Chapter 730: Terror Runs Alongside the Terror Riding the Terror
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Man or horse, which one is actually faster? The answer to that is obvious: the horse.
No matter how fast the fastest human in the world moves their legs, the full-blown sprint unleashed by four legs fueled by an explosively inefficient "move or die" terrestrial metabolism isn't something the mere leg strength of a two-legged Homo sapiens can ever hope to compete against.
However, this is a fantasy game... Rei-shi's mount, Scarlet-Deerhair Tatenashi, is a monstrous giant horse combining both massive bulk and speed, and...
And I am the fastest humanity in the world, excluding Sensei.
"Um, are you sure you don't want to ride..."
"It's fine, it's fine! I'm fast!!"
"Varururururuon!!"
Hahahahaha, you shitty horse! You might win in toughness, but there's no way in hell I'm losing in pure speed to a giant body like you!!
For some reason, this horse absolutely despises me... no, rather than despising me, it's more like its only methods of communication are "biting" or "shoving".
But its horse power is the real deal; or rather, it's so strong that debating its authenticity is just plain stupid.
First of all, as a fundamental rule, players are the ones having fights picked with them. Unless you have some separate special modifier like Scars or a curse, you basically buy monster aggro the second you encounter them, right? Wait, do you sell a fight? Do you buy it? Whatever, doesn't matter.
But when it comes to interactions between monsters, the story changes. Take the Draculus Dinocerberus "Scarlet Wound" for example. From what I've heard, that explosive-heat environment-destroying organism is treated as a mere Rare Enemy rather than an Exordinary Monster, yet it is now the apex predator of the sea of trees environment. I hear even the original Exordinary Monster "Scars of a Mortal Struggle" actively avoids encountering it (I don't know who or where they are, but apparently some idiot—I mean, genius—actually tried to make those two fight each other).
In other words, strong monsters force lower-tier monsters to take the exact same actions as a curse.
And Scarlet-Deerhair Tatenashi, a.k.a. the Arma-Alogo Hetairon, is at the apex... or if not quite the apex, it's at least strong enough to have one foot firmly planted in it. And, on top of that, you have Rei-shi—who successfully job-changed into a hidden highest-tier class—riding right on top of it.
"A symbol-encounter style boss rush..."
"Eh?"
"No, it's nothing."
Meaning, towards a "you seriously don't want to mess with them" group consisting of a sprinting me and Scarlet-Deerhair Tatenashi (with Rei-shi on top), the vast majority of monsters would start fleeing the moment we even entered their field of vision.
"By the way, do you actually know where our destination is?"
"Yes. I asked the Dwarves about it as well, and found a likely location."
That place is apparently named the "Great Severing Scar". Just as the characters read, it is a massive fissure tearing through the ground like a crevasse in the far north, or perhaps a massive, continent-scale wound.
Why was a piece of land given the name "Scar"? Do the Dwarves know the truth of this continent? No, the reason this place came to be crowned with the name "Scar" is far more simple.
"...This is it."
"It just looks like a normal fissure on the surface, but..."
I can't see the bottom, but maybe we should try climbing down as a test... hm? I can... see... ah, what a feeling of déjà vu. To recall it specifically, it's like, you know, when you peek down the barrel of a massive beam weapon and catch sight of the light surging up from the depths...
It's a niche situation, sure, but you see it fairly often in missions where you have to perform sabotage from inside the cannon barrel. Wait, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die, I'm gonna die!!
"Whooooaaa!?"
Right after I threw myself backward with all my might, a light mixing white and black overflowed from the deepest depths of the fissure and erupted onto the surface. Perhaps it had properties akin to a laser or a beam, as the light, which shot into the sky retaining the exact shape of the fissure, dissipated as if fading away after a few seconds... Ah, I see?
"Like, it still hasn't formed a scab yet."
"Are you, okay?"
That's definitely the kind of instant-death gimmick that would vaporize anyone on contact, not just me...
Considering the guys sleeping beneath this continent, this is probably the wound Aether carved into Erebos. The damage received from an archenemy that doesn't mix on a level far beyond water and oil—on a literal white and black level—is probably still erupting out as unmixed light even now.
"Nine times out of ten, this is the 'White Scar', but..."
"What are we supposed to do..."
Immerse it in the white scar—some sort of quest presented to Rei-shi from the Sword of Taiji. What exactly does "immerse" mean we're supposed to do? Should we just charge right into the erupting scar beam, or do we need to climb all the way down to the bottom? If we have to climb down, we'd have to do something about the scar beam flying up at regular intervals... Unfortunately, I don't conveniently possess a means to nullify light/heat-attribute attacks, and what's more, I feel like trying to block this even a little bit will just result in death.
"No, that's not it..."
This is a task predicated on Rei-shi—or rather, the person possessing the weapons and armor Rei-shi has—challenging it. Which means the fundamental premise is having the "Sword of Taiji" and "Armor of Twin Reason" on hand... No, wait, can the Sword of Taiji, or rather the Sword of God-Demon, truly only be acquired by one single person? Well, considering the Non-Standard Tactical Mech-Beast is a one-off, I definitely feel like the devs of this game would pull something like that... But, that aside, would they really tune it to be challenged by a single player entirely solo?
I've thought this for a while now, but the balance tuning in this game is completely backwards in the weirdest places. Just when you think it's abnormally faithful to the world's lore, there are times when they obsess over balance tuning to an insane degree. To give an example, the Overdress Golem on the Debris Highway. Trying to clear something of that size without a Tactical Mech would require an absurd amount of effort, but they implemented a brain-strike gimmick as a solution, and built a route up to that point that says, "It's a fair bit of trouble, but absolutely worth the effort to attempt"...
"So which is it?"
"...?"
Lore priority, or walkthrough priority? If it's prioritizing the lore, it would be something simple like knocking the player wearing the Armor of Twin Reason all the way down to the bottom to trigger an awakening... No, as expected, that's just... hmm...
"Um, Sunraku-kun..."
"Hm?"
"Actually... I have a bit of an idea."
Oho.
Just what kind of "idea" did Rei-shi propose?
Author's Afterword
In both senses, it is also known as "The Aftermath of a Fistfight Between Gods".
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