Chapter 382: Sharks in a Fishbowl

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The most important thing in a Bakumatsu event is to first clearly establish your own standing. Swinging your sword around aimlessly will only get you beaten to a pulp, and even if you're going for a Berserker playstyle, you still have to use your head.

For starters, the guys genuinely aiming for the top spot are essentially walking typhoons, so you absolutely must not get involved with them. They're all players who have completely discarded their morals and humanity, so it's a regular occurrence to suddenly realize your head has been skewered without you even noticing.
Besides, the first-place reward recipient always gets swarmed and beaten to death by a mob the moment the event ends, vanishing without a trace, so worrying about it is a waste of time. Unlike the second-place rewards and below, which have multiple copies, a national-treasure-class weapon is like a rainbow appearing in the sky after the rain; just seeing it is lucky enough.

Now, regarding this current event, the absolute villainy of the Bakumatsu administration is on full display with how they prepared non-physical avatars like Wraiths for a death-game-style format.
Is it out of consideration because you can't respawn during a death game? Don't be ridiculous, it's basically them saying, "Please use these players who can clip through walls as drones."

Those guys are kill scores that double as drones; there are absolutely going to be people who buy them off and use them. Like the "Warmonger" I just executed a minute ago; the one who stuck all those Kill Scores (Excess Wraiths) to you to turn you into a dummy target was probably him too.

This event ends either when you survive until the final day or the moment you're the last one standing, even before the event period is officially over. Meaning, right now, players are split between those who hide and those who hunt.

The ones hiding use the Wraiths because they want to eliminate their own danger as much as possible and make the others kill each other off. The ones hunting use the Wraiths—who have essentially had all movement restrictions removed—to smoke out the guys hiding in blind spots.

In short, this event looks like it requires survivability, but what it actually demands is strategy: how well can you manipulate the Wraiths? As expected of this wonderfully awful administration; this right here is exactly why I feel the urge to log into Bakumatsu every once in a while.

"Umm, so what does that mean?"

"The only people who can win through indiscriminate Divine Punishments are the absolute top-tier guys. You can't, so use your head."

Part of it is because the game tends to be underpopulated, but the reason the names at the very top of the rankings almost never change is simply because those guys are monsters hyper-specialized for Bakumatsu.
The only reason I managed to get a ranking reward wasn't because I challenged them head-on and won, but because I invented a highly efficient spawn-kill farming method.

"Honestly, just how strong is this 'absolute top tier'? I consider myself pretty skilled too, you know."

"There was one time a cheat went viral in this game, and it's so insane that even then, the Top 10 rankings didn't shift at all."

Beating an absolute-hit matchlock cheat with a quick draw is completely out of your mind, but it's a fact. You can catch a glimpse of the abyss of this game in the fact that the cheater, who ended up getting relentlessly targeted by ten rankers, was the one who cried uncle first. I honestly felt bad for the cheater getting absolutely curbstomped by a dream team with wide smiles plastered on their faces.
The deeper a guy steps into the abyss of this game, the more insane his movements become. Beating a sword with a dango skewer, what is actually going on? There are ten sharks born from cannibalizing each other inside the fishbowl known as Bakumatsu... Wait, is Bakumatsu actually a barrier designed to seal away monsters...?

"Well, for better or worse, they have a lot of followers because of that. So if you see a 'Night Parade of a Hundred Demons' made out of swarming Wraiths, there's probably a ranker leading them, so your only option is to run away."

"You mean like that?"

"Hm? Yeah, exactly like that. The guy at the front with the Lord-style topknot is 'Seii Taishogun', roughly 8th in the event rankings..."

One of the Wraiths gave me a thumbs up, and I returned it with a thumbs down. Looking closely, it was "Warmonger". Does that guy want to see blood even after he's dead?
And Mr. Seii Taishogun had a massive grin on his face.

Yeah, that guy kind of holds a grudge against me.

"Run away, Kyou-timateeeeeee!!"

"Eh? Eh!?"

This is bad, of all people, he's the worst one.
During a winter event way back when, I farmed so many points via spawn-killing that I got into the rankings, knocking him out of the bracket and causing him to lose out on the ranking reward. He definitely has a tab open for that grudge, so running into him now is seriously dangerous!!

"Divine Punishment Divine Punishment Diiiivine Punishment Diiiivine Punishment HhihihihihiHahahahahaha!!"

"Dammit, we were already spotted!"

"Wait, what is that!?"

"The end result of selling your soul to Bakumatsu and losing your humanity! He's a violence-machine that hunts down players the moment he spots them!!"

"That's not how you evaluate a human being, is it!?"

Dashing out of the tea house we had been using for our strategy meeting, I plunged into the tenement housing district alongside Kyou-timate, who didn't seem to fully grasp the situation but followed along anyway.

"Thank god I min-maxed STR. If I had min-maxed AGI, I'd already be in his attack range..."

"Oh, I've been raising my AGI lately too, you know?"

"Eh? Seriously?"

He's running right alongside us—that's hilarious... Ah, death.

"Divine Pun───"

"Uoooh, Secret Technique: 'Self-Tripping'!!"

"What!?"

Allow me to explain! The Secret Technique 'Self-Tripping' is a technique where you intentionally hook your own foot to take a massive fall with a trajectory even I can't predict! It's incredibly useful when you seriously can't dodge in time!

"Shiiih!!"

"The tip of my nose!?"

Despite catching him completely off guard, he instantly threw his sword at my face with zero hesitation. Dodging it just a hair's breadth from my nose, I drew my own sword and took a stance to counterattack before any more reinforcements arrived.

"Hoh... To think you'd have 'Ground Blizzard' of all things... It seems you wish to die."

"Sorry, but committing seppuku isn't really my style...! Besides, you probably already have one anyway, don't you."

"About two of them..."

At the very least, it seems two of the rankers from 2nd to 4th place besides me in last year's winter event had fallen victim.

"Well, that's that, and this is this. The heavens are telling me to settle past scores, so I'm not in the wrong."

"Every Bakumatsu player says that...!!"

Well, this is self-defense, so I'm not in the wrong either. The heavens say so too.

"S-Sunraku! There's another Night Parade of a Hundred Demons coming from over there!"

"Wh... No, wait, what kind of guy is leading them!?"

"Eh? Umm..."

"Chesutoooooooo!!"

"Hey, you're supposed to be on the Shinsengumi side, you bastard!!"

Stop using the Jigen-ryu style! Kh, the fighting space is too narrow. It's not exactly a back alley, but the width is tight, so if I drop my guard, I'll get pushed against the wall.
And the opponent is a genuine monster who has completely adapted to the atmosphere of Bakumatsu; he might just start running on the walls.
As I was barely deflecting the lethal blades, Kyou-timate, who was watching the front of the Night Parade coming from the opposite direction, yelled at me.

"It's hard to explain! His upper body has armor and a helmet, but his lower body is just a fundoshi... Eh, what is that, a wooden mallet?"

"Alright, he's here!!"

I can make them clash! There's only one guy who uses an unidentifiable pervert avatar like that! The other perverts are much more clearly defined!!

"As expected, even if it's just event-level, it seems you possess a certain degree of skill...!"

"Unfortunately...! For this kind of...! Delays and feints...! I've got plenty of experience dealing with them... hah!!"

If I take it head-on with this STR gap, I'll be broken in half. Using a fighting style full of dodges and parries just like when fighting Wethermon, I managed to evade the Divine Punishment and leaped out into the open main street.

"Hello there 'Jumonji Daifuku', I've got a delivery of 'Seii Taishogun' for you."

"I don't really get it but Divine Punishment!!"

"Guuh! Damn you, you made us clash!!"

As expected of a ranker; launching a Divine Punishment with absolutely zero explanation is a display of top-tier insanity.
But it saved me... "Jumonji Daifuku" is a regular at 9th place in the rankings, a mad dog bastard who aggressively picks fights with those ranked above him.

"Alright, time for Divine Punishment, you bastard!!"

"Well then, I'll leave the rest to you."

"Ah, wait! Kh...!!"

With the ghosts beginning to get hyped up with their (soundless) cheers and the sound of a wooden mallet shaking the earth behind me, I successfully escaped the area alongside Kyou-timate...

"...And so, as you can see, unexpectedly running into a ranker leads directly to death, so in this event, it's better to pawn them off on other rankers."

"Wasn't like seventy percent of that caused by your personal problems?"

"I'm a man who isn't bound by the past... ah, you're the bastard who stabbed me in the back during last year's event! Divine Punishment!!"

"Could you stop contradicting yourself in two seconds?"

Two seconds ago is still a perfectly valid past.

Author's Afterword

• Bakumatsu Rankers
  A group of madmen who have dedicated their lives quite seriously to Crossroads Killing Capriccio: Online. General players treat them as walking disasters.
  Since they are sharks polished inside a cramped fishbowl, if it's strictly within Bakumatsu, even Sylvia would probably lose. While everyone else is playing Dark Souls, these guys are moving like it's Armored Core; those are the rankers.
  That being said, they are still players, so it's quite common for subjugation squads of several dozen people to form up aiming for the ranker rewards, and they often get hit with Divine Punishment.
  Rank 1? Rumor has it he once intercepted and wiped out a 100-man subjugation squad.

By the way, the reason it's "Roughly X Place" is because while the general power dynamic is established among the rankers, upsets frequently occur due to interference from other players.
"Roughly 8th Place" Seii Taishogun is a mass of contradictions—a Shinsengumi who yells "Chesuto Sekigahara" with a greatsword—but he's strong because he can easily handle around twenty people with his "Chesuto."