Chapter 951: To My Beloved Dawn, Part 24
Imperial Gold Sword.
The king of the Crystal Scorpions who overcame his picky eating and became a gourmand. Forged with lavish amounts of his materials, this sword possesses the ability to absorb metals, gemstones... anything that falls broadly under the category of 'mineral,' and generate a blade from it.
The scope of this 'mineral' category is broad yet narrow, and materials from mineral-like monsters fall outside the bounds of what it can absorb. It has to be a mineral of the sort that would drop from mining.
But ever since I obtained those three crystalline masses after defeating a True Dragon Species... the True Dragon's Treasure Proofs, I had been thinking about it.
It started with the question, 'Does this count as ore?' but the moment elements that had originally been separate became linked by a single... line of thought, the option of 'using a True Dragon's Treasure Proof on the Imperial Gold Sword' had ended up taking root in my mind.
The thing is, they go together.
A crystal scorpion and a dragon of metal blades. A sword without a blade, housing the power of a dragon that was itself like a blade.
Collaboration, mariage, super combo, synergy. Call it whatever you want, in the end, 'because it's cool' was a reason I couldn't ignore.
Because come on, cool and cute alike... they're the embodiment of the ideal inside you. Games are fun because they let you make that real.
"This kind of thing is at its coolest when you do it right before the big boss... ah, whatever."
Rejoice, Uwaa, you're the first witness to a legend!!
The Imperial Gold Sword, having fully absorbed the Treasure Proof, gave off an ominous light.
Not its usual, almost deliberately gaudy glittering gold, but something clearer... like the reflected gleam of a terrifyingly sharpened kitchen knife.
It was the gleam of steel that unmistakably called that full-body-of-blades dragon to mind.
With a series of crackling sounds, a blade began forming on the Imperial Gold Sword.
But this was clearly different from the usual: it was not merely generating a blade; the design of the sword itself was transforming.
The Imperial Gold Sword had only been gaudy and sparkling to the point of bad taste because of its materials, while the sword's design itself had been fairly simple, but now it grew jagged, and black, a color that the emperor had never possessed, began mixing into it.
That intensely jagged design, which looked somehow familiar, was unmistakably modeled after that dragon's wings, or perhaps it resembled a crown of spiky crystal and blades... and then the blade, which had looked like an aggregation of crystals, bubbled and melted away.
"It's a birthday party, sorry we're rushing the proceedings."
Allow me to introduce the star of the party.
"Let's go, Imperial Gold Dragon Sword![*1]"
I leveled at Uwaa the black-silver blade that had emerged from within the melted crystal, golden lines pulsing through it.
Okay, first things first......... time out, could you let me read the weapon description?
"a-ha-Ha-hA-ha-HA!!"
Mmm, no dice. Life is always a no-rehearsal live run!!
This bastard had the gall to keep the fact that she could sprout spears from anywhere on her body at lethal speed hidden as a proper trump card.
But her trump card had been flipped faceup and exposed to broad daylight (though it was night).
And so, as though she no longer had any need to hide it, a poison spear launched at high speed from Uwaa's hand, aimed at me.
───For the barest instant, a look at the text so brief it couldn't even be called skim-reading. But I had definitely seen the words 'On Hit' in the Imperial Gold Dragon Sword's ability text. I read that much, so there was no mistake.
Then it isn't just me, this sword is on a no-rehearsal live run too! Hit something and we'll find out what it does!
Deflect the poison spear and observe what changes.........
Peel
"Peel?"
◇
Goldunine the Inexhaustible.
The two characters for 'Inexhaustible' crowning her name succinctly indicate that, by virtue of her origin and nature, the existence called 'Goldunine' can be copied and multiplied without end.
But not every one of those individuals possesses precisely identical capabilities.
Eight individuals, numbers 2 through 9, excluding 1 and everyone from 10 onward. Only the individuals called the Original Eight are different.
In the beginning was the first Goldunine, who burst apart beneath an ego swelling as the Great Serpent.
The swollen and partitioned ego was born bearing the emotions that had churned through and devoured the innards of a single beast... the number of portions cut away was eight.
From those eight people, all subsequent Goldunines were born.
If one were to force the relationship between shed skin and what lay within into the analogy of 'parent and child'......... then the Original Eight are, as a whole, the mother of every 'Goldunine' born up to the present day.
Therefore.
"───a fine niGHt, isn't it?"
The insurmountable gulf called years separating the Original Eight from all who came after.
It meant nothing, she had simply greeted them because they happened to meet... yet at those casual words from the 'second,' every Goldunine present, without exception, became aware of her own death.
"U-uh........."
"Isuna?"
"ah, thaT oNe... no GOod, tHat oNe aLOne is nO gooD...!"
Isuna was the Goldunine Kyogoku had contracted with, virtually seizing the contract from the player Kyogoku herself had cut down, and even to Kyogoku's eyes, Isuna was plainly behaving strangely.
The other Goldunines were reacting little differently from Isuna.
"Don't tell me that's the Boss-dunine Sunraku mentioned?"
"No, that isn't her... it shouldn't be, anyway..."
Shiyu was an outsider player compared with Kyogoku, who had experience fighting the Unique Monster 'Goldunine the Inexhaustible,' yet she was the one who answered in the shaken Goldunines' stead that it was not.
Then who was 'she,' the one who had transformed the air merely by offering a greeting............ no,
"............"
That was not what had seized Kyogoku's attention.
"...A katana, huh."
Compared with the cultural-property katanas familiar to Ryuguin Kyogoku, its design was remarkably crude.
It could have looked like nothing more than a nicely carved piece of ore stuck onto a nice-looking branch, or like a masterpiece wrought by the master craftsman known as Mother Nature.
But that was not what Kyogoku found impossible to overlook.
"as fOr Me PerSoNaLly, i bear no gRUdge... well, call it a tWIst of fATe."
The way she carried herself as that Goldunine smoothly drew the obsidian katana worn at her waist.
A movement that concealed within an utterly unremarkable action a readiness for go no sen, the initiative after, capable of answering any surprise attack.
───Grandfather! What would you do if a wicked samurai attacked you in the middle of town!?
───First, I'd praise him for having the nerve to challenge me... listen well, Kyogoku, in that situation your first choice should be to run, but if you must stand and fight.........
An ordinary, foolish question from childhood.
But her stern grandfather had answered the 'situation straight out of a period drama' with his own brand of humor.
It remains an unfaded treasure within Kyogoku even now... and that Goldunine's unforced bearing was that very thing.
".........I see. I see."
"What's up, Kyogoku-chan?"
Perhaps she had caught the scent of the emotions swirling within that tiny murmur, because even with the situation tense, Pencilgon addressed Kyogoku first.
"Nah, just some personal business......... yeah, never thought I'd end up saying a line this painfully cliché, but........."
Kyogoku smoothly drew her katana and spoke.
"Leave this to me and go on ahead. Sorry, but take Isuna with you too... okay?"
What Kyogoku faced was the Inexhaustible's double, or perhaps......... the shadow of a peerless swordsman.
Author's Afterword
The Trace AI system is patented by Utopia Corp, and its data belongs to Utopia Corp.
• Imperial Gold Dragon Sword
In classification terms, it is Dragon Destroyer Gear.
Through the paradoxical guarantee that 'a weapon possessed by one who defeated a dragon is Dragon Destroyer Gear,' the weapon that was not used at the time became Dragon Destroyer Gear.
In game terms, if a weapon or piece of armor qualifying as Dragon Destroyer Gear breaks and disappears during battle with a True Dragon Species, or if the player was using equipment that cannot be made into Dragon Destroyer Gear, this is a kind of relief reward allowing them to 'turn any equipment of their choice into Dragon Destroyer Gear.'
Steel and gemstones are decisively different, yet both are deeply bound to the earth, and the two are far more compatible than Sunraku thinks.
As a rule, anything bearing the name of a god that once existed... or a god from far, far away is strong; that is a basic law of Shangri-La Frontier. Brain-kun is saying, 'That's right, that's right,' too.
Translator's Notes
- [1] Mavors: An old poetic Latin name for Mars. Antiares echoes Antares, the red star in Scorpius whose name means 'rival of Ares,' linking the scorpion-derived sword's original name to its new Mars-derived one.
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