Chapter 402: Crimson Nightglow Emperor Domain

After watching the three of them get sent back when Shuffle timed out, I try to break through the desert using the high-speed movement of Levin Trigger: Hazard.

These days, it is rare to see a sky packed full of stars without civilization’s lights getting in the way. But VR can generate even the inside of a human body as a world if it wants to, so as long as you ignore that it is not real, you could say there is nowhere it cannot take you.

The starry sky above is a very appealing sight, but if I look away, I could trip and make everything go to waste. How long had I kept running without letting my guard down?

Sunraku: "The end of the desert... I made it..."

There is barely anything you could call BGM in SLF. Sometimes a melody that is almost like a sound effect plays, but normally there is no music during boss fights, and of course there is none outside combat either.

In other words, I had finally made progress after the pretty hard trip of just running through the desert in silence. Even if a few tears welled up, that could not be helped.

Still, there was a reason I had been able to cross such a huge desert without getting lost.

Sunraku: "It’s like a lighthouse-red light ruining a spectacular night view."

It looked as though a huge flame were burning the night sky. But that light was different from the flickering glow of fire, that kind of energy. It never wavered and kept bathing the sky in the exact same light... a red, red light like a lamp.

I have not had many good memories of red lately... that red thing that munches up anything and everything, that huge crowd of red armor that made the game easy all at once... hmm, a cursed color instead of a cursed day?

Sunraku: "I see. Looking at it this way, it really does look like the earth is wearing a crown."

At some point, the sandy ground had turned into rough rock. I moved through a dim, lifeless place without even a little dirt for grass to grow in... and finally reached a distance where I could see it.

Sunraku: "So this is the ‘Crystal Crown’ Noirlind mentioned..."

I held my breath and quickly looked around. Unless he had been exaggerating, there should be monsters here on the level of Elder Crystal Scorpions. I think... a centipede and a spider?

Sunraku: "Doesn’t SLF have weirdly strong bugs...?"

I looked over terrain shaped like a giant bowl fused with a doughnut, so huge that even Thirdrema could fit inside with room to spare, but there was no sign that the True Eye Bird Mask’s vision correction was activating.

Sunraku: "Are they asleep?"

So monsters are less alert at night? Yay...

Sunraku: "..."

I picked up a softball-sized stone at my feet and lightly tossed it. I did not put any strength into it, so it easily followed the gravity system, fell onto the bowl-shaped slope, and rolled down...

ZUBOBBOBBOBBOBBO!!
(The sound of human-sized spiders bursting out from slopes all around.)

BEGYAA!!
(The sound of a crushing shove-fest that pulverizes even its allies attacking the pebble, giving off a strong feeling of déjà vu.)

ZUGOOON!!! BAGYAA!!
(The sound of a huge centipede, maybe pissed off by the noise, coming out of the ground and flattening the spider swarm one after another.)

GOGOGOGOGOGO...
(The sound of a Spider Fortress that had been camouflaged as a huge boulder rising up.)

Oh, I think I just heard a conch shell sound announcing war.

Sunraku: "No, is this even possible?"

They should not be using gunpowder or anything like that, but explosions had been echoing nonstop for a while now.

When I nervously looked down, human-sized spiders appeared in numbers that nearly covered the ground. Wherever they had been hiding, they now latched onto a centipede with strange, oversized tube-shaped shells along its back.

Then they detonated. It was not like gunpowder. Maybe they were creating a huge shockwave from inside themselves, because cracks spread through the centipede’s clearly hard shell.

But the centipede was not losing either. Just by coiling up, it crushed dozens of baby spiders at a time. Hm? The self-destruct attack was not passive, but an active move? The baby spiders crushed by attacks broke apart and vanished without scattering shockwaves around them. Ah, the materials...

Sunraku: "Fuck, Noirlind... You weren’t exaggerating at all."

What can a player do after getting thrown into a place where a mobile fortress and a rail cannon are locked together in a fight with murderous intent? I would have a better survival rate as a civilian running for their life in a monster movie.

Sunraku: "Heh... but I’m no longer a flat being. The realm of the Z-axis is already in my hands..."

I had kind of figured out how this bowl-and-doughnut terrain had been made, but so what?

Sure, seeing the bigger spider fire baby spiders from the spikes on its back like cannon shells had honestly freaked me out. But seeing the centipede spray huge lumps of poison from the tubes on its back—poison that clearly existed for nothing except one-shotting enemies its own size—had freaked me out on top of that.

I see. It is not particularly rare for humans to sit low in the hierarchy in this kind of hack-and-slash, but after being shown a monster showdown like this, I had no choice but to accept it.

People of the SLF world, let’s give up the name “primates.” Even if we strut around as the crown of creation, we are probably a little below the middle of the hierarchy.

Sunraku: "One pebble starts a full-scale war... Is this the bottom of a bug-killing jar?"

Sorry, but I am the one reaching for the jewel hanging from the ceiling. Activate Bradion. Steps one through three get me to the Crystal Crown, and steps four and five let me land safely. A perfect plan.

At least, that was what I thought one minute ago without a shred of doubt, and the method itself should not have been wrong.

Time rolls back just a little.

Over a hell pit filled with roaring sounds, bursting sounds, blasting sounds, and crashing sounds—battle sounds that rely on no gunpowder—a deep blue-purple comet races.

The blue-purple effect trailing behind it looks... ah, right. It looks like the movement effect of Metius or Cursed Prison in his Prison Breaker form.

Unlike those, which are only movement actions, this is a seven-link skill with risk and reward pushed to the limit. Let my guard down, and I could end up as a stain on a cliff.

But from the rim of the bowl-and-doughnut to the crown in the center is roughly one hundred meters... heh heh heh, if it is just a straight long jump with no obstacles, then it is within Bradion’s range.

A path at the limit, beyond even a track athlete’s world record. When it is a game, you want to go beyond reality. This rules... okay, step two.

Sunraku: "Fuhahahaha...! Watching the fight below from the heavens is the best...!!"

A god’s-eye view. Right now, I’m practically a god...!! No, wait. Whenever I get carried away like this, it is a given that I get hit with a painful backlash. Overconfidence is a deadly drug that brings death and defeat... I should make absolutely sure and use Quantum Gaze too...

Sunraku: "—Huh?"

Light was dancing.

I mean that literally. Above me, light was dancing along sharp angles, as if it were scattering off the crown of crimson crystal.

Ah, no.

That...

Was that a wave of attacks, thin and sharp enough to look like lasers...?

Sunraku: "!!!!!!"

I used my third step and jumped sideways with everything I had. Making a sudden right-angle turn without slowing down made my body creak in pain. But that did not matter. While Bradion was active, it could handle some recoil.

So the problem was not that...

KYUGAAAAAA!!!!!

Sunraku: "I──────"

A moment that could have gone either way decided my fate. Massive destructive power became visible as a wave. Almost at the same time I recognized it, an unmistakable “beam” ripped through the air and passed right beside me.

It probably was not wind-element magic itself. Its power was simply so high that it was shoving the air aside.

Sunraku: "Bwah!?"

So this is what it feels like to be a fly smacked by a flyswatter... Hahaha, did that have to happen now? It did? Of course it did. This is baaad!!

Sunraku: "Waaahhh!?"

Fuck! It was not just that a gigantic beam almost grazed me at close range, it threw off my balance! Am I going to die? Fuck that! I have two steps left! Can I recover!?

If Quantum Gaze had not been active, I would have just died. Even while I was being flung around in a mess worse than a corkscrew spin, my thinking and awareness of everything around me remained intact in the slow-motion world.

First, I had to stabilize my body or nothing else mattered.

I focused to the limit and, in a view spinning like clothes in a washing machine, waited for the instant when my head and feet faced the right directions.

Quantum Gaze was about to run out. The distance to the hellish ground was getting closer. Even so, not yet, not yet, not yet... now!!

Sunraku: "Four!"

I kicked the air with all my strength. With upward force that erased all my body’s movement until then, I shot upward in a cord-free reverse bungee jump.

Right after that, the huge body of the Spider Fortress that had been blown away rolled into the place where I had nearly fallen. If I had been two seconds later, I would have gotten caught on that huge body and died.

Sunraku: "Guh...!?"

Quantum Gaze ran out. The sudden shift in how fast everything felt almost made my mind slip away. Bad. If I blacked out in the middle of a game, it would be a disaster. If I woke up next and saw a system message saying I had been forcibly logged out, it would break my heart a little.

But I had bought time...! Now I just had to land somehow...!!

Sunraku: "...Ah."

Then my eyes clearly caught it. Was it the reward for focus sharpened to the limit, or the effect of the True Eye Bird Mask...?

Among the crimson crystals, there was only one crystal giving off a blue-green glow. No, that was wrong. It was a crystal, and yet it was not a crystal.

Sunraku: "Found you... a new species───!!"

And you are the bastard behind that beam earlier...!!

The answer came in the form of a second shot.

Wait, the fifth step was for landing... ah.

It is not like I particularly like scorpions.

But if I dump all the settings about this new guy, then just like yesterday, more than half of this could end up being an afterword...

By the way, normally, firing magic of the same type at an Imperial Treasure Crystal would only get absorbed. But if you hit it with magic of the same type but the opposite phase, the magic forms a core and reflects.

At that point, like evaporating water carrying away heat, the magic forming the core absorbs the Imperial Treasure Crystal’s magic—well, “coating” might actually be the more accurate word.

Then it repeats that same process dozens or hundreds of times through scattered reflection. Finally, it intercepts the magic with its tail, gives it direction inside the compressed Imperial Treasure Crystal that forms its body, and blasts it from both pincers.

Its power? With a 120% charge, ready to self-destruct, it could Gura— ...no, I mean, it could not just punch through Glatoisto and the other dragon snakes’ outer shells and scales, but pierce clean through them, I guess?