Chapter 398: Let's Expand Our Circle of Friends
A few volunteers messaged me saying, "I'll help with the tally!" and I was honestly a little moved. At the same time, these days I've found myself reconfirming that, yeah, a thousand votes is messed up in all sorts of ways.
I do plan to reply to everyone individually later, but first, here:
Thank you very much! Some people even sent me tallies they'd already completed, and it's been an enormous help! Truly, truly, thank you so much!
Also, SLF fan works are completely fine. As long as they don't run afoul of Narou's rules, I have nothing to complain about. You can even make trash games the main focus, you know?
There's always something romantic about "power so great even its wielder can't fully handle it." Otherwise cursed demon swords and bewitched blades wouldn't keep showing up in fiction. Precisely because people hate getting hurt, they admire—or fear—those who keep moving forward even if it means getting hurt.
And right now, I think it's fair to say I'm on the side people ought to fear... because I'm the one thinking, more than anyone else, that this is seriously dangerous.
Sunraku: "I've got absolutely no confidence I can control this."
This makes eighteen respawns in total. My stats are a disaster from the death penalties, but considering the benefit that skill gives me, I'd still come out ahead even with level-1 stats. Hell, the change left over would be enough to buy a car.
Sunraku: "That said, linking skills is something you've really got to think about..."
I see. Yeah, this skill really is outrageous. You could call it a balance-breaker. Honestly, in PvP it has the potential to make you invincible all by itself, and even if it got nerfed I'd just laugh and say, "Well, yeah, of course it did."
But this game is, if anything, primarily focused on fighting monsters. Since its theme is pioneering a world, conflicts between players—or between players and NPCs—aren't exactly unnecessary, but they're not something the game would actively want to encourage either.
It really is that powerful... but looked at another way, it's like a battleship that does nothing but keep strengthening its main guns. If cannons alone decided everything, there'd be no need for fighter planes. Hyper-specialized builds basically never leave the realm of joke builds.
The way of the world is that if one thing sticks out, something else sinks in. In terms of convenience, a whole set of things you've mastered is better than one thing that's too much for you to handle.
From that perspective, you could say linked skills throw away versatility in order to realize one absolute extreme. Whether that's a brilliant move or a bad one depends on the user, I guess... And considering the cost, it's not something I can toss around casually. I plan to stick with this setup for a while, but I'll need to think carefully about unlinking it or linking it again.
Sunraku: "For now, the situations where I can use it are super limited... but as a living bullet, I feel like my performance has one foot in the realm of the absolute limit...?"
As an aside, apparently I may have the potential to use one more "Secret Art."
What the utterly exhausted-looking Elke hinted at was supreme swordsmanship... I'm endlessly curious, but it seems to have a once-per-day restriction, so I guess that'll have to wait until next time.
Sunraku: "Hey, Emul. My nose isn't bent, is it?"
Emul: ".........? ......???"
Emul stared at me through the mask as if she were looking at some rare beast, but I've been turned into a wall stain more than a dozen times by now. Respawning may reset me, but after enough of that you start to worry.
Sunraku: "Ah, whatever. Only one way to find out in practice... Emul, can you send me to the New World?"
Emul: "Hai na! Sunraku-san, you keep making me stay behind and watch the house every so often, wa..."
Sunraku: "Well, I am a pioneer... It's basically like cheerfully committing suicide. Besides..."
Emul: "Besides?"
Sunraku: "If I kept you on my head, you'd probably get blown away."
Emul: "I don't want to become a wall stain, wa."
Neither do I. But if that's how things turn out in the end, what am I supposed to do about it?
The forest. In this demonic sea of trees, where the smell of blood seems more likely to drift through the air than negative ions, a fierce struggle for survival plays out today as always, now including the newly arrived human race.
???: "Hey, it's faster than what we heard!"
???: "Forget a thoroughbred Triceratops—doesn't that thing look more like a deer that's been pumped full of muscle!?"
???: "Huh, wait—bugheh!?"
???: "T-The healer!"
Mm, yeah. Watching other people's play from a safe zone really is fun. You get to sit back and watch it like a fire on the opposite shore while another monster creeps up behind them.
Though either way, the moment the healer they were relying on went down, you could pretty much see how that was going to end. Good work out there.
Sunraku: "Hm?"
Oh? What's your problem, punk? Huh? I'm over level 130, you know? Can't you see Lycagon's Contusion? Huhhh?
At that exact moment, a dinosaur-type monster came charging in from the side like a bullet—smooth, gleaming, and very obviously hard-headed in the most literal sense. Making full use of that physical feature, it headbutted the two monsters glaring at me and sent them flying.
???: "Fugororororoh!!"
Sunraku: "O-oh... That's a pretty good face you've got there, huh?"
This is one of those types that traded away its reason in exchange for power, isn't it? I forget the name, but that helmet-headed dinosaur was a herbivore, right? Now hold on, I'm protein. Diet-wise, we ought to be able to understand each other, right?
But apparently this visitor came here looking for a brawl. It fixed me with those brightly gleaming reptilian eyes, sprayed drool from its mouth, and dropped into a forward-leaning stance with the crown of its head aimed straight at me.
It's about the size of a kei car and, at a glance, clearly a physical-specialist headbutting type. If I take that charge with my trash armor, I'll be smashed to pieces.
Sunraku: "Heh. Fine by me."
I equip the Crimson Sea Fistband: Regalex Cestus and take a fighting stance. Tough enemies are irreconcilable pieces of shit when you're grinding, but on a first encounter they're the spice that makes a game exciting.
Sunraku: "Round one! I'll beat you down before the bell even rings!"
I meet the charging head with a jolt and hammer in a counter. My fists are tough as hell toooooo!!
Q. I don't have any firepower-boosting effect. How am I supposed to win?
A. Keep hitting it until it dies.
Sunraku: "Huff... huff..."
I pile on the rush. I burn through all my stamina and leave myself wide open... but no counterattack comes.
???: "Buoro, rorororo..."
With a heavy thud, Mr. Ironhead topples over, the impact making my blood tremble. I'd nullified the recoil by releasing the gauge, so I'd gone all-out trying to smash its skull... but I hadn't put so much as a single crack in it. That took more work than I expected.
Sunraku: "Grab the materials and... damn it. From the second one onward, I'm running."
On top of being ridiculously tough, it was an absurdly versatile fighter, mixing in step-in overhead headbutts and all kinds of other moves... Let's see. Dracule Dinopachycephale Rigid Skull... That's long. Metal Baldy is good enough.
That cost me extra time. All right, reset and... let's go. The continent crossing Akitsu Akane tried to accomplish. In her case, she ran into a giant event flag named Noirlind, so she had no choice but to stop partway through... but with me as I am now, maybe.
Sunraku: "............All right."
Stamina management matters too, but because of Lycagon's Contusion, almost every encounter is guaranteed to pit me against something above my level. If I'm already exhausted the instant I run into something, it won't even be funny. I need to watch that too... and now, time for the continent-crossing marathon.
I've more or less decided where I'm heading.
Akitsu Akane pulled off a Perfect Communication on Noirlind, and the fact that her target happened to be a monster capable of flight produced an unexpected benefit.
That's right: map information on the New Land from Noirlind, an existence with almost no restrictions on where it can move.
Having had his tongue loosened by the radiance of Akitsu Akane's light attribute, the guy talked about what the New Land was like. It was all extremely vague and colored by his personal point of view, but still.
First, as a basic premise, the demihuman races on the New Land are concentrated toward the right side of the continent—in other words, toward the old-continent side.
Why? Simple. The farther you get into the latter half, the bigger the monsters become.
Skyscraper-like species that only get away with existing because this is a game. Because I've seen that sort of thing before with Disaster Beasts (in another game), I can more or less picture the worldview of the New Land.
In short, this world's monster balance is tuned so the difficulty rises as you go left, from Firstia at the far right edge of the old continent all the way to the far left edge of the New Land.
So... so... yeah. I guess that's what this means.
Sunraku: "So eventually, players are supposed to be able to go toe-to-toe with monsters the size of buildings?"
It's not exactly unexpected. Even the strongest-class Disaster Beasts in Thrilling Farm can be beaten half to death and driven off solo if you prepare so thoroughly that you've practically given up on clearing the game. I've never heard of anyone managing to kill one outright, though. People say you could probably do it if you had three more of the one nuclear bomb you can make in a playthrough... Incidentally, using the nuke contaminates your fields and automatically gives you a game over.
So the idea that giant monsters can be defeated isn't surprising. What throws me is whether SLF's system can actually make that possible.
Sunraku: "No... right."
A Tactical Machine Beast.
If there are Non-Standard ones, that means there must be standard-spec Tactical Machines too. Even if they're only infantry equipment, if there are players walking around in powered suits, it starts to feel like there might be a chance. Besides, it's not as though these things are necessarily meant to be farmed in large numbers.
Whoops, my thoughts wandered off course. Among the information Noirlind gave through Akitsu Akane, there was one thing that caught my attention.
Near the center of this land stands a crystal crown that changes color beneath the light of sun and moon. The insects crawling upon the earth are crushed beneath insolent centipedes and spiders, and thus the privilege of savoring that radiance belongs to me alone...
In other words: "There's an area of crystal that shines in two colors and is guarded by ridiculously strong monsters. I'M SO AWESOME I can stand around sightseeing there at my leisure!!" But crystal... yes. Crystal.
Sunraku: "My yet-unmet best friend—my brother—is there...!!"
My sworn allies, the Crystal Scorpions. My worthy rival, the Golden Scorpion. And their parent, the Elder Crystal Scorpion.
The Golden Scorpion is still a powerful enemy even at my current level range. Granted, my defenses haven't grown at all, so a single hit kills me no matter what I'm fighting. Its encounter rate is low too, but in my mind it's still a Lycagon-class threat.
But they... are extremely good sources of money. After recently obtaining materials from an Elder Crystal Scorpion, I've ended up knowing way too much about their ecology. And that's exactly why there's something I can tell.
Those things were probably marine creatures originally. They probably made it onto land, only to nearly die out because of their diet, then eventually evolved a way to become self-sufficient. That's how Crystal Nest Cliff was created.
I see. It's a lot like Bakumatsu. They can only live there. They can't eat meat, they can't eat plants, and mineral resources are finite. If that's the case, then that crystal plain is their one and only viable habitat. No wonder they refuse to tolerate intruders.
But that's exactly why I can see another possibility. Did every Crystal Scorpion come to the old continent? Did all of their ancestors evolve into Crystal Scorpions? I don't think so.
A land crowned in crystal, shining blue-green by day and crimson by night... There have to be Crystal Scorpions—or some closely related species of scorpion—there. And that means the scent of a brand-new money-making opportunity!!
That's why I run. It isn't a Unique. No one has reached it yet. And that's exactly why I can monopolize it.
Besides, I think I've seen that radiance before. On that day when I was nearly carried off by a Two-headed Wyvern while searching for Tiaplaten.
That's why my legs can keep moving forward without hesitation.
Sunraku: "The advantage is miiiiine!!"
Oh, if it isn't my comrade-in-arms, Scarlet Scar-kun. Haaai, how's it going? Huh? Next time we meet, we'll be enemies? No, no, our friendship is eternal, right? Well, I've got somewhere to be, so... whoaaaa, like hell I'm dying here!!
Dracule Dinopachycephale