Chapter 341: O Dragon, O Dragon! Part Seven
The Awakening Altar has, as of now, not been confirmed to exist anywhere other than here in this elf village. If, by some chance... if the Great Red Devourer's red pool were to reach the Awakening Altar.
Sunraku: "Deep Throater, any chance the Awakening Altar is an indestructible object?"
Deep Throater: "Probably breakable... In this game, if an important flag gets destroyed, they just make a substitute to replace it..."
Oi oi oi oi. I stayed behind to protect the elves, and now I'm getting a forced job change into the last line of defense for every player's level cap unlock.
Sunraku: "...If we keep the aggro source away from the Awakening Altar, would that buy us time?"
Deep Throater: "In the end, it depends on how far the erosion can spread, but... if all the heads and fins and stuff are facing the other way, the chance of it getting destroyed goes down, yeah."
Easy to say, but both Deep Throater and I know exactly how dangerous the necessary actions are. In other words, buying time without a single mistake smack in the middle of enemy territory... and on top of that, with no clue how long we need to last, in a situation where even recovery is a struggle.
Sunraku: "Guess I gotta steel myself..."
Deep Throater: "With a turtle-shell bondage?"
Sunraku: "What's with you? You got a thing for turtles?"
Deep Throater: "Turtles are amazing, right? The shell and the head are both erotic parts. A creature whose identity is 80% composed of eros is basically a perfect life form, don'tcha think...?"
Sunraku: "If a turtle heard this conversation, it'd shed tears even without laying eggs."
I was an idiot to demand she tighten up. But we don't have time, so I've got no choice but to drop this pervert with zero impulse control into the fight.
Sunraku: "So many to choose from—I’ll mow ’em all down!!"
Deep Throater: "What is this, a harem porno!?"
Slash, dodge, slash, slash, dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge, dodge...
Sunraku: "Sheer numbers!!!!"
A scream from the soul. A shout so heartfelt I can feel it myself. I should've cut off about ten heads by now, but by my eyes, at least double that number have grown back. At least the "red" that's taken shape as dragon corpse parts seems safe to touch, so I don't hesitate to stomp on them to help with dodging, but even with that, there's just too much volume.
Sunraku: "You alive, you pervert!"
Deep Throater: "Could you not get me off in the middle of a fight?!"
Sunraku: "So you are alive. Too bad."
Spewing red vomit from its mouth, a dragon corpse head thrusts at me—I stomp on its nose to jump, then use the heads trying to snap me out of the air as footholds to climb higher. I can't pull off a leap of dozens of meters, but even five meters up gives me a view of this whole hellscape.
Sunraku: "The erosion range... is barely holding at the residential area."
The boundary line between the Great Red Devourer's red and the green of the grass is barely holding at the residential area. Looks like Deep Throater and I raising hell away from the Awakening Altar wasn't pointless after all. Oh, Deep Throater just flew past my field of vision, sent flying like a home run by one of the multiplied tails. Dead? Dead?
Deep Throater: "Hey, a shooting star across your hearrrrrt..."
Tch, she's full of energy... or rather, that woman is way too tenacious. Hasn't she taken fatal damage like eight times now?
Sunraku: "Oh, thanks for the landing punish—nice welcome."
Like a slide, I slip down a dragon corpse neck—its scales are closer to fish scales, so fewer protrusions—while scanning my surroundings and calculating my next move. Front: a giant fin foreleg like a signboard blown by a typhoon. Left and right: puke beams. Behind: the neck I just slid down. Yep, dodge is the only option.
Sunraku: "Goddammit... like hell I'm letting them gang up on me!!"
My only escape route is the sky, but my skill recast isn't done yet. Just because the recast time is halved doesn't mean it's instant. As much as I didn't want to use it (mainly because the pervert would get loud about it), I've got no choice but Inventoria Escape.
Wait for the timing... now!
Sunraku: "[Transfer: Storage Space (Enter Travel)]!!"
[Cannot use. Hostile monsters within a five-meter radius.]
Sunraku: "Eh?"
Eh?
Sunraku: "Amaaaaaachiiiiii!?"
A panic like greasy sweat erupting from my entire body. The veneer called composure peels away, and what's left is a half-naked body just waiting to die... gh, like hell I'm dying before that pervert does!!
In a split second faster than my consciousness can even register, my thoughts spit out the one and only way to escape this situation. I pull an item from Inventoria—with the high-speed window operation I've been training since I started this game—from the Inventoria that got downgraded in the latest silent fix from a super broken accessory to just a broken accessory.
My vision fills with red. All four sides are packed solid with proliferations, and yet, above me, the moon has passed its zenith...
Sunraku: "[Appooooort]!!"
From a human perspective, five meters. From a god's perspective, a tiny coordinate shift. But even so, that tiny shift saved my life. Like white waves crashing into a breakwater and scattering into spray, the Great Red Devourer's proliferations that swarmed me from all sides slam into each other, wounding themselves with each other's kinetic energy.
Lapistella Cloak flutters in the wind. To avoid the blunder of throwing away this life I just picked up, and at the same time, to vent the frustration of nearly dying because of that silent fix—as I fall from above, I bring both feet together, bend my knees like I'm crouching in midair, and pour power into my legs.
Sunraku: "Drop deaaaaad!!"
I’ll call it Gravity Addition (Plus Gravity): Frustration-Fueled Flying Kick (Air Drop)...! So that's it, they directly messed with the activation conditions... But y'know, Ritsu Amachi, even with a range restriction, the fact that you can use it in combat means it's still for sure broken. If you can get five meters away, you can even completely dodge Siegwurm's breath attack, and even with that, the utility itself isn't lost.
Sunraku: "But that's that...!!"
I'll take out my near-death rage on this punching bag right in front of me!! I extend both legs with full force at the moment of impact, boosting the collision's power and using it as propulsion for a jump.
Sunraku: "If I can reset, I can deal with it...!"
Activate Gravity Zero! I touch the sole of my foot to the multiplying neck that tried to bite me, and change the gravity processing direction! Plus, I shave off HP with Riot Axel to secure AGI! I control the sole touching the neck with step movements, switching gravity processing directions as I fall, advance, and climb!
I cut off Gravity Zero with a somersault and drop, landing on the giant front fin swung in a diagonal slash trying to carve me from below, then leap in a single step—finally, the recast is done—air jump with Flit Float.
Sunraku: "You didn't seal the deal!!"
Deep Throater: "No, I think a hundred out of a hundred people would call that a checkmate situation, y'know?"
Sunraku: "My friends would force me into situations several times more brutal than that."
Deep Throater: "Sexual intercourse? Your friendships are premised on sexual intercourse!? I wanna be one too!"
And here's Areadbhair.
Deep Throater: "My left cheek is well-doooone!"
I'm gonna burn you till you're meat welded to the grill. But still, I guess I should say it paid off that I've been participating daily as the ball in the Crystal Scorpion dodgeball tournament. Recently, those guys' AI must've evolved through learning, 'cause they've started blocking the upward routes too... Sorry to other players, but you were gonna end up with the same result eventually, so come back after you've gotten Inventoria.
Sunraku: "So... can I consider that surviving?"
Deep Throater: "You're twitching... climax?"
Sunraku: "It's more like agony or convulsions."
Deep Throater: "For a masochist, that's a reward..."
Sunraku: "At least whoever designed that thing's behavior pattern is definitely a sadist."
Deep Throater: "What is this, remote SM play? Now that’s efficient!"
Then go be “efficient” at digging your own grave and die, you barbecued meat. But it's a fact that the Great Red Devourer pulled some kind of special move—like the red pool that had spread to its limits gathering toward the Great Red Devourer appearing at the center... that kind of way-too-obvious motion.
Sunraku: "...Come to think of it, isn't it a feat that just the two of us made it to the third phase?"
Deep Throater: "No no... You're saying that knowing full well, aren't you, Sunraku-kuun..."
Sunraku: "Yeah..."
It's too easy. That's the conclusion Deep Throater and I both arrived at after going through Phases 1 and 2. Raid monsters are premised on players challenging them in large numbers. In other words, it wouldn't be strange for them to wipe out forty-five people in a single hit. There's no way the two of us can clear something like that this easily. Hell, fighting a pack of normal monsters probably has a higher death rate. So the conclusion is simple.
Sunraku: "Phase three, or maybe a phase after that... the real thing is coming."
Deep Throater: "And that moment is apparently right after this...!"
As if someone took tissues spread across the floor and crumpled them into a sphere... if that were done with a mass bigger than an elephant. A squelching, indescribable... how to put it, like the sound of gargling amplified a thousand times over and made all gooey...
Deep Throater: "Slime! That's the sound of slime...!"
Sunraku: "Shut the hell up for a sec, seriously."
So, Phase 3... does the real fight start here?