Chapter 65: Putting Feelings Into a Moment — Part Twelve
Emul-san is seriously such a badass... wa... A perfect bunny with wisdom, prettiness, and strength... wa...
It was obviously just half-hearted praise, but with the now slime-rabbitified Emul perched on my head, I made my way through the Rabbit Palace.
Sunraku: "Hey there, easy-mark Emul-san — up, up. We're going to go see your daddy."
Emul: "Fweh heh heh... ...Ah!"
I set the now-lucid Emul down and stepped into the great hall where Vash was.
Vash: "Oi, it's you."
Sunraku: "Yeah. Tonight's the night, so I figured I'd pay my respects."
This kind of small courtesy is basic galge 101 — a single dialogue choice can split the route, after all. At my visit, Vash gave a single nod, then spoke.
Vash: "I see. That's a good look on your face... In that case, there's only one thing we can say to ya."
Sunraku: "............"
Vash: "Don't you forget the Vorpal Soul."
Sunraku: "Ossu!"
If I asked "So what exactly is the Vorpal Soul?" right here and now, I'd probably get killed. Not literally — that's a joke — but I've more or less grasped its meaning through nuance. That's probably enough.
Sunraku: "Well then, I'll be off."
Vash: "Yeah. Give 'em hell."
I bowed to Vash and left the room. Gear: good. Communication: good. Items: good. All right... I've done pretty much everything that needed doing. All that's left is to event-skip straight to nighttime and sleep. Log out, and goodnight...
Screw it, sleep event: SKIPPED!
Evening... no, it's already full night. I woke up, took a bath to freshen up, and made my final real-world preparations before the decisive battle. I stuck a note on my bedroom door: "Critical Phase In Progress — No Visitors Until Tomorrow Morning." Then, from the various items I'd prepared, I grabbed one with English lettering and popped the tab.
It's a backdoor trick that's not exactly recommended for full-dive VR, but ingesting caffeine before playing can boost your in-game performance. The trade-off is that you feel more fatigue than usual afterward, so it's not something you can overuse — but if not now, when?
Rakuro: "Ufufuhehehe... American energy drink, specially ordered just for today... harsher than the Japanese stuff, but it sure works..."
The caffeine power, like it was physically pounding down the last dregs of sleepiness, twisted the corner of my mouth into something unsettling. Oh yeah, it's kicking in... caffeine flooding my whole body...! I chased it with vitamin supplements, nutrition-bar-style cookies, and a bunch of other stuff — energy charge, complete. You could say I'm like a fighting game character with a full gauge — absolute peak condition. Time-wise, I should be meeting up with Oikatzo soon.
Rakuro: "Now... unto the world of the decisive battle... here we go."
Login.
Rakuro-me became Sunraku-me, the body lying on a real-world bed became the body rising from a bed in Rabituza. My limbs felt light — right now, I could probably snatch a fly out of midair with my bare hands. It'd take about thirty minutes for the caffeine to fully circulate, so for now I just needed to meet up with Oikatzo.
Given the fierce battle ahead, Emul would be staying in Rabituza — but she insisted on at least seeing me off as far as Thirdrema, so I gratefully accepted.
Emul: "Sunraku-san, Sunraku-san."
Sunraku: "Hm?"
Emul: "For Sunraku-san, who's going to challenge Wethermon the Tombguard... I'm going to lend you this...wa!"
In a Thirdrema back alley — a small space players rarely ever wandered into — Emul and I had teleported in. Before parting ways, she handed me a small necklace. Looking closely, what hung from it wasn't a gemstone or a ring or anything like that, but what looked like a fragment of something, reinforced with a metal frame.
Emul: "This is my charm...wa! Daddy brought it back as a souvenir long ago, and I had it made into a necklace...wa!"
Sunraku: "Hmm... well, even without this, we're not about to lose to Wethermon."
At the sight of Emul — you could practically hear the ga—n! sound effect — I gave a wry smile and placed my hand on her head.
Sunraku: "But I mean, if someone who's already hyper-invincible like me starts carrying a good-luck charm on top of that, victory's basically guaranteed. I'll gratefully take it — and I'll walk all the way back here to return it in person, so don't worry."
Emul: "H-Hai na! Good luck...wa!"
With Emul's cheers bouncing behind me, I raised a thumbs-up and sprinted from the Thirdrema back alley toward the rendezvous point.
• Identification Fragment Necklace No effect. It is a vestige, a remnant, a fragment, a shard. Whom it proved, and where it was used, cannot be known. But once, it was something that proved a certain person's existence.
Sunraku: "Yo."
Oikatzo: "Hey, Sunraku. How's the doping treating you?"
Sunraku: "That energy drink you recommended is insane. That's not something you use regularly."
Oikatzo: "Told you. I got recommended it by an American pro gamer and I only drink it once in a while — even I couldn't imagine making a habit of it."
We regrouped at the café "The Serpent's Apple," then headed toward the Prismatic Forest Grotto, keeping as low a profile as possible. Oikatzo seemed to be in peak condition too — not too tense, not too loose. Well, he's not the type to let nerves throw off his game. You don't face thousands of spectators as a pro gamer with that kind of weak constitution. While we figured the odds of being spotted were low, we stayed alert to our surroundings as we entered the hidden area — the Hidden Garden.
Sunraku: "Oh, right. They found a new bug technique in Constipation. You can Pile Bunker a gauge move by going through a guard cancel."
Oikatzo: "Wait, seriously?!"
Sunraku: "Serious as can be."
Oikatzo: "A guard cancel, huh... I never thought of that. Wait, why does it even derive from a guard cancel...?"
Saying the exact same thing I did. With nothing to do, we'd plopped down in the flower field, chatting idly — but the instant a crack ran through the heart of the red spider lily field, our expressions tightened and we rose to our feet.
Oikatzo: "...This is it, right?"
Sunraku: "'On the night of the new moon, a gap forms in the barrier'... was it? So this is what it looks like. Kinda looks like a b..."
Oikatzo: "Please don't say something stupid like 'looks like a bugged-out object collapse.'"
Sunraku: "...B-Baka, as if I'd make some dumb joke like that at a moment like this... ...wa?"
Oikatzo: "Your eyes are darting all over the place, trash-game hunter."
Anyway. All that remained was to wait for our ringleader, Pencilgon. As we stood gazing at the rift that had opened in space, the sound of running footsteps reached us from the cave.
Pencilgon: "Sorry for the wait!"
Sunraku: "Judging by how you look..."
Pencilgon: "Man, getting away took way longer than I expected. I didn't think the Maximum Firepower (Attack Holder) would open with a full-power blast right out of the gate."
How tragic... I don't exactly have a great impression of Ashura Kai, but they're probably in chaos right about now. Pencilgon gulped down a liquid that looked like a potion, then fixed her gaze on Oikatzo and me once more.
Pencilgon: "One chance. If we fail... well, getting mobbed by Ashura Kai is a given."
Sunraku: "Toss the 'what if we fail' talk in the trash."
Oikatzo: "Exactly. We came here to win against some grandiose opponent called Wethermon the Tombguard. So there's only one thing to say, right?"
We looked at each other, fearless grins on our faces, and knocked our fists together.
Pencilgon: "In that case, as the organizer, allow me to take the lead... Let's go smash that robot-samurai bastard flat!"
Sunraku & Oikatzo: "Yeah!"
The moment our fists separated, a party invite flew in from Pencilgon. We accepted, and now formally a three-person team, we leaped into the rift that had opened at the heart of the flower garden.
Oikatzo jumped. I jumped. And finally, Pencilgon.
And then the world inverted...!
When it came her turn — after Sunraku had already jumped — Pencilgon looked up at the withered, barren... yes, the cherry tree. By design, the full moon's light was what made her visible, so on this new-moon night, her form couldn't be seen. But that was only a matter of appearance.
Pencilgon: "Setsu-chan... no. Setsuna."
Her presence was indeed here. Bound by her lover's pure devotion, she had waited in this place all this time, even after death. You could call it coincidence and leave it at that. It was nothing more than her own real name being the antonym of an in-game NPC's name. That was all. But... no. That was exactly why Pencilgon — Arthur Pencilgon, Towa Amane — had resolved to throw herself wholly into this game.
Pencilgon: "Your wish... I... no, we will grant it for you."
The dead tree merely swayed its branches slightly in the night breeze. But in that instant, Pencilgon glimpsed the figure of a woman. And then Pencilgon smiled, and plunged herself into the battlefield where her comrades had already leaped.
They were utterly worn down. A sudden assault on a base that no one had ever managed to find. What's more, it was a coordinated ambush by a four-clan player alliance — Schwarz Vulf, the InTora Gang, Team 10PM, and the Knights Tempura — the likes of which you wouldn't even see in a raid boss fight. It plunged the PK clan Ashura Kai into utter chaos.
No — under normal circumstances, they could have mounted at least some defense... if not for her.
Ashura Kai Member: "Dammit... dammit...! That was a skill combo you'd use against a raid boss, no question...!"
Golems — one of the few monsters players can create and command under specific conditions. Ten of them, each equivalent to level 70. And that player had annihilated them all in a single strike... Psyger-0. The title of Maximum Firepower (Attack Holder) was by no means solely the result of being carried by others — Psyger-0 had demonstrated that fact beyond all doubt. Ashura Kai collapsed, and though their clan master and a few members had narrowly escaped, nearly all the rest had been PKK'd — slaughtered by the attackers.
Ashura Kai Member: "O-Orcelott-san... what do we do?"
Orcelott: "...We fall back to the Hidden Garden for now. Nobody knows about that place but us. Pisses me off, but hiding there until morning is our only option."
Retreating to a large-scale map like Thirdrema was also an option, but there was no telling where the attacking clans had eyes. That made a hidden area — completely beyond their sight — the only truly safe location.
As they teleported and moved, heading toward the Hidden Garden, Ashura Kai's clan master Orcelott thought.
(How the hell did they find out? Where did the intel leak from...?)
Ashura Kai's base was the hidden area in the 15th town Fifticia: the wreck of the Glorious Eris. How had they discovered a safe zone that even information brokers couldn't have known about? The most likely possibility was, of course, an informant. A certain woman surfaced in Orcelott's mind — but she, too, had worn a genuinely shocked expression at the attack.
(...Wait.)
Words began connecting inside Orcelott's head. What day was it today? Update day? No. Today was the new moon — the one day when they could challenge Ashura Kai's greatest secret: the Unique Monster. Where had Pencilgon gone? According to survivors, she'd bolted somewhere the moment the attackers flooded in. Pencilgon was — as much as it galled him to admit — superior to him. Which meant she would naturally understand that the hidden area known only to Ashura Kai was a safe place. If so, then in that case, could it be, no way, it couldn't—
Hypotheses reinforced each other, reality bleeding into them. His pace quickened, and before he knew it, he was sprinting at full speed toward the Hidden Garden, ignoring even his clanmates' voices.
Orcelott: "Wh... a...?"
To Orcelott's eyes, the Hidden Garden was a fantastical sight... exactly as it always was. But the person who should have been there was not. And the entrance that should have been there... was not there either.
Orcelott: "Ah... ga..."
The worst possible prediction. Because he knew Arthur Pencilgon... Towa Amane... better than anyone, Orcelott arrived at the truth. He had arrived at it. Truth or lie, "In some past game, she once placed the entire player base under her control"... he hallucinated the image of his actual older sister — the one who'd boasted such things — the sneer, the people-eating grin, the polar opposite of her magazine-photo work-smile.
Orcelott: "She... she did it..."
Ashura Kai Member: "Orcelott-san?"
All of it. For this single moment alone.
Simply to prevent Orcelott and his people from interfering with tonight's challenge against Wethermon the Tombguard.
Arthur Pencilgon had sold out Ashura Kai.
Having arrived at the truth with absolute certainty, Orcelott — Kuon Amane — forgot even the basic etiquette of the game and let out a scream.
Orcelott: "YOU GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT SISTER OF MIIIIIIIIINE!!!"