Gachapin-san is the reason we’ve been able to fight this far... Day one was thirty pulls and one Gold Moon.
Chapter 467: O Dragon, O Dragon! Part Forty-Four
◇
Ten-Don: “I went pretty hard since there’s no penalty... but damn, I didn’t think you’d actually hold out.”
Akitsu Akane: “U...gh...”
Akitsu Akane was lying flat on the ground.
It was no surprise. Ten-Don, leader of the clan Knights Tempura, was a “pre-nerf Master of the Sword” who had once fought Psyger-100 head-on. The maximum number of Sworvants he could control manually was lower than Psyger-100’s, but when it came to PvP, his skill was on par with even veteran PKers.
Trying to hold back every anti-Noirlind player, including someone like him, was bound to end this way. The only reason Akitsu Akane was still alive was because her level was high enough to give her stats that easily surpassed even Ten-Don’s.
Ten-Don: “Normally, if somebody’s not red, I just beat ’em down a bit and leave ’em. But you’re with that Scorpion Thighjob or whatever side, right? Being able to kill each other without a penalty is pretty nice, huh? For both of us.”
Akitsu Akane: “Y-Yeah... We can fight... without worrying about anything...”
But the fight had already been decided beyond any hope of turning it around.
Akitsu Akane’s HP was hanging by a thread... but that was no reason to give up. After all, one of the people she admired willingly fought with his own life hanging by a thread—and then burned so fiercely that even throwing water on him wouldn’t put him out.
But simply acting brave wouldn’t change the result.
Admiration alone couldn’t solve everything.
Ten-Don raised his sword, while Emilia, for some reason, suddenly opened her eyes wide in surprise...
And in the next instant, a shadow covered Akitsu Akane and the others—
followed by a deafening crash.
Noirlind: “Nnngh...”
Ten-Don: “Whoa, Noirlind!?”
Noirlind: “Move.”
Ten-Don: “Oof!”
Ten-Don was sent flying with almost no resistance, saving Akitsu Akane at the last possible moment.
Even as huge damage effects poured from his neck, Noirlind waited until Akitsu Akane somehow managed to stand before quietly glaring at Emilia and the others...
The people who had joined together to kill him.
Noirlind: “You swarming insects... How insolent of you to seek my head.”
Emilia: “Noirlind...!!”
Noirlind: “Too bad. I have no intention of handing this head over to you... But once everything is over, I’ll allow you to shamelessly carve up my corpse.”
Emilia: “Huh?”
Noirlind: “Hmph. Just a change of pace... that’s all!!”
Noirlind spread his wings wide and shot high into the sky.
The huge black body climbed higher and higher before flipping around in midair and diving straight down at full speed...
Ten-Don: “Huh? Did something just fall off?”
No one heard Ten-Don’s quiet comment.
Everyone simply stared up at the black meteor falling from the sky...
Noirlind: “—!!!”
With a soundless roar, Noirlind’s huge body closed in on Siegwurm...
Akitsu Akane: “Ahh!!”
A scream escaped Akitsu Akane’s throat.
The growing sphere of light in front of Siegwurm fired its lasers again, piercing straight through Noirlind’s body.
And then...
Siegwurm raised his right hand overhead.
A flat force field spread out from it, becoming a physical barrier that caught the massive force of Noirlind’s falling body.
Cracks tore through the ground beneath Siegwurm’s feet, and the Dragon King’s huge body visibly sank from the impact, so the attack clearly hadn’t been blocked completely.
But even so...
Noirlind’s all-out charge ended in what could only be called a failure.
Player 1: “Whoa, his neck went first...”
Player 2: “Wait... isn’t it more than his neck? Aren’t basically all his bones broken?”
Player 3: “Did he kill himself?”
Unable to understand Noirlind’s sudden action, the players stared at the black dragon lying on the ground like a ball that had lost all its bounce.
Noirlind lay flat on his back without moving at all.
His tongue hung limply out of his mouth. The light had vanished from his eyes. His neck and joints were bent in unnatural directions...
Could he actually be dea—
Akitsu Akane: “Huh?”
Hearing the confused sound escape Akitsu Akane, Ten-Don couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.
After everything she had done to support the black dragon, having Noirlind die by smashing himself to death would be enough to make anyone feel bad for her.
Even the players who had been calling for Noirlind’s death looked confused about whether they were actually supposed to celebrate this.
Ten-Don: “...Well, uh. Guess you got a weird pattern this time... Wait, she’s gone!?”
Emilia: “—There was no announcement.”
Ten-Don’s shocked cry and Emilia’s quiet realization came almost at the same time.
And a short distance away, running beside Akitsu Akane...
Noirlind: “Come! Grrr, what humiliation...! My stride! My stride is far too short! Everything is so low!”
Akitsu Akane: “N-Noirlind-san...”
Noirlind: “...Hmph. This too was all part of my strat’gy.”
Akitsu Akane: “You got really skinny?”
Noirlind: “Idiot!!”
A monster about the size of a large dog ran beside the fox-masked ninja, loudly barking as the two fled from Emilia and the others.
Noirlind: “This is an application of my ultimate secret technique... Shadowless Emotion: Remote Emote! Normally, I draw mana from the earth to create and control clones, but it can also be used to fool insects blinded by my magnificent form!”
Akitsu Akane: “Um... isn’t that really strong Master of the Sword chasing us?”
Noirlind: “.........Heh. To think someone would actually see through my trick.”
Akitsu Akane: “Um! Won’t both you and me probably get one-shot!? I’m kind of in huge trouble right now!!”
Noirlind: “Just run! I am not used to wings this tiny! I still cannot fly quickly!!”
The strange person and “dragon” ran around yelling as they played a desperate game of tag, naturally drawing the eyes of everyone nearby.
Ten-Don chased after them and deployed his Sworvant to stop them from escaping—
PKer 1: “Ten-Don-kuuun!”
PKer 2: “Come plaaay!”
PKer 3: “Brace yourself—DIE, ASSHOLE!!”
Ten-Don: “What!?”
It was a perfect surprise attack.
The players had hidden themselves inside the crowd, and the moment Ten-Don stepped into range, they jumped out with their weapons ready.
Ten-Don’s eyes widened, wondering why they were suddenly attacking him...
And then he noticed.
Every one of the attackers had their player name displayed in red.
In this game, only players who had committed a certain crime were marked that way.
Ten-Don: “PKers...!? Wait, you bastards... No way. But why the hell are you here...!!”
PKer 1: “Getting hated comes with the PK business!”
PKer 2: “If we’re quitting PKing, we might as well do it with a bang!”
PKer 3: “We got the info from our great pioneer! No reason to hold back anymore!”
PKer 4: “Tias-tan, watch me clean up my act...”
They had a reputation for wearing weird gear and carrying crappy weapons.
They had a reputation for never leaving Firstia.
They had a reputation for being harmless because all they ever did was kill each other.
What a joke.
They were still active criminals with red names.
It wasn’t that they couldn’t leave Firstia.
They simply chose not to.
And killing each other had only ever been a way to achieve their goal.
Now, the real weapons they had kept hidden for so long to avoid losing them to penalties finally saw the light of day again.
That’s right.
These people...
found joy in killing other players.
◇◇
Survival: “Heh heh... Sunraku, you bastard. Sure, I had to wash my hands of it sooner or later... but no way he expected me to actually take that stupid joke seriously. Wonder what face he’s making right now...?”
A new branch of the little-known café The Serpent’s Apple had opened in the New Land.
Its name was The Serpent and the Green Apple.
Inside, one woman was enjoying an elegant tea time alone.
Though chugging an entire cup of tea at once and biting into a chunk of meat was pretty far from the usual idea of “tea time.”
Survival: “Well, they’re idiots who throw a party when their names show up on a name-and-shame thread... Heh. Going out with a bang suits ’em just fine.”
Almost nobody knew the woman sitting there.
If anyone did, it was Sunraku, who had crossed paths with the man behind that avatar before.
His name was Survival.
He was currently the second player to become an Avenger...
and a player with connections to countless PKers, including the clan Dress-Up Tias-chan Squad.
Becoming an Avenger meant Survival had officially “washed his hands” of PKing as far as the system was concerned.
But that didn’t mean all his connections with other players had disappeared.
And right now, the members of Dress-Up Tias-chan Squad had happily accepted Survival’s “request” and thrown themselves into a fight they had no intention of surviving.
Survival: “No clue what he’s trying to pull, but Atbird sent me a tip that sounded pretty fun.”
People often misunderstood something about Dress-Up Tias-chan Squad.
It wasn’t that they only existed in Firstia.
In fact, most of the members had already reached the New Land as part of the first wave of players.
They were simply hardcore enough to make it all the way there, realize—
“RAISING OUR KARMA OVER HERE DOESN’T MAKE TIAS-CHAN SHOW UP!!”
—and immediately return to Firstia without a single regret.
That was exactly why, even though they were still active PKers, they had earned a strange kind of respect.
Some time ago, Survival had gone completely broke from treating Tias to too much food.
Sunraku had taken pity on him, lent him some money, and chatted with him for a while.
During that conversation, Sunraku had casually joked—
Sunraku: “If you’re gonna die anyway, wouldn’t it be funny to go wild enough to make the name-and-shame thread’s hall of fame?”
Survival had taken that joke completely seriously.
He spat out the bone he had been chewing, now picked completely clean of even the bits of meat stuck to it, and gave a fearless grin.
Survival: “Targets are Emilia and Knights Tempura... Not bad opponents for those idiots to go out with one last bang.”
Lutia: “Survival.”
Survival: “Huh...? Lu—L-Lu... L-L-L-Lutia-tan!? No way! Your hidden face is actually showing!?!?”
Survival’s whole “mastermind behind the PKers” act vanished in an instant.
He completely lost his cool as the Bounty Hunter Lutia placed a hand on his shoulder.
Lutia: “A little... scolding.”
Survival: “W-Wait, seriously? No... Huh? Scolding as a reward? Hold on, let me get a recording item ready...”
In the end, as far as he was concerned...
every single part of this was a win.
Shadowless Emotion: Remote Emote
Creates clones made of magic and uses them to attack.