Chapter 397: Forbidden Power (Uncontrollable)
What am I supposed to do with nearly nine hundred votes by hand!? You idiot, past me!! I estimated there'd only be around a hundred...
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What the hell am I even doing right now...
Sunraku: "Manifest, Guardian Beast of the Nation!"
Dinner: "Gyaoooooooooo!!"
Sunraku: "Sweep them away!!"
Answering the President's thoroughly presidential spirit, United's Guardian Beast of the Nation—a dragon called Dinner—gathers light in its mouth and fires it as a beam into the pitch-black horde drowning everything in blood.
As the evil demons that emerged from the demon realm by using people as sacrifices scream, get swallowed by the light, and vanish, the packs that were outside the attack range crash into the front of the United States army... no, the allied army.
Sunraku: "Ready the second shot! I'll hold the line until then!"
Uoooooh! Eat a blow from the Type 32 Portable Sanctified Nail-Striking Hammer, built in an arsenal exclusively for presidential equipment—seriously, what game am I even playiiiiing!?
Let me state up front that not a single story inconsistency has occurred on the way here.
I thought the shitty parts of Fuuun Prejiden were the monotony of the combat and domestic-affairs portions.
Then I invaded Envol Imperial Castle, in the capital of the New Galkart Empire, and learned just how wrong I was. It should've only been yesterday, but it feels like ages ago...
The Darkness General's true identity was a demon that had once been sealed away?
The cornered emperor made a pact with that demon?
Every person belonging to the New Galkart Empire was sacrificed?
Its overwhelming military power forced us to retreat?
I was made to sit there and watch event processing tear half the territory I'd acquired to pieces?
I overcame the trial of the Guardian Beast of the Nation and obtained a MAP weapon?
And right now I'm smack in the middle of a zombie (demon) panic-style action game.
And that's not all. Ever since the New Galkart Empire collapsed, the game's genre has been all over the damn place. Isn't it kind of wrong to throw paranoia elements into a game flying the banner of "United"? The fact that none of it actually breaks the story just makes it worse.
Sunraku: "Annihilate them!!"
The guardian deity of the Dinner United States, Dinner—the Guardian Beast of the Nation given form by the people's prayers—unleashes its light once more.
Incidentally, the player lines up the coordinates through a linked field of vision, so this is effectively a shooting game too. What I'm actually doing is completely insane, yet the setting always has a properly convincing reason for it, which just makes the whole thing even harder to describe...
Sunraku: "There you are, former Purgatory General...!"
Former Purgatory General: "Gyeeeeeh...!"
Damn it. The trash mobs have garbage AI, but enemy commanders move ridiculously well once they're demonized. The thing that used to be the Purgatory General, now sprouting thorny tentacles from the abdomen of its blood-red armor, isn't merely using feint motions—the murderous intent in its movement against the player has obviously gone up too.
The difficulty spike practically screams, "Everything you've played up to now was the tutorial"... Actually, haven't we thrown away like eighty percent of the domestic-affairs side? At this point, the only order I can even give is "grow those easy-to-produce potatoes as fast as humanly possible."
And worst of all are the damage reports Rice-chan gives me every time I return from battle, telling me how badly our side is being chewed up on every other front... Weird. As of yesterday, I was one step away from unifying the major powers, and now I've been driven to one step short of handling the aftermath of a lost war.
No, I get it from a story perspective, okay? This world has some kind of magical something that's miracle-level rare. A President who can fire beams has a huge advantage against ordinary soldiers, but against supernatural demons, that only puts him about even... I understand it. I do. But is that really okay as a game? I can't accept this...
Humans are creatures that can't live without breathing, and expelling breath from the body is one of the two parts of respiration: exhaling.
In other words, if you get tired even of breathing out, all you have to do is breathe in again.
Emul: "Wah, Sunraku-san is awake, wa!?"
Sunraku: "Yo, Emul. Think I'll go make a solo charge across the New Land."
Emul: "The very first thing you do after waking up is try to go lie down for good, wa—this guy!!?"
I can't choose insane tactics in Fuuun Prejiden anymore. If that's the case, I've got no choice but to do it in SLF, right?
But before that, we're going to see your sisters. Time for a slap with a wad of cash.
Effuielle: "Okay then, here we gooo."
Sunraku: "Ghk—ah... ow!?"
Smack-smack! Effuielle lands two sharp flicks on my arm. Thinking of it as getting two static shocks in a row somehow makes the whole thing feel even more irritatingly itchy.
But that brings my slot count to seven... No, technically one slot's already occupied, so I've got six. Maybe I really should start putting serious effort into making accessories too.
Sunraku: "Hey, Effuielle. Can you process this?"
Effuielle: "Mmm... no can do. This one's difficult."
No good, huh... I put the blazing-hot scale away in Inventoria and say goodbye to Effuielle. Alright, next.
Bilac: "What'm I supposed to do with one scale?"
Sunraku: "Yeah, figured... Oh, by the way, do you know where Cazzeria is?"
I figured Bilac might know, what with Arameese constantly making moves on her, but the answer I got wasn't very promising.
Bilac: "What's this, boy? Ya plannin' on goin' to that country of cats?"
Sunraku: "Just feel like going for a run."
Bilac: "Sorry, but I'm a homebody. Don't know."
Sunraku: "Usele—... no, it's nothing! Quit pointing that weird tool at me! Is that a drill!? Are you trying to put a hole in me!?"
I escape the workshop as though fleeing from some bizarre tool made by fusing a drill and a soldering iron. Next! Or rather, last one!
Elke: "Oh myyy, welcome."
Sunraku: "I'm here... Elke."
You money-grubber. Her eyes are gleaming because she knows exactly why I've come. But dragging this out would just waste time. Time is money—but while money can be earned over time, time can't be bought with money.
Sunraku: "I've seen the fastest world. So... the Pruning Secret Art (Planning Law). I can do it now, right?"
Elke: "Ufufufufu... Payment up front, okay?"
Sunraku: "Seven-link."
THUD!! At my command, a leather sack materializes, so huge it looks ready to fill the entire pruning room. I'll grant the money part, but shouldn't I be wondering where the hell this leather sack itself was generated from?
Elke: "Fwaaaah... Seven hundred million Maniii... Ufufu, money... money...!"
Elke clings to the leather sack and climbs up it, looking so blissful that it wouldn't be surprising if yen signs—no, Mani signs—were floating in her eyes.
At the top, she opens the sack, sticks her face inside, and stays completely still for several dozen seconds... When she raises her head again, all the ecstatic excitement from moments ago is gone. Wearing a solemn expression, she hops down from the sack.
Pof, pof. Elke claps both hands, and rabbits appear from nowhere. Like they're carrying a portable shrine, they hoist up the sack stuffed with seven hundred million Mani and carry it away. Oh, one bowed to me, so I bow back.
Elke: "Much obliged... Sunraku-san, you're like a tree that grows money... Now then, come this way..."
Skill Pruning is normally done on top of some magic circle I don't really understand. But this "Pruning Secret Art" seems to be a little different.
Another pof-pof clap of the hands. The seven Vorpal Bunnies who appear are carrying wide, shallow vessels for holding liquid—what people normally call sake cups—and pedestals for them.
They arrange seven pedestals and seven cups around me where I stand in the center of the magic circle, then leave.
Elke: "Okaaay, it won't hurt, so don't move, alright?"
Sunraku: "Bring it on."
Even if my head gets cut off, I won't move from this spot. Immovable as a frozen game screen...! The trash-game version of Fūrinkazan.
For reference, the breakdown goes like this:
- Swift as a trash MMO reaching end of service.
- Silent as the NEWS section of a bug-ridden game's website after the developers give up on fixing it.
- Fiery as someone involved with a game who makes a bombshell statement and gets engulfed in backlash.
- Immovable as a game screen that slows to a crawl and freezes because somebody forced online features into it.
A trash-game Fūrinkazan designed to make the human heart miserable. What a terrifying strategy...!
Elke: "───Now then, pioneer. Call to mind the techniques that connect and weave."
Whoa, hold on. If you're going to hit me with a dead-serious question out of nowhere, I need to accelerate my brain's processing just to keep up.
Sunraku: "...Limit Over Axel, Exceed Gravity, Secret Art of Mount Kurama, Space Charge, Hermes Boot, Bloodburn Burst, Limit Maximize."
Elke: "───The resolve to shatter the yoke."
Red water wells up in one of the cups.
Elke: "───That which has been freed from the laws of the world."
The second does the same.
Elke: "───A hidden, inherited technique."
That red is almost like...
Elke: "───The distant sky, the law where no foot finds ground."
...my own blood.
Elke: "───The nimble rhythm of divine feet."
I haven't started bleeding, and I haven't taken any damage.
Elke: "───The impulse of blood that burns even oneself."
It's just as though the definition of me as an individual is being expanded.
Elke: "───A foothold for reaching the extreme."
The red liquid overflows from all seven cups, dyes the magic circle, and flows toward me in the center as though crawling across the floor.
Elke: "───At the end of the deepest depths, that which encompasses even the distant sky. I speak and entreat innocent mercy; what I offer is the price, the radiance of value."
The reds mingle together. Despite every drop being the same color, the liquid turns black, coils around my feet, and seeps into me. Honestly, it looks like I'm being eaten by a slime-type monster, but empty the mind and even fire feels cool. If a little developer-side firestorm were enough to make me quit a game, I couldn't keep up a trash-game hobby.
Elke: "───Connect. Weave. Overlap without mixing. Accept the fate of parting, yet still bind and bundle them together."
This is completely the classic dark-side pattern where someone reaches for even greater power and stains their hands with an evil force, isn't it?
Elke: "───Seven lights shine; overlapping, they become a single light. 【Pruning Secret Art (Planning Law): High Connection】"
And then the pitch-black liquid completely seeps into my body... I have obtained poweeeeer... Fufufu, fwahahahahahahahahaha!!!!
I tried it out.
Sunraku: "Morning, Emul."
Emul: "That's the fastest death in history, wa."
It's like I snapped my own neck before the reaper's scythe could take my head. Even the reaper would be confused, wouldn't he?
The difficulty shift in Prejiden is like taking a player who, until just moments ago, was at best beating up a Killing Machine and suddenly making them fight the Orphan of Kos.
And on top of that, the situation is permanently stacked against you while around five new systems get added.
To patch a hole in the plot, I'm having Sunraku-san go back to SLF for a bit.
It's not like I want to talk about the new scorpion or anything. I have no choice. Really, no choice.