Chapter 439: O Dragon, O Dragon! Part 16

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"Alright Saina! Emul! Plan B!!"

"What is Plan B?"

"Plan B (Blood). I fight until I die."

"That's not so much a strategy as it is an honorable death..."

"Frankly speaking, for a player who can respawn, both self-destruction and an honorable death are valid options."

"I think Pencilgon would go as far as being a human bomb, but what does Sunraku think?"

"...No, first off, she'd set up a way to blow herself up spectacularly. She's the woman who blew up the royal castle along with the end of the Pencil Dynasty, you know."

Apparently, even wood is a target for plundering over there, so the castle still isn't finished. The End-of-the-Century Round Table is truly the end of the century. It's a world throwing away tomorrow in a completely different direction from Bakumatsu...

"Issuance of Plan B confirmed. Reconfirming, Master: we Conquista Dolls will teleport to the vicinity of the contractor in sync with the contractor's reconstruction."

"Heard you, heard you. What about you, Emul? Are you gonna stay here with Rei-shi and... ah, Diale? Or go back to the save point... the place you teleported from first?"

"I'll stay here, desu wa! Besides, the current me is a cut or two above the rest, desu wa...!"

"..., ...? .........!!?!?"

Oops, looks like Diale noticed something and is pulling an incredible facial expression... Yeah, well, that's how it is. Emul has overcome the wall imposed on NPCs... the wall separating double digits from triple digits. Yep, while keeping me company during Wimp's hellish power-leveling and my grinding loops...

The current Emul is Lv. 101. The road to 100 was absurdly long, but she leveled up to 101 relatively easily. Well, if you keep sticking your nose into the decisive battles between the Trainol Centipede and the Fortress Gargantula over and over again, of course you'll level up.
Ah—well, um... as for Diale-shi, I can only offer my deepest condolences...

"Kuuuuu......... kill meee......"

Well, I can understand how she feels. Even though I'm practically the root cause of it all.
Anyway, I can't keep chatting forever. The moment the signal firework went up, the Rust plan was practically identical to being completed. The final stage of Plan B is completed by spectacularly blowing myself up, so I'm gonna die either way, but, well... I gotta maintain a high degree of flexibility and act adaptably...

"Release the beast within your heart..."

"Don't die before Rust gets here, okay?"

"I wonder if they'll get here within five minutes?"

"Who knows..."

Well, whatever. Reducing the colored dragons to facilitate the subjugation of Siegwurm is part of the plan anyway. And unlike the scorpions, these guys are easy kill-score farms. It's a battlefield practically made for me...

Placing the red skull onto my head with a kapo, I stared straight ahead through one of the six eye sockets and took a step forward.

"Ah, I'm gonna be doing this pretty flashily, so you should probably step back if you can."

"Will there be collateral damage?"

"I gave you my warning."

Now then......... Five minutes, five minutes, huh. I don't really have to worry about the quota, but... five minutes. Will I be able to fight with all my might until the end?

Well, it'll probably be fine, because after all...

"I've already been inoculated with the English spelling of Quantum...!!"

"You're just hopped up on drugs."

"It's legal! ......'Blood Heart'!!!"

Those words. The moment the sound that vibrated my throat shook the skull, it felt exactly like an under-specced PC freezing for a split second when trying to start a massive task. Simply put, it felt as if "the air had frozen solid."
Even through the mourning clothes, because I was wearing it directly on my head, I knew. The bizarre red skull had definitely just... pulsed.

"Eh, wait, what's that."

"Blood...?"

The red skull, the red bone, that red thing. Whether it was actually made of calcium or not was unknown, but a thick, red liquid was oozing out of the skull, which should have been solid.
Naturally, it overflowed and clung to me, the wearer, as if crawling and seeping into my body.
My body convulsed and spasmed. From my perspective, it was just a system motion, so there was absolutely no pain, but seeing the reactions of everyone around me, it was blatantly obvious that the sight of my entire body stiffening and convulsing looked absolutely atrocious on the outside.

And eventually, the overflowing red liquid stopped dripping and clearly began to form a new shape.
Drops tracing the contours of my face gathered to form a lower jaw, and the red dripping from my shoulders down to my arms transformed my frail human fingers into those of a beast.
Thorn-like protrusions, seemingly designed solely to harm whatever they touched, sprouted from my back and shoulders, and the thing that slithered out from behind my waist was unmistakably a tail.

And finally, the red liquid... the eyelids covering the six eye sockets of the skull enveloped in the blood of something opened, and the six glaring eyeballs that appeared from beneath glared at the battlefield.

"Fuuuuuuuuu......"

"U-Um... Sunraku? Are you still sane?"

"........."

I took a silent step toward OiKatzo. OiKatzo took a step back from me.

"You look stupid as heeeeell......"

"No good, seems he's lost his reason. Allow me to assist you with seppuku."

"No, that's..."

I don't have time to deal with a bottom guy who kept his face exactly the same even after changing genders. Unlike the Second Form... wait, no, R.I.P., the Third Form—the Brood=Krone—isn't limitless.

"It's a Harvest FestivalaaaaaAAA!!"

I dashed forward, letting out an effect-laden scream. Grabbing the neck of a nearby humanoid small dragon, I poured strength into my grip with a goki.
With a sensation akin to snapping a piece of fugashi, the small dragon shattered, and its death effect was sucked into my beast-transformed head.

"Osshaaaaa!!"

Executing a back-step to return to my original position, I pulled out the two swords I had stabbed into the ground and plunged straight into the battlefield.

"Out of the waaaaay!!"

"A monster!?"

"Ah, look ou...!"

Sorry, fellow players!! With this form, my physical height gets way bigger!! My bad, but stop what you're doing, move those legs, and get out of the waaaaay!!

The thrown Memento Mori pierced through the torso of a Giant small dragon. Following it up with a flying kick to the pommel drove the oversized sword completely through, stabbing it firmly into the ground.

"It's about time I started whittling down the main body toooOO!!"

Bryreinyego, continuing to produce forces from the inside out against the players' encircling annihilation formation, naturally had a higher density of enemies the closer one got to the main body.
But with an attack hitbox currently applied to my entire body, even just swinging my tail around serves as a source of damage.

"FuhahahaHaHaHaHaHa...!! Time to shift into a higher gear, you bastardsssSS!!"

It's a Code Red. You white bastards better stay indoors. I'm gonna crush every single White Dragon-series enemy currently outside down to the roots.

The weight-reduction effect of the Memento Mori disappears when combat ends or when it is returned to the inventory.
Which means, conversely, if I just leave it stabbed into the ground somewhere, I can preserve the weight-reduction effect. And on top of that, it's possible to grip a different weapon!!

The technique of fighting while leaving weapons out on the field seems to be a fairly common tech in ShanFro, but this tactic has a flaw: if the player dies, any weapon not currently in their hands is left exactly where it is.
Unless it's PK, ownership shouldn't transfer, but even putting that aside, you still have to go back to retrieve it. Worst case scenario, simply because it isn't tucked away in Inventoria, someone might just walk off with it.

Well, in short, it's fine as long as I don't die, and I just have to half-kill any scoundrel who tries to steal it. Besides... I'm not giving them the time for that anyway.

"Full Throttleeeeeee!!"

I'm starting to find the effect applied to this voice kinda funny. That's not good. Weee aaaaare aaaliiiieeeennns...

Author's Afterword
Red Beast Form.

The Third Form of the wicked magical girl who is starting to give up her humanity. It looks like a red version of that handsome seaweed paste guy [*1]. Meaning the "Black" Genesis Kin is... no, it's fine! That guy is solid!!
From an outsider's perspective, it looks completely like he's going berserk, and no matter how you look at it, it seems bad for the body, but to the user, their vision just turns slightly red, and there are no other particular problems.
The eyes increase to six, but you don't actually get slammed with six eyes' worth of visual information. From the player's perspective, it's still standard binocular vision.

Generally, the reward items dropped by Raid Monsters come in three varieties:

• High Risk / High Return

• Medium Risk / Medium Return

• Low Risk / Low Return
  The Brood=Krone is in the High Risk / High Return category. Which means, in the worst-case scenario, it contains the possibility of the user's race itself being contaminated by the Genesis.

Of course, that doesn't mean Low Risk / Low Return items are "duds." Many of them, like the Necrophagy, make you think, "Isn't this just normally convenient?" Or rather, in a place with lots of things to grab onto like the Sea of Trees, it might actually be a better pull than the Brood=Krone...

Damn you, Tottori!! (Green Dragon's honest thoughts)

• [1] It's Venom from Marvel (I think)