Chapter 140: The Die Had Already Been Cast

[I'm terribly sorry for the delay in updating. Real life is unstable... I need to rewrite my route... Life RTA...]

Something was off. Things were going way too smoothly.

Sunraku: "Sure, we formed a party and split roles perfectly, but this is going way too smoothly."

Not that I suspected a trap. It was more like the overall difficulty had been set to easy… Even discounting the possibility of a Unique connection, this was far too simple for a scenario you could accept in the continent's final city.

Sunraku: "Three possibilities come to mind."

One: It just happened to be an easy scenario, no deeper meaning. Two: The moray fish-man is small fry, and there's an even bigger boss. Those weren't impossible, but more likely…

Three:

Stude: "Y-You monster… I'll avenge my papa myself!!"

Sunraku: "Ah, shit—I should've realized sooner!"

It's an escort mission!!

Escort missions: the kind of mission that people who hate them really hate. And yet, because they're such an obvious way to reinforce world-building in the RPG genre, they appear in countless games, with their own special victory and defeat conditions. The NPC designated as the escort target is usually weak, and you either protect them from the enemies that appear or guide them to a specific location. And conversely, no matter how wildly the player rampages, the moment the NPC goes down, it's game over. That's an escort mission.

And the instant the key figure of this Unique Scenario—the self-proclaimed "Great Pirate Stude"—set foot on the ghost ship Crying Innsman, the situation shifted.

Sunraku: "Whoa there—snatching every bit of aggro?! Kid's got tank potential… goddammit!!"

Every single fish-man on the scene directed its aggro toward Stude, who'd leaped onto the ghost ship with nothing but a pathetically flimsy dagger. Even the moray fish-man was ignoring Rei-shi right in front of it to target Stude.

Stude: "C-Come on, then!"

Rust: "Don't 'come on, then' me…!"

Stude: "U-Uwaah!"

Stude's body was yanked backward. Rust, who'd pulled him, tried to drag him back to the Scarlet Whale, but the fish-men who'd boarded the pirate ship were also targeting Stude and heading back to the ghost ship—so Rust was forced to flee toward the ghost ship instead.

Rust: "Why the hell did you come…?!"

Stude: "E-Even I can fight!"

Rust: "Throwing rocks would contribute more than you…!"

Stude: "Whaaa?!"

She called you worse than a rock, little shithead. Then again, a weak point that moves on its own while emitting noise is way too trash-game-y.

That said, failing to recognize this as an escort mission was a blunder on the players' part. I needed to think of recovery and a breakthrough. For better or worse, the fish-men were completely ignoring me and Emul. As I was pondering what to do, Mold—who had at some point scrambled up the broken mast—surveyed the frenzied fish-men and called out instructions.

Mold: "Rust! Break through to the right! Sorry, Sunraku-san—attack the group on the left!"

Sunraku: "Alright, leave it to me! Rei-shi!!"

Psyger-0: "I’ll take that fish-man…!"

What to do? For now, I had to stop the fish-men pursuing Rust and Stude. But they couldn't keep running forever while dragging dead weight—we had to overturn this reactive situation somewhere.

Sunraku: "Emul, I'm giving you a great mission."

Emul: "H-Hai na!"

Sunraku: "You see that wimpy guy standing over there?"

Emul: "I do, wa."

Sunraku: "I'm gonna throw you over to him."

Emul: "Whaaat, wa?!"

I grabbed Emul firmly and took aim…

Emul: "Wait! Wait, wa! This is rash, very rash, wa?!"

Sunraku: "Emul… Akitsu Akane said it too, remember? Rabbits are counted as 'one bird, two birds,' so you'll fly fine."

Emul: "Ceecrue-oniichan specifically denied that one, waaaAAAAAAHHHH—?!"

YEET!

Emul flew over the fish-men's heads. I'd added a bit of a twist, so she went into a gyro spin, but that's within the margin of error—hell, the fact that Emul still landed neatly on Mold's shoulder just shows how scary experience is! Anyway, I was about to start making some reckless moves, so I had to park Emul somewhere. And since Mold seemed to specialize in support from a bird's-eye view, Emul would be more useful over there as a more direct pointer than words.

Sunraku: "Alright… go!!"

First, aggro seizure. Whatever the trick, I'd carefully peel off each point of aggro that Stude had drawn and stick it to myself. Riot Axel, activate—HP drains, speed and strength surge. I launched myself forward, slamming a flying kick into one fish-man with all that accelerated momentum to draw its attention. That one stopping short tripped up the ones behind it. The slapstick chain reaction drew their focus to whatever had halted their march, successfully redirecting a decent chunk of aggro onto me.

Next, Mirror of Fading, activate—leaving the gathered aggro in place, I moved. Even though I’d accelerated compared with before, they were still basically zombie cousins. Level 99 legs built for AGI could overtake them with ease.

Sunraku: "Rei-shi, the small fry over there are yours!"

With a silent nod, Rei-shi sprinted toward the spot where the skill effect still lingered—where over a dozen fish-men were currently swarming. The number of enemies didn't matter anymore. What mattered was that spot.

Sunraku: "Rust, can you still run?"

Rust: "Stamina's almost at its limit—I need a moment to recover…"

Sunraku: "Got it. Rei-shi will scatter the small fry, so cut through there and head back to the other ship."

Rust: "Understood… Mold will probably send support fire."

Sunraku: "Though I tend to deflect buffs and stuff."

Rust: "It's firepower support, so that's a relief…!"

As if there's a shred of relief in this situation!! I watched Rust dash off, roughly dragging the unconscious dumbass who looked like he'd been punched in the face to forcibly mute a noise, and tightened my grip on the Duxram, Blade of Aspiration. Judging by appearances alone, this was a walking death flag, but I had a plan. In short, I just had to stop that zombie train somehow—and it didn't need to be stopped politely.

Sunraku: "Trip the front one to take out the ones behind… just like before."

No, wait—I just needed to stop them. If that's the case, what I needed wasn't the strength of a musou game… but the obstructive quality of a puzzle game penalty.

Sunraku: "Then…!"

I selected an item from my Inventoria, designated coordinates along the path of the oncoming blasphemous procession, and—

Rust's stamina ran out, her sprint slowing. Mold and Emul's magic fired at the moray fish-man. I was about to finish the final step of pulling out my item. Rei-shi's sledgehammer smashed into a fish-man… Each of us was in the middle of our own action when, once again—or rather, I wanted to demand whether this person was simply born under that kind of star—they gave the gears the final push they needed.

Akitsu Akane: "Sorry! I was late because I had to retrieve Ceecrue-san after he went rolling off!!"

It wasn't Akitsu Akane's fault, per se. She was probably just "the last one." The trigger had likely been all players gathering in one place. The moment Akitsu Akane, carrying Ceecrue in a ridiculously slapdash manner, leaped aboard the Crying Innsman, I felt an illusion as if time had stopped for an instant.

(No… this isn't an illusion—it really is stopping…)

A raindrop hung suspended right next to my eyeball. The world's halt, which felt like a lag of less than a second, resumed immediately as if the massive pillars of water erupting around the ghost ship were the signal to restart. A shaking on a completely different order from the stormy waves we'd weathered so far forced everyone present to halt their actions.

Sunraku: "The hell?!"

The water pillars crashed back into the sea along with torrential rain, obeying gravity. But the gigantic—far too gigantic—"octopus leg" within one of those pillars made me freeze in stunned shock. Realizing my carelessness, I spun around toward the fish-men—and they, who until just moments ago should have been chasing Stude in a frenzy, now stood frozen, not so much as twitching, as if that had never happened.

???: "Eh… huh?"

???: "Wh-What's going on?!"

Emul: "This is bad, this is bad, wa… Sunraku-san!!"

Emul's voice reached me with terrifying clarity. And those words reached everyone present almost the same moment the situation shifted.

Emul: "I-It's Ctarnidd, waaaa—!!"

Sunraku: "You're shitting me!!"

Eight water pillars… meaning eight pitch-black tentacles had the Crying Innsman in their firm grip. For a moment, my vision nearly went dark with the thought of a death trap—but the part of my mind still thinking rationally rejected it. Whether it required a certain number of players or everyone present, the idea of instant death just for entering the battle zone was absurd, right? Well, it does happen. But at least not in SLF.

So then: something that fulfilled its conditions when all participating players boarded the Crying Innsman… And the Unique Monster "Ctarnidd of the Abyss," which had revealed itself—even if only its legs… Where were we supposed to fight Ctarnidd to begin with…? A special area?

Sunraku: "Don't tell me—the moment this scenario started, it was an express train straight to the EX, no stops?!"

The Crying Innsman, completely seized by eight colossal tentacles, groaned and began to sink—hull and all. This wasn't a shipwreck. This was…!!

Sunraku: "Normally they give you a heads-up before this shit starts, goddammit!!"

Ctarnidd wasn't kind enough to loosen its grip just because I yelled. With monstrous strength that laughed off both gravity and buoyancy, the Crying Innsman was dragged down to the bottom of the sea—into the abyss of darkness…!!

[Unique Scenario EX "Behold the Abyss Above, as the World Turns on Its Head" is beginning.]

And then everything flipped upside down.

Ctarnidd: "Fwaaah! Welcome! Welcooome↑ to the abyss~! Come in, come in! Make yourselves at hooome! I've been waaaiting for yoou! Customers (smirk) finally came! I'm so happy! So, how d'you wanna die? Lots of options~! These guys are my minions, y'know—the Professor taught me that word! The real fight starts from here, so have fun dyiiing!"