Chapter 142: The Shark and the Bird Who Defy the Abyss

There's a game called "Cosmo Buster." Released a few months before Faer-Kuso, it's considered one of the older Full-Dive VR FPS games. Its biggest selling point was the tagline: "Feel overwhelming despair with your entire body!" And speaking from my own experience playing it, you absolutely could feel overwhelming despair with your entire body, down to the last drop... Yeah, the utter bullshit of being swarmed from 360 degrees by infinitely respawning enemies that looked like basketballs with arms and legs glued to them.

If you ask what went wrong, it was that the developers, like many in the early days of Full-Dive VR, didn't understand the difference between "moving a controller in your hand" and "physically moving your own body." Actions that could be performed just by tilting a stick on a controller require you to move your actual body of your own volition in Full-Dive. Therefore, the way you balance and adjust a standard controller-type game is completely different from a Full-Dive game. During the dawn of Full-Dive, games that failed to make these adjustments—disappointing games that straddled the line between mediocre and Trash Game—were arguably more common than actual Trash Games.

"Shit, it's been a while since I've wished this badly for a mapping feature...!!"

The current situation brings to mind the good ol' days of Cosmo Buster's Stage 5 mission: "Allied Forces Retreat Decisive Battle." You know the "rear-guard suicide tactic"? The ultimate meat-head version of a lizard cutting off its tail to escape. It was a hellish scenario where you were forced to do that "alone," "over and over again," but I never thought that experience would actually be useful for breaking through my current situation.

The ultimate optimal conclusion for the "Allied Forces Retreat Decisive Battle" was not to fight. After all, the only defeat condition was "Player Death," and the evaluation criteria were purely based on the "Player's hit rate and kill score." No matter how many allied NPCs died, it didn't affect your rating at all. Until you realized the strategy of driving them to the cliff and blowing up the bridge for an easy S-Rank, it was an absolute nightmare... But the point is, what mattered in that mission was "how to escape to a specific point without taking damage."

"In Cosmo Buster, I had to use a glitch to climb walls, but in this game, I can climb them legitimately!"

Gravity Zero, Flit Float, and Shana-oh Possession activated. Having acquired top-tier mobility, I leaped using the rubble as footholds, kicked off the walls, stepped on empty air, and dashed straight up to the roof of a building. In Cosmo Buster, the enemies couldn't climb walls, so all they could do was chase me on the X and Y axes while I escaped to the safety of the Z axis... Ah, but it seems things aren't going to be that easy here.

"Why are swarm monsters with no individual rights always such a pain in the ass...!!"

If dust piling up can form a mountain, then piling up monsters can form a foothold. The ones in the back trample over the ones in the front, and by continuously repeating that process, a mountain of corpses becomes a path leading up to the roof. I don't know what percentage of their massive army they expended, but they climbed over a mountain of bodies thick enough to block the street, and several times that number of fish-men came scrambling up after me. I see, the freedom of movement they have is pretty troublesome.

"But that works in my favor, you single-celled idiots."

The ones chasing me, doing so with an honest, straightforward, and almost annoying persistence, are completely inflexible. Fish-men don't have a thought routine for "flanking"; they just track the path I took with absolute obedience. If that's the case, shaking them off using the X, Y, and Z axes is easy.

I run across roofs, jump over gaps, kick off pillars to run backwards, climb even higher, and pretend to jump across only to drop down instead. They try to forcibly keep up with my parkour-like movements by expending their manpower. The seemingly endless numbers dwindle every time a mountain of corpses is built. Every time I change paths or alter my height, more and more fish-men get left behind. Without any countermeasures for falling, the fish-men just pile up unnecessary corpses every time they plummet from top to bottom.

"Alright, good work."

Occasionally, I flip from escaping to attacking, taking out the fish-men that manage to catch up to thin their numbers even further. Even if the fish-men respawn infinitely, if their AI is deliberately set to be stupid, there are plenty of openings to exploit.

"Hah! Idiots!! If you want to corner me, you'd better surround me and drop poison gas on the whole area, allies included!!"

...No wait, please don't actually do that.

After managing to handle the zombie-panic-esque fish-men—though I wasn't really struggling enough to say I barely survived—I climbed onto the roof of a two-story building and looked over the entirety of the city once more.

"A castle in the center, and what looks like towers in the four directions of the circular city. I mean, it's practically screaming, 'Conquer those four and you can challenge the boss'..."

Hmm, from what I can see, I don't spot any of the other players, and I can't find any place that looks like a save point either.
I kicked off a straggling whiting-headed fish-man from the building and moved to another structure, weaving a double jump into my trajectory. A few of the fish-men behind me that tried to forcibly follow met the same fate as the ones that went before them. Aren't they a bit too stupid?

"Stealth action... can wait for now. I'll just keep moving across the rooftops... hm?"

Someone was running just now. And it wasn't the zombie-like shamble of the fish-men; it was a run that favored an injury. Someone with clearly enough intelligence to favor a wound was fleeing through the city. But what should I do? There's something bothering me.

"Even from a distance... there's clearly no one who matches the appearance of anyone in our group."

From what I could see, it was a large man. That instantly rules out Rust, Akitsu Akane, Emul, Ceecrue, and Stude. So is it Rei-shi or Mold? No... wait... didn't he have a tail? Like, a fish tail... So it's a fish-man after all? But those guys are the type to grab and attack even if half their neck is torn off. Would a fish-man like that hold a wound and run away from something?

"...Suspicious. Extremely suspicious."

I can smell flags and events drifting in the air... It smells fishy. Judging from my vantage point above, that path probably connects over there, so if I run that way, I can cut him off.

"Alright, let's go."

Jumping down from the roof and shaving off a bit of my HP, I rushed ahead to intercept the mysterious figure. I vaulted over houses, took shortcuts through alleys, and forced my way straight across the map. With my cooldown times halved, my overall mobility had drastically improved, and combining that with double jumps and various motion enhancements, I easily reached my predicted interception point. Games that let you pull off parkour-like movements like this make you feel like running forever, but I tucked that urge away in my chest and peaked out from the rooftop.
In an area where it's already hard to hear, the fact that I can hear maddened shrieks means the fish-men are right on his tail, and...

"Hah... hah...!"

"Hello there, relatively intelligent-looking fish-man. Are you capable of using those vocal cords to hold a conversation?"

"Kuh, you flanked me...!? Wait, why is a Birdian[*1] in a place like this?"

"Guardian?"

I calculated my descent to land right in front of him and attempted first contact with the fish-man, who was clutching a shoulder leaking red blood (damage effect). Judging by his build and voice, it was a male... He was wearing a strangely translucent, diving-suit-like outfit, and his appearance was a perfect split between a shark and a human. Radiating an aura of intelligence (NPC status) completely different from the fish-men I'd encountered so far, the man stared at me in dumbfounded shock while muttering strange words, but didn't immediately attack.
However, since this shark-man was running away, it was a given that something was chasing him. From around the corner, a swarm of rotting, mindless fish-men came surging forward.

"Ah, shit, talk later. Drink this and run!!"

"Eh, ah, I don't know who you are, but you have my thanks!!"

I was looking for a rabbit, a brat, or the other players, but the first entity capable of conversation I made contact with in this city turned out to be a shark fish-man.

Author's Afterword

And so, contact is made with a fish-man (?). For those who know the reference, I relied heavily on my big sister back in the day...

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Birdian: The Kanji is "Guardian" (Shugosha), but the Shark-man's Ruby text reads "Birdian" (Badian). The Shark-man is likely mistaking Sunraku—who wears a bird mask—for a member of an avian race.