[Let me introduce this crazy lineup!!]
◇R-R◇
Pioneer 1: "It's not fair. You can't even take part unless you're in the New World."
Pioneer 2: "We only just started. We'd be useless even if we were there, wouldn't we?"
Pioneer 1: "Well, yeah, but... huh?"
Pioneer 2: "What? It's shaking..."
Pioneer 1: "Wait, but this is an extinct volca—"
A roar. A violent quake. The pioneers are blasted by superheated steam carrying a shockwave and disappear from the volcano.
???: "Folololololololo"
The remains of a red dragon from long ago, unknown to anyone, had sunk to the bottom of the crater lake and served as a lid over the volcano. What had once been a dragon is blown to pieces.
The crater lake is nothing compared to the sea, but it still should have held a huge amount of water. Now every last drop has evaporated, and at its center is a single butterfly made of flame.
Under the will of something greater, the "red" butterfly waits for an enemy.
◇RB◇
???: "Brrrrroooooo..."
It does not set its pale body on fire. It does not discharge electricity.
It simply walks.
Player 1: "Wh..."
Player 2: "My max HP... is being cut down..."
Player 1: "Wait—"
That alone is enough to leave a trail of death behind it.
With a mane of black mist flowing in the wind and its head hanging low, the eyeless blue horse keeps walking.
Ah, the root whispers: Kill more. The "blue" horse neighs as if laughing at every life waiting along the road ahead.
◇R-B◇
Player 1: "That was close! Thanks for the heal!"
Player 2: "Huh? I didn't use any healing magic..."
Player 1: "Huh?"
???: "MrrrFFFffffffff..."
Player 1: "W-What the hell is that!?"
Player 2: "A-a frog?"
Player 1: "Wait, how much HP is that restoring..."
Monster: "Gugyaba!?"
Player 2: "...Huh?"
A black something like a six-legged frog floats through the air like a balloon. It suddenly barges in while the players are fighting a monster and starts healing wounds.
Healing wounds.
Healing wounds.
Even when there are no wounds left, it keeps healing.
Eventually the healing becomes so excessive that flesh bursts apart. It heals, and heals, and heals and heals and heals and heals and heals...
Until the players meet the same fate as the bear-shaped monster that burst like a balloon—
The "black" frog keeps watching, its eyes narrowed in delight.
◇R-G◇
The Mythic Great Forest. A mysterious place where sunlight filters through the leaves, but also a forest where the trees make it hard to see very far.
There, it quietly begins to act.
A unicorn lowers its mouth to a sunlit spring and drinks. The tree behind it starts moving. A tree monster? No. It is a peacock disguised as a tree through extremely advanced camouflage.
The differences from a real peacock are its strangely long, ostrich-like legs... and the tail feathers that normally define a peacock, which here look like a chain of oddly shaped fruits.
Green Peacock: "Kyokyokyo."
Splash. Green liquid is thrown across the unicorn's back.
The peacock had used its long neck and beak to grab one of the fruits growing from its tail feathers and throw it. The fruit burst against the unicorn's back, staining its coat with the liquid stored inside.
But the unicorn was a creature that had survived this world's struggle for life until now. Something no worse than a water balloon bursting against it was nowhere near enough to shake it.
The unicorn turns around to see what happened. The peacock throws both wings wide, and every feather begins vibrating with a sound like a high-pitched scream.
The moment the unicorn notices it, something changes.
Unicorn: "...?!!?!!?!"
The green liquid soaks into the unicorn's body as quickly as water soaking into paper.
Mana collection... insufficient.
Strength collection... insufficient.
Stamina collection... insufficient.
Not enough. Not enough. Then pay with your body...
The unicorn screams and writhes in pain at this absurd personal bankruptcy... but no one notices. Its cries vanish into the forest.
Some time later, the "green" peacock disappears beyond the trees in search of new prey... followed by the unicorn, now corrupted and completely green.
──────
The place changes. So do the rules.
──────
◆L-B◆
Cyclops 1: "Oi"
Cyclops 2: "Oii?"
In one word, the things that burst out of the ground were "cyclopes."
They look around with the single eyeballs that take up most of their faces and realize that there are others of their own kind nearby.
Cyclops 1: "Oii"
Cyclops 2: "OiiiiIIIIIIIII!!!"
As if there could only be one thing to do next, the muscular cyclopes throw punches at each other in a cross counter.
Some time later, there is a winner and a loser.
One black cyclops lies on the ground, its entire body crushed.
The winner stares at it, lowers its face toward the fallen cyclops's neck...
and without the slightest hesitation, tears out its throat with its teeth.
Cyclops: "OOOooooooo...!!!"
It devours flesh. Devours flesh. Devours flesh.
There are no bones. A cyclops whose body is made almost entirely of muscle fibers is devoured by one of its own kind.
As the horrible cannibalism continues, the predator's body begins to change.
Its muscles swell larger and harder. With loud cracking sounds, its arm... the right arm it had repeatedly used for its finishing blow grows even more vicious.
It is the most basic possible desire for strength. Even if the end of that road is destroying itself with its own strength... the cyclops will not stop.
Cyclops: "Oooiiiiiii..."
After eating its own kind without leaving even a scrap of flesh behind, the cyclops—now a full size larger in muscle—slowly stands and walks off in search of another of its own kind... another meal.
The "black" ogre can satisfy its reason for being only by continuing to win.
◆L-W◆
Squish, squish, squish.
It is soft, fluid, and greedy.
It swallows trees, eats earth, and melts rock. It has no mouth, no eyes, and no visible organs. Its jelly-like body wobbles as the pure-white slime keeps multiplying, feeding, and moving.
After ten seconds, one becomes two. After a minute, there are even more. Leave them alone and they quickly become impossible to handle.
By the time a huge "hole" has appeared in the wasteland, thousands... no, tens of thousands of slimes cover the ground.
Squish, squish, squish.
No emotion can be read from the slimes. They feed and multiply without expression, and now huge numbers of them throw themselves into the hole they created.
The slimes smash into the bottom and splatter, then merge with the ones falling after them. Before long, slimes stuck to the sides of the hole become "walls" and a "floor." Piled-up slimes become "pillars" and "stairs"... and by the time the last slime twists itself into a "bar," a gigantic pure-white "tower" stands in the wasteland.
They remembered.
The people who once set foot in this land had built things like this. And whenever those people saw one of "these" that they had not built themselves... they could not resist investigating it.
So all it had to do was... wait with its mouth open.
The "white" fluids wait for visitors.
◆L-G◆
Insects are flying. That is nothing unusual. In a jungle, you can find an insect or two almost anywhere if you look.
Even if they are larger than a person... that is somewhat unusual by New Land standards, but hardly impossible.
But what if they were all such an unsettling shade of green?
What if, even for insects, they were far too organized?
What if they carried away the enemies they attacked without killing them, keeping them alive?
But none of that is the important part when explaining what they are.
Beastman: "L-Let go! Damn it, let me go!!"
The poor Beastman victim is being carried away, held tightly by strange giant winged insects that look like bees, spiders, flies... or perhaps none of those things at all.
And then he sees it.
An unnatural "flower" rooted in the earth, its huge, horribly fleshy mouth surrounded by petals.
Then he sees a monster thrown into it without a hint of emotion and chewed apart, showing him exactly what is about to happen to him.
Beastman: "S-stop—"
A tongue shoots from the flower's enormous mouth, which even has lips, wraps around the Beastman, and drags him inside.
Before he can leave any final words or even scream, he is chewed into pieces smaller than scraps of meat and swallowed. The flower lets out a belch carrying a sickly sweet rotten smell, and as though that were a signal, the insects scatter in every direction once again.
The "green" insects and flower lament that this is nowhere near enough.
They need more. Much, much more nutrition...
???
???: "Siegwurm... so you finally went."
There is no sky above where the speaker looks, yet a breath is let out while thinking of something far away.
???: "Maybe... the time is getting close..."
O humans, O humans.
The oldest rabbit is one of the beings who questions those living in the present through strength. Without touching it or bringing any flame to it, he lights the pipe held in his mouth.
A tiny flame appears in the pitch-black space, lighting up only the faintest outline of the thing above the rabbit.
Vysache: "...We've got lively ones for 'Flower,' 'Wind,' and 'Moon.' Found a good one for 'Bird,' too... We couldn't do it, but it really makes you want to believe that maybe... just maybe..."
It is enormous.
It is horribly threatening.
And it has been sleeping deeply for a very, very long time.
Wrapped from end to end in massive chains, each large enough to easily crush a person, is a white god sleeping quietly for now.
Vysache: "Just a little longer... please wait, Master..."
The light of the pipe disappears along with the rabbit. The sleeping god is sealed in darkness once again...
But only the immortal rabbit knows that its awakening is not very far away.
[That's all!!]
Crazed Horde of Blue: "Huh?"
Great Red Devourer: "I'll be back."