Chapter 142: The Shark and Bird Who Defy the Abyss
Memory is experience, and experience is power. Experience is power.
There's a game called Cosmo Buster. Released a few months before Fuckaria, it's an FPS and a relatively old title among full-dive VR games. Its biggest selling point was "Feel Overwhelming Despair With Your Entire Body!" And I can say from personal experience—yeah, I definitely felt overwhelming despair with my entire body. It was absurd: swarmed from all 360 degrees by endlessly respawning enemies that looked like basketballs with arms and legs glued on.
What went wrong? It fell into a trap common in early full-dive VR: failing to grasp the difference between "moving the controller in your hand" and "moving your actual body." With a controller, tilting a stick is all it takes; in full-dive, you have to move your own body by your own will. The tuning required is completely different. In the early days, disappointing games that failed to make that adjustment—stuck somewhere between mediocre and trash—were arguably more common than outright trash games.
Sunraku: "Shit, it's been a while since I desperately wished for a mapping function…!!"
This situation reminded me of Cosmo Buster's infamous fifth mission, "Allied Forces' Final Rearguard Retreat." You know sutegamari, the sacrificial rear-guard tactic, right? The ultimate muscle-brain lizard’s version of cutting off its own tail. Being forced to do that alone, over and over, was a living hellscape—but I never expected that experience would actually help me break through my current predicament.
In "Allied Forces' Final Rearguard Retreat," the ultimate optimal solution was simply not to fight. After all, the only defeat condition was "player character death," and the evaluation criteria were "player damage taken ratio" and "kill score." No matter how many allied NPCs died, your rating wasn't affected one bit. Corner them against a cliff, blow the bridge, and easy S-rank—though realizing that was its own special hell. My point is, what mattered in that mission was "how to reach a specific point without taking damage."
Sunraku: "In Cosmo Buster, I used a bug to climb walls. In this game, I can do it with legitimate moves!"
Zero Gravity, Flit Float, Possessed by the Great Asura King—activate. Having secured top-class mobility, I used rubble as a springboard, kicked off a wall, stepped on empty air, and dashed up onto a rooftop. In Cosmo Buster, enemies couldn't climb walls, so once I escaped onto the z-axis safe zone, they could only chase me on the x and y axes… Ah. Looks like it won't be so easy here.
Sunraku: "Why are swarm-type monsters with zero individual rights always such a goddamn pain?!"
If many a mickle makes a muckle, then pile up monsters and you get a foothold. The ones behind trample the ones ahead, repeating endlessly until the mountain of corpses becomes a road leading to the rooftop. What percentage of their massive forces had they burned through? They clambered over the corpse pile blocking the path, and several times that number came crawling after me. I see. Annoyingly free in their movements.
Sunraku: "But that's convenient for me, you single-celled bastards."
Stubbornly, stupidly, persistently, and obediently chasing me—they had no flexibility. The fish-men lacked any thought routine for "flanking." They just followed the path I took with absolute, simple-minded loyalty. In that case, using all three axes—x, y, and z—shaking them would be easy. Running across rooftops, leaping between them, kicking off pillars to reverse course, climbing even higher and pretending to jump before dropping. Their response to my parkour-like movements was brute-force consumption of human resources. The seemingly inexhaustible swarm dwindled with each corpse mountain I raised. Every time I changed course or height, more fish-men were left behind. With no countermeasures against falls, every plunge from above only added to the unnecessary dead.
Sunraku: "Alright, good work."
Occasionally I switched from fleeing to turning on them, culling the fish-men who'd caught up to thin their numbers further. Even if the fish-men were infinitely respawning, if the AI was intentionally stupid, there were plenty of openings to exploit.
Sunraku: "Hah! Dumbasses!! If you want to corner me, try an encirclement and wipeout with poison gas, your own allies be damned!!"
…No, seriously, don't actually do that.
I wouldn't say I'd struggled that hard, but after successfully dealing with the zombie-horde-like fish-men, I climbed onto the roof of a two-story house and surveyed the full scope of the city once more.
Sunraku: "A castle in the center, and four towers at the cardinal directions of this circular city. I mean… it practically screams 'Clear these four and you can challenge the boss.'"
Hmm, from what I could see, none of the other players seemed to be around, and I didn't spot anything that looked like a save point either. I kicked a late-arriving sillago-headed fish-man off the building and moved to another structure with a double-jump. Behind me, several fish-men who'd tried to force their way after me met the same fate as the ones who'd gone before. Weren't they a little too stupid?
Sunraku: "Stealth action… nah, that can wait. For now, I'll move rooftop to rooftop and… Huh?"
Someone was running. Not the zombie-like gait of the fish-men—this was a run that favored an injury. Something with enough intelligence to protect a wound was fleeing through the city. But what should I do? Something nagged at me.
Sunraku: "Even from a distance… no one in our group matches that profile."
From what I could tell, it was a large man. That alone eliminated Rust, Akitsu Akane, Emul, Ceecrue, and Stude. So was it Rei-shi or Mold? No… wait… did he have a tail? Like, a fish tail kind of thing…? Then was he a fish-man after all? But those guys will grab-attack you even with their neck half-severed. Would a fish-man like that clutch a wound and run from something?
Sunraku: "…Suspicious. Very suspicious."
I smell a flag and an event… reeks of fish. From what I saw up top, that alley probably connects over there, so if I run that way, I can cut him off.
Sunraku: "Alright, let's go."
Dropping from the roof and sacrificing a bit of HP, I moved to intercept the mysterious figure. Leaping over houses, shortcutting through alleys, I forced a straight-line path across the map. With recast times halved, my mobility had vastly improved, and paired with double-jumps and various motion enhancements, I reached my anticipated destination with ease. Games that let you pull off parkour-like moves like this almost make you want to run forever, but I tamped down the impulse and surveyed the area from the rooftop.
It seemed sounds didn't carry well in this area, so hearing those mad shrieks meant the fish-men were close. And…
???: "Hahh… hahh…!"
Sunraku: "Hello, relatively intelligent-looking fish-man. Can you use those vocal cords for conversation?"
???: "Tch, I've been cut off…! Wait, what's a Birdian doing in a place like this?!"
Sunraku: "Guardian?"
I'd calculated my landing to drop right in front of him, making first contact with the fish-man clutching his shoulder as the red damage-effect bled out. Male, judging by build and voice. Wearing a strangely translucent diver-suit-like outfit, a face that split the difference between shark and man—a being who radiated the light of an intelligent NPC, a different breed entirely from the fish-men I'd encountered so far. He blurted a strange word at the sight of me but didn't attack, instead staring at me in bewilderment.
However, since this shark-man had been running, there was no doubt something was chasing him. From around the corner, the mindless rotten fish-men surged in a horde.
Sunraku: "Ah, shit—talk later! Drink this and run!!"
???: "Wh—! I know not who you are, but you have my thanks!!"
I'd been searching for a rabbit, a little shithead, or another player—but the first conversable being I encountered in this city was a shark fish-man.