Chapter 208: Together Under Heaven — Part Fourteen

A minigame. That's what it boils down to.

The second form, "Illusion Form," is a minigame where we have to punch down every tentacle falling from the sky and force Ctarnidd to the ground.

The third form, "Fantasy Form," is a minigame where we have to destroy the eight cups held by its tentacles, each of which activates a different effect every thirty seconds.

So what kind of minigame is the fourth form, "Virtual Form"? Simple. We beat down every last piece of food it tries to put into its mouth and keep it from filling its stomach. What we accomplish during Virtual Form probably affects the specs of the final "Imagination Form," which I expect will be a genuine head-on clash. In other words, that's the whole strategy here.

Sunraku: "No way we can kill the big ones right off the bat! I'll keep them busy, so wipe out as many of the small fry as you can!"

The first thing summoned, Arctus Regalex, was sucked into an octopus-hole bored into the void together with the fishmen around it. That established the rule: any summoned monster still alive after thirty seconds gets eaten by Ctarnidd. Right now, I'm doing everything I can to draw the attention of the newly summoned aircraft-carrier anglerfish, Slaygiven Caryangler.

That queen is one hell of a profitable monster. When the main anglerfish dies, every other monster it has absorbed blows apart along with it. It also drops a pretty hefty amount of material from the monsters it swallowed. Actually, it looks like the Slaygiven Caryangler's own materials plus the materials from the monsters it absorbed are guaranteed drops. They say no part of an anglerfish goes to waste, but throwing any of this away would be unthinkable.

It's basically a treasure chest stuffed with materials and flying through the air. If we had the time, I'd love to focus on farming Slaygiven Caryanglers. But there's no way it's weak enough to kill in thirty seconds, so all I can do is watch through tears as it gets served up as Ctarnidd's meal.

I have Emul hit it with ranged attacks, kill the minions the carrier anglerfish sends at us, and keep provoking it. While Slaygiven Caryangler's aggro is on me, the rest of the party goes all out cutting down the fishman population.

The huge monsters naturally draw your eye, but in terms of total mass, the rotten fishballs make up more of the enemy force. Their durability also seems deliberately set low. Even with my stats—where my DPS is fine but my damage per individual hit isn't especially high—I can drain one of their HP bars with only two or three slashes. So clearing out the rotten fishballs is definitely the correct way to tackle this.

Sunraku: "Damn... I'll take down even one more if I can...!"

The black-hole-like opening in the void begins pulling things in. I don't know how it works, or whether what it's doing can even really be called "sucking" things in. But one fact is clear: players and NPCs aren't affected at all. Only the monsters Ctarnidd summoned disappear into it.

I cut down one of the fishmen in midair as it gets comically dragged toward the hole, confirm that it explodes and vanishes before it can be swallowed, and try to whip my weakening morale back into shape as yet another summoning circle appears. What is this now...? Probably a little over ten times.

Sunraku: "How many rounds of this are there? If it's supposed to last five minutes or something, we ought to be almost done..."

Mold: "More importantly, our weapons are getting worn down pretty badly. If there's another round after this, we're cutting it pretty close."

Rust: "...Mold's a magic class, so he's better off. Bows lose durability just from firing..."

Right. I've got Duxram, Blade of Aspiration, which is effectively a weapon with infinite durability, but the other players aren't so lucky. No matter how weak these things are, we can't just cut through them without meeting any resistance. If fishmen keep appearing in Musou-game numbers and we keep killing them, that puts a corresponding amount of strain on our weapons.

Rust has it especially bad. A sword doesn't lose durability just because you swing it, but a bow is different. Her heavy bow has already broken, and apparently her magic bow is almost at its limit too. She does have one spare physical bow and one spare magic bow, but before durability even becomes the issue, she's nearly out of arrows and MP.

Sunraku: "Think you can keep going?"

Rust: "...If it comes down to it, I'll contribute with my bare hands."

Psyger-0: "Everyone... the twelfth one is coming."

As expected of Rei-shi. She actually kept count. The twelfth indiscriminate summoning. And there's an enormous magic circle sitting there as if it's practically announcing, This is the last one. I've got a reeeeeally bad feeling about this.

In Ruluiath, if something is going to be summoned through a magic circle that big, there's only one thing it could be...

Sunraku: "Ah. Yeah, figures..."

Emul: "Pii..."

Oh, right. This is Emul's first time seeing it. Alright, Araba. Be a good man and tell everyone its name for me.

Araba: "Atlanticus Lepnorca...!?"

Sunraku: "That thing is bad... Everybody, forget fighting and just think about getting away—"

The next instant, a colossal electrical discharge erupted from the emperor reigning in the air, as though it meant to reduce everything to ash.

Sunraku: "Uhh... everybody alive?"

Akitsu Akane: "That's like a teacher taking attendance and saying, 'Anyone who's absent today, raise your hand,' isn't it...?"

Akitsu Akane, you can play the straight man too...? No, that's not important right now.

That orca bastard summoned at the very, very end unleashed all the violence you'd expect from something called an emperor. The colosseum Ctarnidd had so painstakingly constructed was wrecked to the verge of collapse, and between the beams it fired and its body slams, the rotten fishballs were practically annihilated without us needing to attack them ourselves.

Whether it heard what I yelled or not, fighting was completely out of the question while that thing ran wild. All of us poured every bit of concentration we had into nothing but dodging and fleeing... and then, at the very end, Atlanticus Lepnorca fired one last electrical blast as it was being swallowed by Ctarnidd and sent all of us flying.

Sunraku: "If you're not dead, answer me... Emul, you alive?"

Emul: "I'm probably dead, wa..."

Sunraku: "You sound pretty healthy to me."

I'm actually pretty close to death myself. Still, as long as I've got HP left, it's fine. I gnaw headfirst into one of my fish. I'd packed in as many as I possibly could, yet the stock is already starting to run low, and the heaviness in my eyelids makes me recognize exactly what's happening.

Sunraku: "The caffeine's starting to wear off..."

Emul: "Caff-eine?"

Sunraku: "Nothing. Don't worry about it."

Riot Blood Revol Blantan is, in its own words, "for short decisive battles." We took longer than expected to clear the gimmicks, so its effect duration ran out. It's not as if I'm going to instantly fall asleep just because the caffeine wore off, but I really hope this chronic sluggishness doesn't start dragging me down.

Rust: "...Mold and I are fine."

Mold: "Somehow..."

Araba: "I'm fine, and so is Nereis!"

Emul: "Araba, you okay?"

Rei-shi is probably fine. More importantly, where's that little shit? Did he die?

I look for Stude with myself already about sixty percent resigned to the worst, but then Rei-shi pushes aside some rubble and emerges carrying him. Protecting a key NPC from a completely different scenario even in a situation like this... Yeah. She really is in a class of her own. Akitsu Akane and Ceecrue were right next to us, so checking that they had survived was easy. For the moment, I've confirmed that nobody is dead.

Sunraku: "I want soy sauce... Whatever. If everyone's okay, sorry, but get back on your feet right now."

Looks like the bastard finished changing outfits. Emul, who had slipped all the way down to the nape of my neck, climbs back up onto my head, and the trembling of her body shakes my skull. Fluffy and shivery.

Rust: "...You little shit. From here on, having you here will only get in the way. Run to the shore as fast as you can."

Stude: "B-but I..."

Sunraku: "Unfortunately, you're the only one here who can operate a boat. Even a little one is fine—go secure some way for us to get out of here once this is all over."

I layer some roleplay over Rust's words and send Stude away from the battlefield, because no matter how you slice it, he's never going to be useful as fighting strength. From a gamer's cold, rational perspective, I'd rather have him stay quietly somewhere far away than accidentally pull aggro. I don't know how he took what I said, but the little shit, looking ready to cry, runs out through one of the collapsed sections of the colosseum.

Sunraku: "Alright, then... Rei-shi, think you can do that thing we did before?"

Psyger-0: "Yes. We'll need to follow the same procedure, but... I can do it."

Rust: "I'm good too. Same as before—once I make it flinch..."

Akitsu Akane: "Understood."

Ahead of us, a pitch-black hole hangs in the void. It's a black hole opened in space itself, and there is no way to perceive any depth inside it. But there, on the rim of that hole... a hand.

Unidentified Speaker: "Ctarnidd of the Abyss..."

The form emerging from that deep abyss seems to embody its name perfectly.

In the broadest sense, it has a human shape. Its enormous body is nothing but blood-red, exposed muscle, while what looks like magical black patterns and strings of writing cover it from head to toe as though substituting for skin. Perhaps not enough time has passed since it transformed what had once been living beings into its own body. An indescribable smell assaults my nose—the scent of the sea mixed with blood and death.

Its grotesque appearance is close to the common image of "Cthulhu" that gets used as material in games fairly often: a human torso with an octopus attached where the head should be. But there is one point where it differs clearly from that familiar image.

Ctarnidd: "O humans, first miracle, born and spread across all. O humans, second miracle, advancing onward and illuminating the darkness."

Ctarnidd: "What will you accomplish? What have you accomplished? Show me. Show me. Show me."

Ctarnidd: "O seeds scattered from the heavens, have you extended your roots?"

Ctarnidd: "I am one who bears the same sky. I am one who gazes upon the world from the deep abyss. I am one who knows the afterglow of the great trajectory."

Ctarnidd: "Show me the value of life. Show me whether their wishes—and her wish—were truly fulfilled."

Words echo out in a way I can only describe as sound itself somehow being perceived as a voice—nothing about it seems human. Ctarnidd should be the one producing it, and yet it sounds as though multiple people are speaking all at once.

The common image usually gives the creature demon-like wings growing from its back. What grows from Ctarnidd's back instead is a "circle," like the halo behind a Buddhist statue. Eight jewels set along that circle shine ominously, like fruit growing on branches.

Sunraku: "Shut up. I don't know the inside story, so just hand over the Book of Truth and behave yourself, octopus bastard... This is the final battle! Everyone, get your heads back in the game!"

Ctarnidd: "For struggle is the essence of life. Therefore, you... prove yourselves!"

Ctarnidd's final form, "Imagination Form." The giant octopus-thing against us, Team Fugutaiten... The genuine final battle had begun.

Blunt Spoiler Corner

Ctarnidd and the "players" are, strictly speaking, roughly relatives.

Are you overlooking it simply because this is a game? Have none of you really noticed?

NPCs and players are different kinds of beings. And likewise...