Chapter 294: My Girl Power Is 530,000

So, strike while the iron's hot. Bilac froze up on me, which means I need a seed flame to heat up both her and Areadbhair. Still, having Vash maintain a weapon that isn't even Togetsu — Moonblades: Waxing & Waning feels kind of scary... not because I don't trust him, but in the favorability-score sense.

Sunraku: "So anyway, Emul. We're warping to Thirdrema. Been a while."

Emul: "Wow... I don't really have any particular memories of it, wa."

Sunraku: "I mean, we did get chased by that scumbag Pencilgon the second we got there..."

Man, maybe I really should bring divine punishment down on her properly one of these days... No. Bringing Bakumatsu logic into another game is a breach of manners worthy of seppuku. Watching someone get surrounded by multiple rankers who then act as their seconds and finish them off is scary as shit even from the sidelines...

So, transfer. At first I thought I'd stop by Crystal Nest Cliff and undo the female transformation, but if I'm going to pass through Thirdrema while it's packed with newbies, staying like this is more convenient.

Sunraku: "Alright, Emul. We're having some girl talk."

I would later regret for a long time that I forgot to screenshot Emul's face the instant she heard those words.

Sunraku: "Emul, you're lacking in girl power. Boost it, shift those gears."

Emul: "S-Sunra... ko-san, you're the last person I want to hear that from, wa...!"

In SLF, no matter how much you dress up your appearance, your voice is the one thing you can't disguise. That's exactly why the Holy Grail's power, which completely reverses both appearance and voice, is top-class camouflage.

Even if my name is still "Sunraku," the impression of the "Sunraku (male)" who's stood out so much until now protects me.

Emul: "I mean, why do you even have women's clothing, wa...?"

Sunraku: "Well, if you get a gender-swapping item, of course you make clothes for it... obviously."

I asked Bilac for them while I was male, so even I, who has no such proclivities, got a little shiver from the look she gave me. But I demonstrated it right in front of her and avoided the baseless slander.

Sunraku: "Come on, come on, let's crank that girl power up!"

Emul: "U-Uuugh... Sunrako-san acting completely like a woman feels so weird, wa..."

Ha! Listen, Emul. Sunraku-san here can even become a little girl if he puts his mind to it, you know?

???: "Whoa, gear I've never seen before... That's cute. I wonder where you can get it."

???: "Sunraku... like, that Sunraku?"

???: "No, wasn't that person a male character?"

???: "Then maybe somebody just picked the same name."

???: "...Actually, why is that person smoking?"

???: "Who knows? Maybe it's an armor effect or something."

???: "The character creation on both of them is insanely good..."

???: "Going by the voice, she's definitely an actual female player. Hey, go talk to her."

???: "Don't be stupid. That's obviously a high-level player. What are you gonna do after you talk to her?"

???: "You know, show her the ropes, hand over hand..."

???: "If it were the other way around, maybe you'd have had a chance."

Should I be proud of the character creation that produced this form when my appearance got reversed, or was Ctarnidd just kind of that sort of guy...? I guess the truth lies at the bottom of the sea.

The instant we're a little way outside Thirdrema, I hit Overflow and sprint at full speed. Sorry, Emul, but I had her get paralyzed again... Hey! Stop kicking me in the cheek with rabbit leg strength, I'll die! I've only got 1 HP; that's more than enough to kill me!

Emul: "S-S-So-Sunra-ra-raku-ko-ko-ko-sa-sa-sa-san..."

Sunraku: "Come on, calm down and drink this."

Once I've cured her status ailment, I turn around, and there it is: the volcano standing there in all its glory, supposedly no longer active.

Apparently the highest place on this continent is the Magnanimous Sanctuary, but regardless of sheer height, mountains have a way of exerting a certain pressure on whoever looks at them.

Sunraku: "Though in this case, I'm the one radiating all the pressure."

Emul: "Wow... This is going to be a remarkably easy mountain climb, wa..."

Thanks to Lycagon's Contusion making monsters at or below my level avoid me, I'm getting almost no encounters at all... which means this really is just a hike.

Emul: "But, but, how are you going to get all the way to the bottom of the lake, wa?"

Sunraku: "Inventoria spam."

Emul: "Ah..."

Another page gets added to the legend of Inventoria being the strongest. Seriously, no matter how badly this gets nerfed, there's no way an ultimate ability like "evacuate into a separate space that shuts out all interference" can ever become useless.

Even if they made it unusable during combat, it'd still be useful for catching my breath like this... Personally, I think the fact that it can reset kinetic energy from the physics simulation is the most ridiculously broken part.

Emul: "...Nyu?"

Sunraku: "What's up, Emul?"

Emul: "Could it be... I'm staying behind again, wa?"

Sunraku: "....................................................................................................You... noticed, did you..."

I look away.

Emul puffs out her cheeks.

I mean, Inventoria is for one person... and in the first place, I still don't really understand how SLF's systems judge being underwater...

Emul: "Lately I feel like I'm only being treated as a convenient teleportation assistant, wa!"

Sunraku: "I mean, come on. If you came with me to Crystal Nest Cliff, you'd die, right?"

Emul: "You're the weird one for happily going there over and over, Sunraku-san, waaa!"

Still, that gang-beating ecology is so awful that I basically have the place monopolized, and that feels great. Lately Oikatzo's been subtly trying to pry the strategy out of me, but like hell I'm telling him. You can get launched around by a mob of scorpions and learn what it feels like to be a volleyball before you figure it out for yourself.

Sunraku: "Anyway, Emul."

Emul: "Hai na."

Sunraku: "Come to think of it, once I recover what I'm after, I'll probably suicide-teleport by despawning, so either way I'll be back in Rabitu—blergh!?"

Emul: "Then eighty percent of all the trouble I went through getting here was pointless, waaa!!"

Sunraku: "You're absolutely riiiiight—..."

Her leaping somersault kick connects with my jaw, and after losing my balance I wind up rolling about ten meters down the mountain.

Sunraku: "I knew it was heavy... And if I put a machine beast on over this once I'm above the lake, won't my mobility be completely dead...?"

Like a gorilla, an American football player, and heavy machinery had been mixed together into a robot: an unmistakable "heavyweight" in the clearest possible sense. Heavy armor built primarily from two colors, deep green like moss growing in shade and jet black. That was the form of the Non-Standard Specialized Armor “Fugaku”.

Fugaku... Fugaku... Memories of that ordeal-like challenge surface in my mind, but that swordmaster probably has nothing to do with this. Presumably the name really does mean the "mountain."

But then that raises a different question. As someone who's stepped fairly deep into the truth of this world through Unique Scenarios, I can more or less see the answer.

In the end, it's a matter of perception. People say sufficiently advanced science is the same as magic, but strictly speaking, that's not quite right. More accurately, you should say, "If you don't reveal the trick, you can make people think science is magic"... and that's probably how this game's world works too.

Sunraku: "Alright, let's go!"

Emul: "Take care, wa! I'll head back to Rabituza first, wa!"

Sunraku: "Sorry I made most of that trip pointless. I'll buy you something later."

After all, I'm rich.

Emul: "Th-then... even that ridiculously expensive spell..."

Sunraku: "You mean that one where the number of digits in the price is completely insane...?"

A mere grimoire costs a hundred million, and she wants me to buy that? Wait, are you still mad?

Well, I can afford it without much trouble, so maybe I'll restart the Emul Enhancement Project for the first time in a while. Thinking that, I dive into Fellfate Caldera, the enormous lake at the mountain's summit.

According to the truth Vash told me about this area, this extinct volcano had its activity stopped by physically using the "Red Dragon" from two generations ago as a lid, through some mysterious power that feels like the same sort of thing as turning a tiger into butter. There are no shallows here at all.

In other words, it's like taking a giant lump of cookie dough, sticking your finger into it, and pushing all the way down to the cutting board. SLF's system-level laws of physics are flawless, but its worldbuilding-level physics are loose as hell... A cup glows and changes your sex, so there's no point sweating the small stuff.

The sinking Genbu shows no light of operation. Of course it doesn't; Oikatzo has the reactor, so right now it's genuinely nothing but heavy armor.

Naturally, there's no system in it that supplies oxygen underwater, so I'd suffocate to death within a minute, but...

Sunraku: "This is so convenient I could practically stand to impose a restriction on myself..."

Transfer into the storage space. Take in as much air as I want, spin the MP-recovery gacha like crazy, then dive again.

After that it's just work. I sink farther and farther toward the bottom with enough weight to overpower my buoyancy, periodically replenishing oxygen and MP in the storage space... until at last, in real space, my feet press down on something.

Sunraku: "Sorry for stepping on you."

If Vash was right, what I'm standing on as though it were the ground is the final remains of Creptokurm the Red Dragon, slain by Siegwurm in the distant past.

This is perfectly girl power, wa...

• Creptokurm the Red Dragon

Unlike Deuredhowl, it came from the old continent. It had gotten pretty full of itself in various ways, but more importantly, without even realizing it, it was tap-dancing on a landmine, so Siegwurm gave it a proper punishment. Its body remains behind as the "lid," but it is completely dead, so the generation has already turned over.