[Author’s Opening Note: GE3 finally arrived and it’s sucking my life away. I love Lulu.]
Chapter 465: O Dragon, O Dragon! We Race Toward the End of Our Longing — O Dragon, O Dragon! Part Forty-Two
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Sunraku: “Hey! You’d better brace yourself, Siegwurm!! I’ll show you the power of humanity—manpower!!”
Siegwurm: “Oh? Then show me—show me your radiance!!!”
A breath attack! It isn’t aimed at us...!? Tch, of course—Bryubas!!
Yashirobird: “D-Don’t screw with me! Do you have any idea how much that cost!?”
Siegwurm: “Fuhahahaha!! Now, what will you do, archer!!”
As though posing a question, the golden light shot forth—
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???: “—”
Even if he had been warned a full minute beforehand that “an attack was coming.”
Yashirobird: “You think someone from an isolated island would get scared by something like that...!!”
Instead of the Type-Six Magic Ballista, he draws his own weapon, a magic bow, to its absolute limit... and fires. At the same instant, Yashirobird throws away his own weapon and leaps into Orcalight’s firing seat, sharpening his concentration to its limit in a heartbeat.
A magic arrow slams into the golden light tearing through the paling sky, its trajectory offset just slightly from a direct head-on collision. At that instant, the spell loaded into the magic arrow, Flare Arrow: Explode, activates.
The spell works by making magical energies interfere with one another, affecting the opponent’s attack. But against such an overwhelming gulf in output, it seems to have accomplished almost nothing and simply fizzled out.
Yashirobird: “...!”
The light pierces Bryubas’s hull. But Flare Arrow: Explode, fired ahead of it, had shifted its trajectory just a little—only the tiniest amount.
Yashirobird: “I knew I could count on you, Bryubas. I’ll chip in for the repairs too—!!”
Half his body is burned by the light, yet Yashirobird’s eyes remain fixed on a single target.
The hull groans and catches fire, and yet the ocean-conquest ship into which its shipwright poured everything still creaks as though insisting it can fight.
Yashirobird: “...Here.”
Ninety percent of his health has been blown away, and even with the system reducing the pain, half his body has still been burned. Yet Yashirobird and Orcalight hold their aim without so much as a millimeter of wobble.
His concentration, as though pain on this level is not even worth taking into account, reaches its absolute peak...
Yashirobird: “—Yeah. Perfect score.”
And he fires.
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Siegwurm: “Gah.........!!?!?”
The answer to the light Siegwurm fired comes in the form of a counter-shot arrow tracing an unwavering line, conveying Yashirobird’s intent even more eloquently than words could.
Siegwurm: “How... magnificent, magnificent!!!”
The shattered upper-right horn spins through the air before dissolving into particles. The flames visible in the distance make it painfully obvious that Bryubas has reached its limit and Yashirobird is out of the fight, but that bastard still pulled it off at the very last second.
One golden copy disappears from the battlefield. So it really is true that the horns and the copies are linked.
Sunraku: “BLOW IT... AWAAAAAY!!”
Who shouted that? Me.
The unmistakable score sends the pioneers’ excitement through the roof.
Four horns left! After watching you move this whole time, I can tell whether I want to or not: the number of horns is the key to those damn Skill-nullification and magic-nullification effects!!
Sunraku: “Rei-shi! Armageddon?!”
Psyger-0: “I have... something even stronger!”
Sunraku: “Even better! Emul!! Use your ‘special’!!”
Emul: “Y! E! SSSS!!”
This takes me back. Come to think of it, when we fought Lycagon (Shadow), me, Rei-shi, and Emul all started moving at the same time like this too.
Sunraku: “I can see you, you pervert! Give me your ‘magic power’!! Exceed Charge!!”
Emul: “This is my special! Cluster Magistorm!!”
Psyger-0: “—I sing of my black half.”
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Yeah, that’s right. Strip full-dive VR down to the bare essentials and it’s a system that sends signals into your brain so you can dream a machine-made dream.
So if someone is looking at you, you can recognize it from your end too. You can’t connect a phone call one-way; if something is transmitted, there must always be someone receiving it.
And right now, with my excitement through the roof and my brain running hot enough to burn, I can somehow tell that I’m being stared at.
Including that weirdly persistent gaze that hasn’t left me for this whoooole time!!
With my strength boosted by Centipede Model 8-0.5 Tausend’s venom hitting me full force, I wield the halberd and round shield at the same time, activate the mirror shield by voice recognition, let it blossom open, and raise it toward the direction of that gaze.
???: “—”
There is no voice to be heard. But the spell that unmistakably weaves between the players comes hurtling into Dis Pater, Nether King’s Mirror Shield as though being sucked inside... and once the Nether King’s mirror takes in its magical power, it unleashes its true power.
Sunraku: “Conversion!!”
Blue flames wrap around me—stage one. I let go of Centipede Model 8-0.5, slip my hand underneath the briefly floating halberd before it can fall, catch it on the back of my hand, and flick it upward again.
With my right hand free for an instant, I slap my chest and activate Levin Trigger: Hazard.
Siegwurm: “I will acknowledge the foolhardy courage of one who cloaks himself in the primordial and stands before me... but!”
Psyger-0: “...Beyond the dream lies the abyssal source, the black god who stands alone in its arrogance.”
Right. There’s no need to stop the chant. Even as the storm of magical power Emul unleashed scrapes away at Siegwurm’s surface, Siegwurm’s eyes glare at Rei-shi alone, and flame-like energy spills from the corners of Siegwurm’s mouth.
Sunraku: “...Whew............... Look. Dawn.”
I plant Centipede Model 8-0.5 in the ground and raise Lumeridian, Treasure Sword of Boundary Light into the first light of dawn.
In an instant, the red curved blade crumbles away and disappears. In its place, a blue-green straight blade crackles into existence from the spot that had been the pommel throughout the night.
Sunraku: “You sure you can afford to look away from me, Siegwurm? Because now... I’m going beyond the critical threshold.”
Oh, so I’m not even worth your attention. Then... it’s already too late for regrets!!
Sunraku: “Bradion!!!”
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First step. My body accelerates from the ground in an instant, plunging me into a world of speed where, without the Skill’s assistance, everything would stretch out and vanish from sight in a heartbeat.
I swing Lumeridian into Siegwurm’s horn, and my body shoots away from Siegwurm even faster than that.
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At first, Psyger-100 mistakenly thinks Sunraku has used teleportation magic. Before she can even mutter “Why?” the first sound rings out.
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By the time the first attack lands, my body is already moving to prepare for the next one.
Second step. I step on the sky upside down. This isn’t the same as canceling my momentum on landing by accelerating in the exact opposite direction. It’s more like a superball bouncing off a wall—an incredibly sharp turn that forcibly sends my retreating body straight back toward Siegwurm.
Been a while. Half a second, maybe? It isn’t much, but here—have some Severing Divide.
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Rust witnessed it. Precisely because she was positioned just a little behind the very front line, she could take in the whole scene.
Something like a bullet shot up from the ground, then somehow bounced off absolutely nothing in midair...
◆+++
Vash was right. Understanding the properties of the material really is what lets you master a Re-Legacy Weapon.
Centipede Model 8-0.5’s enhancement works by taking in poison. Meaning the moment I let go, the boost ends... except it doesn’t. The enhancement actually lasts until the poison injected into my body runs out.
So I’ll make it in time. I scrape together the remnants of the enhancement still left inside my body and race through this single instant. Third hit landed... whoops, Lumeridian slipped right out of my hand. Ah, but that’s me for you—my hand is already moving across the window.
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Deep Throater could not stop laughing. Of course. Given the bidirectional nature of perception, it was not impossible—but to think Sunraku had actually detected that presence!!
It really is Sunraku. It could only be Sunraku...
◆++++
Even the time it takes a weapon to transfer out of Inventoria feels unbearably slow. Ah, I can’t wait any longer. Only one blade has finished deploying—Duxram, Blade of Aspiration—so I slam it into the horn I’ve already attacked three times. The feel tells me it was a critical hit. I can’t see it because my body is already being flung away the very next instant, but I can tell from the feel of it.
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Psyger-0, continuing the chant while trusting Sunraku, definitely saw it.
Psyger-0: “There is but one throne, and there is likewise but one Law. Thus, the right half of my being is the black... Law.”
A “star” traced across the sky in lingering afterimages, so vivid that Psyger-0 nearly botched the chant at the sight of it—
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It is quite literally a pentagram of intersecting slashes. Bradion, Quantum Gaze... and my excitement at its absolute peak. Only when all three come together can I pull off this ultra-ultra-high-speed movement... and this time it’s the suicidal, survival-be-damned charge version. Eat this—my irresistible loot-greed slash...!!!
The other blade finally finishes deploying, and I slam it down with every ounce of strength I have. Drop a Composite Crystal, come onnn!!
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The players saw it. The NPCs saw it.
Sunraku: “Vrrweh!”
They saw a small figure let out some bizarre noise, trace a pentagram across the sky, and go flying away.
Siegwurm: “Wha.........!!!?”
And they saw two of Siegwurm’s horns shatter as the dragon stood genuinely shocked speechless.
And then—
[System Notice: Required speed observed. Condition met.]
[System Notice: Title acquired: Maximum Speed: Speed Holder.]
They saw the moment a title slot no one had ever occupied was finally filled.
[Author’s Closing Note: The freak goes flying away on a trajectory like a boomerang thrown by someone who’s terrible at throwing boomerangs.]
[Author’s Closing Note: Conditions met with Bradion’s fifth step + Centipede Model 8-0.5’s boost + Dis Pater, Nether King’s Mirror Shield’s boost + self-doping through Overflow. Do this indoors and there’s a 60% chance you become a stain on the wall or floor.]