Chapter 1240 - A Battlefield Moving Violently
"——...whoops."
A quiet zanshin... unfortunately, this was not a sword with any room for such a thing to exist.
Once again, aerial walking with 《Talaria Record》. Shaving the empty air that served as a foothold while scattering the lingering resonance of the wild, high-speed rotation, I sheathed the 【Saminazuki】 (T/N: written as 早緑月, meaning "early green month" or May) which had fulfilled its duty into the Kurikara, and that was that.
The ridiculously massive monster that I had cheerfully cut in half, strictly following orders. In the end, without even confirming its total length or full appearance, I had cleanly slashed it diagonally... a mysterious...
......A mysterious, what?
It was shrouded in a black mist, making its true identity even more unclear, but it was probably some kind of wriggly thing like a snake or an earthworm. Slicing off the tip towering from the earth, which presumably contained the head, resulted in instant death.
Unique to games, unique to Arcadia.
While watching the mysterious entity dissolve into a waterfall of light, turning into the blue phosphorescence that allows one to make a certain judgment of victory upon seeing it... namely, the death effect common to enemies.
"Well, how about something like this?"
'...Ah, yeah, indeed...... It is enough. Well done.'
While letting the cheers rising from behind and from the ground wash over me. When I asked for an evaluation of my mission performance, the words of praise that arrived via telepathy could not hide the amazement mixed within them.
Show them something flashy to liven things up—the one who said that and sent me out as the vanguard (me) was Gossan himself, but his words of praise were incredibly half-hearted.
Yeah, well, I guess that's it.
'So, what was that just now...? What did you do...???'
"What do you mean 'what'...... Super Special Ultra Human-Powered Water Cutter...?"
'......I-I see. That's amazing.'
It seemed that showing off an unrevealed new move with overflowing hype and momentum had successfully put him off.
'Just how many 'special moves' do you have up your sleeve?'
"Who knows...? I've never seriously counted them, so I don't really know..."
Thus, between the ground and the air. A delicate atmosphere began to flow through our thoughts connected by intent, which made me feel a bit sad... but wait, no, this was genuinely not the time to be doing such things.
"Ahem... Anyway, there's that. The feedback was exactly as predicted."
Precisely because of its size, even its passing had a ridiculous intensity. As I watched the remains of the monster earthworm turn into a waterfall, then a flood, avalanching down and dissolving into space from the edges.
"It was completely hollow. That thing just now wasn't even a half-raid boss, let alone a raid boss."
I conveyed the extremely anticlimactic 'feedback' remaining in my palms to the general.
'...I knew that, but with that ridiculously huge body? What on earth is going on?'
"I'm the one who wants to ask. ...Well, I suppose if we had allowed even a body slam from that massive frame, we would have normally taken devastating damage, but...... hmmm?"
We players ourselves were the prime example of that, but in the world of Arcadia where game-like systems operated, physical size and mass were merely a tiny fraction of what made up combat power; for instance, it was perfectly normal for a single small human body to blow away a mountain.
...Though that might be because my standards are warped as a ranker, in the end, there was no doubt that it was that kind of world. —If so, the reverse was also true.
Big is strong. Heavy is strong. That was certainly a truth, but it was also the nature of games that small-fry who were merely big or merely heavy existed.
Therefore, a situation where a stupidly huge enemy of a scale mistaken for a natural disaster gets one-shotted by the extreme firepower of the player side was by no means impossible.
It wasn't, probably... but even so, it was still a bit much.
Even so, with that excessive sense of scale, for it to be instantly killed and blown to pieces by a mere single player's ultimate was a bit much.
Certainly, it was giving off an almost deliberately weak presence at the same time as being massive, but...—well, in the end, what I want to say is,
"I have a really bad feeling about this..."
'Yeah, I don't like it either.'
That thing probably didn't have the role of inflicting damage on us from the very start.
Premonition, prediction, conjecture, inference.
I for one year, and others for even longer. The making of the fantasy world (Arcadia) that each of us had grown familiar with was slowly forming a pool of anxiety on our spacious foothold of trust.
Indeed. When some kind of event occurred and its content turned out to be anticlimactic—
'Be on your guard, kid. Probably, any moment now...'
"Yeah, most likely..."
Indeed.
Inevitably, without fail, without a doubt...—something would happen next.
Thus, a few seconds later.
"............"
A rustle, the vibrating air.
From afar... no, separated by the earth, from a distance that wasn't very far.
"......Ah......"
In other words, from none other than the 'hole'.
"Good grief...—you've perfectly fulfilled your role, haven't you, digging earthworm?"
From the depths of the great cavern that the previous monster, which had now completely dissolved and vanished into the empty air, had grandly broken through and opened wide. The countless cries welling up and drawing near.
The next moment, which probably every player, including myself, perceived.
"""""—, —, —, —, —————!!!"""""
With piercing screams and the infinitely echoing footsteps of their march.
From the mouth gaping open in the earth, measuring no less than twenty meters in diameter—a parade of a hundred demons of a scale that I didn't even feel like counting began to overflow.
And, at the same time.
Northwest, southwest, southeast—as if to follow the northeast (here) that I had dealt with, from three more locations.
"""——————————————————————————————"""
The giant tower monsters towered high into the sky.
Wow.