Chapter 688: Echo Upon the Mirror's Surface, Roar From the Skyscrapers - Part 6
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Now then, first up is the preliminary boss rush to test the waters. Though to be fair, for the First through Fourth Movements, all I have to do is simply follow the song and recreate the arbitrary flow of events.
Standing within Orchestra's "Theater"—a being with whom I arguably share a much deeper grievance than Lycaon, at least in terms of the number of black stars etched onto my combat record—I performed a final check of the contents of my Inventoria before walking toward the music player embedded in the wall.
"I looked it up in Behemoth, you know. Your ownership history."
From a meta perspective, considering Orchestra is a Unique Monster, you'd think that kind of mundane information wouldn't normally be preserved, but I had a hunch the data was there...... and sure enough, bingo.
The data slumbering in the deepest depths of the Tenth Layer of Behemoth, the center of its wisdom, reliably recorded the exact path that tiny machine had taken. From the very first owner who bought that music player as an antique, to their grandchild, to their wife, to their daughter, to their best friend, to the customer who bought it from the shop where the father sold it......
At the exact moment the Earth was abandoned, the music player brought aboard the Leviathan changed hands constantly, until a certain soldier transferred to the Behemoth and passed it on to someone else, and from there, it went through several more owners before ultimately finding its way to Andrew.
"If Orchestra is meant to be a vessel harboring the lingering wills of its past owners, a dialogue with pre-Divine Age humanity......... then who the hell are you?"
The moment my finger touched it, the music began to play. Triggered by that sound, the "Diva" and the "Ensemble" appeared...... Now I understand. The sense of incongruity I felt back when I made that collage image at the JGE. The reason why Orchestra was literally the "Theater" itself was because the existence known as Orchestra was the very world containing the existences of the past.
Then it makes no sense. The pieces don't fit together. You shouldn't be here.
"Elise Jitterdoll never owned this music player."
The only connection Elise Jitterdoll herself has with this music player is her singing voice. It makes no sense for the "Diva" to take Elise's form. Even assuming Elise manifested purely because her song was saved on it, the device only contains audio data...... Is it even possible to construct Elise's entire physical appearance from purely audio data without any images?
But even if I forcibly swallow that pill and accept it as "Well, a bunch of occult power happened and Elise came out," it still leaves the glaring mystery of "Why was Elise Jitterdoll the one chosen?"
Because, think about it.
"There were several actual members of Sternenblume among your past owners, after all......!!"
The Theater that was also the Arena—the battlefield meant to test the challenger—wavered and trembled. And what assembled itself in accordance with the song flowing from the "Diva's" lips was...... oh my, well well well, if it isn't "Warphan"-kun. It feels like it's been quite a long time, even though we only met once and I was the one who brutally put you down so we'd never meet again.
At any rate, there are two matters I need to consider right now.
First.
Despite the fact that actual members of Sternenblume were among the historical owners, why was Elise Jitterdoll chosen instead—someone who was just a minor singer with a gap in status akin to glass compared to a diamond when placed next to a galaxy-class idol group, and who wasn't even a past owner?
Second.
Because the battle against "Warphan" is inherently accompanied by the Great Sigmonia War, how exactly am I supposed to clear this arena that has instantly transformed into a pandemonious, agonizing hellscape?
Within the theater that had somehow transformed into the distinctive mortar-shaped terrain with a crown at the center, I readied my swords, glaring fiercely at the reproduced "Warphan" as it flew around, weaving through the lingering shadows of a massive spider, a centipede, and a scorpion that had manifested alongside a deafening roar.
"Ah, right."
The Meteor Iron Mirror is...... there it is. It had already positioned itself overhead to film from a bird's-eye view without me noticing. Alright, zoom in a little bit, good boy, good boy.
"Umm, First Movement. The opponent is the Exordinary Monster FM's Chrysalis 'Warphan'. Due to the location of the encounter, the fight will take place while completely ignoring this massive, utterly ridiculous brawl between a giant spider and a centipede, all while lasers rain down from above."
I guess this is good enough. Alright, let's get this reproduction walkthrough started! I honestly can't remember much besides crushing it under the sheer dead weight of Genbu at the very end, but the lyrics will fill in the blanks anyway!!
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In modern society, information behaves much like fire or water.
In most cases, a single spark of information broadcasted by a single person will simply be swallowed up and extinguished by the overwhelming tsunami of other information.
But occasionally, that spark will vigorously flare up and grow into a massive conflagration capable of catching anyone's eye. A certain live stream that began abruptly without warning was decidedly the latter.
"What in the wooorrrrrrrrrrrrld is this guy doing........."
Amane Towa, who had been actively gathering information on Shangri-La Frontier through various channels in preparation for the upcoming massive war, let out a long, heavy sigh as she stared at the real-time stream playing on a certain video site.
『YeahYEAHTHaT's eXaCTlY tHe feeliNGggg g g g !!!』
When she saw the crimson beast bouncing around on the screen, laughing uproariously while riding on the back of some gigantic rhinoceros beetle she had never seen before, Towa's thoughts ground to a complete halt for several seconds. But by the time her brain thawed from its freeze, she was already rapidly processing the "Why."
(The odds of Sunraku-kun suddenly awakening an inner desire to be a streamer are basically zero. Despite how he acts, he's actually quite the shy boy at heart, after all.)
At the very least, he wasn't the type of person who would start streaming purely out of a desire for attention. So then, why did he start streaming......
"'OrchVerification'. Assuming 'Orch' means Orchestra...... he wouldn't normally use a word like 'Verification'......"
If he were to name it himself, it would be "Walkthrough" or "Subjugation". Having known him for a decent amount of time, she could roughly guess the kind of vocabulary Sunraku preferred to use. What reason could there be for him to actively avoid those words in favor of "Verification"?
"That damn sly old raccoon......... No, wait. This completely half-assed title...... did Sunraku-kun just mess up his privacy settings......?"
Having deduced roughly ninety percent of the truth solely through observation through the screen, Towa immediately switched her brain to the next line of thought.
(The viewer count has crossed 5,000 and is still climbing...... Once it reaches this point, hiding him is impossible. The other side has definitely caught wind of Sunraku-kun's details. Granted, it's a bit of a "so what?" situation, but putting that aside, how can I leverage this massive blunder? Keep using him as a walking billboard? Mmm, at this point, that might actually end up dragging us down instead......)
"Haaah......... Guess there won't be any sleeping tonight."
There was a mountain of things to consider, but more than that, missing out on watching a prime matchup like Orchestra vs Sunraku in real-time was simply not an option. Figuring she might as well drag someone else down with her, Pencil boiled water to brew some coffee while simultaneously initiating a relentless barrage of incoming calls to her friend......
Author's Afterword
Incidentally, Momo-nee-san finally woke up in a fit of absolute rage the moment her notification count hit 32.
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