Chapter 759: Cloudy Night Sky: A Scorching Mortal Struggle
◆
It's been...... probably five hours since the battle started. No, maybe six hours. It still hasn't been settled.
"Daaaaaaah!! Just how long are you gonna stay alive when I'm beating the shit out of you with maxed-out stats, you bastard!!"
"Scar-red" was simply tough in every way, both in terms of stamina and VIT. I already had numerous weapons on the verge of breaking inside my Inventoria, and right now, the situation was just a continuous, grinding mud-wrestling match.
"Fuh!!"
The swung-down Eska=Wallach chips away several of his scales, but I disengage before he launches his next attack. Immediately after, a shudder from his explosively swollen muscles assaults the spot where I just was.
If you fight for hours...... or perhaps, if you've already kept winning against tens and hundreds of challengers, even a reptilian AI learns anti-human tactics, huh? I see, imposing an absolutely simple size advantage truly is laughably effective against humans.
"Kuh."
The center head of "Scar-red" spat a lump of mucus at its own feet. A miss? No, wrong, that "fiendish tactic"...... Evade!!
The muscles of "Scar-red" bulged as it performed a full spin on the spot that seemed to make its entire body creak. Its tail, swinging as if to gouge the earth, blew away the nearly one-meter-high pile of mucus with a splat, causing the mucus to fly out......!!
Gachin!!
"Daaaaaaah!!"
This is it: the blow-away napalm ignition that "Scar-red" didn't use during the Devouring Great Crimson Clad fight. A fiendishly shitty tactic where the scattered mucus attacks as an unextinguishable chain of fire.
The ignited mucus turns into flames, and the generated flames burn the nearby mucus further, scattering "buckshot" of napalm all around. It's an area-suppression map-wipe attack, the type I'm weakest against. When he does this, I'm forced to play my thought acceleration card.
The black lightning that allowed my body to catch up to the world where only my thoughts were accelerated is lost, so can I manage with Idea=Gatleo Superior!? Doing this blind!!
This unruly tornado-spinning device has two types of acceleration despite having the same effect.
This rather unique acceleration method, which accelerates in a circular orbit corresponding to the stepped-out foot, consists of two types: an acceleration resembling a skirt flaring when stepping out with the opposite foot before the body completes a full rotation, and an acceleration centered around rotating in the opposite direction.
At the very least, thanks to the effect of the "Chronostaxia" skill, the chances of a misfire due to a judgment error are low, but even in slow motion, I don't have the luxury of leisurely contemplating how to evade napalm buckshot approaching at human walking speed.
"G-ooooh! My shoulder's on fire!!"
But that's all it is; I smash a recovery potion against my shoulder, shattering it.
The pain of the glass shards piercing me feels like the pain of a foot reflexology massage reduced to about twenty percent and moved to my shoulder. While it has an indescribable, unsettling grossness to it, that sentiment was left behind several seconds ago.
Scraping the ground with a loud gyari-gyari sound, I use the accelerated rotation to stand up from a nearly prone position, much like breakdancing.
"Tch!!"
I ready the Aerial PD and fire. But whether out of wild instinct or pure coincidence, "Scar-red" catches and deflects the bullet with the hardest part of its body...... namely, the head containing its skull.
"............"
"Garororororororo......"
It hasn't quite reached the level of a thousand-day stalemate, but it's an absolute mud-wrestling match.
I'm not dying thanks to relentlessly spamming my nearly triple-digit stockpile of recovery items, and he has the toughness to dismiss all my attacks as chip damage.
However,
"Heh......... brother, you're breathing rough, aren't you?"
This is the sea of trees in the eastern part of the New Continent, but it's also the northern part of the sea of trees bordering the northern frozen soil. Players merely perceive it as "Isn't the AC turned up a bit too high?", but in terms of world-building, it seems it's cold enough that your breath turns white.
The white exhalations pouring out so thickly that they almost hid "Scar-red's" face vividly displayed the depletion vitality, but of its vitality.
"How many hours have you been fighting continuously? There were highs and lows, but you never turned 'off', did you...... How many tens of thousands of calories do you need to maintain that massive body?"
Sorry, but I'm an old hand when it comes to fighting through the night. With the Crystal Scorpions, there was food everywhere so it wasn't a problem, and it's questionable if the big monsters in Sigmonia even need to eat in the first place (since even their mouths are specialized for combat).
So what about you, Draculus Dinocerberus "Scar-red"? Is that massive body of yours fuel-efficient? How many apples per hour do you need to output full power?
"Starve! Die! Go extinct, you mutation!!"
It was at that moment.
◇
───It was simply harassment.
That player had no acquaintance with the masked player he was peeking at with bated breath.
That player had no history with the terrifying crimson three-headed dragon he was peeking at with bated breath.
However, he knew who the fish-headed player was—contrary to the stories he'd heard—and on top of that, he chose interference rather than assistance.
"Heh...... 'Coincidences' like this can happen, right?"
It wasn't as if he had any grudge. It was just that something unpleasant had happened in his own personal affairs, so he made them the target to vent his frustrations.
The crimson Rare Enemy that very few players participating in the New Continent conquest didn't know about. He wanted to thrust reality upon the player trying to defeat it entirely solo: "If you think you can do everything by yourself, you're dead wrong."...... It was that kind of selfish, irresponsible, and inconsiderate harassment that was only permitted because it was a game.
That being said, precisely because it was irresponsible and inconsiderate, he wouldn't stain his hands with Player Killing, which would incur penalties, purely out of self-preservation.
A breach of manners that wouldn't blemish his own record, yet as a form of harassment, was in some ways more malicious than Player Killing.
"Ahhh! Sorrrryyyyy!!"
What he did was extremely simple. Gather the aggro of the surrounding monsters and shove it onto another player...... in other words, the act of pulling monsters along like connected train cars, known as a Mob Train.
If a large number of monsters were brought into an already razor-thin battle, no player would stand a chance.
Serves you right. I'm irritated because I just witnessed my junior at work, whom I liked, confessing to our younger boss, whom I want to die, to put it mildly. If you think everything is going to go your way, you're dead wrong.........
He didn't realize.
That the one person and the one beast fighting in this place, despite being completely different entities in terms of physique, body structure, race...... and even in the sense of reality versus a game, harbored a common dissatisfaction.
Namely...... they were both terribly starved.
Author's Afterword
Is that a spear thrust into your side to pierce your belly?
Pretty sure it's an iron BBQ skewer packed full of meat and vegetables.
Comments
Post a Comment