Chapter 30: A Beginner’s Perspective: Painfully Realizing My Own Limits

[The game based on a certain American-comic hero looked much more fun than I expected and gave me useful reference material for this work, so here’s another update in quick succession.]

[In celebration of that dangerous climbing game where you scale a certain stone statue getting a new version, here’s another update in quick succession.]

Sunraku: "Edge Climb!"

In reality, for skills—unlike magic—there’s little need to declare the name out loud. But if you want to activate it more reliably, voice recognition is the better way to trigger a skill. Using knowledge I picked up while looking up SLF online, I thrust the Marsh Dagger into the belly of Mud Digger—which was now standing upright like a sinking ship—and, true to the name, climbed the creature’s body with the blade. It’s the kind of stunt that probably could be done without a skill, but since my current Sunraku build has completely abandoned STR, without the skill’s correction I’d never pull off the same feat. Sticking to Lycagon the Nightslayer’s leg… or rather, attempting to drive the Vorpal Chopper into it like an ice axe to climb a wall was what taught me this move. Unlike that accursed black wolf, which only chipped away the Vorpal Chopper’s durability, Mud Digger’s belly was soft, and even with my low STR, the skill’s correction let me climb it with ease. Yeah, moments like this—when you’re pulling off moves that blatantly ignore the laws of physics—are when I most feel like I’m really playing a game. Being too faithful to physics can be boring in its own way.

Emul: "Uhyah! That’s amazing, wa!"

Sunraku: "Well, I climbed up, but… now what?"

Emul: "Gyaa, this guy had no plan, wa!"

Can’t be helped. Even if you have a broad strategy, split-second decisions are always pure spinal reflex. Ah well… right now I’m an efficiency nut. I threw my pride about soloing and everything else into the mud. I’ll have to pick it up later. Mud Digger’s head, which is close to a great white shark’s, is a below-average foothold at best, but in the game, where I can sprint across a tightrope, it’s not that difficult.

Sunraku: "I’ll keep my balance on top of this thing, so just keep firing magic attacks."

Emul: "F-Firing!? Um, what about focusing on increasing the power of a single hit…?"

Sunraku: "Power it is! Go!"

Emul: "I-I’ll do it, wa! [Add Spell]!"

I turned my attention away from Emul as she began casting and kept standing on Mud Digger’s lips like an acrobat. But there’s no reason a monster would purposely maintain an unstable state. Mud Digger, as if recovering from its stagger, started thrashing violently. However, instead of righting its posture, it tried to bite me by force—and that behavior was exactly what I was hoping for…!!

Sunraku: "This is way more stable footing than being made to run on a burning wire!"

Is there really a game like that? Well, yes, there is. Fangs, snout, lips… there’s no shortage of places I can use as footholds. A shark head the size of a compact car, physical abilities several times greater than real life, and above all, because this is just a game, I can pull off reckless stunts like this.

Emul: "We can do this, Sunraku-san!"

Sunraku: "Smash it right into its snout!"

Emul: "You ask the impossible, wa…! [Magic Edge]!"

I stomped on Mud Digger’s face as it flailed wildly and finally lost its balance, using that to launch myself away. I knew full well it was unreasonable to ask Emul to fire off a spell while I was sent flying through the air. But if we couldn’t land a follow-up here, we’d have to start all over from scratch—and honestly, I wasn’t confident I could get the same results again. Emul’s spell, mixed with a scream, activated. A blade of magical energy, twice the size of the previous one, hit Mud Digger—not in the face, but squarely in its right eye.

Mud Digger: "SHIGYIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAA!?"

Even so, the powered-up Magic Edge must have dealt considerable damage. Mud Digger shrieked, thrashing about as it… didn’t sink into the swamp. Instead, it bounced once in the shallow swamp and then lay still. A tiny feeling of unease flickered in my mind, but it was immediately wiped away.

Emul: "We did it! We did it, Sunraku-sa—bubuu!"

Sunraku: "Well, figured it’d end like this, ugh."

Following the fallen Mud Digger, Emul and I plunged into the swamp. The fall damage itself was about a third of my health—not that bad for someone with paper-thin defenses—but we were forced into a full-body mud pack.

Emul: "Akyaaaaaaa! My clothes!!!!!??!"

Sunraku: "Ahh… This feels like having wet tissues plastered all over my body…"

On top of that, being covered head to toe in mud made my movements painfully sluggish. It’s like playing an online game on a weak server when the server is screaming. We’re caked in mud, but judging by how things looked, we must have beaten it…………………………

Sunraku: "Wait wait wait wait…!!"

Mud Digger is gone. No—there are clear ripples from something of massive weight sinking into the swamp. That means it’s not over yet. The source of that unease… Now that I think about it, Emul mentioned a "boom"-like attack, and we haven’t seen it yet. A special action? Triggered by remaining HP? We didn’t deplete it all, so it activated? The whole swamp is shaking—area-wide attack, death…

Sunraku: "Emul!!"

Emul: "Wanyo!?"

I forced my body to move, even though I’d tried to shut down everything except my thoughts to piece together the scattered information. Somewhat roughly, I grabbed Emul by the ears, yanked her out of the swamp, and threw her outside it. The next instant, the entire wide swamp suddenly began to tremble, and my movement was locked—as if bound by chains through some system-like force—preventing me from taking a single step. Damn it, could this be one of those special actions where once it activates, you’re guaranteed to get hit…? Wait a minute, on top of being a hard counter to AGI, is this thing also a hard counter to solo players!?

Sunraku: "My body… won’t…!"

Emul: "S-Sunraku-san! Below! It’s coming from below—!!"

Sunraku: "Below…!?"

It’s not exactly my life flashing before my eyes, but as I’m unable to move, various pieces of information start assembling themselves like a puzzle.

The so-called "boom" attack. A monster that submerges and swims through the mud as if it were water. It stood upright in the swamp… even if only for a few seconds… meaning it was capable of that. Stop moving, and from below…

Sunraku: "Ah… It’s whack-a-mole."

The next moment, the sensation beneath my feet vanished. With a version of whack-a-mole that had no hammer from above, Mud Digger launched me high into the air with a blow several times more powerful than the one I’d landed on it.

Mud Digger. A chimera in the broad sense, classified with a shark’s head, a mole’s body with abnormally developed limbs, and catfish whiskers… This area boss’s greatest feature is a special action that triggers when its HP falls below 20%. It submerges deep underground, causes the swamp to tremble, forcibly stopping the movement of any player who has set foot in the swamp, and then randomly selects one person in the swamp to send flying with its snout from directly below. If you challenge it alone and are inside the swamp, you’re guaranteed to be hit by this attack. On top of that, the fall from the height you’re launched will almost certainly deplete your HP entirely from fall damage. If you stay out of the swamp, you can make this attack misfire even when solo—but the difficulty of both managing damage and escaping the swamp in this area where movement is so restricted has led players to call this monster by two nicknames.

Because of its blatant use of terrain to counter AGI and how it easily overwhelms lightly armored characters, it’s called "Light Warrior Killer." And the other… because challenging it solo means you’ll almost certainly suffer an instant-death attack…

It is called "Solo Killer." Actually, since on a first encounter it will almost certainly wipe out at least one party member’s HP entirely, in pick-up groups without a dedicated rezzer, it leads to huge arguments over experience points and drop items—so some players call it "Bringer of Strife" or don’t.