I'm Standing on a Million Lives

Shindou and Hakozaki are unable to revive after being eaten by a troll. In the midst of fighting alone to raise his level, Yotsuya is upgraded to a new job class: Chef. He uses his new job skills to save the two girls, and the three of them finally defeat the troll. Their reward is a glimpse of what the world will look like after they complete all ten quests, and the scene they see brings a certain thought to Yotsuya’s mind…

After being told by the Game Master to hit on a certain girl, Yotsuya sneaks into the girls’ restroom of an unfamiliar high school and saves Tokitate Yuka from being bullied by her classmates. Tokitate turns out to be the fourth party member. When she’s summoned into the other world, Tokitate develops a deep admiration for Shindou, whom she sees as much stronger and prettier than herself… but Shindou also has a past that she can’t tell anyone about.

The party heads toward Radodorbo, a village far to the west, to complete the latest stage of their quest. However, Shindou is captured by bandits on the way. Tokitate and Hakozaki want to save her, but Yotsuya just wants to hurry on, so the three of them end up parting ways. Yotsuya then enters a martial arts tournament in Cortonel in hopes of winning some horses they can use, and there, he meets a woman knight named Kahvel.

Yotsuya has succeeded in saving the other party members with Kahvel’s help. Kahvel agrees to accompany them to Radodorbo if they’ll allow her to train them in swordsmanship, since they are the players and therefore can’t die. They encounter a village of goblins on the way and engage them in battle. Hakozaki, who only slowed everyone down in battle before due to her lack of strength and resignation, finally finds her resolve and manages to slay a goblin on her own.

Yotsuya’s party has saved the people who were under attack by kobolds. They then find out the group is a squad of soldiers from the dictatorial Kingdom of Deokk, and they’re escorting heretics to Radodorbo to be executed. The party still isn’t sure how they should interpret their quest, so for the time being, they accompany the soldiers and heretics on the way to Radodorbo.

Yotsuya’s party is trapped by the Deokk soldier Kamilto in a cave filled with ancient traps. Yotsuya becomes separated from the group, leaving the other three party members and Kahvel to fight a formidable gargoyle. Things look desperate when the gargoyle takes down Kahvel, but then Shindou reaches rank 10 and job-changes to a Warrior (Sword), allowing her to put up a fight against the gargoyle.

After escaping the cave, the party splits into two teams, with one pursuing the Deokk soldiers and the other searching for ways to complete their quest. The team of Yotsuya, Tokitate, and Kahvel catches up to Kamilto and his men, but if they jump straight into battle, it could cause a war to break out between Deokk and Kahvel’s homeland of Cortonel. So Yotsuya comes up with a plan…

Yotsuya's plan to rescue the heretics is successful, as is his vengeance on Kamilto for killing Kahvel's subordinate. He and Tokitate head to Radodorbo with the heretics while Shindou and Hakozaki travel separately in hopes of finding cargo bound for Radodorbo. Along the way, Tokitate becomes invested in what she perceives as a budding relationship between Yotsuya and Kahvel and tries to initiate events to bring them together.

After successfully delivering their cargo to Radodorbo, Yotsuya and the others part ways with Kahvel and split up to cover ground in four different directions so they can complete their quest to cover 5% of the map. It shouldn't be a difficult task if all went as expected, but a sudden blizzard impedes their progress...

The progress of all four party members is halted by heavy snow as time continues to tick away. What's worse, if anyone freezes to death, they can't come back to life until the weather they revive in becomes survivable again. The party grows desperate. Yotsuya gets lost in an underground dungeon that he unexpectedly fell into, Shindou walks across a frozen lake without realizing how thin the ice beneath her feet is, and Hakozaki is unable to progress any further. As the party members lose their lives one by one, Tokitate, the last one alive, is ready to give up...

As her reward for completing the quest, Tokitate gets to ask the Game Master whether this alternate world is actually virtual or not... and the answer is that it's an alternate Earth that branched off of the original Earth's timeline. Upon hearing that it's an existing world, Yotsuya trembles with the realization that he killed real people. Once he returns to the real world and resumes his normal life, the Game Master appears before him in the form of a young girl and leads him to a meeting with the next new player.

The boy Yotsuya saved in the Chinese restaurant, Torii Keita, turns out to be the fifth player. They're sent to the alternate world again, and after receiving the fifth quest, they head for Cortonel to track down some leads. There they find Kahvel, who is now a mother. The party is shocked to learn that 15 years have passed since their fourth quest, but that isn't the only thing that's changed in this world.

The current quest is to make Jiffon Island's harvest festival a success, but the festival can't be held because some orcs that strayed onto the island have taken over all of the Buffo that are traditionally offered as sacrifices. On top of that, the increasing number of orcs threatens the islanders' very lives. With the festival date only 11 days away, Yotsuya begins leveling up to raise his rank so he can help fight them, and his job changes to Blacksmith.

After becoming a Blacksmith, Yotsuya developed two new tactical weapons to use against the orcs: the Storc for close-range combat and the Orc Eater for shooting from a distance. Although they successfully use these to fight off the orcs attacking the stronghold, the orcs learn how to throw projectiles by observing the long-range weapon. Both the humans and the orcs have suffered substantial damages as the battle enters its final stages.

The islanders have sent the women and children away on a boat to protect them from the upcoming battle, but the orcs find and target them. Shindou and Cantil move to stop them, but in the midst of the fight, the earth begins to shake violently as the volcano on the island erupts. Pandemonium breaks loose as volcanic bombs rain down on the island... but this is only the prologue to a much greater disaster.

Jiffon Island has taken severe damage from a series of natural disasters. Some of the survivors have taken shelter in the castle. The Orc Queen, after barely surviving the battle, reaches the boat that was carrying the human children to safety. Giving up hope for the island as it's ravaged by one disaster after another, she tries to escape to a new land with the orc children, but finds herself facing Shindou and the other human fighters first.

The threat of the orcs has passed, but a dragon hanging out in the caldera brings a new threat to the island. It appears to be sucking the life force out of the islanders to store up energy, but it would be suicidal to try to attack it head-on. While fleeing, Yotsuya and Torii stop to help one islander...

After completing the fifth quest, Yotsuya is back in his hometown when a woman named Glenda pays him a visit. She knows about the other world he's been to, and she claims to know at least three other people who have been there. Glenda hopes to get in touch with these parallel world explorers, but she's had no luck contacting them through social media. So she decides to produce a video of Yotsuya and his fellow party members that only people who have been to the other world would understand.

As Yotsuya's party is traveling in order to complete the sixth quest, they meet Jezby, a girl being attacked by monsters. They save Jezby and take her back to her village. There, after determining that they need to protect this village to complete the quest, Yotsuya and Glenda meet a girl named Iris, who happens to be the village chief's granddaughter. Iris convinces them to visit the village chief's home, but he has a dislike for heroes and traps the two of them.

Cox, who had achieved peace in the village by closing it off and reducing the number of mouths to feed, attempts to get rid of the heroes, but then a monster's voice resounds throughout the village. Yotsuya and the villagers are powerless as a multitude of monsters swarms the village, as if under someone's control. After determining that it would be impossible to defend against the monsters' attack, they decide to flee the village.

Yotsuya's party manages to escape the village, and then they encounter a large group of people. They turn out to be the ones who had been run out of the village under the pretext of going on the Journey of Hope to find the so-called New Eden. The party accompanies the villagers in their hurried search for a new permanent residence, even as monsters close in on them...

After joining up with the villagers who had left on the Journey of Hope, Yotsuya's party starts to notice that everyone is complaining of feeling tired, reminding them of what happened at Jiffon Island. When the group is attacked by monsters, a surprising figure from their past shows up and saves them. He also tells them that he's been pursuing Dragon Bishops, that their evil influence is spreading, and that he knows why all the local monsters are so much stronger than the norm.

Glenda has figured out the identity of the Dragon Bishop who's been secretly at work in the area. With her identity exposed, the Dragon Bishop confesses that she was behind everything that's happened since they began the current quest, and explains that she approached Yotsuya's party while searching for a hidden village in order to complete her ritual. Thus begins the battle between the Dragon Bishop and the party of heroes.