[Give me the courage and time to grind Grim like hell for Kokkoro-chan. And give me a harp too. (The cry from the heart of an old-school Enmity Wind Magna man.)]

Chapter 459: Dragons, O Dragons! Part Thirty-Six

The players who had reached the New Land varied in ability, but every last one of them was high-level.

At present, the highest level among all players was 145, reached after a downright insane material grind.

The runner-up was Level 139, reached through repeated battles against unimaginably powerful enemies while wearing a suppressive collar.

The "level ranking," known only to the administrators, had just changed.

Psyger-0: "We need to hurry...!"

Diale: "Yeah, we do. I'd hate to miss a chance to put my Vorpal Soul to use... Seriously, I need to work harder too..."

A crystallization of a no-lifer's accumulated, honed march. Carrying the experience she'd gained from spending her recent days training with a rabbit ally, the knight had deliberately "withdrawn" in the middle of the dragon calamity.

Her destination had been a village of the elves with no pioneers in sight. There, at long last and without having to worry about anyone else, Psyger-0 had managed to unlock her level cap.

Her current level: 141.

Psyger-0: "...Excuse me."

Crafter: "Yes, yes, weapon repa—eek?!"

Psyger-0: "...Ah, no. This is just what my equipment looks like."

A crafting-class player had been waiting near the exit of a New Land Research Vessel for players bringing in weapons worn down in the large-scale battle.

The crafter turned at Psyger-0's voice—and screamed.

Psyger-0 knew exactly why. She held up her hands to show the blacksmith, who had reflexively dropped into a combat stance, that she meant no harm.

Crafter: "S-Saiga... You're with Black Blade, right?"

Psyger-0: "Ah... no. I'm with Wolfgang now. The one in Black Blade is... my older sister."

Crafter: "I-I see... Huh? Isn't that Conversion?"

Psyger-0: "No. It's armor called Twin-Truth Armor."

The holy-knight look it had possessed until then was nowhere to be seen.

Perhaps unlocking the level cap had fulfilled some other condition at the same time. The former Twinface Armor, now renamed Twin-Truth Armor, had transformed into a grotesque shape resembling a mass of flesh fashioned into armor.

The material itself was hard, and it still performed perfectly well as armor. But its surface pulsed in a way no dead material possibly could, and the headpiece—which had at least still looked like a helmet before—now possessed a fleshy "eyeball" and "mouth."

Crafter: "...That's really armor?"

Psyger-0: "...I can take it off."

Crafter: "It's all slimy..."

Psyger-0: "The system... reduces the sensation, at least."

Otherwise, no matter how useful it was, even Psyger-0 wouldn't equip the thing.

She removed the helmet, whose feel was like pressing a lukewarm compress—about as warm as human skin—against her face. The helmet's "face" closed its eye as if falling asleep and stopped moving.

Apparently that was finally enough to convince the crafter. They relaxed, though they still kept a little distance.

Psyger-0: "There's something I'd like to ask... What is happening right now?"

Crafter: "Huh? Let's see..."

Professor: "Hmm. It seems that young man is making quite a spectacle of himself. I've also heard that Eristella, the Saint of Love, has gone to the front line... But the most important development would be that Siegwurm has created five copies of himself."

Psyger-0: "Ah... You're from Library..."

Instead of the crafter, an elderly man's voice—deepened by long years of accumulated wisdom—was directed at Psyger-0.

Professor: "You people are... yes, truly fascinating. Would you allow me to interview you about that armor at a later date?"

Psyger-0: "Ah... um, yes."

Professor: "I'd very much like Sunraku-kun to join us as well... Ah, I hear he's currently at the very front line carrying some interesting transforming weapon."

Psyger-0: "!!"

To Professor, that was only one more piece of information tossed in to liven up the conversation.

To Psyger-0, it was the most important answer of all, worth more than hundreds of other pieces of information.

Psyger-0: "Please excuse me... I have to go."

Professor: "I see... Hmm. Well, this is hardly the time for a long conversation, so I suppose it can't be helped."

Psyger-0 gave a small bow to the deceptively young-looking girl, who was apparently an authority in some real-world academic field.

With Diale disguised as a mantle across her back, Psyger-0 took off at a run without hesitation.

No matter how sharp a blade becomes, it means nothing if it is never swung.

◇◇

While Sunraku clashed with Siegwurm and Pencilgon faced Deep Throater, what was the other original member, Oikatzo, doing?

Oikatzo: "You said it'd turn inside out... but who'd expect it to literally turn itself inside out?!"

Argent Owl: "This isn't the time for that, Ke-tzo! That White got seriously dangerous after eating Red's corpse!!"

Siegwurm's brilliance had overshadowed it, but Oikatzo groaned bitterly on the very front line of Bryleinyego's frenzy, where the white dragon had been driven into a desperate corner.

After confirming that a potion was restoring his HP, he looked toward Bryleinyego.

The white dragon's form was now so hideous and so utterly different from when it first appeared at the frontline base that it might as well have been another creature.

Bryleinyego: "Gerororororo! Power! Power! Poooweeer!!"

Oikatzo: "So it was an amphibian, not a reptile..."

Bryleinyego was a dragon with an abnormally swollen abdomen like an ant's. But as it approached death, that abdomen suddenly split into upper and lower halves.

It opened like a gigantic mouth, and everyone assumed those enormous jaws were about to attack.

But they were wrong.

Or rather, they weren't wrong about the feeding part. What Bryleinyego chewed on was none other than itself.

"Inside-Out Rebirth: Re-Birthday."

With that technique name, it inverted itself in a way that looked like turning a clasp purse inside out—or closing a stapler that had been opened flat.

Through that biologically impossible inversion, Bryleinyego's upper body was devoured by its own gigantic jaws.

After more than ten seconds of chewing, thick forelegs and hindlegs made from bundles of muscle fiber pushed out from the "inside" of the mouth.

The horrific white mass of flesh crawled across the ground and attacked the players with unmistakable killing intent.

Argent Owl: "Heeey, Nadi! You people have been fighting Bryleinyego for a long time, haven't you?! Don't you know anything?!"

Dirnadia: "Do not call me by such a strange name! I hate to expose my lack of martial prowess, but this is the first time I've seen Bryleinyego driven this far. I can tell you nothing useful!"

Argent Owl: "Oh, I see... That's what she says, Ke-tzo."

Oikatzo: "Stop trying to make that name stick! Damn it, too much of our fighting strength has shifted toward Siegwurm! We're losing to sheer numbers here!"

The transformed Bryleinyego had not lost its ability to produce lesser dragons. Quite the opposite.

Deuredhowl the Red Dragon's corpse had been left where it fell because the announcement had confirmed its defeat, and everyone assumed that was simply how things were supposed to work.

Only a tiny number of players knew the fundamental source governing a dragon's life: its "core." More specifically, only those who had fought the Color Dragons before the final battle phase, all the way until their weakness was discovered.

The red dragon's corpse had been abandoned with its core still intact.

Bryleinyego devoured it.

This was not a defeat decided by the scenario. Bryleinyego literally took Deuredhowl's life—and stole its trait at the same time.

Oikatzo: "Lesser dragons with Red's jet-flame ability... Yeah, you really shouldn't give fire to anything except humanity. Lesson learned!!"

Oikatzo grimaced as flames scorched past the side of his face by the narrowest possible margin, then drove an effect-wreathed fist forward.

He confirmed that the humanoid lesser dragon he'd blown away vanished into effects, then clicked his tongue when he realized the "destruction-use" weapons stockpiled in Inventoria had run dry.

Oikatzo: "Argen, how are you doing?"

Argent Owl: "Ran out ages ago. I went back to the ship and restocked, but that supply's gone too. I never knew having no money was this difficult."

Oikatzo: "Stop casually flexing how rich you are... Sunraku would lose it if he heard you."

Argent Owl: "If it turns into a fistfight, I'd love that! But first we need to decide what we're doing now..."

Fighting Bryleinyego—the only dragon there, Siegwurm included, that relied on sheer numbers—naturally meant swinging your weapons that many more times.

The white dragon's battlefield was unpopular too, because the basic experience was one long chain of fights against trash mobs.

There were some players who had continued fighting there from Bryleinyego's arrival right up to the present. But after Deuredhowl was defeated, almost all the manpower that had been freed up flowed toward Siegwurm instead. That only accelerated the reversal of the battle situation.

Oikatzo: "Damn you, Pencilgon... What are we supposed to do now? This is way past 'struggling just enough.' Our defensive line's about to get bitten through..."

There was, however, one point Oikatzo had overlooked.

Even if someone had continued fighting from the very beginning until now, that did not necessarily mean they had already used every card in their hand.

◇◇◇

Animalia: "...If I'm going to use it all up, now might be the time."

A woman whose rough, aggressive stance was almost impossible to imagine from her former appearance muttered to herself.

Her name was Animalia.

She had once made a name for herself as one of the finest debuffers in all of SLF.

But that was in the past.

Animalia: "Bryleinyego, you destroy nature, you destroy animals... Then I'll smash you apart with these fists!!"

Now, after somehow twisting herself down a very strange path, she had become a frontline curse practitioner (fists) who laid on her own debuffs and then beat the target down herself.

[That took forever. Around the time I started writing Dragons, O Dragons!, I worked her into the plot because writing a side story sounded like too much trouble, so I figured I might as well put her in the main story... That point was way too far away. She does have another role a little later, though.]

[Now all that's left is Golden Kuon...]

[• Twin-Truth Armor]

[The Twinface Armor transformed into a new form after unlocking the level cap fulfilled its conditions.]

[The key is what unlocking the level cap means within the world's lore. I've already depicted it, as a matter of fact.]

[Psyger-0 doesn't know yet, but if she leaves the helmet off for about ten minutes, it starts blinking even though it isn't equipped.]

[Huh? Divine-Demonic Sword Antinomy-kun? Of course he evolved too.]