Chapter 193: Freed from Impatience—Now Run with Impatience in Your Heart
Me, Rust, Mold, Akitsu Akane, Emul, Ceecrue, Araba, and Nereis. Leaving out Rei-shi, who was still nowhere to be found, and Stude, who was basically out of the running as combat strength, this was shaping up into a pretty solid large party.
Three frontliners, two backliners, and two skirmishers: a seven-person formation, with two pure magic classes among them. Nereis was apparently technically a magic class too, but she was a weapon, so I was leaving her out of that count.
The physically focused frontliners were me and Araba. Ceecrue, for some reason, could make bamboo sprout with magic... bamboo? Well, whatever the method, magic damage was still magic damage.
The two skirmishers could both handle physical and magical attacks, though the balance was pretty lopsided in each case. Rust switched between physical and magic, but both were ranged attacks, while Akitsu Akane leaned more toward the magic side, with physical attacks being more of an extra.
Sunraku: “So, Rust and Mold can hang on until the morning of Day Six—strictly speaking, until they have to log into NephHolo. Which means we’re going boss hunting right now. Our target is... ‘Barnacle.’”
One of the Blockers—the one that nullified close-range attacks. Just from that description, our three frontliners were almost completely useless. But with the final day coming, I wanted to leave the easier of the Blockers for later if possible, which meant saving “the Couple” for last, since Ceecrue would not be rendered completely useless against them.
Araba and I were basically useless either way, so there was not much difference there. I could at least carry Emul and turn into a mobile gun platform, and apparently if Araba did a bunch of things he could materialize Nereis into a physical form...
Unidentified party member: “What about Psyger-0?”
Sunraku: “She’ll have to hang in there.”
No matter how high you raised your level or how much overwhelming power you obtained, some things were still simply beyond your control. If she was not coming, then we had no choice but to move on under the assumption that she was not here.
Still, not seeing so much as a trace of her was strange. Had she really not logged in even once? It might have been summer break, but it was already the end of August. It would not be strange for her to have plans, and the invitation itself had come out of nowhere in the first place.
Sunraku: “This kind of thing happens in games where time moves for reasons other than your own schedule. Sad as it is, if you don’t log in, that’s on you...”
Although, if we were going to say that, I figured the game deserved some blame for suddenly dumping people into an EX Scenario in the first place. Maybe games that sacrifice a little convenience in order to stay faithful to their world are what people like these days. Your boy here plays so many shitty games that I honestly have no idea.
I could name three or four games off the top of my head that recreated their setting so obsessively they ended up branded as shit games.
Then again, gamers who came from the mobile-game scene always seemed weirdly meticulous about schedule management. VR had become the mainstream form of gaming, so mobile games no longer had the momentum they once did, but plenty were still alive.
And among the players who were neither so obsessed with one game that they ignored everything else nor so chained to it that they could not play anything else, there were a lot of people who were bizarrely punctual about things like daily dungeons.
Usually the whole routine ended with them going, “Ah, sorry, gotta go grab my login bonus,” and logging out. Mobile-game players were basically living alarm clocks. Around five or six in the morning, they would all disappear for a bit.
Sunraku: “Oh. We’re here already?”
Emul: “Sunraku-san, were you thinking the whole way here?”
Sunraku: “Hm? I was just considering whether it’s possible to deliberately set your biological internal clock.”
Ignoring Emul’s disgusted groan from atop my head, we finally arrived at the tower where “Barnacle” was waiting. On the way, we had been attacked by bizarre creatures that looked like someone had combined a shark and a frog and then covered the whole thing in peach fuzz, but at this point they did not even qualify as interruptions to my train of thought. A party packed with players and NPCs this varied was far beyond their league.
Sunraku: “That’s it...? Man, that design looks like the kind of thing some people would absolutely hate.”
Humanoid... technically. Barely. Its neck was positioned a little too far toward its left shoulder, and its right arm was grotesquely swollen, but sure, we could still call it humanoid.
The truly remarkable part was not its shape, but its surface. Barnacles were the things that grew in dense clusters on rocks and breakwaters, and sure enough—because of course they did—the monster’s entire surface was absolutely carpeted in them.
Emul: “Ugh...”
Sunraku: “How does that thing nullify close-range techniques? Does it put up a shield or something?”
Emul: “Nooo! The instant a blade hits it, they go bwoosh! and multiply!”
Sunraku: “That is... something.”
It sounded like it was going to be a pretty horrifying sight. Still, I had a decent tolerance for the kind of grotesque stuff you tended to see around sea creatures.
My dad was the kind of guy who would say, “Barnacles attract black sea bream, so we’re sourcing bait on-site!” and practically drop himself into the sea. To me, barnacles were basically synonymous with “fishing bait.”
Sunraku: “...Come to think of it, can you eat barnacles?”
No, wait. Wasn’t there a specific edible species...? Hm?
I looked around and found the rest of the party staring at me like I had just said something unbelievable. I could almost swear that even the “Barnacle” we were about to fight was staring at me too.
Emul: “...Sunraku-san, even for you, eating that would be a bit much.”
Akitsu Akane: “Sunraku-san, are you the type who’ll eat anything!?”
Sunraku: “I don’t mean that one! I’m talking about real-life barnacles.”
Though if it dropped some kind of edible item, part of me did want to try it.
Sunraku: “All right, action time. First up—Araba!”
Araba: “Yeah!”
Sunraku: “Forget whether it works. Go hit it once.”
Araba: “Yeah!?”
It was not just me throwing an impossible order at him. I wanted to test whether the close-range nullification also prevented us from generating aggro.
Sunraku: “Go on, get moving! I’ll pick up your bones afterward.”
Araba: “Jeez, you pushy bastard...!”
Nereis: “First time I’ve seen Araba get dragged around like this.”
Araba: “No kidding! Nereis, I’m counting on you!”
Nereis: “Sure... [Deep-Pressure Rift].”
A deep blue glow settled over the thick blade. Before Barnacle could react, the sword slammed into its body—and an unfamiliar thunderous sound rang out.
It was not metal striking metal. It was not a blade tearing through flesh. If I had to compare it to anything, it sounded like an enormous stone cracking apart.
It was unmistakably the sound of damage far beyond a simple slash, but even so, the attack failed to cleave Barnacle’s body in two.
Araba: “So this is the trick that seals off melee attacks...!”
Unidentified party member: “Ueegh... it’s all crunching and squishing...”
Barnacle’s body burst open along the blade that had been driven down its facial midline. No—that was not it bursting. Barnacles had explosively proliferated along the impact line.
What a brute-force defense. It was basically producing shield after shield until the attacking side’s kinetic energy was completely spent.
Still, Araba’s big move had not been pointless. Barnacle moved its grotesquely swollen right arm as though trying to crush the nuisance in front of it, which meant Araba could at least draw its attention—its aggro.
Sunraku: “Yeah, breaking through that is impossible. Plan B—brute force—is officially scrapped. Araaaaba! Get back here!!”
So we were going with the original Plan A. According to Rust, the ranged attacks nullified by the Ammon Knight—the boss that seemed to form Barnacle’s opposite pair—had an estimated effective boundary of five to eight meters. If Barnacle’s property was simply the inverse, then at worst it probably nullified any attack launched from within an eight-meter radius.
Sunraku: “All right. Akitsu Akane, I’m leaving Emul to you.”
Akitsu Akane: “Leave it to me! I’ll protect her even if it grinds my bones to dust!”
Emul: “I’d rather we not end up in a situation where your bones get ground to dust, thank you!?”
Relax, Emul. Akitsu Akane was the same breed as me and Sylvia Goldberg. She was not going to stand there soaking hits like a tank until her bones shattered. Though if that arm landed even once, it really did look like it might pulverize her bones along with everything else.
Sunraku: “All right, Araba! Ceecrue! From here on out, the three of us are going to devote ourselves entirely to pissing that thing off!”
Araba: “Yeah!”
Ceecrue: “Could you not phrase it a little better, de gozaru?”
Sunraku: “We’ll swarm around it like obnoxious little flies.”
Ceecrue: “That wording got worse, de gozaru!”
Elsewhere in Ruluiath stood one of the city’s countless houses: a small, somewhat shabby building on the outskirts, poor even by comparison with the others. Its door opened slowly and carefully, so as not to break it, and it emerged.
Psyger-0: “............”
She was not, in the literal sense, enormous. She was certainly tall, but still within the bounds of a human body. Her ogre-warrior armor made her silhouette bulkier than it would have been unarmored, but in the end she should still have been no larger than a human.
And yet she looked enormous. The house was already small compared with those around it, but beside her it seemed almost like a doghouse. What caused that impression?
Was it the power hidden within her body making her appear larger? No. It was something more fundamental—the sheer pressure radiating from the person inside the armor made her seem far greater than her actual size.
Psyger-0: “Where... where are you...?”
Five full days in which she had not logged in—had not been able to log in. Less than two days remained. Anxiety gnawed at her, along with the loneliness of still being completely alone ever since she arrived here. The knight who had been bound in chains of impatience was finally set free.
Deep Hook: “Gerrrrururororororo!!”
It had the body of a shark, the limbs of a frog, and stiff, wire-like hairs growing all across it with the characteristic ability to hook fish. The monster was known as the Deep Hook. One branch of its species had diverged into a land-dwelling relative, but this one had found a human in this strange hunting ground, judged her to be prey, and attacked.
Psyger-0: “...Be quiet!!”
First came Highest Strength, a skill that massively increased her STR for an extremely short period. Then Karmic Fiend’s Embrace, which increased the power of a counter in proportion to how much aggro was directed at her. Then the spell [Enchant: Vermilion], which granted a weapon a special attribute effect distinct even from ordinary higher-tier attributes.
Add to that the sledgehammer belonging to the “Vorpal” series, Vorpal Sledge +14, and the Ogre-Cry Armor Set, which applied a massive correction to attacks made with melee weapons.
Then factor in the fact that her full swing critically struck the Deep Hook square in the snout as it charged straight at her.
She was a frontliner who could also serve as a tank, yet she possessed the brute strength of “maximum firepower.” That strength, combined with all her impatience and anger, was poured into a single full-force blow. It pulverized the Deep Hook’s face, and the impact continued through its cervical vertebrae, spine, and femurs, crushing bone and flesh together.
It was quite literally a bone-grinding, body-shattering blow. Its bones scattered as powder and its body seemed to burst apart, and the Deep Hook lost its entire health bar in a single hit.
Psyger-0: “I have to... find them... and then I have to apologize...”
The danger rating of a single individual in Ruluiath that night had just been revised upward.
Heroine-chan: “At this moment, I am about to lose my composure.”
Deep Hook: “Abeshi!”
Mud Digger: “Big brooo!!”