Chapter 593: Witnessing the Truth on the Horizon of Tannhäuser
Author's Preface
My practice swings paid off, and I cleared out the Galaxy Traveler arc with a single home run. The lesson learned this time is that Space Operas tend to drag on.
───Well, if I had actually betrayed him, my helmet would have exploded on the spot, after all.
I won't forget how a man who is likely a driving force of Japan's economy casually let slip something that dangerous as if it were a schoolboy's prank.
The absolutely non-lethal, yet absolutely guaranteed-hit bullet struck the completely exposed face of G-Cup Breast Meat-shi... As his body was blown backward, Python and I sprang into action.
『Finish him off!!』
"You don't have to tell me!!"
"Ah, wait, healing—"
"Ah, right."
However, moving faster than we could declare checkmate was G-Cup Breast Meat-shi, who now sported a hit effect pasted squarely between his eyes.
"Activate Drones!!"
"What!!"
He was far too well-prepared. So he intended to instantly dispose of us the moment we turned hostile regardless, you damn Chicken Meat-san...!!
"You really did it... I bet that explosion on the Great Wall was your doing too!"
『An astute observation. It took damage, but it was all calculated.』
"Two main cannons, huh... With this, the match is decided..."
『Going to wave the white flag?』
G-Cup Breast Meat-shi settled back into the captain's chair with a weak smile. The moment I saw that smile, an incredibly bad premonition flashed through my mind.
I feel nothing but pure déjà vu from that smile. Specifically, I've been a victim, a perpetrator, and a third-party observer in situations where various people have worn that exact kind of smile, and honestly, I've even worn it myself as the person directly involved.
The shape of that mouth barely forming a smile out of pure exhaustion, and the intensely glaring gaze that shines in inverse proportion to it is──────
"I see, yeah, I understand. Then die along with me."
──────A desperate smile intended to drag everyone else down into ruin alongside oneself.
"What's with this shaking!?"
Right after G-Cup Breast Meat-shi, sitting in his chair as if even healing were too much of a bother, manipulated something, a tremor far removed from anything normal violently shook the entire Teraton-Class ship.
With a tremendously bad feeling welling up, I shout a question at Cutting Board-shi—who is likely watching this ship from a second-person view—while shooting down drones with a handgun different from the Blind Dragon.
"I really hope this is different from what I'm expecting, but what's the situation!!"
『It's exactly what you're expecting, and it's the worst-case scenario... He's overloading the core for a self-destruct suicide run!!』
"Yes, precisely! At this point, let's all die together! We can happily restart as friends!!"
Dammit, I can't even genuinely hurl insults at him because I'd absolutely do the exact same thing!! Of course you'd grab the ankles of someone you hate and drag them down with you if you're battered, bruised, and essentially issued a death sentence!! No matter how much wealth they have, people all do the exact same thing when pushed into a corner!!
『Can you stop him!?』
"Impossible. Want to test which is faster: the time it takes to kill a fully entrenched heavy whale player, or the time it takes for this ship to blow itself up!?"
I refuse to let this end in some lame mutual-destruction tie after coming all this way. I'm going to restart ShanFro feeling refreshed and victorious, so I'll find a path to winning and seize it!!
"Python! Got any ideas!!"
"We have to leave Teraton-Class matters to Teraton-Class ships! Please, Cutting Board-san!!"
『I'll shoot one of them down with the Contraction Reproduction Demise Cannon, but that ship is too close! Even if we manage to shoot down the flagship, the aftershock might take us down too.........!』
"Alright, give me ten seconds to organize the situation!!"
Due to range issues, this ship can't be shot down. I was actually considering just accepting a plan where we get vaporized along with this ship, but letting him make the first move hurts too much.
I don't know if G-Cup Breast Meat-shi plans to self-destruct after crashing into them, or if the core overload just hasn't triggered yet, but our current situation might not be a checkmate, but rather one move before check...
"............Basically, what we need right now is 'distance' and 'time'... right!?"
『If you summarize it, yes! But what will you do? Are you saying you have a plan?!』
"There's a chance if I can get outside!!"
The activation condition for this thing requires the player to personally step out into outer space. If I can somehow get outside......... But it's obvious that punching through the armor of a Teraton-Class from the inside isn't going to be easy. And I seriously doubt the current G-Cup Breast Meat-shi is just going to obediently open an exit for me. Seriously, what do I do!?
".........You just need to get outside, right?"
"Yeah!"
"Then I suppose I'll buy you that time next. Machogasaki-kun!!"
Who!? Ah, you mean Skinny-Machogamine-kun! Because it hadn't twitched an inch behind us until just now, I assumed it had ceased functioning, but apparently, it was merely being preserved to be used as combat power at the very end.
Perhaps sensing the danger from the creaking batroid standing up, the drones attacking us switched targets, but if they try half-baked stunts like that, it leaves me completely free.
"Like I'd let you!!"
In another universe, hip-firing is an essential skill. They say that if you reach master class—because there's always someone out there—you can perform super-dreadnought acrobatics like sniping with a hip-fired machine gun... I could only manage hip-fire sniping with an assault rifle. Every community has its share of inhuman players.
"Go, go, go! I won't be able to hold them off for long!!"
"Thanks for the support... Ah, right."
"What!!"
Squeezing a glance through the slight gap I forced open in their fierce assault, I see Python clinging to the batroid's back. Waving his hand flippantly, he says just one thing.
"Let's play together in ShanFro too, okay? Tsuchinoko-san."
"Hah!?"
My identi... Wait, when did he figure it out!?
Without leaving me any time to interrogate him, Machogasaki-kun charges forward, scattering sparks from its entire body as it pumps every ounce of power into its artificial muscles.
Its target isn't G-Cup Breast Meat-shi... but the wall of this room. More accurately, the glass panel offering a view of the outside, the relatively weakly-defended weak point of a Teraton-Class...!!
In the hand he waved to say goodbye was the bomb that everyone had brought along... And then.
"Alriiight!!!!"
For a split second, I felt like I heard an incredibly menacing, guttural voice, but it was drowned out by the ensuing explosion. As the wind pressure that had blown away the drones and myself reversed, turning into a force that violently yanked everything toward it, I realized Python's self-destruct had achieved its goal.
"!!"
Without resisting the pulling current, but not simply surrendering to it either—running at full speed as if to ride it out instead—I deal with the drone attacks using the bare minimum of evasion. I can hear G-Cup Breast Meat-shi screaming something behind me, but it's already too late.
Before I knew it, only my name was left in the party window. Wolf seems to have died as well, but the fact that enemy reinforcements never arrived until this very moment speaks volumes of his struggle. In that case, there's no reason to hesitate. Since the others laid their lives on the line, I'll pull off the impossible and tear open a path to victory!!
"Gather, Badugamosu! Come forth, Hyper-Dimension! And open, Tannhäuser!!"
Having launched myself out into outer space with nothing but my own body, I take a massive gulp of the air inside my time-limited helmet and activate the Super-Civilization Autonomous Constructing Metal Control Terminal. Fixing my gaze not on the charging Teraton-Class below, but past its very rear, further beyond... the change occurred instantly.
───There was a certain "mystery" surrounding Badugamosu.
Those metallic jellyfish fundamentally appear by having normal individuals crawl out of a massive entity called the Mother, like children. Therefore, the most effective attack against Badugamosu is destroying the Mother. Anyone could figure that out.
However, if you weaken this Mother to a certain point, it enters a retreat phase. And if you fail to defeat it within a certain time limit... it disappears. Furthermore, it does so with a movement that is clearly teleportation.
Then where exactly does the Mother disappear to? And where do Badugamosu even come from in the first place?
The answer was right before my eyes.
"T-This is..."
Crawling out from a wormhole likely connected to sub-space, four differently colored Badugamosu, boasting massive bodies on par with a Mother, appeared.
Gold, Silver, Platinum, and Diamond... The four radiances swirled in a circle, spinning at speeds where their jellyfish forms were no longer visible. Then, as if being compressed, that radiance converged into a single central point, and the light vanished......... I was staring directly at this spectacle with my naked eyes in real time.
"Event Horizon..."
What the Badugamosu are, what the lost Super-Cosmos is, what lies beyond that horizon staring into the infinite universe───!!
The name of the object formed by the four Secret Badugamosu was the Tannhäuser Gate. The massive mass hurtling forward at full power was captured by an even greater force and forcefully dragged into the gate. Naturally, my own body, possessing the mass of merely one human, was effortlessly sucked into the gate as well.
And right before I touched the gate—which was designed like a circle with a single horizontal line through it—I heard the sound of the world cracking. No, that's wrong. It was the sound of fissures running through the hull of the Teraton-Class that had been pushed to the absolute limit of its endurance.
Cutting Board-shi's flagship's ultimate trump card, preserved until the very last moment... The Expansion Reproduction Dawn Cannon, the counterpart to the Contraction Reproduction Demise Cannon and the ultimate weapon in terms of sheer firepower. The other 50,000-yen cannon had delivered the killing blow to the cornered rat that had grown far too large.
The impact point melts away, unable to withstand the heat, and the super-heavy mass is torn apart, unable to endure the strain. Feeding off the oxygen erupting from within the ship, flowers of crimson bloom.
As I passed through the gate ahead of it, watching the Teraton-Class finally split perfectly in two and get swallowed into the Tannhäuser Gate, I felt something snag in the back of my mind.
"Ah...?"
What is it? I feel like I reached the 'I did it' ending without a single shred of lingering regret, but what is bothering me?
I feel like just dying quickly here, taking the Teraton-Class, and restarting would make things a lot easier, but no, that's not it. It's the spectacle I'm looking at right now that caught my attention... Times like this call for properly organizing exactly what my eyes saw.
Ship, Teraton-Class, spaceships, Super-Civilization, gate... No, I can cross off Teraton-Class. That's a word exclusive to this game. If I've achieved what I set out to do in this game, then this sense of incongruity must stem from another game.
Ship, spaceships, Super-Civilization, gate... Gate, gate... In this context, it feels like it implies a new expansion or something similar. Which means the category is different.
The cause for triggering some kind of new expansion... A ship, spaceship, Super-Civilization............ The ship of a superior civilization, an artifact of civilization, civilization, culture, something made by human hands───
"Ah."
At that moment, a massive explosion erupted, as if giving voice to G-Cup Breast Meat-shi's dying regrets. The light and shockwave effortlessly blew my body away, violently shaving off my HP as I was blown even further past the Tannhäuser Gate.
But the information perceived from that light and shockwave was converted into something else inside my brain, racing through my mind like a bolt of lightning.
Ahh, I get it. Why was it so simple......... I thought it was the same type as Wethermon, but I was wrong. It's the same type as Ctarrnid. The goal was simply sitting within arm's reach; the key was there from the very beginning──────
At that moment, my vision whited out, likely entering a loading screen for an area transition.
...
.........
............
The massive fleet warfare that broke out in the Moscow Mule Sector ended with the deaths in combat of the Great Fleet of the Twin Hills' leader, G-Cup Breast Meat, and the alliance player Deer Horn.
Although Cutting Board suffered immense damage, having secured the concessions to the Moscow Mule Sector—where an unexpected landmark had been born—his faction would eventually prosper even more than before the war.
The war this time... Later known as the major player event called the "Unlock War," demonstrated the utility of assaults by individuals or small groups. The players who contributed immensely to Cutting Board's faction were personally gifted Teraton-Class spaceships purchased directly with Cutting Board's own money.
───However, among those players, the figure of the one bearing the name "Gazelle" was nowhere to be found...
Author's Afterword
Q. What happened to Sunraku?
A. Before his body could be blown away, he was warped into the Hyper-Dimension, so he's started a naked-run challenge of the end-game content.
By the way, as thanks for unlocking the Tannhäuser Gate (since obtaining the Moscow Mule Sector concessions allowed Cutting Board to monopolize everything related to the gate), Cutting Board gifted Sunraku two Teraton-Class ships. He can receive them once he dies and respawns.
Q. Where did Python figure out that Gazelle = Sunraku?
A. Chapter 578.
Comments
Thank you very much for the translations.
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