Chapter 335: O Dragon, O Dragon! Part One
If I don't rein myself in, this is seriously going to get bad. Also, realizing I know this much dirty-joke material is doing a little damage to me.
One of the reasons Deep Throater—or rather, Nutcracker—kept playing right up until the service shut down was simply that they were shockingly strong.
Not in the raw-combat-power sense of Sylvia Goldberg or Ryuguin Fugaku, but, say... yes. In the sense of how difficult they were to deal with.
First, there was their dirty-joke magic. This bastard took practically every must-have spell and top-tier spell in Spell Creation Online and plastered them with porn titles and plot summaries, and nobody else could touch their spell-activation speed.
Of course, there aren't many people with the nerve to recite porn titles and synopses in public. And anyone who did have that nerve joined their faction.
The advantage of being able to cast powerful magic faster than anyone else needs no explanation.
But that wasn't the real problem.
Their true threat... lay in those bizarre imitation skills, beginning with Voice Change.
Show them enough of your movements and they'll completely read them through "copying by sight."
Fight them for ten days and they'll even read your thought patterns, then "imitate your role."
They were suspected of cheating more times than I could count. But whenever the operators actually banned them, the reason was invariably "harassment through repeated use of inappropriate words"... which meant, ironically enough, the game's own operators were the ones proving they hadn't cheated at all.
Put an absurdly strong boss character in front of people and their motivation dries up. At the end of that road lies nothing but the death of the game, and Spell Creation Online really did shut down that way.
Deep Throater: "A friendship that begins with trying to kill each other has its own charm, does it not...? Heh heh heh, Sunraku-kun, surely this form is familiar to you...?"
Sunraku: "Tch... Double Wand Style, huh."
Of course it is. That style is exactly what I used back in the Spell Creation Online days. Damn it, what kind of jab is this supposed to be? They even went to the trouble of making the equipment look a little like mine.
Tottori: "Wha—hey, hey, hey, wait, wait! Are you seriously going to fight!? Calm down, especially you, Sunraku! If you die here, you'll get sent all the way back to the last base you saved at!"
Sunraku: "...You escaped with your life, Deep Throater."
Deep Throater: "Ehh~? You can just call little ol' me 'DeepThroat-chan' nice and casually, y'know? ...Oohoo, those eyes are dangerous. Feels like my inner masochist is getting lovingly stroked... I might squirt like a whale. Ah, not that I'm a dead fish or anything, mind you?"
Would heaven forgive me if I killed this freak right now? No, probably not... Astonishingly enough, their karma value hasn't even turned their name red. In other words, they aren't a PK, so if I kill them, I'm the one who becomes "evil."
Sunraku: "...So seriously, what the hell do you want? I'll add you as a friend, so just hurry up and go home already."
Deep Throater: "Hmm, even I might start getting cracks in my psyche after being rejected this hard... But really, I only want to get along with you, that's all."
Sunraku: "Sorry, but can you pick one character and stick with it? I don't like people who make everything needlessly complicated."
Deep Throater: "Guess I got no choice, nya..."
Haaah. I seriously wish a meteor or something would fall out of the sky and delete this freak's data...
Reuniting with this unbelievable idiot had shaved away even more of the sanity already worn down by meeting Aria, who looks exactly like Fuckaria, but it'd be pathetic to keep dragging this out forever.
And when it comes to Spell Creation Online's decline, we who got carried away share some of the responsibility—the sin—too. Trying to paint this one freak as the sole villain would go beyond pathetic and straight into disgraceful.
Sunraku: "Just send the damn friend request already..."
Deep Throater: "Niiice, so you're finally going to accept me, Sunraku-kuuun..."
『Friend request from Deep Throater. "Given SLF's harassment countermeasures, doesn't that make every character both a virgin boy and a virgin girl? You and me are both cherries!"』
I reflexively rejected it.
Sunraku: "...I'm gonna hit you."
Deep Throater: "Bring it ooon—ah, wait, that's a much more serious bludgeoning weapon than I expected! Have mercy!"
I can pop Exceed Charge here and be forgiven, right?
Maybe making Tottori the party leader really was a mistake.
I sighed at Deep Throater's smug grin now that they'd successfully joined the party, somehow reinflated my deflated motivation, and switched gears.
Sunraku: "Fine... You can't go back to before a save. If you step on a landmine and the autosave records it, having to deal with it is part of the harshness—and the charm—of games."
Deep Throater: "Was 'landmine' supposed to mean the landmine that's me too? Nice one."
Damn it... The fact that they actually pick up every little joke is kind of infuriating. And sarcasm doesn't work on them at all. They're in invincible mode. Extremely infuriating.
Deep Throater: "Tottori-kun, you were in the middle of a Unique where you're supposed to escort the elves to the base, right? And yet you're here... Ahaaahn, you just couldn't resist the temptation of unlocking the level cap, could you?"
Tottori: "Uh, well... yes."
Sunraku: "Tottori, you can tell them something like 'shut up, puke-pig'... They'll enjoy it."
Tottori: "No, that's too far. That's just straight-up verbal abuse."
Deep Throater: "Hey, hey, Sunraku-kun, you're gonna train me with an SM set and throw in a vomit fetish too? Nice... I'd have been fine with getting rammed until my chrysanthemum turned into a rose, but is the upper mouth today's limited-time special!?"
…………
Emul: "S-Sunraku-san is wilting more than ever before, waa?!"
Tottori: "I didn't know a person could show this much emotion through a mask..."
Someone. Please cheer me up.
Aria: "Sunraku-sama, I do not know the circumstances, but please, keep your spirits up..."
You, huh... Though if I'm reading suspicion into a line that's one hundred percent pure goodwill, maybe I'm the one who needs to tear off the filter.
Deep Throater: "Mm, if I keep going any longer, you might actually snap for real... Come on, come on. You need to finish what you came all this way for, right?"
They're completely right. Every second spent getting held up by this freak is a second wasted. Keeping my heart strong, we headed toward the center of this... whatever-plate place...
The next instant, something about the size of a person fell right in front of us.
Sunraku: "…………"
Tottori: "…………"
Deep Throater: "…………Ahh, it's not my kid, okay?"
That never even crossed my mind. I mean, what the hell would a player have to do to give birth to a Tyranno head?
For a second I thought it might be that scar-covered individual, but aside from the damage effects there was no visible injury, so it was probably an ordinary specimen.
Sunraku: "Hey, do you think the three-headed Tyranno in this forest has an ability that lets it detach its heads?"
Tottori: "I don't think anyone would design a creature like that..."
Deep Throater: "The gore-filter damage effects make it hard to tell, but if you took a neck that was already half torn off and whipped it around with centrifugal force, it'd probably rip free like this..."
Judging from the eyeball of the twitching severed Tyranno head, it didn't look like much time had passed since it was torn off—or rather, since "it was alive."
And since the three-headed Tyranno doesn't have an ability that lets it launch detached heads, it's hard to imagine the Tyranno itself severed it.
Which means... someone did this. And someone close enough that a head torn off by centrifugal force could fly all the way here.
Sunraku: "...Don't tell me this was your doing."
Deep Throater: "Monster train? Isn't that more your specialty, Sunraku-kun...? Even back in Spell Creation Online..."
Sunraku: "Nostalgia hour is later. Tottori... ...add this idiot to the party too."
Tottori: "How much did you have to struggle with yourself before saying that...? Fine."
I hated every part of this, but if they'd reached a highest-tier job, they could at least do more than an ordinary meat shield.
The bizarre corpse falling out of the sky put everyone here on edge. Emul's body began trembling on top of my head, and without anyone needing to tell me, I drew Duxram, Blade of Aspiration and entered a combat stance.
Sunraku: "Your Majesty, Your Highness... depending on what happens, you may have to cast aside all concern for appearances and run."
Toravante: "Wh-What in the world is happening...!?"
Sunraku: "If it comes to that, take the elves with you and flee."
Aria: "Sunraku-sama, what do you intend to do!?"
Come on. In a situation like this, there's only one thing the knight who stays behind is supposed to do, right?
Deep Throater: "Sunraku-kuuun, something's coming. It's coooming...!"
Sunraku: "Shut up and get ready, you porn-brained freak! Tottori, take the elves and get awa—"
???: "Quwrrrrrrrrrooooooo!!!"
How the hell do you describe that? Like a phone ringtone or a police siren multiplied hundreds of times in sheer unpleasantness... no, the type of sound was completely different, and yet somehow it felt like something I'd heard before...
Deep Throater: "Looks like our customer came on foot... Wonder who they're here to see?"
Sunraku: "Probably a devoted fan of Tyranno-chan (severed head), with those big bright eyes."
Tottori: "...Over there!"
The closer the shaking came, the easier it was to tell where the source was. I looked where Tottori pointed. There were the thorns and vines that kept outside enemies from invading...
And something—something hideously red—was charging the vine net at tremendous speed. Then, with unbelievable ease, it smashed straight through the restraining vines and barged openly into the elf village.
It was red, like blood.
Its coloring was nothing but solid red, so plain it almost looked lazy. Its gaze showed no hint of intelligence, like the eyes of a dead fish, and it wasn't even clear what those eyes were looking at.
It was red, like flesh.
Bone was exposed. Its organs looked ready to spill out at any moment. Its fin-like forelegs looked completely unsuited to life on land and were torn to shreds, yet it forced them to serve for walking anyway, trampling over even the most basic principles of being a living creature.
It was, it was...
???: "Qillllllliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!!"
Like an obscenely grotesque chimera that had indiscriminately devoured anything and everything it could reach.
My voice and the notification from the world—the system—rang out almost at the same time.
Sunraku: "EVERYONE, SCATTER!!"
『Monster Raid!』 『Subjugation Target: Great Red Devourer』 『Raid battle commencing.』 『Participants: 3/45』
It's actually extremely hard to notice, but the foreshadowing for the Great Red Devourer appearing before the protagonists was properly laid in advance.
Vines — "Our restraining power is highly rated."
Great Red Devourer — "Munch munch, slime and all!"