Chapter 382: A Shark in a Goldfish Bowl
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In a Bakumatsu event, the most important thing is, first and foremost, to be clear on your own position. If you just swing your sword around recklessly, what's waiting for you is a gang beatdown. Even if you're going for a berserker play, you have to use your head. The guys who are seriously gunning for the top spot are basically walking typhoons, so don't get involved. They're all people who've thrown away morals and humanity. One moment everything's fine, the next your head's on a skewer—that's just how it goes.
Besides, the first-place reward always ends up with the winner getting mobbed and disappearing after the event, so worrying about it is a waste of time. Unlike the multiple copies of the second-place and lower rewards, a national-treasure-class weapon is like a rainbow in the sky after a rainstorm. It's enough just to be lucky enough to see one.
Now, about this event. The death-game flavor, combined with preparing avatars like "vengeful spirits" that are non-physical, really shows off the depravity of the Bakumatsu devs. You think it's consideration because you can't respawn during a death game? Don't be stupid. Having players who can walk through walls is basically telling you to use them as drones. They're kill scores and drones rolled into one. People who'll bribe and use them will absolutely show up. Like that "War Monger" I just took down, for instance. That's probably the one who stuck a ton of ghost kill scores onto you and turned you into a scarecrow.
In this event, you either survive until the final day, or it ends the moment you become the last person standing—no waiting for the event period to end. Meaning, at that point, people split into hiders and reapers. The hiders use ghosts because they want to eliminate their own risk as much as possible and have everyone else take each other out. The reapers use ghosts—who've had their movement restrictions practically removed—to flush out the people hiding in unseen places.
In other words, this event looks like it demands survival ability, but in reality, it demands the strategy of how well you can handle ghosts. They're predictably shitty devs. This is exactly why Bakumatsu makes me want to log in from time to time.
Kyo the Ultimate: "Uh, so in short?"
Sunraku: "Only the absolute top ranks can win through indiscriminate divine punishment. You can't do it, so use your head."
Part of it is that the game tends to be sparsely populated, but the fact that the names in the highest ranks barely change is simply because those guys are monsters specialized for Bakumatsu. The reason I managed to snag a ranking reward wasn't because I challenged them head-on and won—it was because I devised an efficient respawn-hunting method.
Kyo the Ultimate: "Just how strong are these top-rank guys, actually? I like to think I've got decent skills myself."
Sunraku: "There was a time when cheats were popular in this game. The fact that the ranking top ten didn't budge at all tells you how insane it is."
Winning a quick-draw duel against a cheater with an auto-aim matchlock rifle is just crazy. But it's a fact. The moment when the cheater who was getting hounded by ten rankers finally broke down first is where you see the abyss of this game. I honestly felt a little sorry for the cheater getting mobbed by the all-smiling dream team. The deeper you step into the layers of this game, the more warped the movements get. Beating a sword with a dumpling skewer—how the hell does that even work? Inside the goldfish bowl called Bakumatsu, ten sharks born from mutual cannibalism... Or was Bakumatsu actually a barrier sealing away monsters...?
Sunraku: "Well, for better or worse, that also means they have a ton of followers. So if you see a Night Parade of a Hundred Demons—a horde of ghosts in a frenzy—their leader is probably a ranker, and running is your only option."
Kyo the Ultimate: "Like that?"
Sunraku: "Huh? Yeah, yeah. The guy at the front with the lordly topknot, for example, is basically the event's rank eight, the 'Great General of Sincerity'..."
One of the ghosts gives me a thumbs-up. I give a thumbs-down in return. Looking closely—isn't that "War Monger"? Does that guy want to see blood even after death? And Great General of Sincerity-shi is smiling cheerfully. That guy holds a pretty serious grudge against me.
Sunraku: "Run, Kyotimateeee!!"
Kyo the Ultimate: "Huh? Hwah!?"
Oh no. Of all people, not him. Back during one of the winter events, I racked up points by farming respawn kills, which pushed him out of the ranking zone and made him miss the reward. The grudge from that has fully accrued, so running into him now is seriously bad!!
Great General of Sincerity: "Divine punishment, divine punishment, divine punishment, hi-hi-hi-hi-ha-ha-ha-ha!!"
Sunraku: "Shit, I knew he had me locked on!"
Kyo the Ultimate: "Wait, what is that!?"
Sunraku: "That's the end result of selling your soul to Bakumatsu and losing your humanity! A violence machine that comes to reap any player it finds!!"
Kyo the Ultimate: "That's not how you rate a human being, y'know!?"
I leap out of the teahouse we were using for our strategy meeting. Kyotimate, who still doesn't seem to fully grasp the situation but has followed me anyway, dives into the row-house district alongside me.
Sunraku: "Good thing he's STR-focused. If he were AGI-focused, we'd have been in his range ages ago..."
Great General of Sincerity: "Ah, I've been raising my AGI lately too, actually?"
Sunraku: "Wait, for real?"
He's running right alongside me. That's hilarious—aaah, I'm dead.
Great General of Sincerity: "Divine pun——"
Sunraku: "Whoa there, Secret Technique: Self-Inflicted Tumble!!"
Great General of Sincerity: "What!?"
Allow me to explain! The Secret Technique: Self-Inflicted Tumble is a technique where I deliberately trip myself up, resulting in movements even I can't predict—by falling flat on my face! It's seriously useful when you can't dodge in time!
Great General of Sincerity: "Shii!!"
Sunraku: "Right past my nose!?"
Even though he completely caught me off guard, I dodge the blade thrown at my face by a hair's breadth with zero reaction time. Before more reinforcements can arrive, I draw my own sword as well and ready a defensive stance.
Great General of Sincerity: "Oh... Jifubuki, of all things... You seem to want to die."
Sunraku: "Sorry, but I'm not a fan of seppuku...! Actually, you've already got one anyway, don't you?"
Great General of Sincerity: "About two..."
It seems that aside from me, two out of the rankers from second to fourth place in last year's winter event had fallen victim to him.
Great General of Sincerity: "Well, that's that and this is this. The heavens say I should settle past debts, so I'm not in the wrong."
Sunraku: "Every Bakumatsu player says that...!!"
Well, anyway, since it's self-defense, I'm not in the wrong. The heavens say so too.
Kyo the Ultimate: "S-Sunraku! There's a Night Parade of a Hundred Demons coming from the other side too!"
Sunraku: "What... No, wait, what's the guy at the front like!?"
Kyo the Ultimate: "Huh? Uh, well..."
Jumonji Daifuku: "CHEST-OOO!!"
Sunraku: "Oi, you're supposed to be on the Shinsengumi side, you bastard!!"
Don't use Jigen-ryu on me! Gah, the fighting space is too tight. It's not exactly a back alley, but the width is so narrow on both sides that if I let my guard down, I'll get pinned to a wall. And that guy over there is a genuine monster who's fully adapted to Bakumatsu's atmosphere—he might just come running along the wall. Just as I manage to evade the deadly blades somehow, Kyotimate, who'd been watching the front of the Night Parade of a Hundred Demons apparently coming from the opposite direction, shouts to me.
Kyo the Ultimate: "It's hard to explain in words! His upper body is full armor and helmet, but his lower body is just a loincloth... and—what is that, a mallet?"
Sunraku: "Alright, there!!"
I can crash them into each other! There's only about one person who uses such a weird, hard-to-understand pervert avatar! The other perverts are way more straightforward!!
Great General of Sincerity: "As expected, even if it's just an event, you do possess a certain level of skill...!"
Sunraku: "Unfortunately...! This kind of...! Delay and feint stuff...! I'm used to it... so...!!"
Given the difference in STR, if I block, I'll get snapped. Just like against Wethermon, I rely heavily on evasion and redirection to somehow avoid divine punishment while dancing my way out into the open main street.
Sunraku: "Hello, Jumonji Daifuku. Special delivery: one 'Great General of Sincerity' for you."
Jumonji Daifuku: "Don't really get it, but divine punishment!!"
Great General of Sincerity: "Guuh! You bastard, you crashed us together!!"
As expected of a ranker. The fact that he launches divine punishment with zero explanation shows a truly unhinged level of insanity. But it saved me... Jumonji Daifuku is a regular at rank nine, a mad dog who actively picks fights with the ranks above him.
Jumonji Daifuku: "Alright, divine punishment, you bastarddd!!"
Sunraku: "Well then, good luck with the rest."
Great General of Sincerity: "Ah, wait! Gh...!!"
With the ghosts starting to cheer in uproarious silence and the sound of a mallet shaking the earth behind me, Kyotimate and I successfully make our getaway...
Sunraku: "...And so, like I was saying, an unexpected ranker encounter can lead straight to death, so in this event, it's better to shuffle them off onto other rankers."
Kyo the Ultimate: "Wasn't about seventy percent of that just your personal problems causing it?"
Sunraku: "I'm a man who isn't shackled by the past, so—ah, you're the bastard who stabbed me in the back during last year's event!! Divine punishment!!"
Kyo the Ultimate: "Could you not contradict yourself in two seconds?"
Two seconds ago is also a perfectly respectable past.