Chapter 402: The Emperor's Domain of the Crimson Noctilucence

Seeing off the three who were sent back when the Random Teleportation's time limit expired, I challenged the breakthrough of the desert using high-speed maneuvers triggered by the 【Levin Trigger: Hazard】.
In this day and age, having the opportunity to see a sky full of stars unobstructed by the light of civilization is rare. In that regard, VR—which can generate even the inside of a human body as a world if it wanted to—is a place where you could say there is no place you cannot go, provided you close your eyes to the fact that it isn't reality.

The starry sky I look up at is an incredibly captivating sight, but if I look away, there's a chance I could trip and send everything down the drain. I wonder how long I've been running without letting my guard down.

"The edge of the desert... I've, arrived..."

There's practically no BGM in ShanFro. There are times when a melody that's basically just a sound effect plays, but as a rule, music doesn't play during boss fights, and naturally, the same goes for non-combat times.
In other words, simply continuing to run silently through a desert... it was only after enduring such a rather grueling journey that I finally made progress, so even if a few tears welled up in my eyes, it surely couldn't be helped.

That being said, there is a reason why I was able to proceed through the vast desert without getting lost.

"Talk about a blaring beacon (Red Light), ruining the spectacular night view."

It looks as if a massive flame is burning the night sky. But that light is different from the radiance of fire as a flickering Energy (Power); it is an unwavering, constant light continuously bathing the sky... a red, crimson light like an illumination.

Lately, I haven't had any decent memories associated with the color red... whether it's that red thing that indiscriminately chomps down on everything, or the massive horde of red armor that instantly made the game a cakewalk... Hmm, instead of an unlucky day, an unlucky color?

"I see, depending on how you look at it, it really does look like the earth is wearing a crown."

Before I knew it, the sandy ground had changed to rugged rock surfaces, and I advanced through an inorganic twilight entirely devoid of even a sliver of dirt for grass to grow... until I finally reached a distance where I could see it with my own eyes.

"So this is the 'Crystal Crown' Noirlind spoke of..."

I hold my breath and smoothly scan the area. Assuming he wasn't exaggerating, there should be monsters on the level of the Elder Crystal Scorpion here. If I recall... centipedes and spiders?

"Aren't the bugs in ShanFro ridiculously strong...?"

A massive... I scan the terrain—which looks like a mortar and a donut merged together, so vast that it could comfortably swallow all of Thirdrema whole with room to spare—but there's no sign of the True Gaze Bird Mask's vision correction activating.

"...Are they sleeping?"

I see? The monsters' vigilance lowers at night, woohoo...

"........."

I pick up a softball-sized rock lying at my feet and lightly toss it. Since I didn't put any particular strength into it, the pebble simply falls following the calculations of gravity, lands on the mortar-like slope, and then rolls korokoro until.........

Zubobobobobobo!! (The sound of human-sized spiders bursting out from the slopes all over the place)

Begyaa!! (The sound of a crushingly nostalgic scrum that pulverizes even allies assaulting the pebble)

Zugoon!!! Bagya!!! (The sound of a giant centipede, perhaps enraged by the noise, emerging from the ground and steamrolling entire clusters of spiders)

Gogogogogogogo... (The sound of a Spider Fortress, which had been camouflaging as a massive boulder, surfacing)

Oh, I felt like I heard the sound of a conch shell signaling war.

"No, isn't this impossible?"

There shouldn't be any gunpowder or anything like that being used, yet the sounds of explosions have been ringing out incessantly.
Timidly peeking down, I see human-sized spiders—who knows where they were hiding—appearing in numbers that practically blanket the ground, attaching themselves to a centipede possessing a bizarrely developed, mysterious cylindrical outer shell on its back.

And then, detonation. It's not gunpowder-based; the seemingly impenetrable outer shell of the centipede cracks, perhaps because they're generating a tremendous shockwave or something from the inside.

But the centipede isn't losing either. Just by it coiling up, the child spiders are shattered in chunks of at least several dozen. Hmm? Is the suicide bombing an active motion rather than a passive one? The child spiders crushed by its attacks shatter into pieces and disappear without scattering shockwaves around. Ahh, the materials...

"Shit, Noirlind... so there was no exaggeration at all, huh."

If you toss a player into a place where a mobile fortress and a railway gun are entangled in a deathmatch, what exactly are they supposed to do? The survival rate of a civilian fleeing in a kaiju movie is probably higher than this.

"Heh... but I am no longer an existence bound to a flat plane. The realm of the Z-axis is already in my grasp..."

I somehow understand how this mortar-donut terrain was created, but so what?
I'm honestly repulsed by the fact that the larger spider is firing the child spiders from the protrusions on its back like artillery shells, and I'm doubly repulsed by the sight of the centipede spewing masses of poison from the cylinder on its back, clearly designed solely to obliterate enemies of the same size in a single blow.

I see. It's not particularly rare for humans to be placed at the bottom of the hierarchy in this type of hack-and-slash, but when forced to witness a grand kaiju battle like this, I have no choice but to admit it.
Citizens of humanity in the world of ShanFro, let us surrender the title of 'Primate.' Even if we act tough and call ourselves the 'lords of creation,' hierarchically speaking, we're probably somewhere a bit below the middle.

"A great war over a single pebble... So this is the bottom of a Kodoku jar, huh?"

Sorry, but the one reaching out for the jewel hanging from the ceiling is going to be me. 【Bradyon】 activate. From steps one to three I'll reach the crystal crown, and with steps four and five I'll land safely. A perfect plan.

At least until a minute ago, I honestly thought so without a shred of negligence, and in reality, the method itself shouldn't have been wrong.

Rewinding time just a little bit. Over the cauldron of hell where the sounds of roaring, rupturing, detonating, and crashing... basically the sounds of a battle not reliant on gunpowder echoed, a violet-and-navy comet dashed through.
To be honest, the sight of the effect trailing behind me—something halfway between blue and purple—... Ah, right, that's it. It resembles the movement effects of Meteas or a Prison Breaker who escaped jail.

Well, unlike those which are just simple movement motions, this is a Seven-Connection Skill where the risks and returns are taken to the absolute extreme. If I let my guard down, I could very well end up as a stain on the cliff.
However, the distance from the Edge of the mortar donut to the central crown is roughly a hundred meters by eye... Kukuku, a straight-line Long Jump with no obstacles is well within Bradyon's effective range.
An extreme trajectory that surpasses even the world records of track athletes. Since it's a game, you obviously want to surpass reality. It's the best... Alright, step two.

"Fuhahahahaha...! Gazing down at the struggles of the lower world from the heavens is the best...!!"

A god's perspective. Right now, I am an existence equal to a god...!! No, wait, it's a given that getting cocky like this leads to a painful retaliation. Hubris is a deadly poison that invites death and defeat... Just to be absolutely sure, I'll use 【Quantum Gaze】 too...

"───Ha?"

Light was dancing.
I mean that in the literal sense. Light was dancing in sharp-angled trajectories, as if the crimson crystal crown I was looking up at was causing diffuse reflections.

Ah, no.

Is that...

A wave of attacks so thin and sharp they look like lasers...?

"Tttttt!!!"

Using my third step, I jump straight sideways with all my might. By performing a sudden right-angle curve without decelerating, my body screams and creaks. But that doesn't matter; the effects of Bradyon allow me to tolerate a certain degree of recoil while active.

So, the problem isn't that...

Kyuga───────!!!!!

"Ii──────"

It was truly a moment decided by a hair's breadth. Tremendous destructive power visualized as a wave. Almost at the exact same instant I recognized it, an unmistakable "beam of light" flew past, punching through the atmosphere and passing right beside me.
The beam itself probably wasn't wind attribute; the firepower was just so absurd that the atmosphere itself was being pushed aside.

"Buh!?"

Oh, to think I'd get to experience what it's like to be a fly swatted by a flyswatter... Hahaha, does it have to be right now? It does? I see, THIS IS BAAAD!!

"Owaaaaaa!!?"

Shit! Getting grazed by a ridiculously thick laser at point-blank range is one thing, but my balance was completely destroyed! Am I going to die? Shit! I still have two steps left! Can I recover!?

If the effects of Quantum Gaze hadn't been active, I would've just died normally. Even while being blown away in a manner that felt like a flat spin mixed with a tumble dryer, my cognitive abilities and situational awareness are maintained in a slow-motion world.

First of all, no matter what, if I don't stabilize my body, there's no point in even talking.
I focus my consciousness to the absolute limit, waiting for the single instant within my washing-machine vision when my head and feet point in the correct directions.

The effect of Quantum Gaze is nearing its end. The distance to the ground of that hellscape is closing in. Even so, not yet, not yet, not yet......... NOW!!

"Four!"

I violently kick the empty air with all my might, performing an untethered reverse bungee jump with a straight upward propulsion that feels as if it completely overwrites all of my body's previous movements.
A split second later, the massive body of the Fortress Spider that had been blown away comes tumbling through the exact spot where I was about to fall. If I had been two seconds slower, I would've gotten caught up in that massive body and died.

"Kuo...!!?"

The effect of Quantum Gaze expires, and my consciousness almost fades from the sudden, drastic change in perceived speed. Dangerous. If I lose consciousness in the game, it'll be a disaster. If the next thing I see when I wake up is a forced logout system message, my spirit will break just a little.

But, I bought myself some time...! Somehow, I just need to land here...!!

"...Ah."

Right then, my eyes undoubtedly caught it. Was it the fruit of sharpening my concentration to its absolute limits, or the effect of the True Gaze Bird Mask...?

Within the crimson crystals, there was a single point—a crystal radiating an azure light. No, that's wrong. It is a crystal, yet it is not a crystal.

"I found it... A new species───!!"

And you're the one, aren't you? The culprit behind that beam of light from earlier...!!

The answer was shown in the form of a second volley. Wait, the fifth step is for landin—ah.

Author's Afterword
It's not like I particularly like scorpions or anything.

It's just that if I dump the lore about the newly introduced him, more than half of it might turn into the afterword again, just like yesterday...

By the way, regarding that beam: normally, even if you fire magical power of the same nature into an Emperor Treasure Crystal, it would just be absorbed. However, by colliding magical power of the same nature but with the opposite phase, the magical power forms a core and reflects. During that process, just as evaporating water takes heat away, the core magical power absorbs the magical power of the Emperor Treasure Crystal—well, actually, "coating" might be the more accurate expression. That process is repeated dozens, hundreds of times in the form of diffuse reflection. Finally, the magical power is intercepted by the tail to give it directionality within the compressed Emperor Treasure Crystal forming the body, and then blasted from both pincers. That's the technique.
Power? If it's a 120% charge with the resolve for self-destruction, then it's Glatofu... I mean, it's probably on the level where it wouldn't just blow through the outer scales of the Dragon-Serpents like Glatofudans, it would completely pierce them.