Chapter 12 – Warrior
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Sprinting away from her to gain as much distance as possible, I ran through the night, trying to decide on a place where I’d face her. I chose a public park as there was no other fitting place nearby. I’d face her in a place full of memories for me as I had played there many times over when I was still a little boy.
“Tsk…you sure are quick on your feet…damn it…”
Arriving at the park with a little delay, she was gripping the smartphone in her left hand and a short, double-edged sword in her right while glaring my way.
She looked completely different from the woman I met at the coffee shop in front of Sendai station today. Or to be precise, she had switched from an intelligent young lady to looking like a criminal who would become a topic in the news due to their overly evil face as they were taken away by the police after having been arrested in a serial murder case.
“…So it was about time after, huh? At the point when guys like him start showing up, I’ve run out of good luck. I guess it’s about time to change my base of operations.”
While sucking on the thumb of her left hand, the whites of her eyes were showing. She was totally high as if on drugs.
“Hey, so far as it goes, you should get killed by the management if they find out that you murder people in this game…so why are you doing something like this?”
“Haaah? Oh well, I’ll tell you so that you can die in peace, so tell me how you noticed that I’m dangerous for you. You’re…truly a box full of surprises,” she asked me while focusing her eyes on me.
No, I’m plenty surprised about you as well, okay? I didn’t expect you’d come for the kill all of a sudden.
There’s no way I’m going to blab to her about 『Intuition』. But, I’m kind of curious how she’s managed to avoid the watchful eyes of the management so far.
Alright.
“Your reasoning was flimsy at best. Leaving aside the invitation bonus, would anyone invite a complete beginner, who just started the game, into their party like that? In the first place, you could simply team up with other players who are already experienced, right?”
“Oh, I see. So what do you think I should do instead?”
“The little-sister act is totally useless bullshit. Wouldn’t it have been better, if you had demanded a bigger chunk of cash or come up with agreeable bargaining points? Afterwards, you could build a normal relationship of mutual trust before stabbing them in the back, no?”
“Whoa, I didn’t think I’d receive feedback from my target. That’s seriously good advice there, buddy. Thankies.”
After expressing her gratitude, she clicked her tongue loudly once again. Followed by a sigh so loud that you’d think she’d be taking a deep breath next.
“But, I mean, sometimes you simply cannot choose your means, right? I mean I’d end up messing shit up because I stopped doing things the way I’m used to.”
“Almost all the players, whom you invited, must have complained to why the fuck you dragged them into this crappy situation, when you met them, right? So you apologized it away with you having looked for fellow players to party with you and promised that you’d cooperate with them to the limit, didn’t you?”
“And when I did, the other newbies let their guard down around me, and exploiting that opening, I had my fun with them! That was the gist, but waaaaaaiiit!?!?!?!” She pointed a finger at me, “Why was your first message, 「Why did you put a QR code on a telephone pole? ^.^」. That’s fucking weird! Usually people would hate me for dragging them into this incomprehensible mess! This shitty game which you can’t remove after installing it once!”
“Ah…”
She used her left hand to roughly scratch the back of her head and then muttered at the end, “Tsk…whatever. I can simply use him as exp for the future.”
I operated the smartphone in my left hand so that she, who was currently irritated and confused, couldn’t see it, taking out Dragon Eater. And then I opened the skill acquisition list.
“So, how did you avoid being found out by the management?”
“No choice, I guess. I’m already going anyway, so I’ll tell you. Did you know? Two weeks after this game began, the player evaluation of the management dropped to rock bottom. Their reputation is so fucking bad that the players don’t even bother calling it shitty management, but use 『Shit』 instead. Look here.”
Light spilled out of her smartphone. And what took shape inside her right hand was a mysterious crystal looking like something a fortune teller would use. She showed it to me by holding it up, and stuck her tongue out.
“This, you see, is an item I obtained from a certain player. This thing can create a space that blocks off the surveillance of third parties through a skill. The management fuckers apparently don’t know what I’m doing as long as I got this on me.
It’s hilarious, isn’t it? They’ve become unable to check what I’m up to because of an item they created themselves. It’s only natural for them to be called Shit.”
“…Heeeh.”
Dungeon Seekers immediately calculated the item’s estimated value. I doubt it’ll be unable to get a read since it was also able to appraise Dragon Eater, but…it’s fishy. I better do not trust her too much on this.
She let go of the crystal in her hand, resulting in it falling on the park’s soil with a thud. The crystal emitted a suspicious light, illuminating the park’s playground.
I drew Dragon Eater from its scabbard so as to counter her movements. Blue lights, looking just like veins, appeared on its lustrous blade. As I thought, this guy is definitely alive.
“But, this game is really the best, you know? If a player dies, the management will conceal it so that the public doesn’t find out. Your ass won’t be chased around by the cops either. The last two weeks have been a blast,” she said with an ecstatic look on her face, prominent enough to be visible through the gas mask, before adding, “Especially killing brats like you was truly awesome!!! They all said stuff like, 「It hurts, I don’t wanna to die, nooo, please nooooo」. Also, when I killed that old fuck with his barcode head, he begged for his life while prostrating himself in front of me! That was so goddamn hilarious!”
After guffawing, she completely changed, now showing a calm, calculating expression.
“But well…there are also times when you have too much fun. I killed too many and now all players are gone. The existing players sense that Sendai is dangerous in some way, so they head north or go straight for Tokyo… I’ll make you my last prey in Sendai, then I’ll eat beef tongue in celebration, and move to Tokyo.”
Holding the smartphone in her left hand, she pointed a finger at me with her right hand which also grasped her short sword. Apparently certain of her victory, she roared in laughter while yelling, “Ahahaha, you’re such an idiot! All this useless talk allowed me to slowly keep doing my own thing. Now this park is filled with a colorless and odorless, poisonous gas which I released through a skill! You won’t be able to escape this place any longer, so go and croak, you fucking brat! Let me hear you whimper in agony and pain!”
She continued to laugh towards the sky as if this whole matter was so damn funny that she couldn’t help but to laugh at it. But, no matter how long she laughed, I didn’t collapse from her poisonous gas.
“…What? What did you do?”
“It’s great that you confessed your crimes voluntarily.”
I held my katana low, staring directly at her. Revealing a smile, I opposed this serial killer in front of me. If I were to guess the number of people she killed, she’d pretty much receive capital punishment in a country with a constitutional government like Japan. I will act it out instead. No, it’s self-defense in my case, so that doesn’t work, but━━━━whatever. I doubt it’ll be noticed either way.
“Just now I got slightly curious how much experience points I’d get for killing a human…allow me to test it out without any scruples.”
“HAAAH? You…are the same kind as me?”
She looked at me through the gas mask with a sharp glint in her eyes, and even though she considered it as strange that I hadn’t collapsed from the poisonous gas, she didn’t show any agitation.
“I love watching people’s faces twist in pain and grief as they suffer from the poisonous gas, but…it’s not like I hate killing others with my own hands either.”
She snapped her fingers once again. The eight magic circles, which had been floating in the sky, were all directed at me. Readying her short sword, she relaxedly tilted her body while coming at me with a peculiar style of walking━━━━!
I breathed in so as to ascertain myself. If I believe Intuition, she’s doubtlessly above me in level. She had the advantage of having been a player for two more weeks than I am, and there’s no doubt about her having cleared several dungeons. It’d probably be impossible for me to win with my level and title power-ups I got from having cleared just one dungeon. And as a matter of fact, she was heading my way with a speed that went far beyond what I was capable of.
In such a case, where she was so superior to me, I could only rely on items and skills to win. My only choice to defeat her was to use powerful items and skills to overturn the difference in levels between us.
She hasn’t been the only one preparing during our little conversation. I did the same.
“━━━━『Hidden Blade』.”
“YOU!?!”
As soon as I used the active skill, my body started to move automatically. First off, my hand sheathed the katana again. My left hand held the scabbard while my right hand clasped the hilt. Is this what you call a battoujutsu stance? 1
“『Dragon Eater』.”
That hidden technique was surely illusionary. It was a flash of an upward slash which reached my opponent who was several meters ahead of me. A blue radiance darker than the night trailed the katana’s trajectory which had remained in the air as a fleeting afterimage.
Venom perceived my movements with her eyes, held her short sword sideways, and tried to block the dark blue sword wave.
But.
The dark blue, which ought to be a single sword wave, transformed so quickly that my eyes couldn’t keep up. Its trail became a point attack, looking as if a poisonous snake was swooping down. That snake kept avoiding her defense, turning the katana attack, which I had brandished vertically, into a thrust. Truly the definition of an unprecedented hidden sword style.
Venom stared at this in wonder.
The piercing attack appeared in front of her neck, just to have its dark blue blossom gorgeously. This blooming light bit at her neck from two sides as if snapping at her.
Following a sound as if glass shattered, you could hear blood splashing out. The blade wind devastated the park. And cut up by that fierce gale, the leaves danced through the night.
A breathing sound similar to a draft echoed throughout the park. The skill’s flash, which had pierced through her vitals, was without equal. This magic sword is way too powerful.
But, apparently as compensation for this, it caused a huge burden on the muscles of my right arm. It was hurting now as if struck by a powerful electric shock. I suppose this isn’t a skill I should use at my current level.
“…You…that…katana devoured my gas?”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Quite the cheat, isn’t it…? Fuck. But, you’ve been swallowed, haven’t you? You go around and kill people like me, don’t you? Yep, kill, kill, kill.”
“I don’t do anything like that. I don’t need to since there’s dungeons around.”
“Kghh…you’ve played…a ridiculous hand…there.”
“……”
She was lying on the ground and looking up to the sky as blood ran out of her neck.
━━━━━━
I tore off the gas mask, extended a hand towards her open eyes, and just as I closed them, her body turned into dust and got dispersed by the wind all over the park.
“━━━I guess this is what they mean with concealment, huh?”
Venom, the first Dungeon Seekers player I met, was a serial killer who got a kick out of murdering people by using DS. And just now I’ve killed her.
The smartphone in my pocket vibrated. The words she left behind crossed my mind. I killed her so easily, but I won’t become like her.
Forcing my extremely ailing right arm to move, I swung Dragon Eater, destroying the crystal that was lying in the park. I think it’ll be fine like this.
Darkness. In the center of the park I recalled what she’d said.
The existing players are avoiding Sendai for its abnormally high mortality rate. And newbie players have lost all safe areas to grow here because Venom cleared all the F-Class dungeons in the area. Right now, there are plenty of untouched dungeons in Sendai.
This is a chance for me. I can monopolize the limited resource called dungeons.
“Before other players show up here…I’ll take control of all nearby dungeons first.”
My goal is to entirely clear my hometown. If I do that, my level will rise a lot more and I’ll be able to obtain a lot more skills. If I become even stronger, I’ll become able to persist through a lot, lot harder battles. Right now, my purpose in life was to feed my raw desire for battle. I want to fight and destroy enemies.
“Same kind…huh?”
Maybe her remark had been spot on there. My and her desires are completely different, but in essence, you could call them the same.
I turned around and went back home while still barefooted. I couldn’t raise my right arm, and my soles were painful and sticky with blood. I looked up to the night sky while thinking how much this sucked.
The crescent moon was staring back at me.
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Translation Notes:
- Everyone who knows Rurounin Kenshin can tell what battoujutsu is about, but for the others: it’s a sword style based on quickly drawing your sword to unleash an attack in one motion. This doesn’t work with Western swords because of their bulkiness and double edge which is why there exists no western term for this sort of sword style as far as I know.