Chapter 258: Calamity Spiral: Desperate Grasp
The Vorpal Bunny defensive army is composed primarily of three types of troops: Tanks who hold back Goldhuneenay’s spawn on the front line, Attackers who sweep away the spawn that have been dammed up and push the line forward alongside the Tanks, and Carpenters who rapidly seal the side tunnels to secure the area. There also seem to be medics and rear-support Vorpal Bunnies, but for the most part, the operation revolves around “stopping,” “striking,” and “sealing.”
And my role is to slip into the initial sweep phase of the operation and reach the enemy’s main stronghold. I’m to defeat the Goldhuneenay offshoot—the enemy commander, the source of the “curse” eating away at the Vorpal Bunnies.
For the record, Akitsu Akane will be a skirmisher supporting both the Attackers and Carpenters as the situation demands. Emul is on rear support. Ceecrue and Aydward are Tanks on the front line.
Sunraku: “Is it really okay for the leaders to be out front?”
Aydward: “Standing before all others is the Vorpal Soul. That’s what Father taught us.”
By that logic, hasn’t my Vorpal Soul hit the cap and then some? Eh, whatever. I’ll just carry out what I’ve gotta do. That said, we’ve got very little advance intel on Goldhuneenay’s offshoot. Very few Vorpal Bunnies have even laid eyes on the offshoot in the first place, and the survival rate for those who have is low. The results of gathering info through Emul boil down to: “it’s not that big in size,” and “it doesn’t have a simple serpentine shape.”
If it’s not a simple snake shape, there are plenty of candidates—yamata-no-orochi type, medusa type... But if the Vorpal Bunnies, whose sizes are close to real-life rabbits, say it’s “not that big,” then I want to believe it’s not on the scale of Lycagon or Ctarnidd. If it’s Crystal Scorpion-sized, well... but even those are around the size of a large passenger car... And the biggest concern:
Sunraku: “Obviously, there’s not gonna be any lights or anything, right?”
Aydward: “Naturally. Are the pioneer folk not keen of eye in the dark?”
Sure, darkness that an NPC would perceive as “pitch black” is more like “dim” from a player’s perspective. But it’s still dim. A flashy attack with big effects, I wouldn’t miss. But a plain one—worse, a stealth-based attack—I can’t rule out a direct hit.
Sunraku: “Should I update my respawn point...? No, but the odds of being able to make another dash aren’t that high... Eh, whatever.”
It’ll work out. Right now, I’m a master swordsman bearing the Whalelore Moonblade, blessed by the Caffeine Deity. ...I’m not even sure what I’m saying anymore.
Aydward: “Ahem... Pardon my rudeness.”
Sunraku: “Hm?”
Aydward clears his throat and removes his glasses. Wait, this is usually the cue for an intellectual yakuza-type character to get serious... The next instant—
Aydward: “Beraaammmeeehh!!”
Sunraku: “Ber...”
Akitsu Akane: “...Ranmehh?”
Akitsu Akane and I stare wide-eyed. We’d kind of expected something, but the sudden roar still catches us off guard. I see. That fills in one blank. From the top, we’ve got: old-school gangster, intellectual yakuza (Edokko), Hiroshima dialect, de gozaru, ?, ?, Kyoto dialect... The upper ranks of the Vorpal Bunnies are way too full of character.
Aydward: “Oi, oi, oi, oi, you miserable lot! Quit mopin’ around and straighten the hell up! We’re goin’ on a raid against that damn snake!”
Every hair on his body standing on end, Aydward’s roaring has the surrounding Vorpal Bunnies’ ears snapping straight up.
Aydward: “I ain’t sayin’ no soft-ass crap about just holdin’ ’em back this time! We’re wrappin’ up every last bit of your pent-up grudges and rammin’ ’em straight down their throats!”
Swords, axes, sickles, hammers—the rabbits’ weapons, coated in Vorpal killing intent, are raised one after another. The fighting spirit in this place surges sky-high.
Aydward: “Magic Cannon... Unit! Form up!”
Akitsu Akane: “Ah! I’ll help too! Sunraku-san, please do your best!”
Sunraku: “Got it.”
The Vorpal Bunnies equipped like mages line up in a row, Akitsu Akane slipping in among them.
Aydward: “Here we go, bastards! Brace yourselves!”
With a slick shing, the long blade—apparently named “Tanryu”—is drawn. A tense silence stretches for several seconds, and then—
Sunraku: “Oi, oi, this sounds like a wildebeest stampede...!”
It’s snakes, right? They’re definitely snakes, right? So why do I hear a deafening rumble like dududududu—?! Is the audio bugging out?!
Sunraku: “Whoa, gotta get ready too...”
For today, I’ve been practicing controlling my excessive movements in the overflow state, like a kid practicing for a dash. All that’s left is to trust the rabbits who’ll clear the path for me. Smashing into walls, having my neck bend weirdly from too much momentum, face-first slides, face bouncing, wall collisions like a slapstick comedy bit, a three-and-a-half-spin midair face-plant... How many death scores do you think I’ve racked up to this day? I’m so used to moving under the stat penalties from death that it’s second nature now.
Aydward: “They’re coming!”
I press the Levin Trigger: Hazard against my chest like a prayer, electricity crackling as thunder envelops me. In a sprinter’s crouch, I stare straight ahead. And finally, I see them.
Sunraku: “Ohh...”
Uh, so... you know flowing somen noodles, right? Imagine that scaled up huge, and every single noodle is a snake. That’s about it.
Aydward: “Blast ’em to hell!!”
A volley of hellfire erupts in unison—and then a dragon’s breath swallows it all, trampling everything before my eyes.
Akitsu Akane: “Do your beeeeeeeeeeeest!!!”
Is that a Support Cannon rather than an Apology Cannon? But that’s some serious firepower. When the torrent of energy—devouring even our own attacks—scatters and fades, a path has been forcibly blasted open... Ready, GO!!
Heh heh heh. Allow me to show you the footwork of the man who used a cheater as an alt in Goril Lion Online! Though, for the record, even charging at max speed, you’d still get crushed by the lion’s cat punch with that mysterious vacuum hitbox... Goril Lion was way too cruel.
With a stance just one step from collapsing, my foot pushes off, tilting my body forward, further forward. That first step becomes propulsion. The second step brings even more acceleration. Everything around me streams backward. I charge straight down the scarred path of destruction, where the remnants of Akitsu Akane’s breath still drift as glowing particles. My target is Goldhuneenay’s offshoot. The weight of gazes presses against my back.
A surging torrent of serpents flows past. If I miss my footing, I’ll be swallowed by the moving mass and crushed to pieces. Goldhuneenay’s spawn madly trample their own kind to push forward, forward—racing against the tide of countless giant serpents, I accelerate deeper and deeper. This... is the kind of sight that would mentally kill anyone who’s bad with reptiles. Dragons are reptilian enough that even I, whose resistance to this stuff has been trained through games, am a little creeped out.
Sunraku: “Even when I’m the one doing the stomping... the aggro... won’t... come...?!”
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that. But it still feels like running backward on a horribly warped conveyor belt. The slightest lapse in focus and I’d be sent sprawling. If I’d just run normally, I’d have been ground to mincemeat and delivered straight to the collision line where Aydward and the others are. But right now, I’m an out-of-control express train, liable to run until I slam into a wall if I don’t keep my speed in check. In fact, the way my momentum gets lightly killed is making it easier to run.
Still, how would you handle this in normal play? ...No, in that case, you’d probably just push the front line forward until you naturally encounter the offshoot. It’s only insane because I’m forcing my way through this shitty tunnel like this.
Sunraku: “Hyah, hup— I’m borrowing your head!”
Excessive movement. Amplified momentum. I’m like a super ball or a grasshopper. I stomp on the head of a giant snake in mid-leap and push off with enough force to crush its skull, jumping again. Using Gravity Zero, I dash across the walls and ceiling of the circularly bored tunnel.
Heh heh heh. Allow me to show you the leaping sense of the man once called “the Thomson’s gazelle more ferocious than the carnivores” in Goril Lion Online! Though, once caught in the lion’s inexplicably high-performance death roll—better than a crocodile’s—you’re guaranteed to take 100% damage... Too ruthless, Goril Lion. For some reason, these wicked tactics never worked on the gorilla... a mysterious quirk that remains one of the unsolved riddles in the world of trash games (by my personal reckoning) to this day... Wait, pull my thoughts back. Looks like I’ve arrived.
Sunraku: “...That’s gotta be it, right?”
Amid the mostly straight tunnel with the occasional side hole, there’s a bowl-shaped depression. And at the center of that “hole,” teeming with a writhing mess too chaotic to put into words, sits a single serpent. Its entire body is covered in jet-black scales, with an abnormally swollen belly quite unlike the common image of a snake... Yep, I know what this is.
Sunraku: “It’s a tsuchinoko!”
The black tsuchinoko—Goldhuneenay’s offshoot—fixes its hostile gaze solely on me, even as its spawn swarm endlessly down the path I came from.
Then, every last snake that had been writhing in the hole vanishes toward the far end of the tunnel. The effects of Gravity Zero expire, and I land. The black tsuchinoko and I face each other.
Sunraku: “Tsuchinoko... No, it definitely looks like it has zero mobility, but I shouldn’t judge by appear— nnnyyyeee?!”
BASH! A massive, pale, bluish-white palm slams shut right where my face had just been. If I hadn’t reflexively jerked backward, I’d have respawned at the Rabbit Palace by now.
Sunraku: “...My bad. I’m sorry, I judged you by your looks.”
But let me say this.
Sunraku: “That... THAT came out of your mouth...?!”
An “arm” stretches out from the black tsuchinoko’s wide-open mouth. I scream the most heartfelt retort of my life and... ready my blades. This thing is going to be one hell of a fight.