Chapter 954: To My Beloved Dawn, Part 27

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"Phew........."

Seriously, this is why I have nothing but rotten memories of enemies with poison.

Thinking back, I've been getting tormented by poison ever since the day I fought the Gluttonous Giant Serpent.

That said, as a field test for the Imperial Gold Dragon Sword, I suppose this earns a passing grade.

"Sorry about using you for a test cut."

"ah, hA, haH........."

The Goldunine called 'Uwaa,' her throat sliced open in one horizontal stroke, let out a rasp of air.

From her expression and the movement of her lips, I could just barely tell that she was laughing.

"Imperial Gold Dragon SwordMavors, you're quite the handful, aren't you?"

The change this thing underwent mid-battle had me scrambling around wondering 'what the hell is happening,' but between what I figured out during the fight and what I checked again just now, I've got a general grasp on how to operate the Imperial Gold Dragon Sword.

And it isn't even putting out its full spec, so Dragon Destroyer Gear really is something else.

I put the Imperial Gold Dragon Sword away in Inventoria, then looked at Uwaa again.

The throat wound was the fatal blow, but it looked like what had really done the work was my repeatedly hacking apart the poison spears she produced from her body.

Apparently that attack spent HP to activate, and swinging the Imperial Gold Dragon Sword around was so damn fun that I cut down every last one of them, so she just kept wearing herself out.

"A... nA, NaMe... MY, namE............"

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

On top of having her throat slashed, Uwaa was being burned, and her words were swallowed by damage effects that spurted out like blood spray or froth, leaving them, by sheer coincidence, sounding like nothing but a snake's warning hiss.

But I had a pretty good idea what she was trying to say.

"That wasn't a bad fight, Uwaa."

"...!"

She'd spent the whole fight making a racket about 'call my name, call my name,' so it wasn't hard to guess what she wanted in her final moments.

I don't know what kind of thinking led to choosing such an outrageously ominous name... though if we're talking naming sense, 'Wimp' is pretty questionable, too... well, if she chose it herself and goes around introducing herself by it, I suppose she must be satisfied.

And when it comes to naming sense, players aren't exactly in a position to talk.

You can be walking through town and suddenly see a beautiful woman named 'Scream-Training Tentacle Tomato,' so Uwaa is downright adorable by comparison.

What the hell is a Tentacle Tomato... which part is the tentacle, and what even is that vegetable writhing with obscene intent in the first place?

There are quite a few people who burn with some unimaginable passion for making others do a double take.

"U, AA... so... HYu... Wa, HYaHi........."

Those were her final words.

Along with that rasp, the body that had taken human form transformed into poison, just as her eyes had, and melted away.

Every last Goldunine seems to carry a negative emotion at the core of her personality, and Uwaa, who had spent the fight cackling at a nearly manic pitch, at the very end... or perhaps, in her second death, melted away not with a broad grin but with a faint smile, and I wondered whether, for her, that counted as happiness......................

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

How do I put it, yeah............... am I seriously going to get this foul an aftertaste every single time I kill one enemy Mob that's basically an option part for the boss!?

My PvP history isn't so shallow that an enemy's appearance would make my hand falter at this point, but separately from that, this game's realism is way too high to process them on an assembly line of 'Good work, next.'

More importantly, this is a blind first run, and I want to avoid skipping events as much as possible.

Still, despite not being Boss-dunine herself, she was one hell of a strong enemy.

Her HP being close to a player's, combined with her frequent use of recoil-damage skills, was exactly why I could wrap it up quickly, but if ten or twenty of these started spawning, we'd be in serious trouble.

Granted, she caught me by surprise, but she was still the kind of thing that could grab my large avatar and take off running with me; with that appearance but Rei-shi on the inside... yeah, you could call it Psyger-0's physical strength.

If she'd also mastered magic the way Rei-shi has, I genuinely would've cried.

The unlocking of the New Continent... no, more accurately Bahamut's appearance, I guess; some time has passed since then.

Since the Dragon Calamity War, triple-digit players haven't been all that rare.

I've seen a fair number of triple-digit players myself, but even then, Rei-shi is an outlier. She's the final destination of the idealtemplate.

And then she's fully kitted out in Unique equipment and riding a terrifying horse, so players following the same build philosophy must find her unbearable.

"Now then............ since we made eye contact, shouldn't you come out already?"

Uwaa and I hadn't exactly been fighting inside some cramped sumo ring.

Both of us had run all over, flying and leaping around to secure favorable positions and terrain advantage.

As a result, I no longer knew where I was or how far I'd gotten from the spot where I split off from everyone else... and, on top of that, I was also a little unsure which way I was supposed to go.

In other words, I was lost... but as a separate matter, apparently I'd crashed straight into a PUG mid-fight.

And what's more, it was familiar......... black armor.

"You wouldn't happen to be streaming, would you?"

I don't have many good memories involving streams.

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(I'd vaguely suspected as much, but... everything about her is strong!)

The moment she knew Yozora was a swordsman, she'd had a vague suspicion.

The moment she saw Yozora had the form of a young girl, she'd had a bad feeling.

And the moment she knew Yozora was a 'Goldunine'... it was exactly as expected.

(She's fast, tough, and above all, freakishly strong...! I'm going to snap before we even get to cutting and being cut, seriously...!)

Whenever their blades locked, Kyogoku was driven back.

Yozora showed no sign of flinching no matter how many times she was cut.

Whenever Kyogoku opened the distance, Yozora closed it first.

And above all else.........

"a liTTle loNGer and thiCKer"

"It's already big enough...!"

Immediately after Kyogoku evaded, the obsidian-black killing intent, now swollen to roughly three meters in blade alone, split the earth where she had stood.

Yozora's katana had originally been the same size as the one Kyogoku wielded. Yet it repeatedly transformed with complete freedom, as though declaring it would grant any impossible demand she could make of it.

(Fortunately, making it bigger seems to make it proportionately harder to swing, but...)

It was merely harder to swing; she was still swinging it.

And if that massive weight, driven by the strength needed to swing such a thing around, hit her, even someone in the triple digits wouldn't get away unscathed.

(With skills, I can win on speed, but...)

To begin with, "Kyou-Ultimate's" skill loadout was not designed for long fights.

Thirty minutes at most; beyond that, skill recast times piled up until her neck could no longer turn.

Three-for-Two Strides was still available, but because the skill altered both her stride length and the distance she traveled, managing spacing during in-fighting was extremely difficult.

Wind-Lightning Surge: already used, waiting for its recast to finish.

Thunder and Lightning Insta-Kill Blade: available... however, the post-use stun penalty was far too dangerous to accept except as a finisher.

Ground-Fang Run: a high-speed movement skill whose effect continued if she landed an attack after moving... activated.

Like a snake crawling across the ground, Kyogoku dove low into the 'current' three-meter-radius kill zone.

The blade was too large to stop Kyogoku's accelerated charge.

Before Yozora could shrink the enormous obsidian-black killing intent, Kyogoku's kesa-giri[*1] tore through her......... but.

"That should've been dō-ari[*2]..."

Slurrrp.

Before the wound could even release damage effects, poison traced over Yozora's wound like a crawling snake and covered it.

(I've cut her deep at least five times already, a player would've died ages ago, and even a monster should be moving at least a little like it's wounded... but her performance isn't dropping!)

Nothing but sheer, undying vitality.

The First, who had continued seeking life even if it meant crawling the earth, drinking mud, and biting into carrion.

That outrageous vitality was slowly grinding Kyogoku into a losing war of attrition.

Author's Afterword

That was a name people called again and again whenever she won.

When she lost, no one called her by that name.

Drained until even the strength to scream her death cry had run dry, she died without anyone calling her name.

This time, too, her throat was torn open, leaving her unable even to scream her death cry.

Even so, she died with her name being called.

・Uwabami

The snake that follows Yozora. Strictly speaking, it is not a snake, but something defined as one. It has already appeared.

Translator's Notes

• [1] Kesa-giri: A diagonal sword cut from one shoulder toward the opposite flank, named after the diagonal way a Buddhist kesa robe is worn.
• [2] Dō-ari: The kendō declaration recognizing a valid strike to the dō, the protected torso target.