The thick City walls which they passed through are built on the surrounding mountains. It’s elevated, giving entrants a magnificent top view of the bustling streets and the orderly buildings. The familiar kingdom spreads out as far as the eye can see.

Marcheline stares in awe and disbelief. All these years, this, this is part of the world where she has reincarnated.

____

Lightbringer. It was a mobile game that was popular in Asia, but pretty much unknown everywhere else. It had an incredibly well-balanced PvP fighting mechanic, with beautifully designed characters and animation.

Its story-mode is also an Otome game, and you gain your heroes/harem members through Gacha, or ‘shards’ of them through events and good old-fashioned begging your guild. There’s a monthly event where the game introduces new heroes and story lines, stories that span through different generations and locations. Some are interesting and beautiful, while others get skip-skip-skipped.

The level and stat caps made it so that any new player could catch up in six months, less if you pay real money, though of course the older players have a better grasp of the strategy. The game had frequent updates and events to get you hooked and playing, but the original main story leaves much to be desired.

Some commoner girl gets into a school of magic, rises to power, gets a harem that she uses to fight.

The truth is, the game got popular only about three years after it first launched, when people saw promotional videos of side stories. The game’s steadily increasing budget put to good use. At that point, they’ve added races and more locations to build the world better. Still, the developers try hard to tie everything up. But with two hundred heroes, it’s hard to keep up with the story details.

The biggest plus is that the game didn't require absolute commitment: you can log in for half an hour a day, and you would have the same resources as everyone else. The type of game where you play while waiting to get down from a train, all the while staring at pretty faces.

Most just jump right into building the characters, and grinding for resources to build strong Parties.

The Party System! The heroes are deployed to make a party of five, plus the main character. Then they merrily exterminate monsters, or use unique abilities to solve dungeon puzzles.

Marcheline was really good with the stat allocation and PvP, but can't tell you what the hell the story was about after the school arc, just a general gist of it. At least she reads the update notes whenever they come up.

So, hm, the main character of the game was a commoner girl who was supposed to… fight? …monsters??? How on earth do you translate the game mechanics into this world though?

If you rationalize the story and the fighting, she was just supposed to rally the heroes and clean up threats to the kingdom. But why, and how? Why would a commoner girl have the power to do that? As with most games, she needs to equip the party with maxed out equipment, and imbue them with one or two abilities from the souls she… collects? That's right, fighting monsters would earn her souls with different abilities.

It was easy enough to play, but they didn't exactly have an explanation why the War Efforts are mainly supported by the Heroine and not by the inter-kingdom Guild, or even the Royal family.

In any case, the commoner MC could collect souls, upgrade weapons and armor (it’s just basic for any game after all), and the main guys would follow her instead of anyone else. It’s just grinding for resources through daily quests and events, and you choose which hero to prioritize giving the skill points to, if you're new. Marcheline has everyone maxed out on skills, and she just shuffles their armor and souls depending on the battle strategy.

Was she a priestess? A soul reaper? But her actual 'occupation' in the game was just 'Lightbringer'. Gacha games just keep adding playable features and minigames these days. Those days. Past tense.

It wasn't a game where the main character was particularly powerful by herself. And that's beside the point— it's been seven years since she came to this world as a seven year old kid, and she doesn't have any sort of special abilities. Who's to say if she even is the main character?

—-

"Well, we'll be going to my brother-in-law, but you still have to go and register, right?" Harry asks Marcheline.

She nods, but Nate pipes up, "I'll go with you, so you don't get lost."

"I appreciate it, thanks."

Marcheline looks around as they enter the city square. If she has doubts before on where she is, it's gone now. The buildings are the same. Over there is where she buys trash weapons and armors, there's the building where you get gems, the event center where you could win skins or hero shards, and the cafe to hang out with friends. Most identifiable of all, in the distance, there's the castle and that ominous tower.