Chapter 193: Liberation from Frustration, Run Now While Embracing Frustration

Me, Rust, Mold, Akitsu Akane, Emul, Ceecrue, Araba, Nereid. Excluding Rei who's still missing in action and Stude who's entirely excluded from combat, it's a pretty well-rounded, large-scale party.

A seven-person composition with three in the vanguard, two in the rearguard, and two skirmishers, featuring two pure magic classes—though as an exception, Nereid is technically classified as a magic class too, but since she's a weapon, she's excluded from that count.
The physical-specialized vanguards are me and Araba, while Ceecrue can somehow sprout bamboo using magic... Bamboo? Well, regardless of what the attack method is, he still counts as a magic attacker.
The two skirmishers can handle both magic and physical attacks, but there's quite a bias in their hybrid playstyles. Rust uses both physical and magic, but both of them are strictly long-range, while Akitsu Akane leans more toward being a magic class where her physical attacks are just an added bonus.

"So, since Rust and Mold can stick around until the morning of the sixth day (strictly speaking, until they have to log in to Nephilim Hollow), we're going to go defeat the boss now. Our target is... the 'Barnacle'."

A Sealed General that nullifies close-range attacks. At this point, the three vanguard members essentially become garbage. However, to prepare for the final day, I want to leave the easier Sealed General for last. Thus, we're leaving the "Married Duo" where Ceecrue won't become garbage for later.
Me and Araba are basically garbage against either of them so it doesn't make much of a difference for us. Look, I can serve as a mobile turret by carrying Emul, and apparently if Araba does this and that he can make Nereid materialize, so...

"What about Psyger-0-san?"

"I'll ask her to live strong."

No matter how high you level up or how much immense power you obtain, there are some things you just can't do anything about. If she isn't coming, we have no choice but to operate under the assumption that she isn't here.
But still, to not see hide nor hair of her... has she really not logged in a single time? Even though it's still summer vacation season, it's already the end of August, so it wouldn't be weird if she had plans or something, and to begin with, this was an incredibly sudden invitation anyway.

"In these kinds of games where 'time progresses outside of your own convenience', things like this happen all the time. It's sad, but the one who didn't log in is at fault..."

Well, if we're going to talk about fault, I think the game itself is also somewhat to blame for forcefully dragging you into an EX Scenario completely unprompted... I wonder if games that strictly adhere to their worldbuilding, even at the cost of some user convenience, are what's popular nowadays. Big bro here only plays trash games so I'm not really too well-versed on that.
I can name at least three or four games that got branded as trash games precisely because they over-committed to recreating their worldbuilding, though.

Ah, but on that front, I feel like gamers who hail from the gacha game community are generally really diligent about schedule management. Now that VR has become the mainstream in gaming, they haven't been able to maintain the sheer momentum of their golden age, but some of them are still going strong.
Even among them, the players who aren't so deeply invested that they completely ignore other games, but aren't entirely tied down by their gacha games either so they play other titles as well—those types of players are weirdly meticulous when it comes to things like daily dungeons and the like.
"Ah, sorry, I need to go grab my login bonuses" right before logging out is a completely standard routine for them. Since the gacha game community operates heavily on alerts and notifications... they usually vanish temporarily right around 5:00 or 6:00 AM.

"Oh, we're here already?"

"Were you deep in thought this whole time desu wa, Sunraku-san?"

"Hmm? I was just pondering whether it's possible to intentionally set a biological internal clock."

"Ughhh," Emul groans from atop my head. Setting her aside, we had finally arrived at the tower housing the "Barnacle." We did get attacked along the way by a bizarre creature that looked like a cross between a shark and a frog with peach fuzz growing all over its body, but at this point, those are nothing more than a chore that barely even registers as a distraction to my thoughts. They certainly aren't a threat to a party consisting of players and NPCs with such colorful, diverse capabilities.

"That thing... how do I put it... has a design that people who hate it will really hate."

It's humanoid... well, barely humanoid. The position of its neck is slightly too far toward the left shoulder, and its right arm is abnormally hypertrophied, but it passes the check.
But what deserves special mention isn't its overall shape, but its surface. When you think of barnacles, you think of things densely clustered on rocks and breakwaters, and exactly as you'd expect—or rather, true to its name—the monster's surface is densely covered in barnacles.

"Ughh..."

"How exactly does that thing nullify close-range attacks...? Does it project a shield or something?"

"No it doesn't, the moment a blade touches them they go buwaah! and multiply!"

"Well that's..."

That's going to be quite a shocking sight. Though I'm fairly resistant to the typical grossness associated with seafood.
My dad frequently falls into the ocean while saying things like, "Barnacles attract black sea bream, so I'm gathering bait on-site!" So the only image I have of barnacles is "fishing bait."

"............Come to think of it, aren't barnacles edible?"

Wait, was it only specific species that were edible...? Hmm?
Looking around, I notice my party members staring at me as if they're looking at something unbelievable. I even feel like the "Barnacle" we're about to fight is staring at me too.

"...Sunraku-san, no matter how you look at it, I really don't think you should eat that desu wa."

"Sunraku-san, are you perhaps the type who eats anything and everything!?"

"No, I don't mean that thing, I was talking about real-life barnacles."

But honestly, if it dropped an edible item, I'd probably want to give it a try.

"Alright, time to move out. Araba, you're up first!"

"Yeah!"

"Forget about being effective, just go punch it right in the face!"

"Yeah!?"

It's not an unreasonable demand. I just want to test if the close-range nullification restriction means we can't even draw aggro.

"Come on, go, go! I'll pick up your bones."

"Tch, you pushy bastard...!"

"I think this is the fir-ST time I've SEEN Araba being tossed around like THIS."

"You said it! Nereid, I'm counting on you!"

"O-KAY... 【Fissure of the Deep Pressure】"

A deep blue glow dwells within the thick blade. And the moment the blade slams into the Barnacle's body—faster than it could even react—a rather unfamiliar roar echoes out.
It wasn't the sound of metal clashing against metal, nor was it the sound of a blade cleaving through flesh. If I had to describe it, it sounded exactly like a massive boulder cracking open.

It was clearly the sound of massive damage far beyond a simple slash being unleashed, but the attack did not sever the Barnacle's flesh.

"So this is the mechanism that seals away close-range attacks...!"

"Ew, ew, it's all crunchy and squelchy..."

The Barnacle's flesh burst open along the line of the blade driven into its face. No, it didn't burst—an enormous amount of barnacles explosively multiplied out of it.
What a sheer display of brute force; it's basically the equivalent of continuously spawning shields until the attacker's kinetic energy runs out.

That being said, Araba's heavy attack wasn't entirely useless. Judging by how the Barnacle swung its hypertrophied right arm in an annoyed attempt to crush him, we can at least draw its aggro.

"There's no way we're breaking through that. We're discarding Plan B — Brute Force. Arabaaa! Fall baaaack!!"

We're going with our initial Plan A. According to Rust, the estimated distance for the long-range attacks nullified by the Ammo-Knight—the counterpart to the Barnacle—was between five to eight meters. If we just invert that property, there's a high probability this guy nullifies attacks launched from within an eight-meter radius at maximum.

"Alright, Akitsu Akane, I'm leaving Emul in your hands."

"Leave it to me! I'll protect her even if it costs me my life!"

"I really don't want a situation where it costs you your life desu wa!?"

Don't worry Emul, Akitsu Akane is cut from the same cloth as me and Sylvia Goldberg; she's not going to play a tank role where she shatters her bones and crushes her body. Well, if you take even a single hit from that arm, your bones probably would get shattered though.

"Alright Araba, Ceecrue! From here on out, we're going to mock this guy with everything we've got!"

"Yeah!"

"Is there really no better way you could phrase that, degozaru!?"

"We're going to swarm it like a bunch of annoying little flies!"

"The phrasing just got worse, degozaru!!"

It was a small, rather shoddy, detached house on the outskirts of the city—just one of the many houses in Ruluiath. The door opened slowly and carefully, as if trying not to break it, and she emerged.

"............"

It wasn't actually that large. She was certainly tall, but it was well within the realm of humanity, and while the Onimusha armor [*1] she wore certainly gave her a much bulkier silhouette than her bare body, she should have still been human-sized at the end of the day.
And yet, she looked massive. What exactly was causing her to look so overwhelmingly huge that even the already-small house she stood before now looked like nothing more than a doghouse?

Was it the power hidden within her making her appear larger? No, that wasn't it. It was something far more primal; the sheer pressure radiating from the person clad in that armor made her appear vastly larger than her actual size.

"Where... Where are you...?"

The fact that she hadn't logged in—hadn't been able to log in—for five whole days. The frustration of having less than two days left. The loneliness of having been entirely alone ever since she arrived in this place. The knight, bound by the chains of frustration, had now been unleashed.

"Gerurururorororo!!"

A monster with the body of a shark, the limbs of a frog, and wiry hair growing all over its body designed with the characteristic to hook fish—its name was "Deep Hook". A variant of a species whose kin also existed on the surface, this monster spotted a human in this bizarre hunting ground and lunged, seeing her as nothing more than prey.

".........Quiet!!"

The skill "Highest Strength", which drastically increases one's STR for an extremely short duration. The skill "Embrace of the Karma Demon", which increases counter damage based on the amount of aggro directed at the user. The magic 【Enchant: Vermilion】, which applies a special attribute effect distinct from higher-tier attributes to a weapon.
Furthermore, the sledgehammer belonging to the "Vorpal" series, the "Vorpal Sledge Custom 14", and the "Demon Roar Armor Set", which applies a massive modifier to attacks made with close-combat weapons.

Combined with the damage calculation from landing a full-swing critical hit squarely on the snout of the Deep Hook as it charged straight at her. A vanguard capable of acting as a tank, yet possessing "Maximum Firepower" physical strength—this full-bodied strike, fueled by frustration and anger, completely pulverized the Deep Hook's face, the sheer impact traveling through and shattering its cervical vertebrae, spine, and femurs right alongside its flesh.
Truly a display of shattered bones and crushed bodies; the bone scattered like dust, and with a single strike that looked as if it had made the body literally explode, the Deep Hook's HP was completely wiped out in one hit.

"I have to... find him... And then I have to apologize..."

Tonight, the danger level of a single "Individual" in Ruluiath had been updated.

Author's Afterword
Heroine-chan: "Right now, I am attempting to lose my composure."

Deep Hook: "Abeshi!" [*2]
Mud Digger: "Big brooo!!"

• Regarding Weapon Upgrades
  Weapon reinforcements in ShanFro (the ones with "Custom XX" attached to the weapon's name) can be upgraded up to a maximum of 15 stages. The merit is that the "Materials" required for upgrades are cheaper than evolving the weapon itself, but the demerit is that the "Cost" skyrockets from Custom 10 onwards. Just the monetary cost of upgrading from Custom 10 to Custom 11 alone is enough to craft about three copies of Duxram.
  By the way, from the time Heroine-chan temporarily parted ways in Fifticia until she was kidnapped by the barrel delivery, she managed to upgrade the base "Vorpal Sledge" all the way to Custom 14. The mindless button-mashing permitted only to true hardcore gamers...!

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Onimusha armor: A reference to Capcom's Onimusha franchise, featuring heavily armored samurai/demonic aesthetics.

• *[2] Abeshi!: A famous dying scream from Fist of the North Star (Hokuto no Ken), often uttered by grunts right before their bodies explode.