Chapter 426: Dragons, O Dragons! Part Three

???: "Good evening. What's the situation?"

???: "P.T. Overwerke, huh? They're too strong even for a raid... Their parameters were probably adjusted for the decisive-battle phase. Ask someone who's free about their attack patterns."

P.T. Overwerke: "Mm, got it... What about that customer?"

???: "No word from their side either. Something may have happened, but it's also possible the Color Dragons are simply appearing in a set order."

P.T. Overwerke: "If the blue dragon really is aquatic like we expect, just thinking about it gives me chills... All right. Old Ogre, could you take command at the front?"

Old Ogre: "I was getting tired of commanding from the rear anyway. Leave it to me."

P.T. Overwerke had returned from what was, in a sense, a battlefield of their own and logged in at a speed unthinkable under ordinary circumstances. With that, Team 10PM began moving in earnest as well.

Old Ogre, who had been at the clan leaders' command headquarters as P.T. Overwerke's stand-in, returned to the front line. Almost as though trading places, another player came tumbling in.

???: "This is bad! This is really bad!!"

???: "What happened!?"

???: "Red! The red dragon... Uh, what was its name again?"

???: "Dreadnought?"

???: "No, it was Doomsday Hole."

???: "Don't make a joke when you're obviously setting me up to correct you. It's Deuredhowl... Wait, it's here!?"

???: "Yeah, that one! That bastard burned down the entrance to the forest and made one hell of an entrance!"

The players who had been wasting time on that ridiculous exchange tensed at the arrival of another red dragon, one that had appeared by drastically reshaping the surrounding area.

???: "The monsters fleeing the forest are coming this way too! What do we do!?"

???: "It's a burned-out plain now, right? Then we can treat the battlefield itself as having expanded. Can't we push them in?"

???: "No. Blockentreed goes without saying, but Bryleinyego isn't exactly the type to move around much either."

???: "No, let's send some of the players around the long way and encircle them."

Even clan leaders were, at heart, pioneers who wanted to swing swords and wield magic. They had made a loose agreement to gather once every hour for a meeting, but every last one of them was itching to fight on the front line.

Once the plan came together in rapid succession, the players each hurried off to relay it to their own clans.

It was exactly 9:00 p.m. Its appearance looked almost as though it had been scheduled for that precise time, but the actual trigger was "three or more Color Dragons have appeared."

???: "O humans... O heroes, know that tonight is the night you shall show your radiance."

It was not shouting. Yet the voice, systemically prioritized above every other sound, rang equally in the ears of every player throughout the frontline base.

The speaker was in the heavens. Moonlight itself was speaking... No. Against the golden moonlight, a golden dragon spoke calmly.

???: "My name is Siegwurm, guardian of the Divine Era and the one who scorches the world. I am the one who awaits heroes amid the calamity to come... O heroes, show me. Show me deeds worthy of heroes, shining as the one true light amid the ravages of war!!"

Everyone there—even the Color Dragons—looked up at the sky and beheld it.

A radiant golden Dragon King, its four wings shining and an unnatural number of horns rising from its head—two on the left, three on the right. Far above, Siegwurm looked down upon everything below as its wings began to shine even brighter.

Siegwurm: "My law shall cover this land and crush all things. Applause for heroes, punishment for fools... This is Dragon Law: Notorious...!!"

Golden light spread outward from Siegwurm in the heavens as though its wings had expanded even farther, forming a thin dome that covered not only the frontline base, but a vast area encompassing the burned forest and even the sea.

Siegwurm: "Bad Increase Gravity!!"

For a brief instant, every player and NPC inside the golden dome felt crushing pressure as though they were being flattened from directly overhead... and that was all.

???: "What was that!? What happened!?"

???: "A buff!? A debuff!?"

???: "At least it doesn't seem to be affecting our attack animations..."

A mysterious action by a Unique Monster was reason enough for caution. Argent Owl, who had been blasting small dragons out of the way amid the battle, checked what had happened... and found it in her status window.

Argent Owl: "[Special Status: B.I.G.]...?"

Perhaps because their attention had been drawn away, the small dragons attacked two players who were standing still, as if the players' confusion meant nothing to them.

???: "Geh."

???: "Watch out!"

While casually disposing of the small dragons attacking her as well, Argent Owl watched what happened. Both players ended up swarmed and killed, but one had moved to use their partner as a shield, while the other had stepped forward to protect theirs.

The problem came afterward.

Argent Owl: "...A countdown?"

The swarm of small dragons made it impossible to tell exactly where the two had died, but two icons appeared around the places where they had presumably fallen.

One was an icon counting down from 180, decreasing by one every second. The other combined a downward arrow with a countdown from 15.

Argent Owl: "...No way."

Argent Owl was America's number-one Metius user—in other words, the player doing the most heroic roleplay in all of America. That was precisely why a certain possibility occurred to her, and it became certainty the instant the 15-count icon reached zero and, on that very spot, the player who had tried to protect their partner respawned.

Argent Owl: "Roleplay!!"

???: "Huh? What did you say?"

Argent Owl: "Kei-tzo! Roleplay! This adds to your death penalty when you take actions that aren't heroic!!"

Oikatzo spent several seconds turning those words over with a puzzled expression. Once he understood what they meant, his face stiffened and he looked up at Siegwurm.

Oikatzo: "Seriously, Siegwurm...!? I thought nothing could top level restrictions or forced sex changes, but this is how you're doing it...!!"

Forced roleplay was, in some ways, an even more troublesome restriction than altered parameters.

Judging from Siegwurm's words, the penalty condition was probably conduct that was not heroic. But if merely using a tank as a shield was enough to apply a debuff, widespread chaos was practically guaranteed.

Oikatzo: "So we're supposed to stop living smart and die like fools...!!"

Stability was practically the opposite of heroism. No one admired a heroic tale without danger—at the very least, Siegwurm did not.

Conversely, if an effect was judged heroic, it looked as though some kind of benefit would be granted.

But still.

Still...

What were they supposed to do if they respawned fifteen seconds later in the very place where the thing that had killed them was still waiting? Resetting one's coordinates did not merely mean being forced to retrace an adventure.

Oikatzo: "This is bad. Sorry, Argent Owl. I'm going to link up with my clan members!!"

Argent Owl: "I think I'll play a little longer... Oh?"

Argent Owl suddenly looked up at the sky. Not at Siegwurm. Something resembling the full-dive VR "intuition" of America's number-one gamer pulled her gaze away from the gold overlapping the moon and toward the deep, dark night.

???: "—Uuuuh..."

A section of the star-filled sky had been cut out in pure black.

No.

It was moving.

High and fast, as though it meant to reach the moon itself.

And it was roaring—!

???: "SIEGWURMMMMM!!"

Siegwurm: "Nuooh!?"

The next instant, Noirlind's full-force body slam, accelerated to its absolute limit, crashed into the golden dragon with the force of its enormous mass.

At the same time, on the ground, the third (fourth) race to follow the elves and Pescorians appeared.

???: "Huh? I'm giving the signal? Um... Okay, ready, set, go!!"

Lizardlike humanoids and dragonlike humanoids leapt onto the battlefield. Some wore scarves, some waist sashes, some headbands; the place where they wore it differed, but every one of them had black cloth wrapped somewhere on their body.

At their head stood a girl in a fox mask.

The Black Dragon Ninja Corps.

It was a mysterious group formed chiefly from Dragonfolk whose affinity toward Noirlind had somehow suddenly shot up through Akitsu Akane's persuasion before Noirlind itself had even realized what was happening, along with Lizardmen who had somehow been there without anyone noticing.

The person in question—rather, the dragon in question—had not been involved in its formation at all. On top of that, its operating policy was simply, "We freely do all kinds of things," so nobody had the slightest idea what they were going to do!!