Chapter 41: Remnant of the Divine Era, Defeated by Obsession
Second: Tentacle Parasite.
Apparently the main body wasn’t the bear but the tentacles. Each one took about five minutes—I had to dodge interference from the remaining tentacles while slicing them off at the base, and after cutting off seven, the bear stopped moving too. Clear. Attempts: 4.
Third: Goblin Berserker.
There’s no other way to put it—it was an incredibly strong goblin. But even though it was incredibly strong, it was still a goblin, so it was easier than the dogs or tentacles. Attempts: 2.
Fourth: Dino-boar.
A goddamn boar. The ability to explode when something collided with its nose during a charge wasn’t that bad, but its stamina was insane. When I measured, it kept charging for about twenty seconds per rush. If I hadn’t had rodeo experience, it would’ve taken way longer… well, it was in-game experience; in real life I probably couldn’t rodeo for even five seconds. Attempts: 1.
Fifth: Toxic Eagle.
You. Seriously. I will never. Forgive you. Attempts: 32.
Sixth: Armored Larva.
Honestly, compared to that damn bird that just kept pelting me with poison attacks from the sky where I couldn’t reach it, having the armor of whatever part I hit burst into shrapnel was nothing! Thinking calmly about it, this thing was pretty bad too, but because of what came before, I just ran on adrenaline—dodged what I saw and powered through. Attempts: 1.
Dinner was whiting tempura.
Seventh: Execu-panther.
Fast, strong, but not tough. Its gimmick of circling outside the player’s field of vision before attacking was way too easy to deal with once I figured it out. After a break, I’d gotten my mental composure back, so it was no match for me. Attempts: 1.
Eighth: Twin-head Tiger.
Neither good nor bad, just normally strong… That’s it. Attempts: 2.
Ninth: Beta Unit Golem S2 Type.
Tentatively, if I call attacks with the right arm “A” and attacks with the left arm “B,” when chaining A into A, it would follow up with almost no time lag. But when going from A to B, or vice versa, the core on its chest would flash for an instant. This made a degree of attack prediction possible, and considering the golem’s height versus mine, a regularity would also emerge in both A and B attacks. From that, I hypothesized that I could dodge attacks, then the instant the attack hitbox disappeared, use the arm to run up and close in on the core. I put it into practice—and an invisible energy field blasted me back, shaving off 70% of my HP, forcing a change in strategy. The result of that change was directly peeling off the armor to expose the weak point (this is where I snapped) haaah—! Your back armor’s as thin as a car hood, so don’t go activating fancy crap like anti-gravity fields, you pain in the ass! If that action hadn’t been a move triggered by both time elapsed and player position as flags, I seriously wouldn’t have forgiven you… Attempts: 7.
Sunraku: "Emul… what’s the last one…"
Emul: "Y-You should rest a bit, wa! Your eyes are terrifying, wa!"
Sunraku: "No… I’m fine… When I’m like this, I can move ridiculously well…"
I call this state “Lost Time” on my own. My mind is on the verge of crashing, but my body is optimized. My consciousness is gone, yet my body just keeps executing the grind automatically—in a game without a physical fatigue concept, this is what happens after about two all-nighters.
It’s almost morning, but the nonstop intensity of these fights seems to have worn me out more than expected. The moment I achieve a task or goal, my consciousness snaps off like a light, but in this state, as I told Emul, my body responds to my reactions even more obediently than usual.
In other words, unless this final monster of the unique quest suddenly throws a quiz at me or something, I can face it at near-peak performance.
Emul: "The tenth one is… oh, the Boss says he’s going to go nab it right now…"
Vash: "What’s this, ya already finished up to number nine?"
Speak of the devil and he casts a shadow, raise a flag and a rabbit appears. Vash shows up chewing on a carrot like a pipe, looking surprised—but also like it was, in a sense, exactly what he expected—as he looks at me and Emul. Well, he probably appeared as a flag for beating nine of them, so I guess it was expected.
Sunraku: "Uh, Aniki… the last monster is…"
Vash: "Yeah, went on a little trip and tied it up."
Vash grins, then gestures with a jerk of his nose at something—probably the monster he caught—and tells me:
Vash: "The one we grabbed… well, to be honest, ya probably can’t beat it right now."
Sunraku: "Seriously…"
Vash: "So for this one, I’ll decide the victory conditions myself."
Crunch. He bites through his carrot and declares:
Vash: "Survive for five minutes."
Sunraku: "I see, an endurance match… Bring it on."
And then, that… appeared before me.
Rising on four legs that resembled a quadrupedal stand, its bizarrely thin torso belonged, astonishingly, to a humanoid monster.
The remnants of a robe—so tattered that even calling them rags felt generous—a staff clutched by desiccated skin and bone, and most of all, a battered triangular hat barely told me that this thing had once been a sorcerer.
Sunraku: "What the hell is this…?"
Vash: "Aberrant Wood-Mage. Long ago, ages and ages back… one of the idiots who tried to survive even if it meant fusing with a tree."
Now that he mentioned it, its desiccated body, which had seemed strangely inorganic for a mummy, was the bark of a dead tree. The hair, which I’d thought was remarkably intact for something so ancient—whether it was a mummy or bone, I couldn’t tell—was actually branches.
Vash: "Ya talked big, so show me the goods to back it up… Let’s see what ya got."
Aberrant Wood-Mage, Lv. 120.
The fact that I was the first player among all in Shangri-La Frontier to fight this monster—one that doesn’t exist on this continent—is something I won’t learn until much, much later.