this quest, you must visit various parts of town and bring items that are clearly detrimental to Michael’s health.
As you do this, Michael weakens, and by repeating this process, you eventually discover the corpse of a blue bird on Michael’s bed. It is then revealed that Michael’s true identity was a blue bird that had taken the form of her child for a grieving mother who had lost her son.
Incidentally, afterward, you hear:
“I’ll pay you as promised.
But never show your face to me again.
…I shouldn’t have asked you for anything like this.”
And the quest is cleared. I’m convinced the person who made this quest was either a Demon or something similar.
Compared to such quests, this “Demon King’s Blessing” event is remarkably straightforward.
While this event undoubtedly presents a significant obstacle to marriage, defeating the Demon Lord restores everything to its original state. And if you complete the marriage event *after* defeating the Demon Lord, the “Demon King’s Blessing” event itself won’t even occur.
The developers had commented something like, “You can create a harem if you want, since you can marry as much as you want,” and that is indeed true.
But why, in the first place, did they require players to defeat the Demon Lord before getting married?
If we’re forced to interpret the game developers’ intentions, they likely wanted to say:
“If you have time to get married, clear the damn game first.”
And the players’ likely response to that would be:
“Then say it outright!”
At least, that’s what I’d want to say.
Well, the truth behind it all remains unknown.
One theory suggests that the unmarried “Nekomeko” staff created this event out of spite for their lack of romantic success, and it’s widely circulated. Regardless, this event was eventually accepted by the majority of “Nekomeko” players.
Moreover, by the time of release, people still playing this game were either hardened “Nekomeko” players unfazed by such things or players who had started it out of morbid curiosity, knowing it was a terrible game. Consequently, few people complained about events of this magnitude.
For instance, if I were to fall for this event again now, I’d shout,
“What the! Nekomeko! You did it again!!”
And then, after a few seconds, I’d switch gears and think,
“Well, that aside… I wonder if I can steal items from the frozen ones.”
This is the level we reach; anyone who gets used to “Nekomeko” becomes like this.
Occasionally, a first-time player might fall for this event and complain on an online forum, but comments like,
“That’s standard for Nekomeko.”
“No, this is just how the game is lol,”
and seeing them retreat has become almost like a cultural phenomenon.
I’ve rambled on for quite a while, but to summarize:
“Other events are also pretty awful, so everyone stopped caring too much.”
A truly regrettable reason.
Nevertheless, it’s undeniable that the “Demon King’s Blessing” event is malicious, causes significant harm to players among bug-free events, and is more mentally impactful than other events.
However, even knowing this, there are quite a few people who intentionally propose before defeating the Demon Lord, triggering this “Demon King’s Blessing” event.
Though seemingly having only disadvantages, this event can actually grant a rare skill obtainable only by triggering it.
The special skill acquired when your beloved partner undergoes the “Demon King’s Blessing” is “Incarnation of Rage.”
Its name seems to perfectly describe the players who fly into a rage after falling for this event. This rare skill possesses power that can potentially break the balance of “Nekomeko.”
“Incarnation of Rage” is a unique skill, derisively called a “solo-only skill.” It can only be used once every twenty-four hours and cannot be used when allies, i.e., non-hostile NPCs, are nearby. However, its effects are dramatic.
For thirty seconds after activation, all of the Player’s base stats are tripled. However, for the subsequent thirty seconds, they are reduced to one-hundredth of their original value – a broken ability in many senses.
Since the skill affects base stats, it doesn’t impact bonuses from weapons or proficiency, but it’s still more than enough power. Compared to rare magic that manipulates base stats, even advanced spells might only increase a target’s Strength by 50%, making this skill’s effect exponentially greater.
Acquiring this would bring me great power as I strive to survive in this world.
But, despite that…
“U-um, excuse me.
Did I perhaps remind you of something painful?”
I couldn’t possibly want to learn it by turning a girl like Ena, who looks about to cry and bows her head, into an inanimate statue.
“Ah, sorry, Ena.
It’s nothing you need to worry about. It’s just…”
Earlier, I said the “Demon King’s Blessing” event was still a trauma, but what weighs on my mind more than the event itself is the subsequent deletion of my save data.
There are times I think I should have defeated the Demon Lord and brought back my companions, Tiel and the others, instead of deleting my save data.
Of course, I know that NPCs aren’t truly alive and don’t have emotions.
But even if their existence is fake, my desire to save them was real.
I never want to experience that kind of regret again.
That’s why…
“I’ve absolutely decided that I will never get married.”
***
Nekomeko Wiki, Event Hazard Rank
E
A normal event.
Savor this rare normality as you clear it.
D
A difficult and twisted event.
However, this is standard in “Nekomeko.”
C
An event requiring vigilance.
Depending on the situation, it may be impossible to complete or negatively impact later gameplay.
B
An event that must be avoided.
It is absolutely impossible to clear through legitimate means, or it makes story progression difficult.
A
An event that absolutely must be avoided.
Encountering this event has a high chance of making further game progress impossible.
S
If you save after this occurs, game progression becomes impossible.
Even if you saved before it, there’s a high chance you’re already stuck.
SS
It’s okay, there’s still hope! …Or so you tell yourself.
SSS++
What a lucky person you are to be able to play such a wonderful game again from the start!!
*The ranks and explanations are for reference only.
