Chapter 383: Side 5: Lysogenic Dragon Cells

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Mold: "And what the heck does 'doing a Mold' even mean!?"

Rust: "Honestly, I get it."

Mold: "Ruuust!?"

Rust and Mold were, if anything, a duo who devoted more of their attention to Nephilim Hollow. Even so, they could not completely ignore a game called Shangri-La Frontier.

A certain player from their own clan had brought them information, and in preparation for the day when that information became reality, the two were heading for the elves' village where a facility capable of unlocking the level cap existed... or rather, before that, they were making their way through the forest to level Mold and satisfy a simple curiosity.

Rust: "...What is this?"

Mold: "A player... maybe?"

???: "O-oh..."

There they found a player on death's door, looking like a mosquito that had been only half-crushed.

???: "Nobody told me the time would be shorter with anything but players... damn it."

Rust: "...So, even if it was agreed on beforehand, I want to hear why you took eighty percent off Mold's HP."

Mold: "It's a game, so fine, but can you stop casually using me as a sacrifice, Rust?"

The man's name, apparently, was Vigilance. Rather than leave him there, they helped him out. In return for letting him shave down Mold's HP, Vigilance had offered to provide them with a certain amount of items.

Vigilance: "That was... eh, whatever. I'm probably not the only one. That's the passive effect of the Dragon Blood Demon Clan (Vampire) race."

Mold: "A race..."

Rust: "Dragon Blood Demon Clan... Vampire?"

Vigilance: "The Dragon Blood Demon Clan has a unique skill called Blood Charge. It lets you take blood from monsters that have blood... well, mechanically it's converted from damage. You gain HP and fill up a Bloodsucking Gauge."

The fuller the Bloodsucking Gauge, the more the user's stats continue to be enhanced. Once the gauge falls below fifty percent, however, a stat penalty kicks in, and once it falls below thirty percent, damage over time begins.

Rust found herself wondering whether this was a race built around taking high risk and high return to the absolute extreme. In another world—a game—she had once controlled a Nephilim called Crimson Wing Union, the very embodiment of a wildly specialized build.

Vigilance: "Well, I'm solo, so... I figured I'd be fine if I just hunted monsters along the way..."

According to him, against higher-level monsters the skill itself failed at a high rate, while against lower-level monsters the gauge recovered by barely ten percent.

NPCs apparently possessed the sensibilities of ordinary horror-movie people and saw a Dragon Blood Demon as some kind of monster, making proper communication almost impossible. Unless he could somehow negotiate with players and fill the gauge, the possibility of dying by the roadside hung over him at all times...

Vigilance: "Fortunately, if I respawn, the gauge goes back to eighty percent, but..."

Rust: "...Inefficient."

Vigilance: "It's pretty brutal for solo players..."

As Vigilance sighed with a hand against his forehead, Mold tossed out a question that had just occurred to him.

Mold: "Actually, why did your race change? Was it that Conversion thing?"

The Conversion system still had very few real examples. More specifically, only the handful of players who had reached a beastfolk village had actually experienced it firsthand. By sheer coincidence, Rust and Mold belonged to the same clan as one of those examples.

That was why Mold had asked, but Vigilance, his complexion still poor, shook his head.

Vigilance: "No... I know the cause. Noirlind."

Rust: "...Mm."

Mold: "Ngeh."

Vigilance tilted his head at the pair's strange reactions. In a sense, the two were on the verge of diving into the great vortex surrounding that very name, but Vigilance simply assumed they were reacting to the black dragon's infamous reputation and continued.

Vigilance: "After that thing killed me, every time I respawned I had some weird status ailment applied to me... I cured it each time, but eventually my race changed."

Mold: "That's..."

Vigilance: "The status was called 'Infection: Phase X'... At Phase 10, your race changes. There's almost no doubt about it—the Color Dragons have some virus-like ability that forcibly changes your race."

Mold and Rust thought exactly the same thing.

No matter how you looked at it, siding with Noirlind was the evil route.

That said, there was no need to honestly spell out Wolfgang's policy to him. Rust, Mold, and Vigilance had the same immediate goal: avoid the roaming area boss that had apparently evolved recently and more than doubled in viciousness, and chase the promise of a new area. So they formed an improvised party and continued through the forest.

Vigilance: "I caught a glimpse of that three-headed T. rex thing, and it's completely insane. The balance difference is like an early-game boss compared with a final-dungeon gatekeeper."

Rust: "I heard it's a pain because it's surprisingly intelligent and understands high-risk, high-return."

Vigilance: "...You're pretty well-informed."

Mold: "Huh!? No, I mean..."

Rust: "...An acquaintance of mine charged it solo."

Vigilance: "Ahh. There's no way that thing can be beaten solo, but I guess you can still test it by yourself..."

Rust threw out an excuse on the spot and escaped Vigilance's questioning. Since the information really had come from an acquaintance who would charge in alone, it was not entirely false.

Still, there was no way they could admit that one of their own was an idiot who had somehow built a friendship—self-proclaimed, naturally—while serving as an optional attachment to that very area boss. Incidentally, that same culprit was also one of the people responsible for evolving Scarred into Scarlet Scar.

The root cause, meanwhile, was Tottori the Shimahne, who was currently being hoisted up as a hero, though that fact had not yet become public.

Mold: "Still, we haven't run into any monsters for a while now."

Vigilance: "Well... that's because I've been avoiding them before we get close."

Mold: "Huh?"

Rust: "...Mold, stealth-type jobs can detect monster responses."

Mold: "Huh? But what about Akitsu Akane...?"

Rust: "She's in a different category."

In this game, the Ninja job was the sort of thing that looked like a ninja while actually being a NINJA. The tendencies of its learned skills did allow it to fulfill the roles of a genuine shinobi or an embedded spy to some extent, but most of the ninjutsu—magic—it learned as its main arsenal was fantastical.

Akitsu Akane was no exception. She was a Dragon Breath NINJA who fired lasers from her mouth.

Vigilance: "Truth is, I've reached the end of this stupidly huge jungle before."

Mold: "...You have?"

Vigilance: "Yeah. But unlike the areas on the old continent, there isn't a town or anything sitting there. The area itself probably contains towns... no, more like villages where NPCs live. The old continent was like a ladder lottery made of points and lines. The New World is points inside a circle."

Vigilance's roundabout phrasing—or, to put it bluntly, his attempt to sound cool—made the two exchange glances, but they more or less understood what he meant, so they did not call him on it.

Mold: "What kind of place was it?"

Vigilance: "Uh... a desert."

Mold: "A desert..."

Mold and Rust exchanged a quick glance. According to information that was still being kept secret, the place Akitsu Akane had reached after breaking through the jungle with luck so absurd it was hard to explain without invoking some greater force should have been a wetland. At the very least, there was no way to mistake a desert for a wetland on humidity alone.

Rust: "...A branch? No. More like someone pasted together photographs of completely different landscapes."

Vigilance: "What are you talking about?"

Mold: "Ah! Uh, I heard a rumor before that the next area was a volcano!!"

Vigilance: "A volcano? I don't think the New World is only two colors, jungle and desert... but that's almost certainly bogus. You should make sure you check your sources, you know?"

Mold: "Ahaha... r-right."

At the very least, it would be undesirable for other players to reach the wetland at this stage.

Mold somehow managed to bluff his way through, and while wearing a dry smile, he shot Rust a reproachful look for nearly letting the secret slip.

Rust: "...So, do you remember the direction?"

Vigilance: "The sun and moon are admirable. They follow their fixed paths right on schedule, don't they?"

???: "He's navigating by astronomy!?"

The sky in SLF was overcast that day, so they got lost.

The onset is probabilistic, so getting infected does not always turn someone into a Dragon Blood Demon. Dying repeatedly over a short span raises the chance of onset.