Chapter 948: To My Beloved Dawn, Part 21

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Once everyone shared the clear understanding that we needed to hurry and broke into a run, our marching speed naturally increased.

That said, to a psycho-horse that looked like it had only ever experienced tag as the one doing the chasing, this probably didn't even qualify as racewalking.

Scarlet Bay Tatenashi merely picked up the pace of its legs a little, clip-clop, while making an exaggerated show of yawning, and as I watched it through half-lidded eyes, our group continued pressing deeper and deeper into the Sea of Trees.

Fortunately, though it rankled me to call it that, the snakes and Poison Maidens always came from the same direction, so there was no need to agonize over which way to go.

And yet, there was something that had been bothering me for a while now.

"Rei-shi, what do you think?"

".........There are far too few of them, aren't there?"

As expected of Rei-shi. All I asked was what she thought, and we were already sharing the same vision.

What had been bothering me was the frequency at which Poison Maidens and snake-type monsters appeared......... or rather, perhaps I should say 'the very fact that they were appearing at all.'

We already know that Goldunine......... or rather, Boss-dunine, can generate poison clones, and we also already know that 'Goldunine' can command snake-type monsters.

In other words, there was no room to doubt that every attack so far had been the work of Goldunine the Inexhaustible.

But the issue wasn't the already-obvious 'who's doing it,' it was 'why only this much?'

"If the main force has already made contact......... I don't understand why any of her forces are being diverted over here."

"The worst-case scenario is that the main force has already been wiped out, but......... if that's the case, then it would be equally strange for the attacks to be this sporadic."

Multiple Goldunines were accompanying the main force.

Given Boss-dunine's personality, I couldn't see why she would send enough combat power for a group of ten or so to handle elsewhere while facing must-kill targets.

Then suppose the worst-case scenario Rei-shi mentioned had happened, the main force had already been wiped out, and Wimp was the only surviving Goldunine.........

I couldn't imagine they had gone down without resisting, but if the enemy still had enough combat power left over to distribute it, then the logic technically worked.

"....................."

".........Is something wrong?"

"No......... I just got an incredibly bad feeling."

While thinking about reasons to disperse one's forces, I......... suddenly hit upon an extremely unpleasant hypothesis.

An operation that calls not for quality and quantity, but for quantity and area coverage, is what society at large calls human-wave tactics.

And if she was spreading that quantity out to widen the area, it meant the combat power of the individual units could be disregarded.

What's more, both the Poison Maidens and Snake Maidens were probably expendable to her......... and if I framed it as 'something she wants the Poison Maidens and snakes to do by expanding their area, even if she loses those forces in the worst case'.........

Say......... if their primary objective was 'finding something.'

Finding what? Well, for example......... someone she hates so much she absolutely wants to kill them?

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"foouNd you."

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───It wasn't some sixth sense, animal instinct, or anything like that.

If I had to put a name to it......... a rule of thumb born of experience, maybe.

A moment exactly like this, after we'd beaten some decently strong trash mobs and the short breather had begun stretching a little too long.

A rule of thumb born of experience, earned precisely by clearing countless stories over all my years as a gamer: if an attack big enough to send the whole story lurching forward was going to happen, this was exactly when it would.

"Whoaaaaa!?"

"Sunraku!?"

Wimp called my name from atop the horse, half screaming.

I'd almost praise myself for reacting as well as I did, though with the situation being this much of a situation, I had to admit that was extremely difficult.

"Good eveninG!!"

"W-who might you......... be!!"

A hand less than half the size of my ownSunraku's was crushing my throat and driving me backward.

In the blink of an eye, I and 'another person' were separated from the group.

"Sunraku-san!!"

"I'll catch up! Go on ahead!!"

The identical-faced Poison Maidens, the abnormal eyeless Poison Maidens. But the thing before me was clearly different from both.

Her appearance was almost entirely human, and I had never seen a Goldunine with a side ponytail before......... which showed that this individual clearly possessed a character of her own rather than being a simple copy-and-paste.

The clearly meaningful words, unlike anything we had heard from the previous specimens, marked her as exactly what she was, a humanoid serpent, Goldunine the Inexhaustible herself.

But there was one point that was obviously different.

Something abnormal that I could discern precisely because she had me by the neck......... precisely because I could see her from only one arm's length away.

"Don't......... underestimate me!"

Unprecedented Secret ArtExordinary Skill "War-Shattering Amber DisplayWarphan" activated.

I really didn't want to use it here, but getting slammed into a tree or the ground like this would be far worse.

The touch was soft as a feather, but the extraordinary knockback it generated blasted away the slender arm constricting my throat tighter and tighter.

"!"

"Ghk."

Both the one doing the grabbing and the one being grabbedme lost our footing as the equilibrium was forcibly shattered.

But breakfalls are something I've already learned through actual player skill too, not just parameters.........!

I went down on my back, but rode the momentum into a backward roll, sprang to my feet, then threw in a backflip.

"................"

"................"

Silence.

'That thing' and I reset our stances......... and squared off about three meters apart.

"If you're going to introduce yourself, I suppose I'll hear you out?"

At my words......... the thing whose face looked exactly like Wimp's, or Boss-dunine's, or Ojou's, or Nine's, or, with no 'perhaps' about it, Isuna's, spread a broad grin.

"I am UWaA!!"

"Uwaa?"

"Because......... everYone who sees me screams thaT!!"

That's not them calling your name, that's just their death cry, isn't it?

Goldunine 'Uwaa,' having delivered the most tasteless introduction imaginable, leveled a spear formed from poison.

The whites of her eyes were stained a poisonous purple, yet the red irises glittering brightly within that purple twisted with delight.

I couldn't spend too much time on this, but......... this intimidating pressure scraping across my skin like sandpaper said she was anything but an ordinary opponent.

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Author's Afterword

・【Hard to Forget, Hard to AcceptDux】[*1]

You are me, i am me. If I am nothing but myself, then I am nothing but myself.

And yet, there certainly was a me different from me.

That was something that denied her convictions, something that shook her very foundations. She could never acknowledge that life, and so she killed it.

But even so......... no, precisely because she did so, she cannot deny it.

Thus, amid crystal-clear distortion, amid the vortex of ego, they remain without fading, as murk.

Afterimages, remnants, or perhaps rebirths.

They are the highest-tier poison clones generated by Goldunine the Inexhaustible, reproducing the capabilities they possessed 'in life' almost perfectly.

・Uwaa

The third Goldunine, clad in a dress dyed in fresh blood.

One who sneers with sadistic exhilaration.

A terrifying serpent who devoured even her own kin and held nothing sacred but trampling everything beneath her.

Screams, pleas, abuse, last words, death cries.

Her command of language was said to be excellent precisely because she learned her vocabulary from dying lives.

The type who goes, 'Ahahaha! You died with such a stupid look on your face!!'

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Translator's Notes

• [1] Dux: Latin for a leader or military commander. Following Equites and Legatus, it continues the Roman military-title naming used for Goldunine's higher poison-clone tiers, without necessarily indicating that Dux clones mechanically command the lower tiers.