Table of Contents
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE REPUBLIC OF GAMEHLEIN
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE BEAST KINGDOM
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE BEAST KINGDOM
DAY 118: MORNING -- ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
DAY 118: MIDDAY -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 118: EVENING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 119: MORNING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- OUTSIDE A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON -- 37TH FLOOR
DAY 119: AFTERNOON -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119: AFTERNOON -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119: EVENING -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 120: EARLY MORNING -- ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
DAY 120: MIDDAY -- THE MONSTER FOREST -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 120: AFTERNOON -- THE PLAINS IN THE FRONTIER
DAY 120: EVENING -- OMUI CITY -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 120: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 121: MORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121: MORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121: MIDMORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121: MIDDAY -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121: OMUI CITY -- THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD MASTER'S OFFICE
DAY 121: AFTERNOON -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON -- 55TH FLOOR
DAY 121: AFTERNOON -- THE FRONTIER GENERAL STORE
DAY 121: EVENING -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 121: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- GIRLS' MEETING
DAY 121: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN
EPILOGUE: A NEW DAWN FOR THE CATHEDRAL
Newsletter
Copyrights and Credits
Characters and Story
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN
DAY 117
AFTERNOON
Not a soul dislikes natto. Nope, natto one. (Except me!)
ON THE ROAD IN THE THEOCRACY
INKY BLACK NIGHT—the Wraith’s Shroud—covered his shoulders and cascaded down his back. He pressed his hand into the soft, loamy soil. Then, with a jerk, his right hand shot up clenching a fistful of straw and soybeans!
Haruka-kun was well underway to becoming a first-class fermenter. If his experiments bore fruit, we’d soon have natto and cheese for all. I had my concerns—I didn’t think a powerful dungeon item like the “Wraith’s Shroud: All stats +30%. Magic Absorption (mega). Magic Reflection (mega). Magic Control (mega). MP Absorption. Trait Nullification upon Contact. Rot and Equipment Fracture upon Contact. +DEF.” should be conscripted into natto production—but who was I to judge? Oh, and… Haruka-kun, don’t forget the green onion!
“I can’t believe we have natto at last! I gave up all hope of eating it again when we found out the Beast Kingdom didn’t have any.”
“Yay, natto! And it only comes at the price of Haruka-kun looking like a megadork.”
Aye, for the Wraith’s Shroud held sway o’er the realms of death and decay. Cocooned in that chthonian cloth, the black shadow of Haruka-kun loomed above the baleful beans, a skulking silhouette of night tearing them string from wretched string… I wasn’t aware natto-making was such a sinister process, but hey! The more you know. And for all its ominous appearance, the feats of Haruka-kun’s fermenting looked fingerlicking good.
“Is he trying to make it look disgusting?”
“Well, he’s failing, ’cause this natto is deee-lish.”
Haruka-kun claimed he was trialing a new product to collect data for his internal systems, but all we cared about was the yummy goodness! Tears streamed from our eyes the moment the fermented beans hit our tongues. From then on, there was nothing but the sounds of us snuffling back snot and snarfing up snot-like soybeans in equal measure.
“Huh? Where’d the locals go?”
“The girls who were born in this world? Dunno. If they don’t want their share, more for us.”
“Look, Slimey likes it!”
Wiggle wiggle!
Huh. Haruka-kun hadn’t eaten any himself. Judging by the shudders of horror as he whipped up this feast of fermentation, Haruka-kun wasn’t a natto fan.
“He doesn’t like it, but he made it for us anyway? Aww…”
“He didn’t have to make the production process look like something out of a horror movie, though.”
We were all feeling a bit portly—Oops! poorly—so this natto would have to tide us over until dinner. No lunch for us! We also planned to help the arts club girls with dinner duties tonight. We wouldn’t let our job penalties hold us back. Surely we could manage a few simple recipes. Right?
“Too bad I didn’t get a chance to tour the Sagrada Familia while we were in town! You know, that famous cathedral?”
“I went by it earlier, and uh… The sign called it an eroticathedral.”
“That’s one heck of a misspell.”
Though as far as names went, it wasn’t…wrong? No doubt the namesake of the copy cathedral, this ya no tantosagrada familia, would’ve blushed to see the signboard on the Theocracy’s newest edifice. It was a marker of the place’s less than salubrious contents.
“Haruka-kun being Haruka-kun, I knew he would bungle it somehow. That’s why I wrote out ‘Zaasimov’ on a sign and gave it to him to stick in the ground. I never expected he’d misspell the ordinary words.”
“Right? How hard is it to spell ‘cathedral’?”
“Poor Zaasimov. He’s about to go down in history as an eroticanonized saint.”
“I can hear him rolling in his grave from here.”
As we spoke, the culprit behind these shenanigans (Haruka-kun) was hard at work training with Slimey. Slimey barreled forward, a lightning flash of hurtling slime, smacking into…thin air. Haruka-kun dodged his attack handily, moving so fast he was out of Slimey’s way by the time Slimey had even thought about charging. The issue was, Haruka-kun still had a little tripping and falling problem. Okay, make that a big tripping and falling problem.
“Wow, he’s lost…everything. All his fighting talent is gone.”
The ephemeral flash steps with the grace of a trained dancer? Gone. The flickering phantom footwork of a combat master? Lost. The swordplay that moved so fast it looked sluggish to the untrained eye, the deft weapon handling for which gods would have wept? Vanished. Haruka-kun moved like a completely different creature now. Every step was disjointed; every turn was a jerk. He made raising an arm look like an ordeal. He had to learn how to use his body all over again, because everything he’d fought for, everything he’d scraped to put together, every bit of skill he’d cobbled together over countless sleepless nights—was gone.
“Whoa! I can’t even follow what’s going on.”
“What did he just do?!”
“He got out of the way. He didn’t dodge—that implies a reaction. He’s sidestepping before Slimey begins to attack.”
“You’re right. Slimey didn’t even get close!”
“Haruka-kun is teleporting!”
He sure was. He was a speed demon, but speed was all he had going for him. Haruka-kun’s coordination and expertise were gone. His footwork was a shadow of its former self, rendered clumsy and predictable in its hyperspeed haste. Haruka-kun tripped and stumbled his way through every attempted kata.
“Uh…is there a martial art that involves tripping and falling?”
“Art is a strong word for…whatever that is.”
“What the hell! Haruka-kun worked so hard for his skills. He worked harder than any of us, that’s for sure! It’s just not fair!”
Haruka-kun’s mud-stained martial mishaps made him a pitiful sight, but none of us had the heart to laugh at him. We had to fight back our tears—to say nothing of our bitten lips and clenched fists—as we watched him run the same five moves, all based on the same half-step motion, over and over again.
“He only knows five kata now? That…that can’t be true.”
“But it is. This is all he’s capable of anymore.”
Slimey tagged out, and we stepped in to help train Haruka-kun. If it had been painful to watch him be a stumbling fool, it was agony to fight him. We couldn’t laugh. Not at him. Not…when he was running circles around us?!
“How?!”
“What just happened?”
He was only drilling the same handful of kata ad nauseam, right? He only had five moves in his metaphorical toolbelt, didn’t he? He was clumsy and uncoordinated to boot—and yet he was mopping the floor with us!
“I thought he had the lowest speed stat of us all!”
“His footwork is a mess, and he fights like a white belt. How is he beating us?”
None of us could hit him. His reaction speed outstripped the speed of thought and left our otherwise lofty speed stats behind in the dust.
“Eek! Don’t knock me over! My skirt!!!”
It wasn’t like we weren’t trying, either. We fought as hard as we could and got our butts handed to us—which was as infuriating as it was thrilling. I looked around and saw big grins on every one of my classmates’ faces. Haruka-kun was too beat up to move, too wobbly to manage the most basic tasks, but he was still a brilliant fighter. Even now, Haruka-kun could, quite literally, sweep us off our feet.
“Ow! Hey! Didn’t anyone ever teach you it’s not nice to send girls flying?!”
For a man capable of no more than five moves, Haruka-kun was impossible to predict. His lightning-fast flashes of movements were simply too much for us. Every time we thought we had won the initiative, Haruka-kun dodged and counter-attacked before we could finish our swing. He was ungainly, clumsy, staggering, and stumbling…but he was calm. Cool, even. There was a serious light in his eyes as he launched himself into battle. Haruka-kun was back in action—the self-same Haruka-kun who made us smile our fears away. He made a laughingstock of our worries, turned our concern into a fool’s errand. His fighting was a living lie—an attempt to deceive us that nothing was wrong. Oh yes, Haruka-kun was back in action again. He was his old self, his strong self—and that was why we laughed, and cried, and screamed at him: “Damn you, Haruka! You beat us!”
“Seriously! How did we not win?”
Break time was over. Back to the carriages we went. Once we were alone in the girls’ carriage, I opened the floor for a girls’-meeting-slash-post mortem. We all had plenty of good-natured complaints to get off our chests.
“What happened to all of his fancy tricks?”
“Gone. All he had were the same five moves over and over.”
“He didn’t go overboard for once. He just comboed his five kata.”
“It’s not even like they’re that complex! Take a half-step forward, stick out your fist—that’s all there is to it! How did we get beaten by that?”
Fighting Haruka-kun was like getting tricked by a shapeshifting fox of legend. Facing him was akin to going toe-to-toe with a cryptid.
“Those kata are called wuxingquan, five elements fist, if I remember correctly. They form the basis of xingyiquan. According to practitioners of the art, every kung fu concept is represented in these five kata. I’ve heard said it’s all the same art: at times, an axe; at others, a spear; a boring drill; a roaring fire arrow; a curving sickle.”
“I…I see?”
Pretty impressive for a shambling, incoherent wreck like Haruka-kun.
“Haruka-kun can barely walk, so he only uses five moves. But when those five moves are the essential forms of the entire art of kung fu—well, it’s no wonder he’s trying to master them. He’s working himself half to death in the process.”
And here I thought Haruka-kun had been messing around as usual. Turned out, his move set had quite the impressive pedigree! The execution was lacking, but that was because his end goal was ultra-high-concept.
“Yes, wuxingquan form the basis of xingyiquan, which is purportedly the most powerful of all the internal Chinese martial arts. These internal arts—neijiaquan—operate in contrast to the so-called ‘external’ arts that rely solely on the practitioner’s muscle power. Neijia don’t depend on muscle strength at all. Instead, neijiaquan place an emphasis on qi-cultivating breathing techniques and other similar processes. It’s quite a pragmatic choice for someone who can’t control his own body, I should say. Haruka-kun can still make good use of Qi Wizardry and qi activation with these five moves.”
“Ughhh… And here I thought we finally had a chance to win!”
“For real! I planned on giving Haruka-kun a handicap, but I changed my tune once I saw him in action. Not like that helped matters…”
Haruka-kun’s simplified move set had no glitz, no glamour, and forget any sort of reach. The moves were so simple, Haruka-kun looked open to attack half the time. However, whenever we rushed in to take advantage of his apparent weakness, Haruka-kun knocked us away from him. We’d go tumbling, weapons flying out of our hands. He’d deflect every sweeping sword with a deft push on the flat of the blade, and in the same instant, we’d feel a matching pressure on our elbow or shoulder. Next thing we knew, we would find ourselves rolling head-over-heels through the dirt.
“You see, it all comes down to elemental affinity. Haruka-kun responds with the kata that corresponds to whichever element trumps the element of your attack. It’s quite a challenge to thwart this art. Wuxingquan may lack the flashiness of other styles, but it more than pulls its weight in efficiency.”
“You’re telling me…and I wish you’d told me this before he beat us six ways to Sunday!”
Wuxingquan’s footwork was much simpler than its neijia cousin tai chi, relying solely on the half-step. It was disarmingly simple. I’d thought I’d had Haruka-kun’s number—but fat chance of that! I was completely unequipped to face him. We all were.
All right, enough of that. We girls deserved a break! We spilled out of the carriage in a teeming horde of slavering girls, ready to take on this new art—and receive our three-o’-clock snack!
“It’s time to learn wuxingquan for ourselves!”
“Yeah! Wait, we need to get in character. What’s the mood, girls? Mini or full-length qipaos?”
“I’m feeling full-length. There’s no fancy footwork to trip us up.”
“Or kicks.”
“Wait. What if…we dressed the part only from the waist up?”
“Genius. Pure genius.”
“And for bottoms, what say we wear PE short-shorts? For ease of movement.”
“Love the school theme! Speaking of, I’m told teacher play is especially effective on Haruka-kun.”
“What if we flipped the script? Student play!”
“That’s not roleplaying, though. That’s literally what we are…”
The snack turned out to be pudding. Tuckered out from battle as we were, the sweet treat couldn’t have been more welcome. We returned to the battlefield inspired. Pure destructive force met cool logic; complexity and rationality married to give birth to our form of wuxingquan. Every time a foot hit the ground, the slits running up our qipaos disclosed a flash of bare leg. Haruka-kun, poor guy, had no idea where to look.
Whisper, whisper…
I think he’s got a weakness for long skirts!
It’s a weakness for upskirting.
Well, that explains the nun habits…
Heh heh! With these outfits, victory is in the bag. He couldn’t focus now if his life depended on it!
Yeah! His attacks have lost their punch.
Master likes, all costume. All weaknesses.
No armor, but robe. Is another weakness.
Gosh, he sure has a lot of weaknesses…
Honestly, I was hoping we could’ve hung around in the Theocracy longer. Haruka-kun needed a chance to relax—even a short one—yet the beastfolk were in a rush to get home. They wouldn’t feel safe until they were firmly ensconced within the borders of their motherland.
It was a stroke of luck that the twins’ mom was such a famous figure in the Beast Kingdom. The beastfolk naturally banded around her soothing presence, but they were still too skittish to join us human girls in our tomfoolery. Deep down, they were terrified of people. They hated us.
I didn’t blame them—really, I don’t think any of us took it personally. We didn’t mind that the beastfolk girls loathed our guts. But it hurt whenever they cast a wary glance at Haruka-kun. And I wished they didn’t hate humanity as a whole. Again, I wasn’t blaming them, but…how could they glare at this boy who’d worked himself to death to save them? How far would he have to go to kill himself before they realized he only meant well? I wished they could’ve felt some of his pain. Not a lot, mind you—just a fraction of those sinews snapping, those broken bones, those pulverized organs, those liquidated muscles. Maybe an instant of searing agony so intense it would never be forgotten so long as they lived. Would they still be so wary then?
“Knock it off, Class Rep. You’re scaring them.”
Oops. I guess I let it get to my head. I just—I was just frustrated! Haruka-kun shed literal blood, sweat, and tears to rescue the beastfolk, and they rewarded him with hatred? Just because he was human? Well…ostensibly human?
“You’re not alone, Class Rep. We all feel the same way, but you gotta cool your jets.”
As I seethed, we passed what had once been a fort on the Theocracy border and entered the woods. I looked back as we went. The door was still intact in the rubble of the ex-fort—or was, until Haruka-kun picked it up and stuffed it in his item bag. Now there was nothing left to show that a fort had once stood here, save bits of broken masonry. This terrible fortress that had plagued the imagination of so many beastfolk, the living symbol of their horrific past, lay in a scattered heap of rocks and dust. (Some of the stonework wasn’t half bad, to be honest—Haruka-kun snatched that up too.)
Once we were well away from any roads where anyone from the Theocracy would be likely to stumble upon us, the beastfolk lowered their hackles. Now Sasha-chan and Nesha-chan felt comfortable enough to come back and join the rest of us girls. Yeah, everyone was more relaxed now…except for their mom? She gave Haruka-kun a wide berth for reasons I was aaaall too familiar with. It’d be the kinder thing not to go into it here—she had a husband, y’know.
“It’s not so bad! She just needs to forget she ever had a brush with a Sex God.”
“Easier said than done…”
“Our poor mom!” Sasha-chan and Nesha-chan wailed.
The trees soon thinned out, and then the Great Wall of the Beast Kingdom, the system of defenses Haruka-kun had made before we set out, was…was…
“Oh no…”
“The…the inhumanity!”
Just a few days ago, Haruka-kun had erected a series of walls and fortresses running around the entire perimeter of the Beast Kingdom. Oda-kun and his pals had been left in charge alongside a mighty garrison of beastfolk warriors. But tragedy had struck, and even the last vestiges of Haruka-kun’s legacy were gone. Gone.
In its place, a huge mass of people—humans—swarmed the walls, surging through the open gates. Invaders! A host of humanity flooding the Beast Kingdom!
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE REPUBLIC OF GAMEHLEIN
DAY 117
NIGHT
This is what happens when you leave your nerds unattended.
THE REPUBLIC OF GAMEHLEIN
THE BEAST KINGDOM WAS MIRED in a mob of snarling, jostling humanity. The soaring columns of Tar-Row Route Castle were now plastered—horribly, terrifically!—with larger-than-life illustrations of moe moe beastfolk girls.
“Oh no…”
“The…the inhumanity!”
In the brief time we’d been away, the Beast Kingdom had turned into a tourist trap! Statues—let’s be real, larger-than-life figurines—had been carved out of the stony walls and now loomed large over the surrounding forest in all their moe glory. They won the hearts of all and sundry, and pilgrims of passion had come from far and wide to get their hands on the moe goodness.
When these paw-partial peregrinators reached the land of cute furry girls and jumbo-sized anime figurines, the Beast Kingdom dealt the finishing blow with a beastfolk maid café, fatally corrupting the wanton wayfarers. Trapped in the stinking bowels of moe hell, the moe-maddened mavericks became the next meal of the slavering beast known as a moe fetish.
That’s right. These poor people were being turned into nerds.
“What the actual hell is going on here?”
On the plus side, this did wonders for anti-beastfolk discrimination. We just seemed to have traded it for a different, more insidious problem.
“Excuse me? What is Operation: Enemy Nerdization?”
“You’re telling me this was once an army intent on slaughtering the beastfolk? And now they’re…furries?”
“You catch more flies with honey, as they say…”
“That doesn’t mean turn your enemies into nerds!”
In the wise words of Haruka-kun, it was a nerdemic. Today marked the advent of this world’s nascent nerdery. In a sense, it was the end of one age and the dawn of another. The time was ripe for culture and art to explode onto the scene, but before fine art could get its foot in the door, moe anime art swooped in and beat it to death. So, here we were.
“Man… People are eating this stuff up.”
“I guess there are so few other sources of entertainment in this world.”
The nerdemic—an overwhelming explosion of geekery—took the world by storm. Discrimination against all the demihuman races had vanished with a whimper. With the power of beastfolk girl moe moe kyun, nerd culture had transcended—or trampled—borders. The Merchant Kingdom and Diorelle were a lost cause, and the Theocracy was not far behind. Moe was in.
“Yeesh! Furry maid cafés are more powerful than they look!”
“Wait, but the uniforms are actually so cute.”
Thanks to the stringent warnings of our classmate’s batch of nerds, signs were posted on every café reading “No Sex Gods Allowed.” The beastfolk girls were safe from Haruka-kun’s wily ways—that is, until Haruka-kun (muttering and cursing just outside one signposted café) began work on a new weapon of mass destruction to fry Oda-kun and company.
Oda-kun explained—although it sounded more like a guilty confession—what magical renovations he and his partners in crime had wrought on Tar-Row Route Castle. (Haruka-kun looked aghast before the first word was out of Oda-kun’s mouth.)
“So when we started out…we just kinda wanted to make the castle look more intimidating, y’know?”
“Yeah, exactly. And we thought we could maybe put some tricks or traps in it? Like in the pseudo-dungeon?”
“So then we started adding dummies to catch long-range projectiles. Like arrows and spells and stuff?”
“Right, and then we sorta personalized ’em? Made them relevant to our interests?”
“Yeah, and one thing lead to another until…we got this?”
Mm-hmm. Way to dodge responsibility with all the question marks.
“One thing led to another, my ass! Look. I can’t deny that I would be unable to attack walls covered with magnificent illustrations from such talented, masterful artists. I would never be so uncouth as to scale those larger-than-life figurines with intent to spoil them—also, those statues are superb! But where, my noisy nerds, are these traps and intimidation factors you speak of? On what fine fortress have you installed them—because it isn’t this one! This one is nothing but a tourist trap! One bursting at the seams with people! You’ve turned the Beast Kingdom into a hellacious holy site, the cradle of moeculture… What’s next? Shippers and fujoshi fangirls? The invention of an isekai Otome Road? So long, native culture! Hello, fandom!”
“Oh no! Not BL leaking into this world too!”
Even us girls groaned at the headache. The Great Wall of the Beast Kingdom was supposed to be a defensive feature—not a hobby project gone wild! We should have known better than to leave Oda-kun’s group in charge. We all knew that they had bought truckloads of questionable feminine garments from Haruka-kun for the then yet-to-be-discovered beastfolk girls, but we could never have predicted this. Not a whole town gone mad with moe! My god, how many hundreds of costumes did you guys order?!
“Whose bright idea was it to paint Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring featuring cute anime eyes?”
“Oh no, that’s just what the original looks like?”
“Um. I’m not a Vermeer specialist, but I beg to differ.”
“Oh god, there’s a whole series like it… With everything from Van Gogh’s Sunflowers to Munch’s The Scream.”
“Poor Earth… Your culture’s been defiled worse than this sorry world’s.”
Gone were the looming walls and formidable airs of Tar-Row Route Castle, and here to stay was the welcoming moe. Haruka-kun, for one, didn’t seem to mind having his work reskinned. In any other circumstance, he would have bullied the nerds to kingdom come, but I think he liked the moe metamorphosis more than he would admit.
It was brilliantly done, after all. As much as I hated to admit it, the boys had accomplished something masterful with these art pieces. Between the currently changing church doctrines and these massivemoe murals, the once-omnipresent beastfolk discrimination had vanished overnight.
“And that’s a pretty significant accomplishment.”
“I agree, but the execution leaves something to be desired…”
The stranglehold bigotry had once held on the reins of history and the nigh-absolute reign of discrimination had faded in the face of adorable beastfolk girl maid cafés. A race of people who had been scorned and spat upon for centuries now had humans falling over themselves to spend time with them. The maid cafés were doing gangbusters. Every café had a line snaking out the door!
“So, yeah. We destroyed the church’s brainwashing and control with the power of cute girls.”
“And perverted all these people into nerds in the process… You’ve irreparably warped the course of history!”
“Hey, don’t be mad at us. See how much fun folks are having? Look at those guys smiling as they play rock-paper-scissors with that catgirl maid.”
“Why did she just say ‘Now your order’s just purrfect!’? Last I checked, the cat tribe didn’t use cat puns in every sentence!”
“These girls know how to put on a show!”
In one fell swoop, the nerds had destroyed the beastfolk discrimination that the church had labored for years to establish. Now, ex-beastfolk haters crowded around makeshift idol stages and swung “light sticks” (literal sticks filled with bits of ground-up spellstones) in perfect tandem. And now the beastfolk girls are doing famous Vocaloid songs?! And it’s accompanied by oh-too-cute backup dancing?!
“Now we’re gonna sing you the songs of our people!”
“WHOO-HOOOOOOOO!”
“Uh…wasn’t this a temple when we last saw it?”
Smiles abounded. Delight thrived on every joyous face. With so much celebration, there was no room for the things that didn’t matter—dogma, persecution, prejudice.
“Haruka-kun is making a killing off light sticks and furry idol merch. No wonder he’s happy!”
“He may be cackling over his merch sales now, but he’s the fool who built all this infrastructure with no regard to the construction cost.”
Discrimination was dead. Once people met the beastfolk for themselves—laughed with them, cheered with them—they realized they weren’t so different after all. It didn’t matter what we were: humans, beastfolk, monsters. We were all the same in that moment, cheering on our favorite beastfolk idols. No one could hate in the face of fandom. In fact, anyone with that much hatred in their heart would become the new target of persecution.
“Well, I’ll be damned. The nerds really did turn this world on its head and destroy discrimination overnight. No one thought it could be done.”
“…These are the same guys with negative social skills?”
“I guess it’s because they don’t have a discriminatory bone in their body. They changed the cultural consciousness with the power of cute girls.”
“Right, so you’re telling me they still have negative social skills. They just nerded so hard it spread to the rest of society.”
People had come from all over—Diorelle, the Theocracy, even the Merchant Kingdom—all caught up in the thrill of experiencing the ubercute megamoe…and super swindling. Haruka-kun’s merch sales exploded before our eyes. I didn’t even know this world had the same kind of round paper fans as we did back in Japan. I guess it did now!
“I…never knew discrimination was this easy to dismantle…”
I could tell the nerd squad (ft. Haruka-kun) were up to something off in a corner. Next thing I knew, out pranced a pack of beastfolk girls done up in yukatas of every cut and color.
“Oh my god! It’s an oiran dochu1with literal fox people! I guess that saves on making fox masks…”
“Those yukata are so cute.”
“I want one!”
It was beautiful. I felt like I was in a bizarre cross of a traditional Japanese festival and a modern-day theme park, but dropped into a fantasy world. There were smiles and laughter everywhere I looked, and not the derisive smiles of bigots, either. Prejudice was nothing to smile about, and that’s why it was gone for good. As we all knew, happiness trumped division any day of the week.
Some of the worried, wary beastfolk dads looked ready to pop an ulcer, but theirs were the only frowns I saw in the whole crowd. All the little beastfolk kiddos were having a blast, and many of their parents teared up. Imagine folks calling your kid cute. Imagine letting your kid go outside without fear they’d be treated horribly.
For ages, the thought of just this—for laughter to be commonplace, for living in peace to be the norm—must have been nothing but a dream for the beastfolk. How wonderfully it must have rolled off the tongue to proclaim that the dream had at long last come true.
“Sasha? Are we dreaming? This feels too good to be tru—wait a minute. Where did our village go?”
On the outskirts of this dreamland, the wonderland for our white rabbit and all her friends and family, the man behind the curtain—our one and only hustle-culture king—wobbled on shaky legs as he gobbled MP mushrooms to replenish his rapidly dwindling MP. It was he who had created this kingdom of wonders, this bastion of happiness so potent it could move anyone to tears. Uh-oh. He just keeled over.
“The village is right where we left it, but…I don’t remember it being like a dream come true. Oh, look! There’s all our family and friends. They’re waving to us!”
At least Haruka-kun had died doing what he loved: ripping people off. Meanwhile, the all-female concert staff rushed in to administer moe moe medical aid.
“All’s well that ends well…I guess.”
“This wasn’t what I had in mind for the Beast Kingdom either, but why stop a good thing?”
A parade of rabbit tribe beastfolk pranced past in resplendent uniforms, followed by a merry cacophony of cheering, clashing cymbals, and the thrum of a bass drum. Rabbit ears bobbed to the beat. The paradegoers, noticing the twins, waved ecstatically, and the twins waved back. A festival float brought up the rear, upon which Duke Meropapa consoled a sobbing King Haighpbeest.
“I certainly never considered this as a solution to all the beastfolk’s troubles.”
A family of people—humans, I mean—walked by our little group. We heard the kid say, “When I grow up, I wanna be a beastfolk and come live here!”
The kids’ parents chuckled. “Us too,” they said, sharing a smile over their tyke’s head.
All the beastfolk nearby teared up at the earnest comments. As silly as that exchange was, it was the perfect proof that the beastfolk’s fortunes had changed for the better.
Overpriced headbands with animal ears and clip-on tails flew off merch-stand shelves. We flew to buy ourselves pairs and put them on too, inspiring another wave of tears from our beastfolk companions. They’d been called monsters or creatures their whole lives. Their beloved tails and ears had been marks of oppression for centuries. No one could undergo that level of torment and come out the other end unscathed. They just couldn’t. Now the beastfolk received compliments everywhere they went—beastfolk were in vogue!—from people who longed to look just like them. The divisions between humans and beastfolk melted away. Now we were all just people—people with animal ears everywhere we looked.
When we told Sasha-chan and Nesha-chan that we’d had animal-ear headbands long before this new craze, that started off a fresh sobbing fest. I think that’s what convinced them we meant every word of our admiration. They looked over the sea of joyful animal-ear-clad humanity, and there wasn’t an earless head or a frown to be seen anywhere.
“Aww. Look at the twins. They’re so happy!”
“Don’t you dare tell them what late-night shenanigans these headbands get involved in.”
Looking out over their town and seeing a place of coexistence—cohappiness—made the twins’ tears fall like rain. This peace may have come about in the stupidest, most awful, most degenerate way possible, but it was still beautiful—a future that no one could have even dreamed of.
“Our classmates changed religious doctrine and rewrote laws—the only thing they couldn’t change was their lack of social skills.”
Well, so long as everyone was happy, I was happy giving the nerds their due. No one else could have pulled off such a feat. And honestly? Flabbergasting Haruka-kun was achievement enough. I’d never seen him look so horrified in my life.
Now even the beastfolk army, with their deep-set hatred of humanity, lost all animosity. They were even…low-key worshipping the jocks?
Okay, so the backstory was, we left the jocks here to train the beastfolk army in the ways of jungle warfare. In the process, they won over the gorilla guerillas. The beastfolk warriors adored—venerated, even—our classmates. It also helped that the jocks didn’t have a discriminatory bone in their body. Per Haruka-kun, “They’re too stupid to tell friend from foe, y’know? Which is kinda dangerous in its own right.”
The beastfolk admired that sort of pure, guileless violent potential. “They’re bigger beasts than us,” I heard a warrior say in glowing tones.
Haruka-kun always said, “The meatheads’re bigger animals than the beastfolk. Makes sense they’d get along.” Really, they got along a little too well… The beastfolk completely forgot the jocks were human at all. Even now, the jocks and the army were still drilling and holding mock battles in the woods. All borders dissolved in the face of brute muscle, I s’pose.
“I finally understand why Haruka-kun was so leery of the nerds.”
“Yeah…whenever he used to go off on them for being no-good losers, I was always like—uh, pot? Meet kettle.”
“Wild, huh? Only took a sec, and now Haruka-kun looks like the sensible one.”
“Funny how the nerd revolution changed, like, nothing for the jocks.”
“Why would it affect them? The jocks don’t discriminate. Human, beastfolk—they see no difference.”
“The boys in our class are convinced their friend groups are the only ones with any common sense. And honestly? I love that for them.”
Being unable to pick up on social cues, Oda-kun and his friends had completely missed the memo that humans were supposed to hate beastfolk. They completely eradicated that social impulse without ever once noticing it was there. On the flip side, Kakizaki-kun’s group were so dumb it had never crossed their minds that we should discriminate. Heck, I don’t think they’d ever considered a difference in race at all. The jocks spoke the language of violence and muscles, a language the beastfolk spoke fluently. With that lingua franca greasing the wheels of their interactions, the two groups had hit it off and developed a mutual respect in no time.
And then there was Haruka-kun, who had drawn up the plans to give the church’s doctrine a fresh coat of paint when he was in no fit state to do so. He and Archbishop Stecater, an outspoken supporter of harmony between humans and beastfolk, had put no end of effort into their co-authored papers—only for the problem to be solved via this nonsense. But Haruka-kun, ever one for nonsense, switched gears on a dime. He turned the entire country into a theme park in a matter of minutes, banishing intolerance and sadness alike. No person in the Beast Kingdom—human or beastfolk—was left without a smile when Haruka-kun was done with them.
“Destroying prejudice was this easy all along, huh?”
“No, not for anyone who’s not a weirdo.”
Everyone was full of joy, sharing smiles with their neighbor like race never came into the equation—like they knew we were all the same deep down. It was such a simple concept, but it was a powerful truth for all its simplicity. This Gordian knot of history had been cut through, not by grand strategy, but by the sword known as maid cafés. Nerddom was strangely powerful!
The twins, moved at the sight of Angelica-san and Nefertiri-san in bunny- and wolf-ear headbands respectively, hugged each other tight. Really, it’s better if they don’t find out the true purpose of those headbands… We didn’t need to take the wind out of the twins’ sails, and they were still too young for that sort of thing, anyway—better keep the wonders of late-night furry licking and schlorping a secret. Beastfolk were now very, very popular, but…let’s keep this an OT-rated popular, okay? It was bad enough that Faleria-san had a pair of cat ears of her own already!
While the cavorting and merriment carried on around us, poor half-dead Haruka-kun worked off in a corner, endlessly draining himself dry of MP, refilling the tank, and starting the process over from step one. He was in so much pain it was agony for him to breathe. Nevertheless, in spite of the splitting headaches and the lancing pains, he pumped out fantastic attraction after fantastic attraction and an endless line of souvenirs—everything from beastfolk manju to kitty-ear pennants. I couldn’t sit here and ignore his hard work, so I grabbed an apron and jumped right into selling! (Plus, I wanted some of that tasty manju for myself.)
“See all those smiles?”
“I sure do.”
Of course, this didn’t solve everything. But it was a start, right? A big start. The first of many attractions in a world that shunned racists. A dreamland where bigots were barred from entry.
The problem of prejudice was so deep-rooted, no amount of contemplation would find even the first loose thread to begin unravelling it. But maybe the problem was simpler than we ever envisioned. I mean, those were real smiles on every face. This was the start of something new. Something genuine. Thus, when Haruka-kun worked himself to the point of collapse, we all took turns fussing over him and letting him rest in our laps. He was kinda cute when he was asleep, to be honest. It was when he was awake that was the problem. Y’know, the whole Sex God thing?
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE BEAST KINGDOM
DAY 117
NIGHT
There’s nothing that catgirls can’t fix.
THE BEAST KINGDOM
THE GATES CLOSED BEHIND the last departing guests, and at long last, a hush fell over the sleepy dreamland. The beastfolk who had come back with us from the Theocracy threw themselves into the arms of their waiting families and sobbed on their shoulders. The mental scars of that dreadful experience would never heal, but at least they had a future to hold onto now. At least they had hope. This was the first of many, many steps toward sundering the chains of enmity. Arianna-san would come to the Beast Kingdom herself within the next few days to issue a formal apology, but it would take much, much longer—days would turn to weeks, weeks to months, and months to years, in all likelihood—for the last vestiges of hatred to swirl down the drain.
“Boy, I’m pooped!”
“It’s amazing how quickly people can change.”
I didn’t need to be all doom and gloom about it, though. A bright future was on the horizon, and I only had to look at this giant world-first amusement park—courtesy of our classmates nerding waaaaay out—and the smiles on every face to know it was true. There was a world out there where humans and beastfolk could coexist in peace. All that was left was setting the crooked path of history straight and forging a new future. We had to break the cycle of pain, or else the hatred would never truly end…and therein lay the difficulty.
“Uh-oh, there goes King Haighpbeest…”
“Is he crying again?”
“Must be a trauma response.”
The king and his retainers, spotting me, bowed deeply in our direction. All right, I admit—I did get a little mad at them the other day. But it was necessary! How else were we supposed to put a stop to their violence-loving ways? Whoops—even Haruka-kun was looking at me in horror now…
“That’s one wound that’s too deeply ingrained to heal.”
“Yeah. You legit traumatized them, Class Rep.”
Some of the beastfolk still shot Haruka-kun dirty looks, making me want to fly off the handle at them all over again. I couldn’t deny that these poor souls had suffered humiliations and grievances beyond anything I could imagine. I couldn’t really blame them for holding grudges against us. But not against Haruka-kun. Not if they didn’t want me to rail at them. He’d suffered and struggled more than the rest of us combined. He’d taken unbearable pain upon himself to save the beastfolk. If they hated him for it… Ooh, I just wished they could feel a fraction of his pain—see how they liked having their arms ripped off, their lungs punctured, their flesh on their legs stripped down to the bone before those bones were snapped too.
I could understand their hatred, but that didn’t mean I had to like it. Haruka-kun had fought brutal battles to protect and save this whole race of people, and none of them so much as knew it. His sole claim to fame was the “black-haired commander” stock character. A fool in a comedy show. That really, really rubbed me the wrong way. I had to do something abo—
“Easy there, Class Rep.”
“Ugh! Give me a break. I know I shouldn’t be mad. I just…”
“We’re right there with you, girl. But what can we do?”
All the credit was going to Arianna-san. She would go down in history as the emancipator of the slaves and crusader against the false sects of the church. I knew this for a fact—because the real emancipator-slash-crusader (Hint: It was Haruka-kun) had written a play about it and was now selling tickets for admission. The word was spreading with every performance, and Haruka-kun had become even more of a laughingstock in the eyes of the world.
He’d cast Arianna-san as the main character to center her prominence in the emerging post-war narrative, while Haruka-kun had relegated himself to little more than a clown. The story was meant to inspire world peace and universal hope…but it just bothered me, okay? Haruka-kun had done all the work, and here he was cheerfully writing himself out of history! And making a killing off of it, I might add—which only made me more incensed!
“Aherm, might I suggest we set aside this percentage of the profits to offset the building costs? I would also recommend allotting these funds for routine upkeep and these funds for further expansion.”
“Sure, but y’know, you’re gonna need this much for labor. This place is gonna need a whole lotta personnel to stay up and running. That ties into this, and that’s gonna eat into the total profit, and this other thing’s gonna come out…like so?”
Now I understood Haruka-kun’s sudden interest in magical construction projects. The Sagrada Familia was just a warm-up. The Beast Kingdom—and its massive potential to make Haruka-kun rich—was the main event!
“We’d like to expand the commercial districts like so, sir. It will be necessary to construct additional hotel blocks. Perhaps here?”
“Y’all aren’t thinking big picture. You build a hotel block on a dead-end road, and where’s your traffic gonna go? And what’s this over here? If you’re gonna market this attraction, it can’t look cheap! You gotta convince people they’re paying extra for class. Steal from the rich and all that, y’know? You tell the rich they’re getting something special, and they’ll walk away happier and poorer. That’s just how the world works, baby.”
Haruka-kun was speaking to the king’s adviser from the black goat tribe. That a human—one who had been so despised, at that—held all the power in the equation made the adviser toady and simper. Those who knew the truth—the adviser and the tribal leaders who understood that Haruka-kun had orchestrated their freedom—knew that Haruka-kun had a fearsome supply of knowledge at his fingertips, and knowledge was power. They had nothing but genuine respect for him…and in turn, the ordinary citizens, knowing nothing of Haruka-kun’s feats, were growing ever more enraged watching their leaders debase themselves.
“How ’bout we slap down a 24-hour casino right here? Can you guys find enough people to work the nightshift?”
“I shouldn’t think that would be a problem, sir. Many of our people are nocturnal and would be quite pleased to staff the second and third shifts.”
Those with knowledge revered knowledge; those with power venerated power. And those with hearts—ah, those with hearts looked upon tender emotions with gentle smiles. And so, it was time for us to return to the frontier. It was time to take Haruka-kun home, to the place where people welcomed his presence with joy, to the land where his legends were born from more than cruel gossip and false rumor. To the realm where the people understood his sacrifices without the need to elaborate the presence, where the people’s hearts were warm and hands were generous because they knew tragedy like an old friend, where they trusted the evidence of their eyes above the words of strangers.
“I mean it, broski. You’ll make a killing. You’ll make, like, a slaughter! You think you’re charging too much? No such thing. It’s only right that furry maid cafés cost an arm and a leg! It’s not about the quality of the offering. It’s about the cuteness! It’s about getting blatantly ripped off with a just barely tenable excuse of plausible deniability! Huh? Have I been to a maid café? Nooo, never. Not me. Definitely not. Wait—why am I banned from all the cafés in the Beast Kingdom?”
“Certainly, I don’t imagine anyone shall complain if we raise the prices a smidgen… But perhaps, in the interest of sending our customers home happy, should we offer a ten percent discount on these items of merchandise to any café patrons?”
One of the other girls told me Haruka-kun, upon discovering the nerds’ “No Sex Gods Allowed!” signs on all the cafés, was found outside one such café hugging his knees to his chin and feeling sorry for himself. Sorry, Haruka-kun, but they have a point! It was dangerous to let a Sex God loose among so many fluffable young women. One glimpse of the horror in Sasha-chan’s and Nesha-chan’s eyes said it all. This man could fluff—he was a threat to maidens everywhere!
“It’s all about providing added value, my dude. A furry girl in a maid outfit saying, ‘Have a safe trip home, master!’ is priceless. And you gotta work the food angle. Your guys’s food is the bomb, so crank up the prices on those meals like there’s no tomorrow. Food tourism is gonna be the staple of your economy when I’m done with you! Focus on the big draws: cute girls with animal ears and good food. The tourist attractions are just a perk.”
“A-animal ears, sir? The very same animal ears humans have reviled for centuries?”
“Surely you aren’t referring to our miso and soy sauce, sir? I’m afraid no human has ever taken an interest in our ancestral recipes before.”
“Both our ears and our cuisine are sources of great pride for our people. Why, I can scarce believe humans might take interest in either. I never thought I’d see this day with my own eyes…”
The black goat sniffled with pride; even the lesser advisers and petty officials were moved to tears. The king of the beastfolk and the tribal leaders bowed yet lower. Haruka-kun couldn’t have said this if he thought beastfolk were lesser. There was no hidden deceit in his heartfelt words, and that earnestness moved the whole group to tears.
Well…I shouldn’t make it sound like Haruka-kun was perfect. Truth was, he really did have a bigoted streak—a fierce, raging hatred against old men. But at least he was equally hateful; he attacked every old man he saw.
Anyway, enough of that. The beastfolk king stepped forward and, before the entire assembly of leaders and officials, swept into a deep bow directed at Haruka-kun.
“My lord, you have my deepest thanks for rescuing my kinsfolk from the clutches of the Theocracy. Should the Theocracy correct its doctrines and treat us henceforth as fellow people, we shall gladly accept their offers of peace and friendship. We would likewise be happy to take their human faith as our own. Yet this is not to say that I shall force those who’ve lost kith and kin to reconcile with our tormentors. Past scars do not so easily fade. You’ve convinced me, with the sight you blessed us with today, that a day may come when beastfolk and men look upon one another as brothers. Were it not for the king of Diorelle, he who treated us with the warmth of a kinsman regardless of whether it invited his church’s ire, the chance at reconciliation would never have been ours. My lord Haruka, we are in your debt. We shall never forget the treasures you have granted us, and it is because of your noble actions that we shall choose to believe in humanity—aye, to trust you as one of our own. We owe you and Princess Shalliceres our deepest gratitude.”
As one, the other tribe leaders performed bows no less deep, and in doing so, we cemented the pact between our peoples.
“Rise, Your Majesty, and speak with me as one ruler to another. Diorelle will never forget the bravery your ancestors showed when they fought alongside us on the frontier. We were once brothers-in-arms against the monster hordes, and we can be so still. You need not bow to me, my brother, lest you wish to spit on your ancestors’ graves. We have never ceased recounting the legends of your people’s bravery and kinship, and we shan’t start now.”
And with these heart-stirring pledges, the alliance between Diorelle and Gamehlein was sealed. I guess this makes up for the time Princess Shalliceres whooped the king’s ass?Well, that’s politics for you. Lord Meropapa clapped the king on the shoulder, moved by the pathos of this emotional moment. (Never mind that the duke beat him up too.)
“Politics is the term we ascribe to the wicked webs of trickery and wiles we spin—a tangled maze of falsehoods and deceptions.”
“Yeah, but we know a thing or two about mazes thanks to dungeons. And just like in dungeons, violence is always the answer, I…guess?”
I asked Haruka-kun—I know, I know, bad idea, but I did it anyway—and he said there’s a famous saying: Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed. Or, as Haruka-kun problematically put it, politics is jabbering without ass-kicking and war is ass-kicking with jabbering.
I’m sensing a theme here. Virtually every problem could be solved with violence. Beat-downs broke barriers; skirmishes slaughtered solutionless snags; tussles terminated tragedies. It wasn’t a question of whether violence was the best answer—so long as it was an answer, that was good enough for us. If at first it didn’t succeed, well, try, try, and try again. We were enacting the world’s most violent solution for global peace and, by god, was it working.
“I can’t believe it. It’s like we never kicked their butts at all!”
“Politics is scary.”
“We’re scary! We were the ones kicking butt!”
Evil couldn’t be eradicated; it was here to stay. We could drive it back for a short time, but we could never stamp it out in its entirety. Hence it was our duty to track evil back to its lair, beat it into frightened submission, and make it too scared to ever see the light of day again.
“As Haruka-kun says, what is violence but a form of politicking? What is government but systemic violence?”
“Anyone who sees him politick will get that in no time flat.”
We left evil too scared to be evil. We made it pretend to be good or else. And really, if evil masqueraded as good up to its dying breath, was that really so different from true goodness? If the most vile, wicked, despicable people could be kept in line with fear—if violence and violent politics could be used to scare evil into playing nice—then wasn’t that the same as peace?
“All’s well…that ends well?”
“Somehow.”
“Meanwhile, Haruka-kun—the primary offender—isn’t even listening.”
No, Haruka-kun was too busy building extra attractions—namely, a pool complete with water slides and a grand hotel with traditional Japanese flair—to do more than throw the statesmen a disinterested glance every couple of minutes. He munched his way through a line of MP mushrooms and renovated his way through a line of buildings. He broadened avenues. He transformed promenades. The land of the beastfolk’s dreams was taking shape before our eyes. I could only imagine the toll this massive magical project was exacting on him. The beastfolk never considered his pain, though. They never even looked his way. They were too spellbound by the dreamscape to care.
“Oop. Haruka-kun down.”
“Uh-oh. Did he run out of MP and collapse midway through again?”
“Actually, I think he’s done.”
“I should hope so! He’s made this place next level.”
“With these attractions, the Beast Kingdom’s economy will be back on its feet in no time.”
“Ugh. Haruka-kun overworking himself, a tale as old as time.”
“At least he seems excited about it.”
“He has, shall we say, a vested interest in the Beast Kingdom’s finances.”
“Doesn’t he now have a finger in three kingdoms’ economic pies? Why is he still broke constantly?”
“’Cause money passes through his hands like water. Huge torrents of water.”
“I heard him say he’s invested in a new miso factory and everything.”
“Ugh! Haruka-kun! I can’t believe you spent your latest windfall already!”
Haruka-kun’s wallet just couldn’t keep pace with all the national economies he personally financed. His investments failed to reap dividends in time with his aggressive development plans. As the three kingdoms boomed, so did his shares in their burgeoning markets, and we were facing an unprecedented economic boom with no end in sight—basically, the cycle went that as soon as prosperity flourished, Haruka-kun would take all his revenue from it and swell his portfolio, dumping it into fresh ventures. Or, in so many words, Haruka-kun was the poorest rich man to ever exist.
“Well, hey. I can’t complain. Whatever gets us miso and soy sauce.”
“Hear, hear!”
The Kingdom was in odd financial straits too. The government couldn’t mint enough currency to keep up with the boom in production, causing an inflationary trend. Rising labor costs led to runaway costs of living. There wasn’t enough currency in circulation to buy goods, Haruka-kun was flooding the market…and the rest was history. The result: spiraling deflation, all caused by a single freelance production machine working overtime. Once the Beast Kingdom and the Theocracy were dragged into that mess, Haruka-kun would have a full economic bloc on his hands. There would be no end to the development.
“Until the runaway economic growth stabilizes, our local broke megamillionare is going to stay in the red.”
“He’s going to be there for a loooong time. I don’t think Haruka-kun knows how to stop.”
“Until he hits his ‘good enough’ threshold, he’s gonna be poor as a church mouse.”
“And stinking rich. At the exact same time.”
“So what I’m hearing is it’s our job to buy lots of clothes from him.”
“Right.”
“Exactly.”
“Come to think of it, Haruka-kun’s cash flow pretty much consists of what we pay him, huh?”
“Right. If we cut down on meals, we’ll cause widespread economic collapse. Looks like we have a moral obligation to eat our hearts out!”
“Oh ho. Now you’re speakin’ my language.”
So it was high time we headed for home! High time to earn lots of money and shop until we dropped. We needed lots and lots of personal happiness—pretty clothes and yummy treats—to complete Haruka-kun’s vision of global happiness. Win-win, right? There could be plenty of happiness to go around.
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE BEAST KINGDOM
DAY 117
NIGHT
Turns out, investing time in d*cking down provides good dickidends.
THE BEAST KINGDOM
THE MYSTERIES OF THIS WORLD were endless.
“But the biggest one is this: Why do I wake up in fresh clothes every time I pass out?”
I even had a fresh pair of boxers. And why did the girls look so pleased with themselves—and the twins so mortified—as they climbed into the carriages waiting to take us home?
“Uh…why are Bunny Girl and Wolf Girl coming with? Isn’t this their home? Completely unrecognizable, courtesy of the nerds, as it may be? Y’know, you can beat the nerds up for that if you want. Knowing nerds, they’ll prolly say, ‘In otaku circles, there is no greater honor than having a furry girl step on me,’ but it doesn’t matter so long as they get trounced one way or another. What I’m trying to say is, the twins are already home? We built dormitories over thattaway and everything? ‘We’ being the four people currently sprinting away, and if you’d like to chase after them and give ’em a can of whoop-ass, I can lend you a crowbarlike object? If you want?”
The rabbitfolk village had actually burned to the ground in the slavers’ raid, but I had thought it was kinder not to tell the twins. Instead, why not blame the destruction of their home on the nerds? If the nerds got beat up in the process, all the better! A flawless solution, if I did say so myself.
“We haven’t repaid you yet! We’ve barely begun to make up for everything you’ve done for us. In fact, our whole people is in your deb—mmph mmph mmph!”
“It would take over a lifetime to give back everything you’ve given to us, so it’s the least we can do to pledge our lives to you. We swear to serve you in body and spiri—mmph mmph!”
Prior to this, their mom had word-vomited a rapid-fire string of thank-yous at me before hightailing it and zooming away like a—well, like a rabbit. Besides the gratitude for saving her and lifting her curse, there was something about asking me to please take good care of her daughters… Wait, so the twins were coming with us? Like with permission and everything?
“Bunny Mom also said she was gonna beat up—ahem, retrain the king of the beastfolk and his old dudefolk entourage. I support that endeavor, and I gave her some bespoke equipment to assist in her efforts. Will the old beastfolk men survive? Who knows. My only priority is protecting those bunny ears!”
Well, long story short, it looked like the twins were part of the crew now. They would come back with us to the frontier and join our dungeon diving squads. In fact, they wanted to join the vanguard.
“Huh? Your dad’s a commander in the beastfolk army? You mean that old wolf dude who was wagging his tail with joy when Class Rep mopped the floor with him was your dad?! Yo, that’s kinda messed up…”
“He did what?!”
“Not the tail wag…”
Having teenage daughters and tail-wagging at another teenage girl… Yeesh. Talk about family drama. Yup, the girls were passing the twins morning stars as we spoke.
“How dare he! Ogling teenage girls when he has a sexy mama rabbit at home and two teenage daughters… I’m jealous! Hold up, gang—there’s something important I forgot to do. Self-destruction be damned, this crowbarlike object and I have one last job to complete. Be right back, unless I die first… Hey! Get off me!”
“Bad Haruka-kun. Sit. Stay! Get in the carriage!”
“Stop yammering so we can get a move on.”
“No running away, and no plotting to kill the twins’ dad.”
“Seriously! How many wolf-eradication schemes did you just draw up?!”
The girls hog-tied me and tossed me into the carriage. All the while, the question begged—how was I supposed to sit, stay, and get in the carriage at the same time? Anyway. The girls’ coordinated pushing-and-shoving match that resulted in my unhappy incarceration was a thing of beauty. I had never seen such powers of cooperation before—the terrifying might of the Book Club President’s Organization Skill at work. Oh, the trap of Book Club President! Hers was a well-planned trap, for inside this carriage were the three dungeon emperors dressed in sexy nylon minidresses, making me forget all thoughts of escape. That’s the problem of cute girls and molded-on clothing—they can get to the best of us.
And then the squeezing began.
Being tied up, there was rather little I could do in response. Ooh, but I could check my stats. I’d been too busy doing literally everything else; I was overdue a look at them. Something must have changed, right? I also needed to perform an equipment review, but…it was kinda hard to focus when I was being squeezed and sucked on from all sides?
Still! I needed my stats, stat. Double still! Meanwhile, three pairs of tights-clad legs wound around mine, three bouncy butts massaged their way up and down my limbs, six hands wandered into unmentionable places for a good stroking, thirty fingers clambered up the length of my teenage boyness, six palms rubbing and tugging in a twenty-four-hour, round-the-clock, stick-to-him-like-glue fondling-’n’-fingering fest!
“Three cheers for fantasy worl—no, Haruka, stop getting distracted. Status!”
NAME: Haruka RACE: Human
Lv: 28 JOB: —
HP: 679 MP: 797
VIT: 559 POW: 575 SPE: 771
DEX: 678 RES: 706 INT: 797
LUK: Max (Above Limit)
SP: 339
COMBAT SKILLS: Ultimate Cane Mastery Lv4, Magic Entanglement LvMax, Life or Death LvMax, Random Fire Lv8, Limit Break Lv6, Martial Qi Wizardry Lv3
MAGIC: Demolish Lv3, Teleport Lv9, Gravity Lv9, Holding Lv9, Void Lv7, Qi Wizardry Lv7
SKILLS: Sensitivity LvMax, Servitude Lv9, Insentience Lv9, Qing Qigong Lv1, Neidanshu Lv1, Airwalk Lv8, Jupiter Eye Lv9, Pleasure Arts Lv1, Lovemaking Lv7
TITLES: Shut-In Lv8, NEET Lv8, Loner Lv8, Archsage Lv4, Sword King Lv4, Alchemist Lv9, Sex Monad Lv1
UNKNOWN: Wisdom Lv8, Master of None Lv9, Hoplology Lv1
EQUIPMENT: Universe Staff, Replicant Sword, Clothes Set?, Leather Glove?, Leather Boots?, Cloak?, Jupiter Eye, Ring of the Destitute, Item Bag, Monster Bracelet: Power+84% Speed+79% Vitality+77%, Black Hat, Wisdom Crown, 100-Poisons Anklet, Fortune Ear Cuff, Godly Aegis Bladed Shoulder Shields, Sorcerer’s Bracelet, Magic Blowgun
Level 28? Whoa, I went up two full levels. This teenage boy was moving up in the world (as the teenage boyness did its own sort of moving up).
“Not the threeway tongue action! Wait, forget that for a second—did I gain those two levels in the dungeon? Or ascending the cathedral? And speaking of ascending, watch where you’re putting those tongues! Yeepers!”
Whew! Anyhoo, I would run into my next level wall at level 30. Once I hit that point, it’d be a hot minute before I had another level up. But hey! At level 30, I could register as an adventurer.
“On the flipside, level 30 adventurers aren’t allowed in dungeons. That might present a probl—yeeuurgh!”
My post-coital clarity poofed out of existence in a matter of seconds!
“Not that I had much clarity to begin with!”
The development of Hoplology was the biggest transformation, and through it, my teenage boyness restiffened within moments. But, considering the sheer scope of the alchemical transmogrification behind it, the change in my physical ability was relatively slight.
“Like, check out my speed stat. I’m not faster now; it’s my reflex time that’s improved. I’m just quick on the draw—fortunately, I can’t say the same for my teenage boyness!”
I was a little disappointed by my lackluster stat changes. But they weren’t all that bad, comparatively speaking. I couldn’t be too unhappy—especially not when my teenage boyness was having the time of its life!
“Whew! Looks like you’re down for the count, little buddy.”
While my teenage boyness is out of action, let’s do some number crunching.
Most people in the late 20s, early 30s level range would see their stats increase by a single digit number each time they gained a level. Even my classmates, empowered with cheat Skills as they were, rarely went up by more than 10 or 11 points per level—and never more than 20. So I was plenty happy with my numbers. Those two Potential Mushrooms I had eaten still seemed to be in effect. The alchemical transmogrification, meanwhile, provided power-ups not reflected in the raw numbers.
“Hey! Don’t lick a guy when he’s down! Especially not if it brings me right back up! Is this a revival skill—the true power of the Hot Damnsels? To suck the life right into me?!”
Schlorp schlorp schlorp.
My vitality and power stats didn’t go up by much, though their growth wasn’t as abysmal as it used to be. Still, I needed stats in the thousands if I wanted to go toe-to-toe with another dungeon emperor, and my HP was too low thanks to my low vitality stat. I had no stamina, no durability, no staying power. Speaking of stamina, my teenage boyness was once more down for the count and wilting like a deflating balloon. Post-nut clarity, take the wheel!
“Hoplology is one heck of a Skill, huh? I had some 3000 SP—now it’s down to 339. You’re blowing through my SP too fast, Hoppy homie. Wait—shouldn’t I have earned more SP from defeating the darkness? So Hoplology used even more than I first thought. Okay, you’re really going through it too fast!”
I had, what, 2700 SP at level 26? Something around that? Two levels-up later, I would’ve crossed the 3000 SP threshold for sure. I was fuzzy on the details—I didn’t know what Skill spent how much—but cumulatively, my Skills had gone on an SP-spending spree!
“I started out with 50 SP in that white room, right? How come my classmates got so much more than me? Most of ’em had upwards of 100, and I hear Class Rep topped out at 500. The old god dude recommended she cash that in for Hijack and a buncha other good Skills. Stupid old god dude! I oughta kick his holy heinie. Not only did he not save any good Skills for me, he didn’t save any SP either!”
Well…considering I ended up with all the leftover skills, I lucked out—SP or no SP. There was much (much!!!) to be said about my grab bag of Skills, but, multitudes of problems and all, I would never have made it this far in my new life without them.
If I’d chosen a regular old cheat Skill, I probably would’ve died ages ago. I could’ve been walloped by What’s-His-Face, butchered on the bottom floors of an ultimate dungeon, or swept away in the sea of humanity in the battle of Murimuri Castle. Regular cheat Skills were OP on regular enemies, but when your enemies were irregular, you were shit outta luck. You needed the illogical to fight the illogical.
“My list of Skills really pared itself down… Eye Mastery Lv4, Composite Sorcery Lv8, and Alchemy Lv9 vanished. General Health LvMax and Body Manipulation LvMax turned into Hoplology, I would imagine. I get why it consumed those two, but you’re telling me it also ate up Walking Mastery Lv9, Presence Sensing Lv8, Magic Control LvMax, and Presence Concealment Lv9? That’s wild. Wait. Physical-Proof Lv7 and Lascivious Lv9 too?! Oh, hold on—Physical-Proof Lv7 turned into Qing Qigong Lv1. Meanwhile, Revival LvMax turned into Neidanshu Lv1. That probably sucked up MP Absorption Lv8 too… Lascivious Lv9 most likely became Pleasure Arts Lv1… Yo, and Sex Monad Lv1? Let’s go. Oh, and we can’t forget Hoplology Lv1.”
Talk about getting a load off in more ways than one. Ha ha! Ha. Ha. Anyway. Quite a few of my Skills had consolidated into other Skills. Now, if only my poor teenage boyness could catch a break from this grueling endurance test…
“Let’s run down the list and cover which Skills evolved.”
Physical-Proof Lv7 → Qing Qigong Lv1
Revival LvMax → Neidanshu Lv1
Lasciviousness Lv9 → Pleasure Arts Lv1
Sex God Lv8 → Sex Monad Lv1
Blockhead LvMax → Hoplology Lv1
Those five formed the foundation of my Skills. I didn’t really get how they worked; the Qi Wizardry line of Skills alone had so many complex components that it was all Greek to me, and Hoplology was no better. Because it encompassed everything related to fighting and techniques, pretty much anything fell under the Hoplology umbrella.
“Bit late to worry about that, I s’pose. The high fantasy aspect went out the window the minute martial arts took the stage.”
Let’s talk Neidanshu. Neidanshu, or internal alchemy, was more than just an advanced Skill or the usual kind of Alchemy-based transmogrification I used often—it was a secret art of physical and spiritual alchemy. Using qi, the fundamental building block of everything in existence, the practitioner applied alchemy to their own body, which gave rise to Neidanshu, the pinnacle of the Daoist arts. Neidanshu was, supposedly, what let sages achieve immortality or create fantastic panaceas and elixirs. The bodies of the sages would transform to become one with the Dao, the Way. And I know exactly which Skill to blame for this.
“Lovemaking! You’ve had way, way too much practice. Yes, I know it was you!”
It’s difficult to slap a precise definition on Neidanshu, save that it’s a kind of internal alchemy produced through qigong, aka the art of activating qi. As an evolved form of Revival, it was evidently a sort of rejuvenating Skill that utilized both refined qi, or lianqi, and magic. Even now, my downstairs department was springing back to life for all it was worth… Although whether that was from Neidanshu or Sex Monad was beyond me to say. And in case you were wondering, yes, the dungeon emperors were still going to town on me.
“Consolidating the body’s fundamental lifeforce—qi—into a single point, the art rejuvenates the mind and body, returning both to their ideal states. Which is kinda like Revival, if you squint. Like Neidanshu’s a mix of magic and Alchemy, y’know? I want to give it a test run, but I’m not eager to injure myself…so I guess the endless testing of my teenage testes will suffice? This isn’t a test run! This is a test marathon!”
Schlorp schlorp schlorp.
“Is that a response kinda schlorp or an ‘I’m ignoring you, Haruka’ kinda schlorp?”
I attempted—key word, attempted—to calculate my stat increases and compare my new Skills with the old. It took a reeeeaaally long time due to my difficulty focusing. My teenage boyness was in fine form and kept making unhelpful comebacks.
Lovemaking went into both Neidanshu’s and Sex Monad’s functions, increasing my sexual stamina and recovery by leaps and bounds. I noticed a slight change in length and shape too. As for hardness—no doubt about it, there was a significant shift!
“But I’m up against three formidable foes! Every time their minidresses get rumpled in the rumpus of rumps, it exposes another flash of sensual skin and lengthy limbs. And as if that weren’t enough, the dungeon emperors have learned how to do their makeup for extra erotic eighteen-plus excellence. Gwohhh!”
Maybe it was the Sex Monad, maybe it was the other Skills, maybe it was being with three girls at once, maybe it was Ma*belline, but whatever the cause, this sexual skirmish was significantly more superheated than its sex-spat sisters!
“Neidanshu is supposed to increase vitality too, right? Yeah, very on brand for an emperor?”
Like, wasn’t Neidanshu one of those things ancient emperors used in their quest for immortality?
“Does that mean I have emperor-class Skills already? …But only when it applies to the bedroom? An emperor-class teenage boyness would be a scary thing indeed… Wait, all three of my opponents are emperors too! Yeeaagh!”
There were too many darn emperors in this bed! Miss Armor Rep’s lips were painted a captivating crimson; Dancer Girl’s, a seductive scarlet. With Sleeping Beauty’s charming cherry-pink smackers, I had a full color palette of luscious lips to admire, a fresh thread of sticky drool dangling from each. Any Shangri-la, Heaven, Valhalla, or other unearthly utopia paled in comparison with this pornographic paradise. I was taken aback by just how beautiful the human form could be, but I had no time to marvel over their majesty, as their excessively erotic embraces evoked in me a—Ehurk!
“Never-ending, service. Just for, you!”
“That sounds good on paper, but if this keeps up, I won’t be able to keep it up! Revival Skills or no!”
The healing caused by the girls repaired the damage caused by the healing repairing the damage caused by the alchemical transmogrifications. (Say that three times fast.) Maybe it was nothing more than intense pleasure overwriting my memories of the excruciating pain, but it felt like my body was beginning to stabilize via this turbocharged sexual healing. Wow! The trade-off was my poor bone(r) getting sucked bone dry.
“C’mon, Hoplology. There’s gotta be an escape for this thigh-trap pinion problem. Oh, hey, whaddya know? I’m free. Heh heh!”
Now the three emperors, wide-eyed and teary, cowered and hugged one another for dear life. They shook their heads in a silent plea of no, no, no!
“Oh yes, yes, yes! Say hello to my little friend, the ‘Summoning Ring: Dexterity +40%. Weapon Summoning Control. Attraction. Enticement.’ Never seen Attraction in action, have you?”
Teeth chattered in horror. Oopsies. Tee-hee, clumsy me!
“Well, lookie here. Guess who’s got all his equipment back? That said, even with the buffs from the ‘Eternal Trinity Rings: Holds dominion over eternity, perpetuity, and permanence. Status Maintenance (hyper). Indestructability (hyper). Reinvigorating. Restoration. Restitution. Revival.’, I’m teetering on the brink of blowing myself up. Yeah, ’cause I have new equipment? And with the evolved Skills Sex Monad and Pleasure Arts, I’m about to show you a whole new world of pleasure and passion and ecstasy and exuberance and rapture and, if you’re really lucky, reverie. We’re about to take pleasure to the extreme. It’s revenge time!”
“Eeeek!”
A single quirk of a finger in their most sensitive locations produced dramatic effects in the girls, and Pleasure Arts cranked it up to eleven. Their pleasure built in rolling, overlapping, ceaseless waves which at last broke against the shore in crescendos of spray, one after the other; as the tide rose, it encroached on their balmy beaches, so trapped were the dungeon emperors in the narrow confines of the carriage, which now seemed smaller than ever as it resounded with moans, squeals, murmurs, and purrs; triplet thighs tangled together and shuddered in the throes of ecstasy; backs arched, and breasts heaved in delicious, disheveled, delirious delight—yeah, it looked like the dungeon emperors had a good time?
“Wait a second. Pleasure ‘Arts’? Lovemaking, aka the Daoist art fangzhongshu? If these are martial arts, then Hoplology must be affecting them! Well, I’d better take my time collecting scrupulous, succulent, sensual evidence until I’m firmly, furiously, frenetically sure of that! Good thing I have three guinea pigs to experiment on! Time to work hard!”
Terrified screams gave way to labored breathing and happy shrieks.
Meanwhile, the carriage continued on its bumpy, bumpy way back to the Kingdom’s capital… Call that a 9.0 on the Dichter scale!
DAY 118: MORNING -- ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
DAY 118
MORNING
If a function f(x) equals (sky times x) over x as x approaches infinity… Yeah, then the sky’s the limit?
ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
I SAILED. I SOARED. Zigzagging from nonexistent step to nonexistent step, I climbed into the endless expanse of blue. Sword ever at the ready, I slashed and cut the cerulean firmament itself. I spread the pinions on my Black Demon’s Bladed Wings, then wheeled into a tailspin fall. Yeah, I took an unexpected downward dive? Krrrashhhhh!
“Glad to report Qing Qigong is in working order! ’Cause if it wasn’t, that crash landing would’ve been the end of me.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Qing Qigong made me virtually weightless. You’d think this would be conducive to flight, but you would be wrong. It simply lessened the impact of the post-flight crash—which was plenty fine by me.
“If I fire off a Wind magic spell right before my untimely faceplanting into the ground, I just might be able to pull off a smooth landing.”
For a guy who’d been flying (or, more precisely, locomoting in some fashion or another through the air) from almost the moment he’d been isekai’d, it sure was taking me ages to figure out landing…
“Why can’t flight and landing skills come as a set?! I’m still struggling with rapid bursts of acceleration and sudden braking. Would it kill my Skills to have a little consideration for poor ol’ me? Must all Skills involving the great beyond require reaching the pearly gates to unlock?”
“Welcome bac—Haruka-kun! What about being immobile made you think this was the perfect time to try flight lessons?”
“’Cause I thought giving myself wings might give wing to mobility?”
“You will be the death of idiom writers everywhere.”
There’s a Zen Buddhist saying that went, “Clouds flow, water flows.” As clouds scudded through the sky and water flowed downhill, so too should we free ourselves of our inhibitions. Only by achieving that level of insentience could one move passively through life. And at this point, I’ll take any movement I can get, passive or no!
“What can I say? Life works in mysterious ways. This world is full of surprises—and old men.”
“You’re responsible for the vast majority of those surprises, bub!”
As they said, surprise the limit? The sky’s infinite? I’d be in an aerial pivot; next minute, the ground’s imminent? Which certainly surprised me!
“You’re the biggest surprise this world has to offer.”
“Would you please stop flinging yourself into the stratosphere and dropping like a stone at the slightest provocation?”
“I can’t help it, y’know? The sky, that unbroken expanse so heartrendingly blue it almost feels close enough to touch, calls to me, if only I have the daring to reach out and take it—so I tried? Turns out it wasn’t close enough to touch after all.”
“You can dress it up in pretty writing all you want. It’s still a bad idea.”
“You are also hereby banned from attempts at pretty writing on account of your inherent sleaziness.”
“Uh, excuse me? I’ll have you know most sleaze is erotic in nature, and what is eroticism if not literary art? The belletrist is not stripped of his title should his subject matter be les belles femmes. Must you assassinate my character if my assiduous assonance is employed in the depiction of asses? Do you think my alliteration is naught but titillation for an illiterate literati? Nay, I seek not the vulgar gaze of la populace philistine. I do not court the tempestuous trends or fickle fluctuations of public opinion; mes œuvres érotiques are solely concerned with artistic affairs. Put simply: You guys are the weirdos with hang-ups about sex. Classic literature is full of stalkers and people cheating on each other!”
“Haruka-kun, what dimension do you live in?!”
Anyhoo, I couldn’t figure out what exactly Hoplology’s deal was. It seemed to encompass virtually any sort of art and made learning them much, much easier. It made my assorted Skills skyrocket—which, naturally, inspired a desire to try my hand at skyrocketing too.
“Hoplology synthesizes, harmonizes, integrates, amalgamates, and orchestrates all my Skills. So what I’m hearing is…I don’t have to do any more work! It’ll do all the Skill learning for me!”
“That’s your takeaway?”
Any art I had learned, I now understood on a higher level. Anything I had only a passing knowledge of, I now grasped intimately. Maybe this explained how I learned Qing Qigong so quickly. Tai chi and the great and terrible tongbeiquan had never become Skills—they seemed to have been folded into Martial Qi Wizardry—but they were now mine to play with at levels that should have been impossible.
“Problem is, I’m way out of shape.”
The only art I had run optimization problems on was wuxingquan. It was impossible to fully plumb the rich depths all these moves had to offer, so I started integrating tai chi into it, weaving combos of rapid-fire knee and elbow blocks and strikes in with the more standard moves. Between last night’s practice session and last night’s “practice session” (otherwise known as revenge), I had no end of practice under my belt. Which was why I got bored. And started flying. The sky was, in fact, not the limit for me.
“I mean, Sleeping Beauty was only level 1, and even she was more than a match for me! In exchange for granting them a blissful escape from reality, the dungeon emperors let me make my great escape into the great blue sky, whereupon my leisurely romp was abruptly terminated by a sudden impact with the ground? So I guess the ground’s the limit?”
“Oh my god! Stop running off for post-coital cavorting in the clouds!”
“And please stop mixing your metaphors.”
“I’m ready to make my escape from this conversation…”
“But never mind about that. We demand seconds.”
“Yeah! We only had thirds at breakfast and fourths at the pre-breakfast snack.”
“We may have overdone it on the post-breakfast snacks… All eight servings of them… But hey, they say you should stop once you’re 80% full—and this is close enough, right?”
On we went to training. Me v. Sleeping Beauty—fight! We were the only two people in the gang who couldn’t pull off moves like something out of a kung fu flick brought to life. At first, Sleeping Beauty could just barely hold her own against me. She had only been level 1 when we’d first recruited her, y’know? A strong level 1, but level 1 nonetheless. But as she trained, she leveled up rapidly, and soon she was devilishly difficult to beat.
“Remind me, aren’t you supposed to be a Saint? Isn’t that a healing role? You dumped all your healing traits and went for a brawler build!”
Mm-hmm!
Sleeping Beauty launched her attacks with beauty and grace—and magic and qi and a whole lotta muscle. Her weapon rushed by with the roar of a bullet train!
“Yow! That whistle in my ears says one touch equals instant death. You need to learn how to pull your punches, girl!”
“Hoo! Ha! Hii-yah!”
Her quick, precise strikes—no doubt on the cusp of becoming legit Skills—solidified before my eyes. Sleeping Beauty was no ephemeral phantom, no dainty waif-turned-wraith. Her weapon was no monk’s prayer staff—it was a halberd.
My outstretched left arm pivoted to send her halberd glancing off harmlessly. Its staff-armed twin followed in hot pursuit. Bengquan, baby! Sleeping Beauty parried the hit with her staff and launched a fury of counterattacks.
“This holy Saint is an unholy terror!”
Her violent fighting style combined major magic and muscle. Is this the secret to Vice Rep B’s freakishly strong style?! Like her Archsage counterpart, Sleeping Beauty used Holy magic to grant herself physical buffs before flinging herself into physical combat with high magic defense and autohealing powers. Between her and Vice Rep B, I almost wasn’t sure who was worse!
“Phew! I’m starting to miss dungeon battles. All this practice for the real thing is tuckering me out!”
Wobble wobble.
Back home, people said, “Shed blood, sweat, and tears in practice to avoid spilling blood on the battlefield.” Here, that seemed to have been misconstrued as “If battles have no bloodshed, why not practice till you break?” It was never the battles that were dangerous. It was the practice at home that worried me!
I took a quick break, by which I meant I was knocked flat on my back and couldn’t continue. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, was a regular font of energy. Maybe she was just happy to have her body back, or maybe she was making up for lost time after centuries trapped underground.
“You wouldn’t expect a delicate, dainty Saint to run around with a halberd, nor merrily match up with the hammer-heaving Archsage Vice Rep B. You guys are magic users. Act like it! Stop swinging around those giant weapons with booms and cracks and bangs! Don’t sunder the sky with a mighty roar as mighty hammer meets mighty halberd with a terrific crash! Quit knocking about those enormous knocke—I’m not finishing that sentence. But believe me, there’s a lot of swinging going on here!”
How come all the girls were glaring at me again? I was just watching Sleeping Beauty and Vice Rep B train! Watch and learn, y’know? Sit back, relax, enjoy the sho—Yes, ma’am, sorry, ma’am! Getting back to work, ma’am!
Sleeping Beauty stepped with the fluidity of water. Like a leaf adrift on the wind, a drop of water in a swift-flowing stream, and the silence of the night, she turned on her heel with no noise, no resistance, and no disturbance to the air around her. Her long, slender fingers stretched toward me, ready to nuzzle my che—ohhhh no you don’t! I don’t have a death wish!
“That elegant tongbeiquan is gonna make me tongbei gone! You’d blow me to smithereens!”
“That was, for, the wall incident.”
“Sheesh! Someone’s holding a grudge.”
I danced on the wind like a puff of dandelion fluff, buffeted about by Sleeping Beauty’s flying fists but avoiding the deadly strikes themselves. Miss Armor Rep’s strikes were far more precise, barely stirring the air at all, and Qing Qigong was likewise powerless to stop Dancer Girl’s fluid tongbeiquan hits—meanwhile, Sleeping Beauty’s flailing fists were powered by the fury of her personal grudge. She didn’t emit so much as an excess drop of tempered lianqi; rather, she expelled it in the form of pure power the moment it was ready for use. I never saw her moving until it was too late. Sleeping Beauty attacked in a literal flash!
“Ack! Making myself weightless with Qing Qigong means I get blown even farther when I’m tongbeiquan’ed!”
I almost just wanted to let go and drift off into the deep, inviting blue. From up here, the sky seemed to go on forever…’cause I’d been blown thirty stories high!
When I kept my magic and qi on a tight leash, the excess magic ran haywire within my body. On the flipside, if I let my magic and qi run loose, my overactive reflexes kicked in. Before I knew what was happening and exerted a conscious effort to move in a specific fashion, my body was already moving without me. Every action had its opposite and equal reaction, and in my case, both were simultaneous!
Now, when I tried to lean back to dodge out of the way, I lurched into something resembling a backwards somersault, effectively performing a suplex on myself and smashing my head into the ground. I had to worry more about killing myself than being killed by my attackers. My controls were just too fussy; I couldn’t figure out how to get myself into the Goldilocks zone where everything was just right.
So much for training. (Wherein “training” was an excuse to tear me to shreds.)
Innocent whistling.
Well, at least we were almost to the Kingdom capital. The demon scythes and Slimey, up front on the coach driver’s box, frolicked and gamboled with my horsey. They were happy to be coming home. But inside the carriage car, things weren’t quite so lighthearted—our playtime had yet to finish.
All three of the dungeon emperors were in somewhat compromising positions, twitching faintly, faces melded into masks of the obscene. I just wanted to thank them for their thorough training with a few tentacles, y’know? I didn’t do anything wrong.
We’d uncoupled this carriage from the beastfolk cars, and now we were putting the pedal to the proverbial metal. The scenery whizzed by in reverse at the speed of our brisk clip, the colors running together into a streaky blur. The gale-force winds of the breeze made havoc of my hair.
“Speaking of, my hair’s getting kinda long. Is it just me, or does it grow faster here? Maybe that’s a byproduct of Revival?”
When I squinted, I could just make out the capital on the horizon. Hmm? Why was there a gate right in front of us? And a gatekeeper? And why were both the gatekeeper’s mouth and the gatekeeper’s gate gate-crashingly gaping wide?
“I’ll pass on the open-mouthed old men, if you don’t mind. Don’t want ’em, don’t have anything to put in their open mouths. Any old men looking to star in a BL story can pin their hopes on the nerds or the meatheads, thank you very much. Either is fine? Perhaps both?”
“Hey! Don’t volunteer us for that!”
“I don’t think there’s a market for old-man yaoi, and if there is, we really don’t want to be a part of it!”
Actually, it turned out it wasn’t BL at all? Our wannabe BL-er was sent to lead us into the city. Sort of an honor guard thing? Or a way to prevent me from getting lost?
“Oh, don’t worry. I know the way to the castle. I know it very, very, very, very, very well. From every warehouse to every treasure horde along the way!”
“Which is why they sent a guard, Haruka-kun.”
The castle gates opened for us, and the pimpin’ king and ol’ lolly-licker stepped out. They gave us a very pimpin’ and lolly-lickin’ welcoming. Just my luck to be cursed with old men everywhere I went, huh? Maybe I’d better light them all on fire.
“Your Majesty—” KA-SLAP! “…you are the king. You should not leave—” KA-FWAP! “…the palace without an accompanying guard. A king may not—” KA-CRACK! “…appear in public without the appropriate fanfare!”
Duke Meridad got to the king before I could and whacked him hard. That’s right, this was an all-new technique: Using a comically large paper fan, the Old Dude Bopper Mark 1, Duke Meridad slapped him a new one with the powers of tongbeiquan. The ODB was designed to make huge amounts of noise but hurt very little—but appearances could be deceiving, as each thwack caused massive internal damage! A masterpiece of product design, if I did say so myself!
“Agh! Stop it, you—stop, Meropapa! What in the blazes—stop, that hurts! You’ve made your point very clear!”
The fan was enormous, a fun visual gag where every mighty slap had very little wei—actually, scratch that. Each wallop from that fan packed as much punch as its massive size threatened.
“Look, I’m not champing at the bit to join an old man stand-up supreme, but I just so happen to have a metal washbasin, a kettle, and the Old Dude Bopper Mark 2—a spring-loaded lethal weapon made to look like a paper fan. So yeah, pick your poison! It’s high time we thinned the old-man herds ’round these parts. There’s old men everywhere I look, be it the Kingdom, Beast Kingdom, or Theocracy. It feels like there’s ten thousand old dudes for every one pretty girl. No matter how you slice it, that ratio just doesn’t seem right. Here, let me kill two old men with one stone—”
“Kindly don’t! Do put those away. They all look dreadfully painful.”
I guess they didn’t want me to join in the routine? Which was a shame, since I’d worked hard to make that series of ultralethal weapons with decidedly un-ultralethal designs.
“If those are not to you sirs’ liking, then perhaps you would enjoy this fine squeaky toy hammer? Do mind the hidden pile bunker inside. Our clients rave that it’s dreadfully diabolical.”
That didn’t work either. New plan: switch targets. On to the third old dude!
“Hey, Lolly Licker. Isn’t it your job to bump off shady characters? Well, nothing’s shadier than a coupla old dudes hosting a comedy routine outside the castle gates. Get bumping! Oh, and I can sell you a magic sword, if you’d like. Don’t mind the free curse.”
Killing three old men with one sword? Hell yeah.
The duke sighed. “I shouldn’t think the king would employ bodyguards willing to cut him down, my boy. Kindly quit attempting to hire assassins or speak treason at the drop of a hat! And no selling cursed swords!”
Aw, he was no fun. There was to be no three-way slaughtering for me… Unless I could find another trio of likely old dudes!
“Sorry, if you could excuse us for a sec…” Class Rep said. “Girls! Grab Haruka-kun and shut him up!”
“Ja!”
“Beautifully done, madam interpreter. I cannot thank you enough.”
“Hey, don’t seal my mouth! I kinda need that to breathe? Actually, this would be a really great way to kill someone—may I recommend you sirs try a mmph mmmph mmpmh!”
“Taped shut, ma’am.”
The girls slapped a big fat X of tape on my mouth! Having an X for a mouth—what was I, a teddy bear? A stuffed rabbit? Might as well bring on the bunny ears! Wait…maybe that’d be popular with girls?
“My lord father,” said Shalliceres, “I come bearing felicitous tidings. The Church’s old leadership has been deposed and replaced with new blood, who send their deepest apologies for the pressures exerted on Diorelle to hand over Lord Haruka. I also bring a letter from His Majesty the King of Aryuca. In accordance with our old alliances, he pledges to send an army to fight the dungeons plaguing our people. Princess Ariel shall be among their number. We know not what cards the Merchant Kingdom or the Empire hold close to their chests, and as such, she is to be accompanied by an elite guard comprised mainly of the Knights of the Scriptures. Finally, with the blessing of every bishop in the Church, I bring you an offer to make peace signed by His Eminence, Pope Stecater.”
What if I reinvent myself as one of them ikemen bunny boys? I think I’m on to something here! Though the wash basin and kettle kinda ruin the look.
“You’ve done us all proud, my daughter. You have my undying gratitude for shouldering the burden of our disputes with Gamehlein; aye, and with the Church. You make me proud to be your king…and your father. I was once of the erroneous belief that you were fit for naught but the battlefield, but you’ve proven yourself to be a diplomat of the highest order. You’ve grown into a fine young lady.”
Bro, what? This “fine young lady” attacked the king of the Beast Kingdom and the church’s biggest bigwigs. A good 70% of her diplomacy had consisted of the word “charge” and the remaining fraction had been “kill them.” Along with a few “destroy them” and “smite him where he stands” thrown in, natch.
Yeah, so anyway, there was to be some meeting or something or other? I let Mr. Meridad and Royal Girl handle it and made myself scarce. I didn’t want nothin’ to do with fancy politics—especially if the polities were stuffed to the gills with old men. And the only maid cafés didn’t let me in!
“Shoot! If I’d checked my stats earlier, I could’ve used the Sex Monad loophole!”
I could’ve had a troop of cute maids with cuter animal ears serving me omelet rice made with love! I could’ve… I could’ve had…moe moe rock-paper-scissors… Bweeeeeh!
If this was a mission of friendship and goodwill, how come the goodwill didn’t extend to me getting friendly with cute animal girls? Huh? Huh?!
DAY 118: MIDDAY -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 118
MIDDAY
Oh, so window shopping is okay, but boob-window shopping isn’t?!
THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
SOME PEOPLE CALLED some meeting thingy, so I peaced out and let Mr. Meridad and Royal Girl handle it.
“Mmrrph! Mrrggmph!”
The more pressing issue was the big X of tape on my mouth. How was I supposed to get that thing off? I yanked and tugged before I remembered I had the Liberation Staff slotted into the Universe Staff. Off came the tape. All those bondage and late-night escape-artist scenes finally came in handy!
“AAAaaahh. There we go. I’m guessing we’re spending the night here. What say we stroll around and check out the place first? Maybe grab something to eat?”
Wiggle wiggle.
The shops on the main avenues sold a wider variety of goods since I’d been here last, and every person I passed had a bigger spring in their step. The castle town was coming to life. I used Jupiter Eye to scan the multitude of merchandise, hunting for just the right addition to my inventory.
Then I saw a tiny bookstore—really, no more than a blanket on the ground with a handful of handwritten and handsome volumes spread across it. Naturally, I bought the whole stock. One book was a bog-standard fantasy story of a noble boy whose happy, halcyon days were wrested away from him in a tragic incident, thus setting him on the path of revenge. Another was a passionate, pathos-filled poem anthology crossed with a diary written by someone who would in modern parlance be referred to as a stalker. The third, a first-person narrative of a girl who lost her family, friends, and beaux in a monster attack. The fourth, a nonsensical, plodding treatise on theoretical political structures written by a no-name nobleman. The final book, and the most popular, was a guidebook called Walking Guide to the Frontier.
“The rest are copies of our new play. Y’know, the one about the Kingdom’s new legends.”
Jiggle jiggle.
The paper quality was shoddy—funny, ’cause so was the writing quality. The books were too short to contain anything of substance…but they were books. The first books and the first bookstore I’d found in this whole world.
“Good! That means the paper industry is taking off. Now the literacy rate will go up. What’s next? Movable-type printing presses? I bet the nerds can throw one together, but knowing them, they’ll only print porn mags… Maybe we don’t have them invent the printing press. So long as they explain the schematics to someone else, that’ll work. Right?”
Jiggle jiggle.
Peace and development went hand in hand. The longer the peace, the bigger the business boom. The more thriving businesses, the bigger the book shops—hence my search for good equipment, which would enable me to carry on this prosperity further. The Beast Kingdom was a lost cause, y’know? It had been infected with moe art, and it was only a matter of time before the nerds invented furry porn. I might have to check that out myself…
“Hey, old man. How much is this?”
“That fine ear cuff? A bit pricy, my boy, but the workmanship is worth every ele. A gift for your girlfriend, I pres—ooooh. Yikes. Never mind. A-ahem, no girlfriend, is it? Very well, I’m sure it’ll look lovely on…you… Aherm. Yes, a thousand ele should do it. No, no, I insist. Chin up, laddie, you’ll get yourself a nice girl someday. Don’t give up hope!”
I got the accessory at a major discount—and the only price was my broken heart. Oh, to be given such a pitiful look! The horror, the horr—actually, the bargain was pretty nice? I dragged myself away, maybe only a little despondent, and whenever I looked over my shoulder, the old man was still back there waving at me with the pity reserved for puppies left out in the rain. I had hoped for a nice bit of retail therapy, and all I got was the need for therapy!
“More prosperity means more shoppers and more…couples.” Sniff, sniff.
Bobble bobble.
Ooh, then I stumbled upon a shop selling cool necklaces and daggers—but I refused to buy any of them. I wouldn’t even ask the price! What was that “Couples 10% Discount” crap all about?! With anti-beastfolk discrimination eradicated, this world had moved onto its next target: single people! What a cruel, cruel wo—oh, hello there.
“Heh heh! Buying a ring for your girly, sonny boy? Bring her here, and you’ll get 10% of—waagh! F-forget I said anything! Th-that’ll be 7,500 ele.”
“I brought my slime. Does he count?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Well, that was embarrassing. I should’ve stuck to my guns and not bought anything there. Friggin’ normie store with its normie clientele all handholding in public. Friggin’ couples discount!
“Yeah, we’re totally a couple. There’s…two of us. Technically.”
Wiggle wiggle.
“Oh, bless your heart… You can have it for one thousand ele, honey.”
“No, it’s not what it looks li—”
“Shh, shh, shh. You don’t have to talk about it. Granny knows. Now, take your nice little trinket and run along.”
She gave me a ridiculous discount!
“Don’t give up!”
“Yeah! Don’t let it get to you. You’ll find someone someday!”
“There’s plenty of fish in the sea, kiddo!”
“We believe in you!”
Now all the nearby couples were pitying me! Their attempts at encouragement were agonizing! What was this—a market, or a trap for the forever alone?!
“We gotta get out of this dangerous accessory aisle, stat. Off to the blacksmith’s we go!”
Wobble wobble.
Yeesh! That place was more hazardous than a freaking ultimate dungeon.
“Hi, I’m looking for a hood, a pair of gloves, a pair of boots, and…a cape, maybe?”
I wanted equipment that could be equipped at my low levels and could slot with other pieces of my kit. The only actual “armor” in my possession was shoulder pads. I had nothing covering my chest, groin, or elbows, to say nothing of my knees. Most metal armor didn’t require high levels to equip, but their Traits were usually locked behind level walls—so what was the point in trying?
“Hmm…”
First things first, I wanted something that would augment my current cloth armor. Beyond that, I wanted as much defensive equipment as possible, but my low level prevented me from using any of their Traits. Good defensive equipment with low-level-friendly Traits tended to get snapped up by the wealthier denizens of this world, according to the shopkeepers I was friendly with.
“I used to be considerate about armor weighing me down when dodging, but I’m so messed up right now, dodging’s not on the table. I gotta get something that’ll stop me from getting OHKO’d. Problem is, everything for sale is too heavy and too expensive. And…not even that good.”
Wiggle wiggle.
Earlier, when I’d had this thought, I’d donned my shoulder shields and…watched them fly away without ever once protecting my shoulders. Welp.
“I don’t think this universe understands that shoulder shields are defensive gear…”
Jiggle jiggle.
Even if I made my own armor, I still wanted armor pieces I could model my work off of. And if I was going to pay money on something anyway, why not grab a piece of equipment I could use?
“‘Cowcatcher Kneepads: To be used for fighting cows. Power +50%. Certain Kill (only works on cows). +ATT.’ The hell? Why are these kneepads designed for a bovine battle? The only cow monsters I’ve seen were those minotaurs on the 99th floor of the first ultimate dungeon. And a low-level adventurer shouldn’t be fighting those!”
Boing boing.
The rest of the armor was no different—all useful only in ridiculously specific situations or just plain bad. “Take the ‘Bladed Elbowpads: Slash. +ATT.’ Rest your elbows on the table (yes, I know it’s bad manners; that’s not the point) and you’ll saw the whole table in half! Why would you need swords on your elbows for anything but elbowing? The rest of the time, you’ll be a walking hazard!”
I popped into here, window-shopped there. If there’s no good gear for me, I could still find something to sell back home. Maybe something for the girls. I dunno. I wandered hither and thither, and that was when I saw…it.
“You stick out like a sore, suspicious thumb. ‘Monster Leather Breastplate?’ Huh? Another piece of equipment with a question mark in its name. Appraisal tells me it’s made of ‘Leather?’ Question marks all the way down…”
Question marks were the heralds of choice gear. So, even though it took major MP, I used Jupiter Eye’s Wisdom Eye for a more thorough Appraisal. “Minotaur Leather Breastplate: Strength +30%. Physical and Magic Resistance (hyper). Slash and Penetration Resistance (hyper). +DEF. Slots three items.”
“Did the Cowcatcher Kneepads bag the beast that went into this breastplate? Yeesh!”
This was perfect for my needs, and I never would’ve known if not for Jupiter Eye.
“How much for the breastplate, pops?”
“That piece of junk? Not much, but you oughta consider a better ’un. Wouldn’t wanta die out there. That there’s made o’ monster pelt. Thick stuff, but you’d be better off gettin’ something reinforced with steel.”
Was he kidding me? This was minotaur leather. Minotaur! The strongest monsters I’d seen on the frontier yet. Plus, the Traits were drool-worthy.
“Nah, I’m good with this. How much do I owe you for it?”
“You sure? Well, it’s your funeral. You can take it off my hands for 2,000 ele. Now you save up and buy a better suit of armor, y’hear?”
What a kind old dude. The price was a steal even without the forever-alone discount. But his look of pity dealt major psychic damage…
“Wait. Did I just get a bunch of equipment for ubercheap ’cause the shopkeepers felt bad for me? Wow, let me cross off another square on my isekai bingo board…”
Great, as if I needed more damage to my bruised psyche… Not that it mattered, since I’d suffered a fatal blow to my ego on accessory row.
I wandered here. I wandered there. I ambled down avenues, sauntered in and out of shops, moseyed my merry way along ways thronged with other merry moseyers. Midway through my merry moseying, I spotted a stall selling chicken skewers and bought a couple for Slimey ’n’ me. We enjoyed our snack and poked around the other stalls.
“Whoa. If I sold this to you-know-who, I’d be a rich man.”
Unfortunately, the “Fullmetal Worm’s Armor: Physical Nullification (large). Full-body Defense (medium). Hardening and Shapeshifting. +DEF.” would only increase in size when counterattacking. It, ah, did not add to its wearer’s assets by default.
“Vice Rep A can’t use this anyway since she wears one-piece, full-body armor. But Tiny Tanuki? She wears light armor, so this would be perfect for her. It’s also a great piece of gear in its own right. But…I have a bad feeling she’d run into foes nonexistent-chest-first in the hopes of getting attacked. Seems counterproductive for the purposes of defense.”
So, I said goodbye to the Fullmetal Worm’s Armor.
Next, I found a protective talisman in the shape of a hairclip, a consumable item. It had good Traits for a consumable. I would’ve bought it were it not to break after one use, but as it was, I didn’t like the idea of leaving its wearer undefended. And besides, I could never sell just the one.
“Consumables aren’t economical, but safety’s important. You know what? I’ll take it home, steal the schematic, and flood the market with my own copies! Who cares if this talisman is a little pricey? Let’s buy it.”
And so long as the design was cute enough, these clips would be big sellers for me. Especially because they were consumables! Hello, cash!
“Ooh, they have cloak clasp pins. And earrings!”
Wiggle wiggle.
With the old superstitions abolished, all the surviving alchemists were beginning to come out of hiding. They were flocking to the Kingdom in droves, bringing new equipment and potions with them.
That stupid church and its stupid oppression… Why did it oppress all the useful people—the alchemists with their brilliant inventions and the beastfolk with their fierce warriors? Oppression was perfectly pointless, nothing but needless, firmly futile. The people of this world lacked the strength to keep the monster hordes at bay, yet they’d divided their strength further for no other reason than greed. Self-interest had handed humanity a one-way ticket to self-destruction; short-term financial interests and plain old avarice had sent them tumbling to their doom, ignorant of the true value of this world their ancestors had laid down their lives to protect. They’d sold their futures for financial interests. They’d brought a bad ending, a dead end disaster, upon themselves. Only now were we beginning to turn the tide. Shame, really. Seems there’s no such thing as a perfect world, even in fantasy.
“Why the constant desire for more money, y’know? If you have enough to buy what you want, live where you like, and eat whatever sounds good, isn’t that enough?”
Jiggle jiggle.
“That’s more than enough! And what did you do now to make everyone look at you like a kicked puppy?”
Oh, hey, mean girls. The mean girls were mean (average) teenage girls but with a mean (excellent) mean (mean) streak. And a meaner fashion sense! The townsfolk couldn’t stop staring at their clothes—so stylish! So unlike anything they’d ever seen before!—nor could they avoid gaping at their doll-like proportions. The girls had great figures and an even greater sense of what looked good on them. Here in this backwater universe of bumpkins and yokels, their fashion sense drew every eye and then some.
“Hey, mea—”
“For the last time, we’re not mean girls! And none of our names start with ‘mea’ either!”
The mean girls had, or so I’d heard, sometimes been scouted by magazines to be featured as amateur models, but none of them had dreamed of going into modeling. They’d been interested in joining the fashion industry and had taken afterschool classes at fashion trade schools. Therefore, these budding designers and stylists dressed to impress, and impress they did.
“Hey, are those clothes new? The fit’s a little off, hon. Oh, but it’s custom-made? Clothesmaking Club Girl designed it and Sewing Club Girl put it together? Oh, I can so tell. It’s so them. This part could just be a liiiiitle looser, and then it’d be perfect.”
“Wow. You know your stuff.”
“Most people would never blink twice at those clothes.”
“And you saw all that with one glance? You should open your own luxury maison de prêt-à-porter.”
“Oh, but tailor-made is so in right now.”
“Handicrafts Club Girl and Clothesmaking Club Girl have yet to master draping fabrics, but really, that’s totally beyond the average high schooler’s capability.”
Uh-huh, uh-huh, I see. Ready-made clothing required a degree of universal applicability, which was why haute couture was judged much more harshly. An article of clothing made for one person alone could be so much bolder than a garment made to sit on half a hundred body types. The body types of the four mean girls were much like ideal mannequins themselves, with their small, shapely faces, long arms, and longer legs. All they were missing were the snipping and sewing skills to back up their cutting critiques.
“I woulda made them a dressmaker’s dummy if you’d asked.”
“That wouldn’t be good for practice. They would only learn how to make clothes for the dummy’s exact body type.”
“Plus, I don’t like the idea of a dummy based on our measurements. That’s just creepy!”
See, the mean girls wanted the Yggdrasil Fruit for themselves—but they chose to give them up in favor of the arts club girls. I never heard a peep of complaint out of them either—I only knew ’cause Class Rep told me. These girls had put serious effort into their command of couture, cramming every day after school in their trade school classes… Oh great. Now I have to go find another five pieces of fruit. Where was I going to find another ultimate dungeon full of ghosts? Still, if any of us had a chance of finding one, it was me. Drop items seemed dependent on luck, and I had the best luck of my whole class.
Just then, I stumbled upon a very familiar scene.
“Why are you always eating? Is it the psychological damage from being called the twin telephone poles? With the way your legs are bulking up, you each have a pair of twin telephone pol—aah!”
“Haruka-kun! You’re the source of that trauma.”
“Quit yelling that nickname at the top of your lungs! What if it catches on?!”
The sports club girls were buying food—oh boy, here came Slimey’s favorite part! Bunny Girl, Wolf Girl, and Tiny Tanuki wolfed down cotton candy as a trio of fast friends—whether that was ’cause of Tiny Tanuki’s chattiness or her animal magnetism, I couldn’t say. Behind her was Vice Rep B, window shopping with a very prominent boob wind—never mind, not finishing that thought! Class Rep and Vice Rep A were glaring daggers at me, morning stars at the ready!
“Hey! How did you get your hands on that Punishing Pummeler? I thought I banned it! Huh? Dancer Girl lent it to you, Class Rep? Well, I guess that makes sense. You two are close friends… Am I the only one who thinks girls sharing morning stars is kinda weird? Oh no, don’t mind me. The only sweet, sweet bouncing and boinging I was watching was Slimey bouncing and boinging his way through sweet, sweet cotton candy. That’s all I was looking at. Unrelated, but why is Vice Rep B wearing a dirndl? We need to call in the bomb squad, because that low neckline and fine bodice is the bomb. I mean, very dangerous! Due to morning stars!”
“You’re completely ogling her, Haruka-kun. That glazed-over look? It’s a dead giveaway.”
“I can see the lechery written on your face. Guilty, guilty, guilty!”
It wasn’t my fault! Vice Rep B and a dirndl was inherently a dangerous combination. See how all the male halves of the couples walking by had started drooling? See how their girlfriends were beating them up for it? Violence was breaking out everywhere; fights were forming in the streets; it was tragic, so tragic. So yes. More? Gimme gimme?
“Look at all the shops. Did you guys find anything cool?”
“Yeah, any good places?”
“What? There’s no manju stall!”
“You see that yellow pyramid-shaped tent back the way we came? They sell accessories with little talismans in them.”
The girls were starved for news of new merchandise. (Judging by their stomachs, they were not starved for food.) With their spoils of war (read: snacks) in hand, the girls roved the marketplace, ignoring the accessory shops and making a beeline right for the food stands. Whatever happened to the stereotype of girls watching their figures?
“Oh em gee. Are these cute, or are these cute?”
“Eh… Not my cup of tea, and I wouldn’t pay that much for a consumable. I pirated the talisman concept, so if you want the clip itself, go for it. We can add talismans to it later.”
“Sounds like a plan! Thanks, Haruka-kun. Put me down for a pre-order.”
Two’s company; three’s a crowd; thirty’s an…unholy terror? Yeah, it’d take more than an army to stop this pack of thirty girls. I would’ve worried about letting my young female classmates go off alone in a fantasy-typical crowd, but with three dungeon emperors in the mix, any would-be assailant would soon find himself the victim of physical assault.
On I went, wanderin’. Putterin’. Moseyin’. Hey, was that a flower crow—yooooo, holy shit.
“Every one of those flowers is a talisman! This is revolutionary!”
I liked the specs of each crown, so I bought the whole stock. I felt a little bad for the monsters soon to be slaughtered by tittering teenage terrors in dainty flower crowns, but oh well! With each talisman packing a punch, each crown equated to a lot of punches. And they were cheap!
“Do you know when you’ll be getting another shipment of these? Is there, uh, a handy warehouse full of flower crowns lying around here somewhere?”
“Heh heh! You know a good bargain when you see it, don’tcha? Well, I’ll tell you, laddie, the alchemist who makes these sold the last of his stock to the Zackary Corporation. You know, the one on the frontier? I don’t have any left. If you want more, you’ll have to talk to the folks at Zackary.”
A frontier trading company? The old gal at the general store?
I didn’t see any other flower crowns like these elsewhere in the market, so the trader must have been telling the truth. Any other flower crowns would be in the frontier. Still, since I was not in the frontier, I bought the whole local stock—I doubted the frontier had enough to satisfy my client base.
“Imagine all the housewives going around with their flower crowns and goblin clubs… I’m shaking in my boots just thinking about it!”
Pretty soon, the frontier’ll be monster-free…
DAY 118: EVENING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 118
EVENING
Me, in a flower crown? That’s a bad idea—better nip it in the bud!
THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
I WAS A WALKING CONTRADICTION. The only way to stop my body from exploding on itself was to control it manually, and the only way to control my hyperfast reaction times was to use thought acceleration…but thought acceleration drained my MP reserves in a flash, causing me to fall over immobile. I ended up immobile either way, ’cause self-destruction rendered me bedbound too. And immobility in battle meant death.
“I wish I had something halfway between these two extremes. Guess I just gotta keep fine-tuning my setup and hope Wisdom figures it out someday.”
I could solve this problem with the right equipment. (Let’s ignore that my equipment often contributed to the self-destruction process.) Yes, this was the quickest, most effective solution!
Which was all just to explain why I went into town earlier.
“Yup! I need to boost my intelligence and vitality. If I don’t have a balanced build, I’ll balance it myself. Operation: If Even Wisdom Says I’m Dead, Pray My Equipment Doesn’t Break! is a go. Have at it, equipment!”
I spotted an interesting ring at one of the stalls: “Marionette Ring: Dexterity +30%. Control Abilities Boost (large).” Seemed like kind of a niche item, to be honest. It was meant for fighting with battle puppets and stuff, right? But then I took a closer look at the Traits list and realized what a gem I had on my hands. Naturally, I snapped it up.
“I bet it works on tentacles too! And if not, at least I can put on a puppet show for the orphans?”
Then, much to my surprise, I found a stall selling ear cuffs. One was called the “Oscillation Ear Cuff: Hearing Assistance. Sound Modulation. Slots five items.” I had no idea what a vaguely fantastical hearing aid was used for, but I guess I could hold onto it for when I got old? Also, I liked the sound of that “Slots five items.” With mithril, I could probably bump that number up to seven, but I only had the one other ear cuff: “Fortune Ear Cuff: An amulet that shifts one’s fortune according to the luck stat. +Luck.” Come to think of it, both of them have kinda shitty Traits…
“And then we have the best find of the day, the ‘Minotaur Leather Breastplate: Strength +30%. Physical and Magic Resistance (hyper). Slash and Penetration Resistance (hyper). +DEF. Slots three items’! This is a bona fide bargain. The strength buff will exacerbate my self-destruction problem, which is kind of an issue, but…I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it. Meanwhile, the leather lends a classy touch to my poor man’s Villager A garb. Listen, I’ve waited long enough! I deserve some new armor! The breastplate may have won me the shopkeeper’s pity, but I’ll never pass up a bargain!”
Unfortunately, I couldn’t add mithril to the breastplate yet. I didn’t trust myself to be able to handle the load it’d place on my internal systems—which was a shame, considering it was my shiny new toy. Oh well, what the hell. Let’s at least try it on for old time’s sake.
“Huh. It covers the shoulders too. That’s a twofer! You gotta watch out with torsos—lots of dangerous bits and bobs in there that really shouldn’t be stabbed.”
Wiggle wiggle.
I could potentially regenerate my own heart; hell, without a heart, I could probably pump my blood with magic and qi. Lungs, though—I had to watch out for those. One punctured lung, and I was a goner. It didn’t matter if I had a second working lung. If I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t temper my qi. Without that lianqi, I couldn’t use any of my qi arts, and without qi arts, I was dead. Call that a vicious qi cycle. When my healing abilities took a dramatic hit, none of my physical or magical prowess would make a difference—I’d inevitably wind up on death’s doorstep.
Yeah, so, a breastplate was paramount. At first, I’d assumed any old breastplate would do, but most breastplates made it look like I had megapecs, which was a no from me. I’d hit the jackpot with the Minotaur Leather Breastplate—I could worry about the whole self-destruction thing later.
“Above all else, I gotta protect my head and torso. But a flower crown on a teenage boy… Are you kidding me? With all the looks I’d get, that’d be more of a glower crown. (Not going to lie, though, I think I’d look good in a flower crown.)”
Judgmental jiggle jiggle.
Or maybe not. I’d never seen such a judgment-laden jiggle from Slimey before. He shouldn’t have been able to lip curl, being a big ball of goo lacking any kind of face, but he’d managed it somehow. Oh, the psychic damage!
“So this ‘Talisman Flower Crown: Inherits Traits from talismans. +DEF.’…All it does is buff defense, huh? And its talismans provide all the fun Traits. I guess they didn’t consider the consumable angle.”
Wiggle wiggle.
The talismans themselves, drawn onto the flowers with spellstone ink, had very weak Traits. The crown was made of three large flowers, each with Traits like “Nullifies 30 HP Damage. (Limited to one-time use)” and “Status Ailment Recovery. (Limited to one-time use),” interwoven with several smaller, decorative flowers, with Traits like “Fire Resistance (small). (Limited to one-time use)” and “Slash Resistance (small). (Limited to one-time use.)” It was a sumptuous piece of equipment—maybe too sumptuous. I doubted it would fit inside the girls’ helmets. I needed a simpler, smaller version because I wasn’t about to ask the girls to go around with flower crowns outside their full suits of armor. Do you have any idea how creepy that would look?
“Hmm, would it be possible to have a full suit of armor made from fake flowers? I should make suits from chrysanthemum flowers2—and give ’em to the meatheads and nerds. Yeah, and then burn ’em? I bet fake flowers are real flammable!”
Wobble wobble.
Yup, these fake flowers were weak to fire and water. The talismans couldn’t be activated with the spellstone ink alone, meaning that their user had to provide their MP. They autoactivated, which was nice in its own right, but this also made it impractical to use huge numbers of them in armor. These flowers had some pretty specific use cases, but if applied effectively, they could be a genuine technological innovation.
“I don’t know how to make talismans myself. I’d better take these apart and figure out how they work.”
Outside of the, y’know, visual problem, I had no issue with wearing a flower crown. My old Intelligence Crown had only had three slots, so it’s a good thing I’d added mithril to it and made it the “Wisdom Crown: Intelligence, Resistance +40%. Control boost (ultra). Sorcery boost (ultra). Slots five items.” With enough mithril and high-grade spellstones, maybe I could upgrade it again and get seven slots.
Anyway.
Metal Helmet: Vitality +20%, +DEF.
Sorcerer’s Crown: Intelligence + 50%. Sorcery Boost (hyper). Seal Spawning. Sigil Spawning. Skilled Sorcery.
Carbuncle Crown: MP, Intelligence +50%. Scarlet Shield. Scarlet Armor. Scarlet Eye. Uses unique Scarlet magic.
Those being the first three I already had slotted. Now, for the next two:
Talisman Flower Crown: Inherits Traits from talismans. +DEF.
Talisman Flower Crown: Inherits Traits from talismans. +DEF.
Five outta five.
“I sure have a lot of vitality buffs in my headgear. I should find a way to leverage that.”
Two flower crowns gave me close to 300 freebie hit points. Add in my current HP and I could take quadruple-digit hits. Score. Unfortunately, the flower crowns’ talismans were consumable and didn’t have any Traits that mitigated self-destruction.
“To be fair, I rarely get hit. Most of my damage is self-inflicted.”
And the crowns only took hits caused by enemies.
“Next up on my to-do list is to find some equipment to combine with my breastplate.”
Problem was, breastplates were mainly for low-level adventurers, so I rarely stumbled across them in my travels. My best bet was to put off adding mithril to the Minotaur Leather Breastplate until I had extra. My mithril resources would be allotted for the Wisdom Crown. Yeah. That sounded good.
Okay, it was time to see how my equipment functioned in action. I popped on over to the castle training grounds and found the girls hard at work doing some training of their own.
The average level of the girls hovered somewhere near the 130 mark, so the castle soldiers gave them a wide berth. With every stat in the thousands, the girls and their physical abilities were off the charts. And with cheat Skills and cheat buffs? Well, they were unstoppable. They scattered the Kingdom’s heroes; the earth trembled at their passing. Yup, ’cause if their levels were stratospheric, you should have seen their wei—why do I have the sudden sensation that several someones want to kill me?
“Hey, watch it! I’m not your target? Are you locking on to me with your glares?! Girls, please! Fat burning and muscle building are great for the figure, but muscle is much heavier than fat. If you lose weight, you’ll lose muscle. It’s perfectly natural for you to be a little on the heavier side, so—aiiyeeeee! Please don’t do the cool samurai sword drawing thing with morning stars!!! You’re scaring me!!!”
I narrowly escaped the morning-star mauling with the help of my souped-up reaction time. Using the Storage Cloak to pull out a morning star in one lightning-fast strike is definitely cheating! And terrifying! Frighteningly fast and blindingly brutal!
“We missed? Shoot him—I mean, shoot.”
“What was that?! Did you try to disguise your kill order as a grumble?! Complaining about someone when they’re in earshot is rude—especially if it’s ordering their death!”
Grumbling expresses disapproval and can be considered rude when performed in front of the subject of one’s complaint; it has been known to make people feel a little uncomfortable. That’s why we don’t do that to our friends. But it’s true that in some cultures, good-natured griping is a bonding method, so there’s some regional variation to this rule. So I suppose we just don’t know if being rude to people is considered rude in this world!
“I mean…aw shoot, you’re just too cute.”
“Huh? Now you’re flirting with me? Where did that come from?!”
Y-you know what? I’ll just ignore them. I didn’t want girls flirting with me, even as a joke. Because it was embarrassing, okay?! Hmph.
Anyway, I refocused and began running through slow wuxingquan drills once more. After a couple of sets, I carefully reintroduced my tai chi forms into my repertoire.
Yeah, okay. The footwork’s giving me trouble. Compared to most other arts, tai chi didn’t require a lot of foot movement. Some people even joked that tai chi practitioners were stuck in place like beached boats. But even then, I really struggled to get the footwork down.
Hoplology and Martial Qi Wizardry were the problem. These two Skills encompassed Body Manipulation LvMax, Walking Mastery Lv9, Avoid Lv9, Rapid Movement Lv9, Bend not Break Lv9, Diamond Fist Lv8, and the magic Skills Dash Lv8 and Overclock Lv9. All those movement and martial Skills were, in their evolved form, more difficult to control than ever. And as if that weren’t bad enough, Hoplology applied its own synergistic effect. Each step I took was at a different pace and separate distance from its predecessors. Walking like that hurt.
Gravity magic powered Qing Qigong. Teleport magic powered Hoplology…right? That was the only explanation. My steps were too clunky; the time it took to analyze each one, much too long. But before long, I’d have to bite the bullet and experiment with…it. Ichi no tachi.
“Hwah!”
I slashed in accordance with the lost art of ichi no tachi—the one sword. This mysterious, phantom kata was created by master swordsman Bokuden, from whose sword expertise spilled the kendo art of Shinto-ryu. Ichi no tachi was the grandfather of many a derivative kata, but none of these derivatives bore much resemblance to one another, and thus was the original kata lost in the shadows of history.
“Take the initiative and strike. Sit on the fence and wind up on de-fence.”
This single sword art governed all things offense and defense. A strike that moved so quickly it sliced the enemy’s strike in twain…if you believed the nerds, that was. Which I didn’t.
“Are you kidding me? The nerds never did kendo. Even if they had, how on earth would they know a kata even the experts don’t understand?”
But Wisdom was picking it up. Once again, I feared the nerds were putting bad ideas into Wisdom’s head… First tongbeiquan, then tongbeiquan, and finally—what was it again? Oh yes—tongbeiquan. The tongbeiquan we practiced here was not like any tongbeiquan I’d ever heard of back home!
“Thence offense does commence whence the fencer steps past their opponent’s defense and slashes down with a force intense? Yeah, it’s common sense?”
Ichi no tachi was not so much a move as a philosophy. It was a mentality, a way to remove the opponent’s blade and strike them down in one fluid motion. Hence, though every derivative was different, it was all at heart the same technique.
Meanwhile, as I worked on mastering this esoteric sword art, Dancer Girl taught Sleeping Beauty our stylized version of tongbeiquan. Sleeping Beauty infused her body with magic and qi, let herself relax, then lashed out like a whip, whipping up spirals about the straight axis of her strike’s trajectory. The air trembled, although it most definitely shouldn’t have. Waves shuddered through the air and blasted apart the opposite wall, despite that not being appropriate behavior for walls on the receiving end of tongbeiquan. It was a thick wall! She wasn’t standing anywhere near it! And for crying out loud, tongbeiquan didn’t blast through walls to begin with!
But, of course, Miss Armor Rep and Dancer Girl nodded, like that was exactly what it was supposed to do. With this bad omen, I realized the OP anime version of ichi no tachi was likely to be adopted in this world too. Yikes! What a freaky—and freakishly nerdy—sword discipline.
“Oh, quit being smug! Don’t give me that I taught her everything she knows face.”
Sleeping Beauty had yet to master the art; she’d expended a huge wealth of magic and qi only to leave a crater in the stone wall. (The dungeon emperors high-fived her for it nonetheless.) Maybe the attack would work better at closer range. What if I used it on foes a millimeter away? No, a tenth of a millimeter? Now that’d be an instadeath cheat skill. That was the kind of inhuman feat reserved for dungeon emperors and other higher beings. Speaking of higher beings, while Sleeping Beauty’s high-five was pretty lowbrow, everything else about her was high level. High waist, high hips, high-quality tush…
Maybe the nerd version of ichi no tachi was right. I mean, it was dead wrong, but maybe it was dead wrong in the right way? Like tongbeiquan?
“Hmm…”
To be honest, I did have a way to control my reaction speeds: slow them down with slow-mo. Problem was, if I sped up my thoughts to the point where they matched my reactions, time slowed to an ooze. And if it kept oozing and oozing…then it oozed right into the abyss of Hell, and it only kept sinking from there into the endless abyss, toward the bottom of the bottomless depths. In that stage of stopped time, when all the world was frozen solid around us—was where my eyes met Miss Armor Rep’s. The temporal axis was locked in place, here in the realm of the dungeon emperors—the ultimate in slow motion, the world’s end garden, the quiet whimper of a universe’s extinction—the backdrop upon which we locked eyes.
“I’ll go light, but be careful…of my safety, mostly. Now let’s rumble!”
The air was a blue blur. The world bled streaks of color. We crossed empty space in a span of time too brief to be called an instant. In search of alaya, in search of amala,3we dissected time into numbers as unfathomably great as the wonders of the Buddha, into upwards of nayuta4 pieces, into a googolplex of miniscule fragments. There, in the trench between existence and nonexistence, where time became but a concept—there, in that nothingness of nirvana, I found the domain of the dungeon emperors.
Miss Armor Rep smiled. The ghost of her smile remained behind her like an afterimage when she moved, like an optical illusion, and she cut through the clastic, almost ceased, flow of time. Like two dancers, like two master fencers, our swords sailed about one another, leaving ghostly afterimages in their wake, dropping down to kiss one another in a clash of steel. As if stirring time into motion once more, our swords traced paths through constrained Kronos, dancing, darting, parrying each other, slicing through space. We described ellipses, drew helices, wheeled and whirled, to meet for a third time. Our swords glanced harmlessly off each other. And then I…I crumpled to the ground. Yeah, because I never stood a chance?
I wheezed, for all the good that did me. “I…can’t…breathe down here. And that third strike broke me… How much…MP…did I use? Huh? All of it? Well, shit.”
Not so much as a tenth of a second had elapsed, and I was already exhausted. Three strokes into the battle, and I was done. But the “fun” was just beginning! See, ’cause these three gorgeous goddesses got gnarly grins, each one as distinctly different and delightful as the girl herself. Tongues skated around the edges of red, red lips.
“Uh…be nice? And stuff?”
Nuh-uh. Nope. No, sireee.
Well, this was bad. The dungeon emperors were very happily shaking their heads no at me. Their faces alone? Fine. Perfectly innocent. The things they were doing with their tongues? Very 18+! Very dangerous!
“You’re all eternally 17! You’re not supposed to be engaging in 18+ activities! That’s a numerical inconsistency! Could you be a little less consistently horny for me?!”
Nuh-uh. Nope. No, sireee.
The dungeon emperors dragged me away. At first, I thought they were taking me to a bedroom, but no. They had reserved the bath for our use, and…added an air mattress?! This was supposed to be a chance to test my equipment! And now all my equipment was being removed! Resistance was futile; I was stuck in place, rendered immobile by my sudden MP loss. Oh, I was defenseless against their ablutionary agonies. With bubbles, and doubles, and toils and troubles, the dungeon emperors descended on me for a bubbly bedroom boogie! Ack!
Sploosh!
DAY 119: MORNING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 119
MORNING
An early morning Fish Girl fighting session threatens to make sushi out of sashi-her and sashi-me!
THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
I INHALED A BIG WHIFF of fresh morning air and listened to the angry squawking of some giant bird off in the distance. Ahh. Nothing like a good squawking in the morning.
“Wait—back up. A giant bird?! You mean a monster?”
At the sound of my voice, three pairs of glares disentangled themselves from the blankets and launched themselves in my direction. Ahh. Nothing like a nice glare or three in the morning.
“Heya. Don’t look at me like that. You all had your fun letting me collect lots of data, so I had to get revenge. Yeah, vengeance is mine? And I didn’t do anything wrong? Yup, that Marionette Ring was a great find.”
Yup yup, I may have endured brutal humiliation and wound up buying it halfway in tears, but the “Marionette Ring: Dexterity +30%. Control Abilities Boost (large)” was worth every bit of disgrace. And having Slimey there netted me a couple’s discount?
“Bluh!” Evidently, the dungeon emperors were not a fan.
The ring was enormously effective. It offered such fine tentacular control that I’d increased my tentacle capacity fourfold. Now packing twelve tentaculicious tendrils, there wasn’t a patch of skin that’d gone un-juiced up, not a crevice that hadn’t been explored, not a cramped space that hadn’t been wormed into and wriggly worked until said space’s owner had combusted in a ball of flames. Now take that and multiply it times twelve. The result? The ultimate fondle fest. Once the girls had flopped over, exhausted, modeling the happy baby pose or splaying open their legs like the letter M, I’d gone to town to make them as happy, jubilant, and joyful as I could! The girls had had no complaints about the equipment—it was the poses that’d bothered them, if the mega-death glares had been anything to go by. Maybe it was the horizontal version of a standing split that’d done it?
“Look, I need a healthy dose of glares to start the day off right. Once I have the right glares in me, I know everything’s bound to come up Haruka. Without my daily dose, I just don’t know what to do! In other words, I didn’t do anything wrong?”
Glaaaaaare.
I revived the three immobile ingenues and read the writing on the wall—those weren’t good morning glares. No, those were wiping-Haruka-off-the-face-of-the-earth glares. Time to run! Before I get chewed out! Those glarey glarers sure are furious. So I peaced out. The famous proverb “Play with fire, and you get burned; now, play with a fiery young thing, on the other hand…” rang in my ears.
I wanted nothing more than to leap back into bed and horse around with this trio of firebrands, but no! It was morning, and I had morning things to do, such as radio calisthenics, wuxingquan, and tai chi. I did a set of each, and then I started all over with weapons. I took up my knock-off of the oni-slaying Dojigiri, the Old Dude Slayer Mwa Ha Ha, and rechristened it the “The Thought of Slaying Old Ladies Makes Me Quake, I’d Rather Kill Old Dudes Instead!” If you’re thinking the name changes constantly, it’s not just you. I can never remember what I’ve named the darn thing, so I just call it whatever pops into my head.
“Hoo! Hah! Hoo!”
The closest Skill I had to ichi no tachi was Life or Death, my all-or-nothing, ultra-close-range sword attack. In this secret technique, if the opponent faltered, the practitioner pushed forward and struck. If the opponent attempted to take the initiative, the practitioner darted out of range and struck first.
In stories and myth, ichi no tachi was synonymous with its legendary creator Tsukahara Bokuden. In real life, we didn’t know what this art truly was. Much of what we knew about Bokuden himself, even, was myth. He was said to be a master of every kind of martial art that ever was. No matter who he’d fought or what weapon he’d faced, he’d adapted his fighting techniques on the fly to overcome any obstacle thrown his way. This had resulted in him emerging victorious from no less than nineteen sword duels and thirty-seven battles with a record of zero defeats and a paltry six wounds—all of which had come from arrows. Over the course of his career, he’d slain 212 opponents personally. However, his legend had truly begun later in life, when he’d developed the secret sword art ichi no tachi.
“Now, how does this go again… It is said that within one sworde—and his swordman—existeth three things that determine his primacy in a faight? The fortunes of Heauen set him off right; terrene aduantages gyue him insight? But both of these factors are truly slight? A moost good swordman knoweth that he fears the guy with rapport with all of his peers? Everything else is a whole lotta cruft; one’s character is what matters—and stuff?”
Ichi no tachi had later been developed out of these principles in what become the Kashima school of kenjutsu. In this art, the practitioner begins either with their sword in its scabbard, to be brought out in a reverse draw, or in a free, ready to swing, position. The sword does not protect the wielder’s body from incoming attack; rather, it leaves the wielder open and defenseless, which in turn invites the opponent to attack. If, when dodging, the tip of the opponent’s sword is over one sun—about three centimeters—away, the ichi no tachi practitioner is encouraged to disengage. The sword fighter must be within five bu (1.5 cm) to close the remaining distance and strike down their assailant. This principle is called issun no hazure, gobu no hazure: the one-sun and five-bu extremities.
“I’m not sure I get all that sixteenth century stuff—but if I had to say, I guess it’s like cutting the opponent’s sword’s vectors and angles ’n’ stuff? Two parallel lines diverging? Maybe?”
When attacked, the sword wielder’s instinctive reaction was to move back—however, the defender must step forward into the strike with a simultaneous strike of their own. This technique became known as ichi no tachi, the mysterious move later memorialized in the seventeenth century military record Koyo Gunkan with the cryptic message, “One fortune, one sword strike, one sword—and so is the primacy of a sword and its master so determined.”
“But that’s not a kata, per se. Isn’t it more like a guiding principle? The nerds insist this is a technique, but I don’t trust ’em as far as I can throw ’em. The nerds get all their knowledge from pop culture!”
Yet pop culture juju contained kernels of truth. If I could wed those kernels to solid fact via my Skills’ OP synergistic properties, then I was in business. The only thing that was stopping me was my body—and I could always push myself past my physical limitations.
“Right-o, so all I gotta do is dodge within a centimeter of my opponent’s blade, getting me close enough to where I’m guaranteed to cut the fool in half, and then unleash all my strength in a single strike—aka use my luck, my terrain advantages, and all the skill I’ve cultivated in a single move to slay my foe? Hell, if I could do that, I could say goodbye to Skills forever. I could give up being an isekai protagonist and wreak havoc back on Earth! They should’ve isekai’d Bokuden, not a random high schooler.”
Anyone who could pull off this trick was a monster! Bokuden had lived to eighty-three and pumped out legends like he’d been a legend assembly line—small wonder he was called a sword saint. Bokuden had been born to be an isekai character. He could’ve sliced the demon king, queen, and knave to bits in seconds. Ichi no tachi never failed! It never missed! It never screwed its user over…except when I tried it.
Copying this move was, uh, kind of a tall order. But surely if I worked hard enough and put my sword skills to the test, I could do it! Make that cane skills?
“Hmm… Hiiyah? Like this? Or that? Nah, that’s not it…”
I pictured it like this: Slip into range in the pause between breaths; strike the opponent in the pause between the opponent’s sword swings. So, I kinda needed an opponent to practice on, and preferably one that wouldn’t kill me in a single hit. (Cough, Miss Armor Rep, cough.) Even Bokuden was no match for her!
That left me fighting Fish Girl—the most classic sword fighter among the girls, owner of the Sword King title, scion of an ancient fishy line. Once more unto the breach, Fish Girl!
“Oh, for the love of—what ancient fishy line? Fukunuki-chan! Stop agreeing with him!”
I was impossibly close. I dodged her blade, coming within a hair’s breadth of my untimely end on a steely skewer, and turned the blow. I measured the length of a Fish Girl breath to judge the best time to move into position—problem was, fish perform branchial respiration.
I could bring my cane up to match Fish Girl’s, but all the rest of my technique had gone out the window in my breaking and reforming. I had no time to start over from scratch, so in the meantime, I had to master the five weaponless moves of wuxingquan and the single sword move of ichi no tachi. Both were the zeniths of their respective art forms, and with little control over my body, the best I could do was instill this pure essence of the combat arts into my muscle memory. I had no time to learn complex techniques the hard way! Believe me—I’d done it once already, and it sucked! And even if it had been a walk in the park (which it hadn’t been!), I had no time. I had to get back to the frontier, clear dungeons, and prevent the situation from growing any more dire. I had to develop my dungeon fighting ability, stat! Why? Because I was out of money! So, ichi no tachi would have to do.
I sidled so close to Fish Girl’s sword it nearly grazed me, let her sword almost—almost!—cleave me, and stepped into range. My position, my angle, and my direction all locked and crossed with hers, and now all that was left was a breath—hff, there it was—and then balance! And then thrust!
“Hff!”
A single reverse strike, a single breath, a single clean cut.
“Damn it! Not quite.”
“Hello?! What the heck was that? That was too scary, too close, too fast, too—too!”
Too clumsy, that’s what! She could still parry it. Our blades kissed and parted; the lines of our weapons converged as our swords sang; she knocked aside my blows with strikes of her own.
I guess that’s what I got for fighting Fish Girl (even if I didn’t want to get turned into a Haruka shish kabob on the end of Miss Armor Rep’s sword). Fish Girl was a tough customer.
There was nothing I could do unless I left myself open. This technique only worked at very, very close ranges—a half-step away from the enemy at most.
“But even Shioda Gozo, aikido master, once said ‘Never go up against a fish when death is on the line!’ Maybe I shouldn’t go up against her. Maybe that’s my problem. I might need to find the right moment to get out of the way.”
But then again, if I got out of the way, I’d be out of range.
“I’m not a fish!”
“Shoot! You blocked me again. This could only be the fabled Unspoiled, Unsoiled, Unfoiled Fresh Fish Fencing passed down from fishy mother to fishy daughter for generations, thwarting the legendary Shinsengumi and savvy fishmongers alike! Admit it!”
“Would you please stop giving my attacks those weird names? I’m not a fish! Neither was my mother—Fukunuki-chan, please. That should not come as a surprise.”
Fish Girl’s sword was as silver as the scales of a salmon, and it leaped like a lively lunker on a line. The blade’s sharp tip waggled and wobbled in every place at once, giving the appearance of a whole school of fishy fencers.
“Wait. Are there more of you? Do you have fishy family? D-don’t tell me you’re the youngest of fishy five! Do you have three older brothers with the catchphrase ‘Say my name, fishes!’? ‘Omae wa mou sea-ndeiru’?? Yeah, Fisht of the North Star? What’s next? The bad fish puns? ‘Stay away from that kid, baby sis. He’s all washed up’?”
“First off? No. Second off? We’re not fish. Third off? I’m an only child. I don’t need three random older brothers, please and thank you!”
Every clash of our sparkling silver sabers raised showers of sparks. Our blades crossed in a dizzying whirlpool of after-streaks. Fish Girl was a master of control. Every time she moved, you could feel the intent. She didn’t waste a single step or a solitary swing.
Me? I fought for dear life to hold onto my dear life. She possessed a mermaid’s grace, an easy mastery; I possessed a madman’s pace, a queasy disastery. She never left me an opening for ichi no tachi. I was left performing wuxing combos, every one of which she parried.
“I was not mermaid to put up with this nonsense…”
She was so fast that even my super-reflexes couldn’t keep up. I pushed my control over my body to its limits, and she still ran circles around me. I swung my sword like an utter fool, tool, and mule (yeah, ’cause I was half-assing it?) and never got a chance to take that last half-step forward. I was left applying all five elements of wuxing to my sword-cane while Fish Girl repelled every hit.
“Wait a—ahhh!”
My reflexes kicked in, and I moved instantaneously. I stepped, and I slashed. My brain turned off; it was pure muscle moving with the certainty of inevitability. It felt, dare I say, cool as shit. I moved to evade Fish Girl’s blow, and as I stepped off the line of her attack, I darted in with one clean, beautiful motion, and—aaaaah!
“Phew! That was a close one. Thanks, Miss Armor Rep and Dancer Girl. You stopped me in the nick of time. Too bad about my arm—yeah, the sudden stop kinda lopped it clean off… Hey, thanks for the heal, Sleeping Beauty!”
A low-level weapon like the Middle-Aged-Men Masher couldn’t cut through Fish Girl’s OP equipment. Thing was, the attack itself was bad business. Thank goodness Miss Armor Rep intervened and turned my sword at the last microsecond. My hit had almost landed—if Dancer Girl’s chains hadn’t snaked around my arm at the very final milli-instant, there would’ve been catastrophe.
“Your poor arm! I’m sorry, Haruka-kun. I…I should’ve parried in time…”
See, when I’d realized what was about to happen and tried to pull back, I’d wrenched back so hard on my arm that my reflexes had kicked in and snapped it off at supersonic, bone-shattering speeds. And that didn’t even stop the sword’s momentum! My muscles and tendons were shredded from my wrist all the way up to my bicep. Silly body, not keeping up with my impossible motions!
But much more importantly—that was really, really bad. What’d almost happened was completely inconceivable. Coincidences had coincided; the magic, qi, and breathwork Hoplology demanded had come together to produce a miracle—a completely natural, perfectly unconscious strike. It was much, much, much too close to “a teensy-weensy huge lot past superfluously safe” for comfort.
“Ow! Fish Girl, are you okay? I didn’t turn you into sashimi? You’re not secretly freshly filleted and gasping your lamprey last? Still got all your fins and gills attached?”
“I don’t know about fins and gills, but I have all my arms and legs. No cuts here! And even if there were any, they wouldn’t make me sashimi.”
Oh, thank goodness. She was okay. No charges of schoolgirl sashimi-ing on my criminal record today.
“That momentary flash of inspiration when Hoplology took the wheel was a real eye-opener! And ichi no tachi is a real belly-opener—yeah, ’cause it’s an overhead strike that cuts through the centerline of the body and passes through to the back? Some fish are filleted belly first, and others are filleted back first. I guess it depends on the size and knife? Point is, you gotta watch out for an accidental opening.”
Now Wisdom understood ichi no tachi and wasted no time slapping an emergency lock on it. Although I wouldn’t be able to perform the technique again until it was analyzed front to back, I was able to stop myself from performing it. Much like Miss Armor Rep’s Sword Flash, I had learned such a skillful skill it didn’t qualify as a Skill. Still, if someone could sweep in and stop it, then I must not have had the right luck and terrain advantages… Ichi no tachi was really too powerful. I would really have to keep it locked down tight during training.
“’Course, it only goes off if all conditions are fulfilled, and that’s nigh on a miracle. A collision of coinciding, conspiring coincidences! I don’t want to jump the gun here, but I think it might be fatal? Maybe?”
“No maybes about it. It is fatal! Please don’t sashi-me—I’m a girl, not a fish!”
Yeah, with my current level of (or lack of) control, this technique was not to be messed with. Not without a lot of time that I didn’t have—and being that I had no time, this was where I would stop for the day. Plus my arm hurt? Ouch?
We were all packed and ready for our return to the frontier, but the pimpin’ king wanted to talk to us after breakfast. Ew? I didn’t care what he had to say. Unless it involved the frontier, it had nothin’ to do with me.
“I couldn’t help him even if I wanted to! I may be upright and walking, but I’m hanging on by a thread. Everything hurts. I need to rest and recuperate.”
Oh yeah, I should probably mention that I had visited the Cathedral’s library off-screen. Lol. Anyway, I read every one of those books from cover to cover and found that everything linked back to the frontier. While the why evaded me, it’d become apparent that all magic—all monsters, all the raw magic (or “magi”) in the air and soil—naturally congregated in the frontier. Monsters were all but unheard of in the lands bordering the seas in the west, and when any were spotted, it was in an inexorable march east. East of east was the Kingdom, and further east and across the mountains was the frontier—the tip of the continent and the convergence point of all its magic.
“Wait a sec—I might be a filleting master now! I should whip up a fishy dishy for breakfast.”
The frontier also supplied much of the continent’s water. Rivers and groundwaters trickled down from the frontier and across the land. Analysis in these ancient books claimed dungeon spawn might hitch a ride on these subterranean waterways and permeate the rest of the world. Many of the world’s dungeons, in fact, had been proven to lie atop groundwater channels—but these days, no one was checking anymore. Dungeons simply germinated, creating monsters that crawled back to the frontier and filled the ground with more magic. Rinse and repeat. The western half of the continent grew fat and happy in relative safety, while the eastern portions suffered through the dungeon generation cycle. Meanwhile, every other nation forsook the frontier in its plight, stole its few valuables, and monopolized its enterprises. It was a miracle the frontier hadn’t collapsed entirely. You’d think most similarly challenged nations would!
“We’re having fish for breakfast, he says while making direct eye contact with me.”
Throughout the history of this universe, heroes took up arms and quested to the frontier whenever the situation became too untenable. The flames of rebellion were quelled; dungeons were destroyed; the bravest of the brave made it to the far reaches of the eastern lands and went down in legend as the six saints. They stood on the shoulders of their comrades whose names had been lost to history, the countless felled and forgotten. Back west, the rich and powerful grew ever fatter on the heady ambrosia of eastern peace; here in the east, the death toll climbed inexorably. While the continent was safe, the frontier people were slaughtered.
“Nah, I was just wondering if it was chill for you to eat fish. Like with your family and all. Wouldn’t want you to chomp down on a relative.”
This was why the Empire’s tendrils had never reached the Kingdom. The Empire was content to keep the east a politically fangless foe and focus its belligerency on the continent’s northern and western quarters. Peace meant money in the right pockets—western pockets. Peace meant prosperity back home; peace meant eschewing military and financial expenses. Subjugate the rowdy northern nations with their piracy and plundering! Conquer and leave the conquered to the dogs. Let the eastern lands brave the dungeons; live in peace and let the east fight whatever petty wars they will.
“My family’s back on Earth—and they’re not fish!”
The continent had once been a single, unified empire united in its fight against the dungeons, but time had caused it to split into a poorer eastern bloc and a wealthy western bloc. Regional infighting under local warlords had spawned chaos; the empire toppled and fell. The group efforts to combat the frontier dissolved, and the page opened on a new chapter of history—the continent’s downfall. Nationalism and self-interest had led the west to desert the east—let them fight the monsters and stifle the threats while we enjoy our peace and grow conceited on our own cleverness, the thinking went. Let us sow a deadly crop of complacency and reap our own demise. The continent ought to be an empire; it’s only right, and that being the case, it’s only right that we be the ones to make it so. Yes, we need a new empire with us as the head. Let us gobble up every nation on the western shores, and once we’ve conquered everything there is to conquer, why, what’s next?
“Stop bullying Fis—Chika-chan.”
“Hey! I heard that!”
Book Club President encouraged imperial conquest as a waste of the Empire’s military resources, but the way I saw it, any military resource not spent in eastern defense was another point for the enemy. If the west wanted to wipe itself out with infighting, that was fine with us. Why funnel away eastern resources better spent on monsters to waste on western enemies?
“Man, this war stuff sure sucks.”
The west could help themselves. I was going back to the frontier. They could go rot on their own time. Of the eastern nations, I knew of the Merchant Kingdom and the Elf Kingdom—and was interested in both. I’d investigate those in my own time. The frontier came first.
I still had so much to do. I hadn’t even finished learning all the secrets of the relics I’d purloined in the Theocracy! So much to do, so many dungeon emperors to do in carriages, so many glares to bathe in over breakfast—so little time!
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
DAY 119
MIDMORNING
The key to good leadership is limiting access to your fine selection of meats and cheese. Yeah, deli-gating?
THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
THE PIMPIN’ KING summoned us for a meeting. Apparently, there was a thank-you note from the Theocracy or something? To my teenage mind, thank-you notes were something you shoved into your teacher’s arms behind the gym on the day of graduation—but I wasn’t an expert, naturally. I’d certainly never done that. Obviously not. Anyhoo, I didn’t know why we’d get a thank-you note, ’cause we’d done nothing worth a thank-you. And hadn’t I been repaid with a copy of The Gentleman’s Guide to a Select Subset of the Church’s Nuns (Traveler’s Edition) courtesy of His Ancient Upskirtness? And a highly choice nun—okay, Saint—to boot?
“Oh ho, now here’s a humble hero. My daughter Shalliceres claims you neutralized Aryuca’s armies singlehandedly and cleared the path to the Holy City.”
“Uh, no? I was just performing reconnaissance? I must’ve said this half a hundred times? I was being sneaky? And spy-y? And all the loot I picked up is mine! Finders, keepers. You won’t believe how many unperceptive gatekeepers and dimwitted old men I passed on my way—and you’re no better! Don’t you know a covert operation when you (don’t) see one? I wasn’t systematically slaughtering! I was scouting! I was being covert and creeping and clandestine!”
How did he get blitzkrieg, mass slaughter, annihilation of whole armies from undercover,or underage agent? Were his ears going? His wits? He was getting up in years… You still remember your name, don’t you, pimpin’ king? Not like I’d know the right answer if he said it.
“No, my daughter Merielle insists you toppled the fortress the Theocracy had made of its cathedral. Surely you remember toppling an entire building?”
“Sure, the cathedral was destroyed, but how was that my fault? All I did was very sneakily eliminate enemies and report back the subsequent lack of foes. That cathedral was falling apart anyway. And don’t worry, me ’n’ the church are cool now. His Upskirting Oldness is now His Upskirting Popeness, and I gave him a sexy nun habit, so everything’s chill. And I didn’t do anything wrong?”
A person couldn’t be expected to remember every little thing they did in their pure, upstanding, sensible life. Why did everyone insist on pinning every nefarious plot under the sun on busy, busy me? All I’d done was scout, hand out letters, and maybe freelance tailor an outfit or two on the side. I don’t know how everyone else got a different story, but clearly it was a weird quirk of this world’s language. Something of my immaculate speech patterns evidently got lost in translation.
“The king of the Theocracy also extends his gratitude. I wasn’t aware you’d paid a visit to the palace, yet I struggle to imagine who else they could’ve been meant by the ‘mysterious black-haired boy who did not give us his name but repeated ‘y’know?’ with incessant frequency.’”
“Oh, I visited the palace. I dropped off the king’s mail? And I also gave him barbecue ’n’ shabushabu ’n’ stuff? I bet he’s thanking me for the barbecue. I made sure he ate the letter after reading it instead of eating the letter without reading it, but you gotta admit, a letter can’t be anywhere near as tasty as shabushabu. Especially with sesame sauce? That slaps. Get a little ponzu sauce and grated daikon, and mm-mm-mm! You can’t go wrong with ponzu and daikon. I was going to proselytize the wonders of sesame sauce, but I wasn’t allowed to talk? So if they got lost in the sauce and picked the wrong sauce, don’t ask me to sauce—I mean, suss—out what they actually ate?”
Like, I knew what I prepared. But I never saw them eat it, so if they got sauced up and swapped out the wrong sauce—well, I had no way of knowing. Man, I’d have killed for some wasabi soy sauce. Too bad I hadn’t had wasabi at the time. What if I make garlic soy sauce? Yoooo, now we’re talking.
Incidentally, why was everyone else sighing and looking at the ceiling? Was there something interesting up there? Eyes in front, people! Didn’t we all learn this in driver’s ed?
“Goodness gracious, Haruka…”
Sister Girl and the local gal gang were the ones who’d gone to war with the church and liberated all those towns. I’d been too busy spying and looting to join in, and the nerds had been too busy moe-ifying the Beast Kingdom. As for the idiots, I think they’d been off playing in the jungle? Gosh, this got complicated fast.
“The original plan was to sneak in, beat up the pope, and sneak out. Right? Then halfway through, it turned into a James Bond-esque infiltration crossed with corpse co-opting crossed with spirit stealing crossed with dungeon diving, and somewhere along the way I forgot all about the whole church and Theocracy thing?”
“Let me attempt to unravel this. The Cathedral, the impregnable source of the Church’s power, was destroyed and revamped into a…a what now? An eroticathedral?”
“Sure? I don’t remember that part all that well. What I do remember is the James Bond-esque infiltration crossed with a corpse co-opting crossed with a blah blah blah. That part was great! I loved every second of it. I’m still thinking about it even now—every night, in fact! A buncha dead old dudes and an old philosopher dude shafted me with their dirty work and everyone was so, so thankful, so I didn’t think they would mind if I took all the Cathedral’s relics, so I stole them all, and in the end, I was so busy with looting the place from top to bottom that I really did reach the bottom floor, and I picked up the spirit that was lying there, and then things got kinda dangerous, ha ha, lol. Anyway all’s well that ends well? Oh—and it wasn’t my fault. Any of it.”
Somehow, the king still failed to grasp all the details. Perhaps I’d beaten around the bush too much—I was beating right here and the bush was in the next country over.
“To put it in plain, directly-bush-striking terms, I went to the Theocracy to scout and found that there were no enemies, even in the Cathedral, and the Cathedral collapsed while I was in the middle of scouting it, and I had a job to do in the ultimate dungeon, so I went to the bottom floor, and then I went back up to the top floor, and the end. Simple. You got all that?”
What else did these fools think I was doing? I was undercover! Spying! I disguised myself as a priest and everything! I could not have been more undetectable, ergo, I did nothing wrong.
“I’m so sorry. May I please request an interpreter?”
“Hey! Stop! What’re you—don’t tape my mouth shut! I have my own tape, see? From yesterday! I also have this fine bunny-ear headband, if anyone would like me to do—what is the glare for? I didn’t—mmph! Mmmrmrph mrrmmph!”
I guess no one wanted the headband. It was topical, guys. Dick Bruna, author of the Miffy bunny series, always drew his rabbits with X’s for mouths. You couldn’t have a taped X for a mouth without bunnies. That’s just math.
“Speaking of bunnies, y’all know that kids’ book Miffy at the Zoo? It’s about a bunny going to a zoo, which is kinda surreal if you think about it. And there’s Miffy at the Seaside. She’s topless in that one, but don’t tell anyone! Not that it matters, ’cause she’s just a bunny. Oh, and if you were curious, she does wear a bikini bottom.”
Unfortunately, my mouth was taped shut, so all my insightful commentary was summarily ignored. Someone talked about something or other. Someone else answered some question about whatever. Some more stuff was said on some topic by some people. Some other people whose names I don’t remember discussed something that eluded me. Sister Girl’s name came up in conversation. I think something about her being Princess Arianna and Arianna’s mama’s llama? Most of the Arianna mama llama drama went over my head. I added a very astute piece of commentary around this point (namely, here’s a llama, there’s a llama, and another little llama, fuzzy llama, funny llama, llama, llama, duck), but no one paid any attention due to the tape over my mouth. Why’d they bother inviting me to this dumb meeting if they were going to tape me up the whole time?
I wanted recompense for the abuse Miss Armor Rep, Dancer Girl, and Sleeping Beauty had suffered at the hands of the church—that’s why I went to this darn meeting—but as it turned out, the statute of limitations had run out on revenge. Revenge, they said, was pointless. Oh well—I got my revenge anyway!
With my vengeance dealt, I had no more use for the church or its Cathedral. I did have a poke around the Cathedral’s relics, but none of them had had anything to do with teleporting people in or out of this universe. At least I’d gotten to save Sleeping Beauty—and that made the trip to the Theocracy worth it. Dancer Girl had been worried sick about her lost friend, and wasn’t the whole point of being a messenger boy to rescue damsels in distress? Seemed cut and dry to me. But the meeting was still going? This coulda been an email…
“Ahem hem. According to Haruka-kun’s treatise entitled The First Rule of International Commerce is to Have Fun and Be Yourself. Whaddya Call the Study of the Sound of Little Dudes Moving About Underground? Echo-Gnomics. Ha Ha Nice One, Haruka, it would be a smart move to conduct trade between the Beast Kingdom and the Merchant Kingdom. I don’t know why that is so easy to understand when the title is…like that…but there you are.”
“As the kings of both countries have approved of this proposal, we see no issue in implementing the general framework posthaste. The details are a bit more flexible and may be worked out by the two respective nations. We suggest these are handled after the first stages of the treaty’s execution.”
Organization was a powerful skill—it fostered the ability to think logically, formulate coherent arguments, and convey information in a rational, chronological fashion. A brilliant scholar who horded their knowledge did not a good adviser make. A proper adviser possessed the unique talent of dispensing clear, comprehensible wisdom. Experts were often too knowledgeable, developing a sort of tunnel vision, and prone to getting lost in their own wealth of knowledge, whereas the adviser was thus best served focusing their efforts of organization with the hopes of leading their rulers to a brighter tomorrow.
“Very well. I have no objections.”
“Splendid. Then let us adjourn.”
Book Club President was so darn organized this world recognized it as a full-fledged Skill. I was glad I delegated that particular mental exercise to her and utterly ignored it in my personal life. There’s a right tool for every job; if you didn’t know what you’re doing, leave it to experts! A well-meaning idiot could be worse than a disingenuous smart man, and I was certainly well-meaning—there was no end to the things I meant, and surely some of them were about wells—so I had no problem leaving all the problems of organization to her.
It was quite natural that I made other people do my work. That was the whole point of being a NEET, no? I was a teenage boy brimming with vim and vigor, especially when it came to dodging responsibilities! Oh hey, the meeting was over.
The pimpin’ king and Mr. Meridad kept sighing in my general direction throughout the whole conference, but beyond being the target of their dirty looks, I wasn’t sure what role I’d been supposed to play in all this… Whatever. Time to go. Whee!
I wanted to visit the market one more time, but the twins seemed too people’d out. Being around all those strangers must’ve been stressful—that, and their eating fit to burst. Yeah, it was one more set time?
We split up the carriages and set out individually in place of the usual train. My horsey sped along at a brisk clip, cutting the grass in his wake. Yup, I had taken a bit of a detour to let the girls have a break—if we fell behind, Horsey could catch us up again in no time. The girls hadn’t suffered any casualties in the war, but war left its own mental scars. The girls deserved a bit of R&R.
That’s a long way of saying that they wanted to put me on trial; hence, I was on the lam. I told them I nearly poked Fish Girl, but the girls somehow misheard “poked” with an r? Baffling how all these miscommunications happened.
Thus, to clear up the misunderstanding in no uncertain terms, I said, “No, no, no. I almost made fishy sashimi with tender pink girl flesh?” which somehow only made things worse. Doubly baffling.
Oh well. This was a perfect opportunity to check out dungeons outside of the frontier. Until the false accusations—and subsequent rage—cleared up, my safest bet was to hide out in a dungeon!
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- OUTSIDE A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119
MIDMORNING
All this quantum business seems pretty quan-dumb to me.
OUTSIDE A KINGDOM DUNGEON
THANKS TO A SPONTANEOUS TEENAGE GIRL sashimi breakout, I was on the run from an enraged pack of teenage girls—that was, a Kingdom dungeon tour. Now was my chance to make some cash and do a little training!
“Dungeon numero uno, coming right up. The Guild says it’s a mid-size dungeon, but you coulda fooled me. It looks like a small dungeon to me. It’s hurt a lotta soldiers and adventurers relative to its size, I s’pose. Also has a lot of monsters. We just discovered it recently, though, which means it either just spawned or we discovered it late. Doesn’t matter—point is, it’s too much for the Guild to handle alone, so I should wipe it out. Yeah, ’cause I need money to pay rent? I’m facing a personal financial crisis here, people! Cha-ching?”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle.Mm-hmm. Bounce bounce.
Class Rep only doled out 50k ele per day to each of us from our class allowance funds. I could always borrow money or ask the frontier folk to put my expenses on my tab…if I wanted her to confiscate the rest of my wealth. Say bye-bye, Mr. Moneybags. Hello, life of poverty. At least my classmates shared my suffering. All eyes lit up at the prospect of earning scraps of change. Girls had to shop—even dungeon emperors! And this was Sleeping Beauty’s introduction to the frontier anyway. We needed to stock up on savings, or she’d dig me into a debt hole so deep I’d never climb out.
“I doubt this dungeon’s gonna make us much money, though…”
Nuh-uh.
The Kingdom’s dungeon problem was exacerbated by the throne sending its armies to the frontier. Then, with the massive aristocratic shuffling of titles and lands in the kingdom-frontier war, even fewer soldiers could be spared to clear dungeons. So much for my leisurely meander home! Off to work I went. But then again, side trips were the spice of life. It’s all about the journey, not the destination, y’know? Especially when I didn’t have the cash to pay rent at my destination. And if Class Rep found that out… Gulp.
“Okay, but these monsters seriously suck.”
Nod nod.
I popped in at a few little hamlets along the way, to swap news and trade goods, y’know? Eventually, we passed the last of the villages and wandered waaaaay out into the sticks. And there we saw the dungeon entrance, a yawning mouth in a massive boulder looming over an otherwise flat prairie. No wonder soldiers hadn’t cleared it yet. This was truly the middle of bumf*ck nowhere. And yeah, turned out it was a mid-size dungeon after all. Coolio.
“But in my defense, it looked shallow.”
…Mm-hmm?
Tough dungeons contained all the hardest monsters and sickest treasures. Most of ’em were on the frontier, so when I did find one elsewhere, I couldn’t afford to pass it up.
“Ready, Sleeping Beauty? No sleeping on the job.”
Mm-hmm!
The 1st floor was a maze with tight, cramped corridors. Sleeping Beauty and I took the lead to do some EXP farming—me ’cause I was still on the mend, her ’cause she needed to level grind. Until we reached the lower floors, the other dungeon emperors were to follow behind and step in only as needed.
“Hey, did you know the word ‘babble’ has nothing to do with the Tower of Babel? It’s derived from Early Middle English babeln and later reappeared in Late Middle English as bibble-babble. Is that cool or what?”
Bibble bobble?
These upper floors were a piece of cake for Sleeping Beauty and her mithril-turbocharged equipment. Still, I was relieved to see Dancer Girl keeping a close eye on her—not that I was in any position to worry about other people.Until I was a high enough level not to hold the others back, I had to optimize, optimize, optimize. Balance my loadout. Max my mins.
“Guys? You could join in the conversation, y’know. Otherwise, it’s just me talking to myself ad nauseam. The monsters are starting to look at me with pity. Guys? Guys???”
I put the Universe Staff through its paces, but I didn’t go ham on it. I was straight-up chill. Relaxin’. This was just practice. I worked to master each quantum of movement, each miniscule flick of a muscle—and if this practice happened to take the form of a high-speed massacre, well, I wasn’t complaining. I made ghoulash of the level 1 ghouls without ever using Entanglement. I never broke down. I never lost control. My staff hit home every time with compact, controlled micromovements. I contorted like a calisthenics instructor. I dropped undead like a dancer.
“Here I am bibble-babbling to myself like a fool who doesn’t know the rule that it’s just not cool to natter on like a tool—oh, just downed a ghoul…”
The ghouls were little more than a warm-up, but I didn’t mind—the only way to get better was to take my time, focus, and practice, practice, practice. I was breaking in my new body in conjunction with my equipment. I was developing a proper mental perception of my physical capabilities. I was gathering data and running calculations. My goal? Cut down on the self-destruction until it was just barely survivable—if still ouchy.
“Ghouls, too weak. Let’s go down.”
We hacked and slashed our way to the stairs and raised a rain of ghouly gore. We sliced spooks as we slid down the steps and bashed bogeys out of our way as we barreled on by. I could use about 50% of my power, sans Entanglement, no problem. The 17th floor of a dungeon vs a level 28 fighter at 50% strength and a crowbarlike implement crossed with the Universe Staff—who would win? (Spoiler alert: I did.) My equipment aside, I was growing more powerful. Like, fundamentally. My bizarre reflex speed only helped; it was like a cheat skill in its own right!
And that was precisely when I realized why the Guild had had so much trouble with this deceptively docile dungeon.
“Okay. This is a major pain in the ass.”
Nod nod! Rattle rattle! Mm-hmm! Jiggle jiggle!
Ants. Big-ass, nondescript ants with rock-hard exoskeletons. Huge swarms of big-ass ants. The floor was buried in the teeming mass of swarming ants. If not for those sturdy exoskeletons, the ants on the bottom of the pile would’ve been crushed under their nestmates’ many legs. I didn’t blame the Guild or the soldiers one bit for turning tail and running. The sheer number of ants was daunting enough. But on top of that, one misstep and the unlucky adventurer would be swallowed up in the ant ocean.
“Ah ha. This is why all the adventuring parties stopped on the 36th floor.”
So, I waded into the fray, bashing bug bodies and antagonizing annoying ants with every swing of my crowbarlike implement. Sleeping Beauty sliced and diced with the halberd she insisted on calling a holy staff, thus clearing up the mystery of how she’d made it so far down that ultimate dungeon to save Dancer Girl—she took the brute force approach!
The halberd whizzed like a whirlwind. Sparks flew from its steely sides like silver stars. These exoskeletons would’ve turned sharp swords in other, lesser hands, but Sleeping Beauty carved up dozens of insects in a single swing. She decimated this anthill in a way that would’ve made a termite proud. The “Armor Ants, Lv: 36” never knew what hit them. None could get close enough to touch her—which was too bad for them, as touching her was one of the better things in life…
Corpse piles mounded higher as she mowed down the flock. One couldn’t expect dungeon emperors to play by the same rules as us mere mortals, but all the same…was she really only level 10?
“And how many freaking ants are there? Are we even making a dent in them?”
I was, you might say, getting antsy. For every ant we felled, another ten popped up to take its place. I wanted to be rid of the damn things, but even that simple “wanted” turned into a “wantantantantantantantantantanted!” Talk about conjugation frustration! And I thought that sixteenth century stuff from earlier was brutal…
“Where did I even learn to read sixteenth century literature? We studied it in school…right? We must have. I distinctly remember falling asleep in those classes. It’s just, I can’t remember if the teacher had a name…or a face…”
The ants’ exoskeletons were as thick as plate armor, but just like plate armor, the ants were most vulnerable at their joints. The hard part was finding the joints in the GIANT ANT PILE—or the subsequent GIANT SPELLSTONE PILE. It was hard, hard effort!
“Good work, team. We cleared ant hell. Hey, do you think ant hell is the same thing as anteater heaven? Have we seen an anteater monster yet? I suppose the girls count… They’ll eat anything! Okay, on second thought, I don’t want to picture the fresh hell that is girls crunching on insects. Never mind.”
Eww! Monsters were gross! Not cool, dungeon!
Just when I thought we were free from ant Armageddon, we came across the “Armored Queen Ant, Lv: 36.”
“Yeesh, no wonder the adventurers had a tough time. A hidden boss constantly laying eggs to hatch fresh baby monsters? Not cool, dungeon. Not cool at all.”
I say “came across,” but Queenie here had holed up in the hidden room and refused to come out. I had the brilliant idea of using the “Carbuncle Crown: MP, Intelligence +50%. Scarlet Shield. Scarlet Armor. Scarlet Eye. Uses unique Scarlet magic” to waterbend all the fluids in her body. To make scarlet ammo à la Aria, y’know? But I couldn’t figure out how to get the hang of it. It was hard? And MP-draining? And time-consuming? So I got mad?
“Yeah, the bullets came out purple! ’Cause there’s too much of that blue stuff that some ants have! This scarlet magic isn’t being very scarlet!”
Wiggle wiggle.
Grr! Miss Armor Rep, Dancer Girl, and Slimey shared my frustrations (although I think that’s ’cause they were tired of sitting on the sidelines), but I couldn’t turn them loose. They’d perform pest control and clear this ant infestation in no time flat. I wouldn’t have been able to keep up. Hell, I couldn’t keep up with their running pace any longer—not unless I introduced some major slippage. Superspeed a-go-go! Whee!
“Hmm. That wall was rather more textured than I expected. Very mountain rustic. Wall au naturel. That is to say, ow? That hurt?”
See, the problem with slipping was that if you didn’t turn in time… Well anyway—upon further reflection, I realized that sliding was even more difficult than walking. I loved my traction-optional “Spiked Boots: Power, Speed, Dexterity +30%. Acceleration +30%. Sudden Super-Speed. Sudden Braking. Suction. Wall + Ceiling Walking,” but controlling the boots was like herding cats. The sliding part was fine, but the sudden stopping part was less fine. My feet would bolt themselves to the floor while the rest of my body kept going, snapping my tibias like twigs and giving my face a whirlwind introduction with the ground. That was usually about when I panicked and let go, thus flipping me into the air, smacking me against the wall, and otherwise subjecting me to a lesson at the school of (very) hard knocks.
“Wagh! Whoa! Yipes!”
So, naturally, I Entangled the boots with Airwalk and the Black Demon’s Bladed Wings. Alas, my days of graceful soaring and gliding through the skies were long gone.
“I was thinking of splitting my equipment with my classmates since I can’t use them all anymore. But I doubt my classmates could get much use out of them either—nor do I want them to blow themselves up trying.”
The thing was, all my equipment was really, really good—regardless of its usability or lack thereof. It was the kind of stuff people with levels in the 100s couldn’t use without Wisdom or a boatload of practice.
“Too soon, for equipment. Focus on control, first… In fact, too soon for dungeon.”
“Equipment strength, bigger threat, than your frailty.”
“Heal up first. No fighting. I fight for you. I get strong for you. You don’t… You don’t need, to break yourself. Not anymore.”
Jiggle jiggle.
I’m feeling outvoted here, gang… I guess the dungeon emperors were not fans of my second alchemical transmogrification. (But guys, it did bump up my stats! Guys?)
“Sure, I might’ve gotten sideswiped by an ant or three and nearly died every time…but who’s counting?”
I was still using my old external control Blockhead tricks (although Blockhead had gotten an upgrade into Hoplology) and helping it along with the “Marionette Ring: Dexterity +30%. Control Abilities Boost (large).” The results were fantastic. More than my mortal body could handle, but like…who cared? Revival existed for a reason. If things got hairy…whaddahell. I’d figure it out. Why was everyone looking at me with such grave concern?
“Don’t worry, guys. It’s just practice. Potentially lethal practice. I’m proud to admit that I’ve never died once. Pride goeth before a fall, but I’ve fallen lots of times, and I’m still puffed up with pride, ergo, therefore, TL;DR, don’t worry? ’Cause I won’t die? My luck stat is off the charts, if nothing else? And stuff?”
I thought my explanation of my flawless track record of not dying was perfectly sound, but none of the others were convinced. Um, don’t shake your heads at me?! I had a zero percent death rate, people! Was that not impressive? How come it failed to persuade anybody?
“I literally have a 100% survival rate? Say I was the cat in Schrödinger’s experiment, and you opened my box one million times. I would turn out alive every single time. Unless it was because I, like, cat-apulted (heh) the Geiger counter into the sun… And until the box is opened, aren’t I theoretically immortal? And furious that you stuffed me in a box? Schrödinger should worry for his life!”
Speaking of things that were neither dead nor alive, the Cathedral’s ultimate dungeon had had that one ghost that was both dead (kinda) and alive (kinda), plus a saint who was dead but living and could also die, plus another part of the same saint that had existed simultaneously until I’d fused the two parts together, and when I’d opened that box I found a naked girl? And she was sexy?
“I don’t know about all this quantum business, but if there can be a girl both dead and alive before you open her box, I don’t see what’s so far-fetched about a cat.”
The double-slit experiment had proved that the microscopic world did not obey the same rules as its macroscopic counterpart, but the only double-slit experiments in this fantasy world proved that thighs here were infinitely more attractive than women’s thighs back home… Hubba hubba!
“Let’s assume a probability P(Haruka dies) = 0. Opening the box is roughly akin to flipping a coin. If we run this experiment an infinite number of times, we can assume heads—or ‘death’—never emerges, not once. Yet with enough permutations of tails—‘life’—we might break the system such that the coin suddenly begins producing dice rolls, bringing up sex—I mean, six—and dice don’t have head sides, so I’m even less likely to die. Yeah, a die means I won’t die? Ever think about that one, huh?”
And—returning to the previous thought exercise—it was therefore only logical that, just prior to being crammed into the poison-filled box, I could turn on old man Schrödinger, beat him black and blue, stuff him into the box, and assume he’d come out unscathed. Or at least not dead. He was surely going to be scathed when I was done with him—P(Haruka beats up old men) = 100%.
DAY 119: MIDMORNING -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON -- 37TH FLOOR
DAY 119
MIDMORNING
If I’ve learned anything from Urashima Taro, it’s don’t beat up turtles if you want hot girls to take you home!
A KINGDOM DUNGEON
37TH FLOOR
I DIRECTED THE NERDHEADS to take the speedy, wheely, carriagemobiley to a different dungeon while the girls took a slower route back to the frontier. Looking over my map of dungeons speckled across the Kingdom, I realized it was highly likely that I would need to take a detour and knock out as many of them as I could. I didn’t have time to fiddle-fart around this dungeon, then. Time to get a move on.
“Hello? Did you hear me? What part of ‘get a move on’ do you not understand? Stop spawning one at a time!”
It was like yelling at a brick wall—or “Mimic Walls, Lv: 37,” if you would. When you heard “mimic,” you thought treasure chest, right? Not these guys. They were all wall.
“…Which is kinda an issue, if you think about it. The word ‘mimic’ means one who practices ‘mimicry,’ a noun that contains several disparate definitions in and of itself: imitating, resembling, parodying. But these mimics are not imitating infrastructure. They do not merely resemble rectangular roof-reinforcing ramparts. And parody? Parody of perpendicular pavilion-propping partitions? Ha! No, these mimics are walls through and through. Which means I can go smashy-smash? One-man demo crew with a crowbarlike implement?”
See, this floor was an unsolvable maze. The walls shifted such that, no matter what route you took, your escape would be blocked at every turn.
“Look, Jupiter Eye shows me you’re mimics… You could come out en masse for group smashing therapy, y’know. It’d be faster than waiting for you to block my path one at a time.”
But they did not. They sat there as unmovable as—well, walls—and waited for me to approach. They wanted the unobservant to wander into their midst and get lost in the ever-scrambling labyrinth. By the time their hapless prey had caught on, it was too late. Boom went the walls and splat went the adventurer.
“But if you know the trick ahead of time, boom goes the wall via your crowbarlike implement? It’s hard, boring work, but someone’s got to do it.”
I placed my hand on one of the walls. Holding magic seeped out until it covered the wall’s entire surface area. I controlled my breathing; I tempered my qi. Magic surged through my veins and sketched arcane sigils across my physical form. My qi and magic became a farrago of how far I’d go for victory and slammed through the wall in a rolling, rollicking wave. No brute force, no powerful tremors—just a single, subtle oscillation at a precise frequency. Just the Vibration magic developed through incessant, adolescent, finger-lickin’-good training!
Brrrrrrrllglllglgglglglglglg!
Talk about a wake-up call! Even Sleeping Beauty looked alive when the walls shuddered and wailed like my well-pleasured partners in Vibration-training crime. Technique and magic melded. Qigong and Skills synergized. The ubercharged spell sent magical shockwaves shuddering through the mimicked brickwork until the would-be architecture came crumbling down around me.
“All physical objects possess a set of ‘natural frequencies’ at which they tend to oscillate when disturbed. When synthetic stimulus is applied that mimics this natural frequency, the object’s oscillation will continue rising until the object destroys itself. Thus, according to these principles of sympathetic vibration, we find the key to destroying virtually anything we please. Especially if we slap ‘tongbei’ on the attack name.”
“…Huh?” in triplicate.
Theory, however, rarely played out perfectly. Vibration destruction was inversely proportional to the distance from the stimulus squared, limiting its utility as a long-distance attack. That’s why I used Holding magic to latch onto my targets and pump out qi and magic shockwaves. Mimicry be damned, these faux walls shook like their real counterparts!
Yeah, I think I’ve got a better hang of controlling my magic than controlling my body at this point… I was relegated to the back row in most dungeon runs whenever locomotion became my sole focus. Now, the dungeon emperors were the ones sulking behind me with nothing to do but watch me massacre monsters en masse. I could feel the glares bore into my back as I cast Vibration magic—I had interrupted them moments before a tongbei bash fest. Sorry!
The Vibration magic made me a real threat. No, not to monsters—to my female companions. They glared at me so frighteningly I cut short my plans of trying another Vibration sympathetic frequencies spell and returned to smashing walls one by one. Vibration magic paired well with the Universal Crowbarlike Implement. That rapidly pulsing rod was a miracle tool in the right hands… Why were the girls eyeing it in fear?
“What? I’m giving everyone a turn with my thunder rod! Wouldn’t want to stint on the magic stick, right?”
Glare!
While I was in this great spirit of experimentation, I added a pinch of Vibration magic to the earth elemental hengquan. Skill factorization activated and a wall shattered into a pile of rubble!
“Whoa! The nerds were right! Wuxingquan was made to pair with magic. I’ve unlocked…magic fist! Unless the nerds tricked Wisdom into making a weirdo cheat ability again… Whoops.”
Double glare!
This development opened up all kinds of new possibilities. I could use wuxingquan to counter enemy spells or enhance my own spellslinging! Combining magic and martial arts allowed me to devise whole new forms of fighting. Were Hoplology and Entanglement a cross of magic and martial arts in and of themselves? Maybe… Who was to say? Regardless, this demo job was truly breaking new ground!
40th floor, here we come. Aaaand…it’s a golem. Well, what’s good for the fake walls is good for the golem.
“It’s certainly an efficient fighting method, if a bit boring… One tap from the crowbarlike implement or a wallop of hengquan, and these earthworks go down like dominos.”
Earth was inextricably linked to fire. Fires burned to ash—and from this ash fire created the dust we call earth. Following this formula to its logical conclusion, fire-element cannonballs + earth-element magic = ashes to ashes, dust to dust. This fighting style packed a wallop—on the flip side, it was difficult to control and very, very extra.
“Yeah, I can never remember if fire begets earth, or water destroys earth, or… I think I need to get a flowchart, sit down, and memorize it!”
Speaking of memorizing, because wuxingquan was the only fighting art available to me in my weakened state, I drilled it so it would become muscle memory. I didn’t do anything fancy; I just repeated wuxingquan moves over and over. Upping the ante could come later—when the dungeon emperors were less glare-happy!
“I can’t even do ichi no tachi yet. It’s guaranteed to kill me if I try. Plus, practice got me slapped with teenage girl sashimi allegations, so I’m better off quitting while I’m ahead. Oddly enough, I never knew studying the blade had anything to do with human sashimi…”
I walloped the would-be walls; I gashed the genuine (I guess? I dunno what they were—earth elemental monsters, at any rate) golems. Wood beat earth, so I whipped out my wood magic.
“The tree clenches earth in its mighty roots and sucks up the nutrients, leaving the soil parched and bare. In wuxingquan, the wood art is called bengquan. Let me try swinging with the crowbarlike implement and activate the Universe Staff’s Mistilteinn at the last second… Oh my god! The golem went flying! And oh great, here come the glares… I wasn’t trying to steal your thunder. If anything got stolen, it was my MP! Let me seal this away… One misaimed swing and I could send the girls flying. You guys would be fine. You all dodged that last misfire. I couldn’t hit you even if I was aiming at you—but I suppose I owe you an apology regardless.”
A long line of golems toppled and exploded, one after another. I chalked it up to the Mistilteinn rather than basic wuxingquan. The attack burned through my MP but remained controllable and powerful both.
“Huh… That’s not a long, straight corridor. That’s a hole. I guess this is a cave system now? Well…whatever gets us to the bottom quicker, am I right?”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm. Jiggle jiggle.
Fusing qigong, magic, and martial arts was becoming stronger, faster, and more energy efficient by the minute. I was also noticing fewer and fewer side effects. Was that Hoplology at work?
“Yeah, like in the ichi no tachi aka spontaneous sashimi incident or the Mistilteinn attacks. I can’t activate these skills on command yet, but…I feel like I’m getting closer.”
My new growth allowed me to stay fighting on the front lines even as we went down to the 41st floor. There, I discovered that a well-formed wuxingquan strike could shatter the hardest turtle shell (btw there were turtles down here; did I forget to mention that?). However, a sloppy move had no impact at all.
“Piquan! Piquan! Piquan? Piquan! P-tooey! Wait—mispronounced that one. Piquan pulverizing, go!”
Piquan, the metal element of wuxingquan, used the edge of the palm to imitate an axe blade. Against turtles, this felt all too reminiscent of basic crowbarlike-implement bashing, aka manual labor. However! The move was deceptive in its simplicity. Each simple strike built to something bigger, something more complex because it was so simple. To master its perfect profundity took persistent practice.
“I kinda don’t know what to make of these ‘Oily Turtles, Lv: 41.’ They’re tough, sure, but fighting them is just so easy. I was hoping for something more. I wanted a battle that would force me to come out of my shell!”
The turtles oozed an oily mucus that they slid on to skate across the floor, snatching chunks out of me with their snapping jaws as they went. Their crocodilian faces, long claws, and short, clublike tails poked out of hard shells that whizzed and whirred every way across the soupy hell they made of the floor. It’s like turtle bumper cars out there…
“This is like curling gone wrong.”
Unfortunately, this lineup of nasty characters was not who I’d hoped would join me for a teenage boyness oil-play slip-’n’-slide extravaganza. I inevitably wound up taking the brunt of all the slipping, and no one took the brunt of my teenage boyness.
“Hii-yah!”
“Take, that!”
I batted away one careening tortoise with my crowbarlike implement, which slammed into the second incoming turtle, caromed off, and wiped out turtles three and four. Turtle number three crashed into a fresh turtle of its own, and the next thing I knew, I was trapped in a pincer attack of turtles rushing in from all directions!
“…Hff.”
I stepped forward and slammed my staff into a turtle with bengquan. Then, following a half-step, I laid waste to another foe with hengquan. The two turtles ricocheted away, clearing the field of other incoming reptiles. Then one of my companions caught the next turtle with a fresh attack and added it to the mounting mayhem. The dungeon emperors sent the reptiles zigzagging across the floor at every conceivable angle like so many billiard balls, setting off a totally turtley chain reaction! The turtles lost track of which way was up, so occupied were they with helplessly leapfrogging from one to the next of our five-person group.
“Go, turtle!”
Wiggle wiggle!
This fine mess had all started with an accident on my part. Conscious of my lack of self-control, I had been careful with taking my first, tentative half-step. I’d kept it small. I’d put very little weight on my lead foot. Alas, my caution had ended up being the deciding factor. I’d botched my balance, and when my weight had shifted as I raised the Universe Staff, I’d slipped and screwed up the move. Instead of crushing turties, I’d skidded on oil and bumped into the first unlucky beast, thus setting off the whole floor-wide bump-a-thon. But it wasn’t my fault the dungeon emperors saw that and joined in.
“Is this this world’s first billiards game, curling match, or turtle bullying session? I guess it doesn’t matter if everyone’s enjoying themselves—but I’m having a terrible time here!”
Miss Armor Rep whacked a turtle with a tongbei thwap of her sword. Dancer Girl sent several more spinning with a swoose of her tongbei chain. Sleeping Beauty, not to be outdone, joined the fray with a thwack of her tongbei halberd, and Slimey brought up the rear with many a tongbei bobble and bounce.
Yes, the oily turtles were difficult foes—just not in the usual sense. My dungeon emperor pals were having a grand old time sending them caroming into each other with turtley shrieks of terror until, at last, those hard shells cracked and shattered to bits on each other. Bye-bye, turtles.
“Whew! At least that’s over. I wasn’t bullying tortoises à la Urashima Taro! I just tripped! Believe me, I would never do anything that could jeopardize my chances of bagging a hot turtle girl princess. If anything, the tortoises were bullying me!”
Jiggle jiggle.
At least Slimey had enjoyed himself…
“I guess a lack of entertainment breeds new pastimes… Still, those turtles would be dangerous for normal folks. Let’s keep turtle billiards to ourselves for now.”
Wriggle wriggle?
“No, I mean it. They were level 41, they had All Resistance and Double Impact, and they swerved around at superhigh speeds. That could kill a regular person. And don’t get me started on the biting!”
I let Slimey eat the turtles to stop him from sulking, granting his bibbling and bobbling extra bibble-bobble power with Double Impact. He’d set foes’ hearts a-quiver now with even more wriggly, quivery goodness!
“Speaking of… Oh, what I wouldn’t give to see Vice Rep B with Double Impa—Ahem! Who said that?”
Her weapons of mass destruction were too big to qualify as bludgeoning devices. Too big, too round, too deliciously heavy… She had the kinda body that made you want to invent jiggle physics.
“Whoa! I was only imagining her. I wasn’t doing anything untoward! Put the morning stars away. Not you too, Sleeping Beauty! What is it with the girls handing out morning stars every time they make a new friend? No, that is not a local custom from back where we come from! The teenage boy population would’ve been extinct if it were! Put the notebook down. I’ll be good, I swear.”
The dungeon emperors had fun; I got good practice in. All was well that ended well. Except for the turtles—but I wasn’t going to mess with any turtles on account of the whole Rip Van Winkle aspect of the Urashima Taro story. Yeah, it was a cautionary tale? But the only magic gems I received were turtle spellstones, not turtle treasures, so maybe I was safe?
DAY 119: AFTERNOON -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119
AFTERNOON
Once upon a midday dreary, while I dungeoned, weak but cheery…
A KINGDOM DUNGEON
SO THERE’S THESE TIGERS, RIGHT—except they’re not really tigers? They’re big kitty cats? But not cute ones—just so we’re all on the same page. Yeah, so there’s these monstrous monster kitties, and they’re not cute at all, not one itty-bitty bit, not by the hair on their chinny-chin-chins—that was, if they had hair. ’Cause they don’t. They’re covered in scales. Now you see why I said they’re not cute. What, pray tell, is the point of a cat you can’t pet?
“Some cats you are! Thanks to your scale suits of mail, you fail to fall on the feline scale!”
These plated pussycats lunged at me with frightening speed. My instincts kicked in with even more frightening speed. Dual-wielding Universe Staffs in their crowbarlike form, I waded into the fray, fending off razor-sharp slash attacks and slamming kitties into the stratosphere with bengquan.
“It’s an outrage! My hulking ‘Panzer Cats, Lv: 42’ cannot have metal covering their cute widdle toe beans. I won’t stand for it!”
Wuxingquan was not meant for dual-wielding, but what other option did I have? I needed to use something if I wanted any hope of getting fighting practice. My hydra, chickenatrice, and lizardisk “back-up” were a little too trigger-happy, and I could barely get a hit in.
Eventually, I turned all three of my auto-defense animals off and slapped copies of the Old Dude Chopper and Old Dude Brutalizer into two of my Magic Hands. Ta-da, quad-wielding! Then off I went again to make moggy meatloaf.
“Don’t mind me copying Vice Rep A. Or is this copying? She uses six swords. Maybe I should stick an additional two swords on my back. She took Lil Stabby from me, so I can only hope she doesn’t take the Old Dude Slayers too. She doesn’t need to octo-wield.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Yeesh! These were some real speedy cats. But my allies were a couple of speedy cats themselves. As I struggled to hold my own, the dungeon emperors pushed the Panzer Cats onto the endangered species list. Sleeping Beauty, who had been gaining levels slowly but surely this whole dungeon, far outstripped me now. She and her fellow dungeon emperors herded the dozens of cats into a confused and yowling huddle. Some foolish kitties attempted to slip out behind the dungeon emperors’ backs or bravely leap out of the press, but every escape attempt was soon thwarted. The dungeon emperors simply had too much reach.
“Miss Armor Rep’s slash attack whizzes through the air. Dancer Girl’s chains can unfurl and stretch large distances. Slimey can stretch like a wad of Silly Putty or divide himself into smaller slimes. ‘Escape’ simply isn’t in the dungeon emperor dictionary.”
And of course we couldn’t forget Sleeping Beauty. The strikingly ephemeral saint dominated the space with her halberd, slicing open kitties and stabbing through their entrails. Her halberd was a descendent of the legendary three-section staff!
“Right, uh…remind me why she’s doing her best impression of a Romance of the Three Kingdoms protagonist? And are we sure ‘strikingly ephemeral’ isn’t a misprint of ‘ephemerally striking’?”
Her delicate, dainty looks were a far cry from the guttural battle cries she produced whenever she swung the three-section staff-halberd into a fresh foe.
Watching her go reminded me that I had to pull my own weight, too. I lurched back into the fray for more bashing and bopping. Zuanquan made quick work of panzer cats lunging at me from above. Bengquan smashed through their more terrestrial cousins. Hengquan carved steaks of filet meowgnon; paoquan mowed down the last of the mousers.
I had only five moves to work with—five moves that encompassed everything. Five ultimate moves. What I lacked in move set variety I made up for in unlimited opportunity for innovation. The only drawback to these moves was their short range, thus increasing the difficulty for dodging enemy attacks. But the godly strength and speed were worth it!
“Ew! I hate petting scales. You’re not a cat, you’re not a cat, and you’re definitely not a cat. Take that mockery of meowing somewhere else!”
Mew?!
The panzer cats boasted tough armor, swift paws, and feral strength. However, their strongest weapons were their elemental-magic-charged Magic Claws. Each claw was colored according to their element (very handy for moi) so I used the opposite element to wipe ’em all out. Easy-peasy. It was, you might say, a clawless victory.
“No claws, no toe beans… Tsk, tsk.”
Wisdom and Hoplology boosted my speed such that, in short-range scenarios, I ran circles around these superspeed beasties. Once I finished mopping the floor with them, I triumphantly trotted down the stairs. On to the 43rd floor!
The 43rd floor had tight, narrow corridors. The dungeon emperors fell into battle formation: a single-file line. Guess who was slow to get with the program and wound up the rear guard?
“Y’know what? I’m bored of flame bullets. Let’s try thunder bullets! …If there was anything to try them on, that is. The dungeon emperors put up such a solid defense there’s not a single monster left to fry… Ugh. Now I’m just bored bored.”
I could fight well enough to defend myself now! Between the Universe Staff’s mutable length and Dimensional Slash, I could even fight from a distance. I simply had to wait for the foes to come to me—and that was the hard part, because the dungeon emperors destroyed all the enemies before the rear guard ever got a chance. Goodbye, sweet chance…
Miss Armor Rep, Slimey, and Dancer Girl formed up in front of Sleeping Beauty and me to protect us from the monsters. It was kinda overkill. Sleeping Beauty was now over level 20, and because the corridor was so narrow and she was standing directly in front of me, nothing made its way to me. Nothing could get past her, not even the most gung-ho of the bats occupying this floor. There was simply no space for a bat to slip by in.
“Dang, those bats are really going for it. Check out those illusion spells. It looks like there’s a whole swarm of bats flying at us. Pity we’re a tiny corridor and not, like, an open hall. They might’ve stood a chance.”
Not here. Not up against close-range Miss Armor Rep, long-range Dancer Girl, and Slimey and Sleeping Beauty handling everything in between.
“Yup, a whole battalion of bats couldn’t get past the dungeon emperors. Sorry, ‘Illusion Bats, Lv: 43.’ This corridor is just too cramped for your tricks to be of any use!”
I dipped and ducked, shooting thunder bullets around flashing swords and whirling arms. Alas, none of the projectiles hit home. There were too many damn dungeon emperors in the way! Suddenly, I understood how the girls must have felt all the time… Frustrated. Worthless. Discontented. Oh yeah, and bored!
“And yet they never gave up… They tried so hard, and grew so strong…sniff sniff.”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm!
Did the girls even know? Did they know they were far stronger than me? Did they know they were ridiculously, stupidly strong? (For my own sake, I hoped the answer was no.)
“To be fair, I knew from the jump that I’d never be able to beat their cheat Skills. That’s why I devoted my time to deception, dishonesty, and deceit. I’m a crookery, craftiness, and chicanery cognoscente. A genius of guile! A scholar of skulduggery! An Übermensch of underhandedness!”
Wiggle wiggle?
So I wouldn’t let the girls beat me. Not yet. They could mop the floor with me—they always could’ve—so it was my job to trick ’em and make it look like I won.
“Yup! What’s a teenage boy if not braggadocio incarnate? A walking sex drive?”
For real, though. Teen boys were 90% horniness by weight. Take away the exaggeration, the bluster, the constant dick-measuring, and there was nothing left but pure goonery. Thus, no matter how uncool it was, the only way to look cool was to posture one’s pee-pee off. To bluff. To lie. To swindle and swagger.
“All right! It’s monster-hunting open season. You just take these guys, and I’ll go over here and run experime—what? Don’t look at me like that! Disguise the undisguised disgust, madams and slime. Sharing is caring! Hogging monsters is against the rule book! Look, it’s written right there—‘Save some monster mauling for others.’ I’d know, because I wrote it myself. What? How else was I supposed to pass the time?”
If I could share my snacks with them, how come they wouldn’t share their monsters with me? This whole master-servant thing wasn’t all it was cracked up to be… But hey, at least the roll cakes were a big hit.
“You do know their primary purpose is to be twin-shutter-uppers? Right?”
Om nom nom nom.
Anyway…
A shadow of deepest night fell over the land. Monsters skulked, foul beasts born of the baneful miasma choking the realm. Slayers. Reavers of man flesh; creatures of fear, and fire, and blood. Demons. Yeah, and then, like, I killed them, lol.
“Gimme my spellstones! Make me rich! Line my pockeeeeets!”
Grraaaaawwwghhh!
O Entanglement: the ultimate deceiver, the builder from nothing, the synthesizer of synergies. The cheat Skill that time forgot. Waded into the throng did I. And then I watched. And I waited. The monsters bore down on me, and I merely waited. With ease, with dilatory apathy, I wound my Skills and Effects into one single magic, a composite force, a unified node of power…which I handed to Entanglement.
“Before, I would just let ’er rip, but that’d kiiiinda rip my head off… So we’re just gonna take it slow.”
Lianqi suffused my veins. Entangled magic coated me like a mantle. The demarcating lines between self and non-self blurred; I became a unified, unfathomable, uncontrollable force of nature. I didn’t push the power away from me bodily as once had been my wont—I let it become one with me. I was it. I was Power.
A deadly spear wall comprised of “Spear Ravens, Lv: 44” loomed before me. One brush against them, and I would be fatally impaled on their lengths. Spears lurched into movement—a black rain. A shower of ebon, nightmare feathers.
“I thought ravens were migratory? What’re they doing setting up house in a dungeon? I mean…if they don’t wanna get a move on, I’m gonna have to kill ’em… Not like I wanna, but…I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place?”
Ca-caaaaw!
Fear was the control killer. Fear made Entanglement deadly to me. It was the fear of the devastating power ripping through me, snapping my bones and sinews to shreds, that ruined me. It was the fear of the infinite and incomprehensible transformations Entanglement exerted upon me that brought me to my self-inflicted doom.
“Weirdly, I’m taking a page from the girls’ books here.”
Bobble bobble?
Like Entanglement, the girls were more than a sum of their parts. They constantly came together, forming fresh combinations and becoming better fighters for their efforts. Not like What’s His Face, the dude who picked people off one by one and only made himself weaker for it, or the rest of his ilk. No, the girls made slow but sure progress. Constant. Never-ceasing. Progress. That was the solution. That was the monolith I couldn’t afford to suffer defeat to.
“If Entanglement defies logic, evades all understanding by rational thought…then let’s turn my brain off. We’ll Entangle my Skills in my body.”
My whole class worked better in teams. There was a finite number of the nerds and idiots (thank god), but the girls? The girls kept swelling their ranks. They had numbers; they made use of their numbers. They achieved the impossible task of teamwork. They cooperated; they collaborated; they built an indefatigable collective from the efforts of many individuals—a collective armed with morning stars! A terrifying collective!!!
“Keep it up, Entanglement, and someday, you’ll catch up!”
Thing was, the girls didn’t believe in themselves. They had inferiority complexes about their strength on both the individual and party levels. They failed to understand what a menace thirty cooperative young women armed with cheat Skills could be. For all that they whined about failing to land a hit on the dungeon emperors during training, they failed to realize just how absurd it was to train with a freaking dungeon emperor in the first place. They’d been capable of fighting level 100 bosses for days now. The only reason they didn’t was ’cause I told them not to—I didn’t want people getting hurt, y’know? The dungeon empirical and dudely escorts—those were all overkill. Me being overprotective.
Small wonder they felt inferior to the dudes. Shocker that they nursed frustration. But y’know, I…I didn’t see a reason to risk anyone’s life. Right? Like, what was the point of all this hard work and growth if it came to nothing? Why throw that all away? Better to fight only that which could be, with 100% certainty, overpowered and destroyed. Better to battle only when it led to a win.
“That’s what power is all about, isn’t it?”
Wiggle wiggle.
The dungeon emperors didn’t want the girls fighting either. I think they saw themselves—their younger selves—reflected in the girls. And unlike the young dungeon emperors, the girls weren’t alone. They had us to rely on. They could keep on training and laughing and living it up.
“Besides, the girls don’t like killing and competition. They weren’t made for that. The nerds and meatheads… They’re another story. They like going up against stronger opponents. They like feeling out of their depths. Weirdos! Guys, don’t try and copy them. I mean it.”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm.
So I swore an oath to the dungeon emperors: I would catch up to the girls…’cause if the girls beat me fair and square, they’d try shielding me in battle. (I heard that was like their whole motivation?) And pardon my French, but fuck that. No one was protecting me on my watch. That’s what all the cheating and deceiving and lying and swindling was for!
“No ‘do the impossible.’ To hell with ‘do or do not; there is no try.’ Just get out there and get it done!”
In the span of infinitude cut so small, so minute, so thinly grained not a scrap, not a particle, not a quantum of time was left—I walked. With no fervor, no force, no emotion; with no pretension, no posturing, no power plays; with absolute precision, with deadly accuracy, with total control; with nothing save myself as I truly was—I killed.
I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed. I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed, I killed. And I killed. And I killed. And I killed, I killed, I killed. Just for something new, I killed. Then I killed some more. I killed until all that was left was that fact that I had killed. The world stretched in an unbroken and eternal silence around me, and on I killed. I killed until there was nothing left. I killed until the end of all things.
“Hff…”
The first step was the beginning. By the time my second foot hit the ground, everything was over. Life and death. That’s all anything ever amounted to. Life, and that which it returned to, death. The last remnants of the spear ravens had long since drifted to the floor and vanished. Now, nothing remained—save the spellstones. And the silence. The silence of a single man alone in a universe.
“Um, ow? I don’t know what I expected…”
Nod nod! Rattle rattle! Mm-hmm! Jiggle jiggle!
The selfsame silence of isolation in the depths of a dungeon. The quietude of existence in a place beyond the end of time. The seclusion of the farthest reaches of the universe. The ultimate solitary existence that no man or woman would ever know save for me. And them. The dungeon emperors. And maybe…maybe if we were all together, loneliness wouldn’t be quite so bad.
(At times, the company could be friggin’ obnoxious, but don’t tell the others…)
“Yeah. I’m never gonna catch up to the girls at this rate. Look what that cheat Skill did to me! Now compare it to all of theirs!”
I might have caused mass destruction, but, uh… Oopsies? It’d happened so fast I couldn’t stop it? Oh, and here come the glares. Sleeping Beauty had already developed quite the eye for dealing glamorous glares. Which…score?
DAY 119: AFTERNOON -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119
AFTERNOON
As much as I appreciate my Japanese roots, I’d trade for Western cheerleaders over traditional cheer squads any day.
A KINGDOM DUNGEON
I USED APPRAISAL on the item the level 36 Armored Queen Ant dropped. “Piercing Drill Sword: Speed, Strength +30%. Adds piercing damage to stab attacks (large). Equipment Fracture (large). +ATT.” Yoooo, that’s like frontier-level strong. My sole complaint: We had no drill girls to give a drill sword to.
“I’m surprised how many monsters we’re encountering and how strong they are. Maybe this is a big dungeon after all.”
The average monster strength made me assume this was a small to mid-size dungeon. We’re talking fifty, sixty floors tops. It also lacked the appropriate big dungeon feel—the inviting yet sophisticated big dungeon ambience. Y’know?
The ant’s hidden room’s treasure chest produced another rare find: “Gale Cloak: Speed, Dexterity +30%. Wind Element Multiplier (large). Wind Armor. Wind Blades. Gale Winds.”
“Maybe this is a big dungeon. You’d think the monsters would be stronger and the equipment would have cooler Effects… Still, I should thank my lucky stars it wasn’t a Fail Cloak. Between being a NEET, a Shut-In, a Loner, and jobless, I have it bad enough! The last thing I need is a Failure title to seal the coffin on my social reject status.”
Jiggle jiggle.
At least I confined Entanglement’s deadly self-destructive side-effects into a sliver of a segment of a smidgen of a second! Talk about innovation. Or optimization. Or maybe just downgrading. Because ouch, did that self-destruction hurt.
“Why is the beater-upper becoming the beaten up? It’s inconceivable! Unbelievable! Accounts receivable? It’s so irrational and irreconcilable it makes me downright irritated. I need a good, long rest with my head in someone’s lap to calm down. On second thought—my daily encounters with feminine thighs only contribute to the self-destruction. It’s not exactly ideal to be so beat up I can’t move when luscious thighs dance across my immobile field of vision…”
The moment I buried my face in a girl’s thighs, the real battle began—but I was still too injured to move! But then again, the dungeon emperors only let me rest my head in their laps because I was injured, so there was just no winning.
“Maybe I should have an Injury Orb to complement my Healing Orb. But the mood-lighting chandelier it came bundled with might’ve been a bit much… The Healing Orb is very good at its job, but does it really need a whole chandelier? It’s just too much. Too extra. Not to mention too big!”
Wiggle wiggle.
See, I was talking about the “Mood Lighting Chandelier: Amplifies and spreads the power of up to four orbs” that I’d found on the lowest floors of Sleeping Beauty’s dungeon. I’d slotted the Revival Orb, the Antidote Orb, and the Regeneration Orb into the chandelier’s three corner sconces. Then, for the pièce de résistance, I’d popped the “Curing Orb: Holds dominion over curing” into the central sconce. The chandelier had lit up with a gorgeous, otherworldly ephemeral glow. It’d been…a lot. Not the kind of thing I’d wanted to lug around, so I hung it in the eroticathedral and left it there.
“I wish I could’ve brought it home with me, but it was way too big and bulky. I get building a campfire in a dungeon to take a quick rest, but a friggin’ giant chandelier? No thank you. Leaving it in the eroticathedral was the best choice. We don’t need any mood lighting in our dungeon delving. Too much mood lighting, and the ‘quick’ rest isn’t so quick after all, know what I’m saying?”
Bobble bobble.
Truly, the Mood Lighting Chandelier and the eroticathedral had been made for each other. That luminous liability deserved to be housed in a place of soaring ceilings and swooping buttresses and the eroticathedral, no longer sucking the Theocracy dry of magic power, needed a proper light source.
“If the chandelier’s healing powers don’t bring in foot traffic, then I don’t know what will. That’s where the sexy nun habits come in. There’s nothing like legs to bring people in hand over fist! I’d go down on my knees for costumes like those any day.”
The church needed a steady source of income, right? Otherwise, they’d have to take out loans to pay the renovation fees.
Anyway, I realized my chances of making it back to the frontier by nightfall were very slim. If this was a big dungeon, like I feared, I would be here all night. It wouldn’t matter if I collected enough spellstones to buy the inn itself if I never got to use them. Nor could I turn back now. Any big dungeons had to be destroyed for fear of monster stampedes. And who was more fit for the job than me? No one, that’s who. It took a full troop of frontier soldiers to clear the opening floors, and anything past that was beyond the handling of normal folks.
“I have a hunch this is a big dungeon, but that doesn’t fit the facts.”
“Is old dungeon. Been around, for, seventeen years. But little magi, in soil and air. Hasn’t grown much, yet.”
“Agreed. Not enough magi to grow. But old. Old dungeon.”
“Old, not strong.”
Wobble wobble.
Huh. Were those a thing? Old, slow-growing dungeons? Maybe so. There was that one dungeon in the frontier that grew a ton of floors with zero warning. It wasn’t that old, but the frontier was so thick with magi that that sort of thing could happen. The frontier was worse off than I thought… The frontier army, half the First Division, and the Adventurers’ Guild could do little more in their combined efforts than slow the dungeons’ growth. Small wonder these Kingdom dungeons were neglected and kept growing.
“Big dungeons are spawning in the frontier as we speak. Sounds like a job for us!”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Mm-hmm. Jiggle jiggle!
The bigger issue was the darkness—but I could worry about that later. I had a dungeon to clear first. I could walk again, and as long as I didn’t overextend myself, I wasn’t going to spontaneously combust or anything. My Skills were painful and frightening, but what else was new?
“It’s awfully ironic that going full throttle is easier to control because I can’t moderate or fine-tune my fighting. Maybe my attacks only work for a split second, but my body can only hold itself together for a split second, so it all works out in the end.”
My recovery time was too long. But at least I could use that recovery time to work out the sweet spot of minimum self-destruction, minimum movement, and maximum output.
“Hmm…”
Wiggle wiggle.
I experimented as I walked along. Wuxingquan’s kata were simple. No fancy kicks or jump attacks—just cold speed, raw power, and a focus on taking down opponents as fast as possible. All advancing, minimal dodging. Every move was to be delivered with the speed of a lightning strike. The offense provided its own defense, striking with spiraling force and thus repelling incoming attacks. My staff whirred like a gale wind, wreaking mass destruction and smashing whatever was unlucky enough to be at its receiving end.
“Hiiyah?”
Blub blub.
Wuxingquan was precision incarnate, logic taken to extremes. It was just like M-san always said: “If a single hit leaves you dead, why not leave destruction in your wake?” Yes, wuxingquan was truth itself, offense and defense both, an ancient art distilled from rationalism and the universal laws of combat to deliver certain lethal force.
It was a bad joke taken seriously. It was intense study to the point of madness, five barebones kata discovered in the act of stripping away anything and everything superfluous. These five kata were the heart of all warfare, the essential, the everything. With one half-step forward, the battle was finished. The foes were felled. The enemies were crushed.
“Wait…that went by so fast I lost track of all the elemental imagery!”
Ever since I’d been destroyed and reformed in the fight against the darkness, I had done nothing but practice these five kata over and over again. Even so, even with all the powers of Hoplology and Wisdom, I could only grasp but a fraction of the art’s shadow. My strikes were awkward, ungainly. A sliver of my physical prowess, a shard of my magic, a whisper of my qi, a breath, a step, then anything and everything I had in a brief milli-instant of Entanglement—then sometimes, just sometimes, I would produce a huge torrent of destructive force. These techniques were energy efficient, to be sure, but the timing window was very, very tiny.
“From top to bottom is piquan, aka metal. From bottom to top is zuanquan, aka water?”
Chain together blinding quick half-steps, alternate between moves directed to the left and right, and close in on the enemy. Teleport made the distance vanish with alarming speed, and with that and the power of bengquan, I sent a giant crab flying.
“Bengquan has all the piercing power of an arrow? And stuff?”
What giant crab, you’re asking? Did I not mention the “Metal Crabs, Lv: 46” scuttling all over the 46th floor? Well, there were those—giant metal crabs scuttling hither and thither, I mean. Let the teen-and-crab scuttle fest commence! I couldn’t afford to let my guard down. The previous floor had had “Armored Prawns, Lv: 45.” Imagine if I’d had a seafood allergy! These crustacean infestation wave attacks would’ve left me all washed up!
“Too bad, so sad—seafood is Slimey’s favorite. He likes nothing better than a tasty crab or lobster, unless it’s a yummy prawn or shrimp. He’s not choosy. Eat up, little guy.”
Wiggle wiggle!
What could I say? Slimey saw food, he ate it.
I hoped for a nice spiny lobster on the next floor, but alas, that was where the pattern broke.
“But we did get dessert! ‘Wild Strawberries, Lv: 46’! I usually think, like, ‘feral’ when I hear the word ‘wild,’ but I think this just refers to strawberries not grown on a farm… I would check, but Slimey ate them before I could use Appraisal. Slimey? Why are you wriggling like a vine? That’s some serious ivy action you’ve got there, little buddy. You sure you didn’t watch my tentacles at work?”
Had the wild strawberries been wild mushrooms, I would’ve rooted for the fungi. Alas, these fragarias were no match for our resident fun guy.
Off we went to the 48th floor, where we found flocks of bird and moth monsters. I busted out my projectile weapons to handle these aerial adversaries. I could’ve extended my staff to whack ’em, but I didn’t want my staff whizzing around the room and getting in my allies’ way.
“Look at me, gaining self-awareness! I guess I could always fly after the enemies myself—I really do need the practice—but something tells me wuxingquan wasn’t meant to be used midair. It wouldn’t look cool enough, you know?”
Jiggle jiggle.
Thus, a non-flying teen boy whipped out a drum to be a one-man cheerleading team for his satiated slime eager for seconds. I’ve seen boy and his slime stories, but I doubt the crowds are lining up to read one like this…Oh well, who cares what the people want? Time to drum up support for Slimey!
“Slimey, Slimey, he’s so tough.
Watch him eat ’em all. And stuff?”
Wriggle wriggle!
“Slimey, Slimey, see him go.
There’s nothing he can’t do. Y’know?”
Bobble bobble!
“Let’s go, Slimey; you’re a lucky duck.
My exclamation point key is stuck?”
Jubble jubble!
“Shut, up! You, distracting us! And the enemies, dead already!”
Huh? Why were the dungeon emperors mad at me? Had cheerleading drums not been invented yet? Well, they existed now. And cheerleader uniforms! Who wants to try one on? And immediately take it off for me?
Onto the 49th floor. There was one more below—this dungeon ended on the 50th floor. This was my last chance to experiment.
“Man, this is the third time I’ve swapped out my cloak… What a poignant moment.”
It wounded my heart, but I tearfully removed the “Verge of Death Overcloak: Slashing and Bludgeoning Resistance Multiplier (large). +DEF” and donned the “Gale Cloak: Speed, Dexterity +30%. Wind Element Multiplier (large). Wind Armor. Wind Blades. Gale Winds.” I was concerned about losing my slashing and bludgeoning resistance, and the speed boost threatened to mess with my poor control further, but the wind element multiplier was a godsend for Qing Qigong. The cloak didn’t offer much protection, but it was perfect for evasive maneuvers.
“Hey there, fluffy little guy! Can I pet y—ooh, never mind. I don’t like those slavering fangs. Yeah, nope. You fall squarely in the pesky vermin category.”
I relaxed from my fighting stance and straightened up. There was something else I had to do before I whipped out my ol’ reliable wuxingquan. The bear’s (oh yeah, I was fighting several bears—whoops, forgot to mention that) long claws ripped through the air in front of me, stirring up a wind that shook me until I lopped off its arm in one stroke.
The bear howled in pain and tumbled forward, threatening to crush me. The wind generated by the movement of its titanic form buffeted me, pushing me out of harm’s way. I very solicitously sliced off its head on the way down. Two bears on either side of me roared, and two giant paws tried to pin me between them. I slipped and slid on the resulting whirlwind, and my sword danced, traveling here, there, everywhere.
“It’s working!”
I let myself dance along on my Qing Qigong, dodging attacks effortlessly and lashing out in a flash of steel and staff. I couldn’t control myself, but I trusted myself to the wind and my body. It was the ultimate passive technique. The “Ripper Grizzlies, Lv: 49” never knew what hit them. Three cheers for the classic M-san strategy: “If you can’t move ahead, invest in an airbrake. (And also attack. And stuff.)”
Attacks that would’ve landed otherwise sent me wheeling out of the way. I whirled. I twirled. I swished and slashed and swooshed.
I wanted to try out the teen-boy-attracting Piercing Drill Sword, but I didn’t have the resources to spare. I was all momentum, a victim of the gravity-negating Qing Qigong, a creature of speed and little power. The two Universe Staffs made merry work of the bears as their huge claw attacks swept me across the room. It was all very badass—if we ignore me pirouetting like a dizzy leaf caught in a whirlwind. Shh.
“At least I dodged everything and didn’t fall once! Never hurts to be prepared, even if it’s impossible to run into darkness this close to the surface. That’s my motto: Be prepared, be impaired, and, eventually, be repaired! That’s how I hobble through every squabble with a—”
Wobble?
Exactly! High five, Slimey. Oh. You can’t, huh? Occupational hazard of being a slime.
“Okay, but if the boss is bad business, I’ll let you guys take the wheel. I won’t get myself in over my head. Oh, please! Have you ever known me to do anything ill-advised? Am I not always bursting with sound arguments and fine, logical reasoning? I’ll be so fine.”
“…Promise you’ll switch out!”
All right! One boss to boss around, and then it was back to the frontier for us.
DAY 119: EVENING -- A KINGDOM DUNGEON
DAY 119
EVENING
Even a shut-in doesn’t want to be shut up in a pocket universe when it’s got no form of entertainment!
A KINGDOM DUNGEON
MY TIMING COULDN’T HAVE BEEN WORSE! Whenever I attacked, it blocked; whenever I blocked, it swept right past me. The dungeon king—a “Corrosion Fog, Lv: 50”—was a tough customer, but not anything to write home about. I’d fought worse in bigger dungeons or frontier dungeons. It was the corrosive part that gave me pause. I didn’t dare go near it for fear of rotting, and how was I supposed to fight a fog with no core to target?
The miasma swept in without a puff of air or single sound. Qing Qigong was no help—with no wind, I couldn’t be propelled anywhere. I had to jump and dash out of the way, and once I was at a safe distance away, I found myself in a deadlock once more.
Bobble bobble!
Tum-ta-ta-tum, tum-ta-ta-tum!
Slimey did his best little drummer boy impression on the cheerleading drum for me, but the others refused to join in the cheer squad. No uniforms and pom-poms for them!
I unfurled my Black Demon’s Bladed Wings and tried flap, flap, flapping the mist away to little avail. The fog scattered, only to congeal again in a matter of moments.
“I’d slash at it if that would kill off the fog, but I fear that’d only make more fog particles…”
Nor were heating or cooling viable options. The fog would simply absorb any magic I cast. Physical weapons weren’t much help either. If I got too close, I’d have to contend with Rot, Equipment Fracture, and MP Absorption.
“This reminds me of the Sand Giant. It didn’t have a core or weak points either. I had to use Demolish to homebrew my own atom bomb, but that wouldn’t work here. And if I use Holding magic to pull the fog together, the fog will just suck up my MP.”
So, we were at a standstill. The fog shied away from my divine swords. Every time I tried to grab it, I missed—or mist, if you will. Using Demolish on a rapidly dissipating handful of fog technically was an option, but it wouldn’t set off a chain reaction like I wanted. And none of us wanted an uncontrollable nuclear meltdown.
“Not to mention, it’d take too long. Anyone have ideas on how to beat this thing? Wanna switch in for m—whoa! Watch it there, fog! I wish this thing would stop spreading the moment I take my eyes off it…”
I did not want the entire room covered in a flesh-eating fog. I slashed and hacked away at it, driving it back with my divine swords, to stop it from touching me. It shied away from the swords. We were playing a game of attrition crossed with a game of keep away. Hey, gang? Any ideas on what to do next?
“Good, luck.”
Jiggle, jiggle.
“We believe, in you!”
Wriggle wriggle.
“Let’s go, Master! Let’s go!”
Bobble bobble.
Tum-ta-ta-tum-ta-ta-tum!
Their ideas? Cheering, apparently. None of them wanted to fight this stupid fog either!
“Y’know, a teenage boy would feel more get up and go from a squad of frisky cheerleaders… Just throwing it out there…”
Forget pom-poms. All I had were Slimey’s bom boms.
Bom bom bom!
With enough effort, I corralled the freakin’ fulsome fog into a corner. If my plan worked on walls, why wouldn’t it work on fog? It would be limited range, and I wasn’t sure if the explosion would travel from fog particle to fog particle—but hey, that was why this was an experiment. I Entangled my magic, qi, and Skills to create a zone of deadly vibrations powered by Demolish, Vibration, and Void magic. This had to work—or else. I had to one-shot the fog, or else it’d eat all my MP.
“Hoo… Okay. Let’s roll.”
Speed was unnecessary. I only needed Thought Acceleration to give myself complete control. I slowed time to a crawl, leaving a scattered morass of time particles breaking apart like so much plasma. Then I stuck my foot out and stomped. This was no perfect, instantaneous bengquan, but a ground-shaking, earth-quaking, power-awakening mixture of magic, qi, and physical prowess. The dungeon emperors shied away, horrified. Dancer Girl snapped her chain at me, forcing me to dodge. Oops. Was this attack supereffective as friendly fire?
“Eeek! Aaaah!”
The air trembled; space itself creaked like the rotten beams of a crumbling building. The world shuddered and warped before melting in on itself like myriad mirages layered over one another. If the dungeon emperors were running, this was bad business! But I couldn’t run for cover myself, or else I’d lose control—and then who knew where the attack would go? The whole room shivered and spun in a spherical vortex centered on the tip of my staff!
“No! Stay, back! Get away!”
The sphere began to collapse; space began to decay. The destructive powers of magic gone mad curved around the edges of my divine weapons, but the fog succumbed completely to its fey pull. There was a horrible, earsplittingly high-pitched shriek of high frequency harmonics gone haywire. Low-frequency rumbles shuddered through the room. Molecules vibrated, generating heat, turning the room into a furnace of cataclysmic proportions. Then everything ceased. All light vanished. All sound failed.
I looked down and found nothing. My body was gone. Oopsies. Miss Armor Rep screamed and sobbed, but no sound reached my nonexistent ears. Dancer Girl stood stock-still, horrified, one end of her molten and melting chain still clutched in one hand. Sleeping Beauty ran over to where my last molecules were rapidly dissipating, lobbing Healing in my direction and keening fit to wake the dead. I wanted to speak, to at least give some word of comfort to the silent and stupefied slime, but I couldn’t. I had no voice. I had no mouth. No ears. Nothing but silence. Darkness. And nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Sinking into nothing…
Whew! Okay, I’m better now. That was a close one, huh, fellas?
“I’m not sure what I expected, to be honest. Like, no duh, vibrating atoms is stupid dangerous! Had I vibrated a little harder, I would’ve left you all sad and lonely without me. When they say ‘the world disappears in the fog,’ I didn’t know they meant literally… Anyway, blame the fog! Not me!”
The dungeon emperors stopped bawling just long enough to yell, “Shut up, Haruka!”
Jeez, they were spitting mad! They glared, chewed me out, and sobbed in equal measures. They forced me into a penitent position and gave me actual hell. The menacing morning stars at the ready made me gulp. And gosh, were the dungeon emperors still crying? It’d been well over an hour! My feet fell asleep at thirty minutes in! Then I was forced into another half hour of them hugging me and sobbing onto my shoulder while I cradled heads and whispered, “Shh, it’s okay now. I’m here.” I’m watching the clock, girls… It’s almost nighttime.Hmm. What should I make for dinner tonight?
“Really, guys, I’m fine. You all knew—well, Sleeping Beauty didn’t—that I have the Sacred Severing Staff. And I have Void magic. Even if I were willing to blow myself up, you know I could always teleport out of the way. Guys, I’m on death’s doorstep every other day. I wouldn’t actually die. It’d be a waste of my extensive collection of close shaves!”
You remember the Severing Staff, right? It was that relic thingy the church archbishop dude had had when he attacked the Kingdom. Using mithril on it upgraded it into the “Sacred Severing Staff: +50% to all stats. Magic control boost (ultra). Severing. Seal. MP boost (ultra).” Its Severing Trait allowed me to shut myself away in a pocket universe in times of trouble. Shut-ins the world over wished they were me. Thing was, the pocket universe shrouded its occupants in silence and darkness. The user could see nothing in the space—not their body, nothing—just the outside world. They couldn’t move. They couldn’t cast magic. They were stuck. Had someone not brought my staff to me, I would’ve been locked in there for good. It was a great hidey-hole in emergencies, but entering it used oodles of MP. No wonder I’d forgotten about it until this moment. Had I not had a flash of inspiration—when in doubt, be a NEET—I would’ve been toast!
“Waaaaaaah!”
Crying and yelling at me? Girls, pick one and stick with it… Anyhoo, I hadn’t expected myself to vanish on them like that. I hadn’t planned on getting caught in the crossfire to begin with. Accidents happen, y’know? Who didn’t mistakenly vanish out of existence every so often? We’ve all been there. Right? There’s no need to make a fuss out of your garden-variety extinction mishap. Does it still count as a garden-variety mishap if the garden vanishes too?
The one stroke of luck was that the spellstone hadn’t vanished as well. Good! I wasn’t risking my life for free here. And all was well that ended well, i.e., I’d done nothing wrong. And wasn’t it Dancer Girl who reminded me of the Severing Staff in the first place? Yeah, hadn’t I used it when we’d first met? Wha—don’t whistle innocently at me!
“That’s a good thing! It’s good that I remembered I had it! Yes, your attempts at dodging the blame are very cute, but there’s no blame to dodge. That staff saved my life! Hmm…there’s no convincing you, huh? You’re that mad? Mm-hmm. Uh-huh. From your perspective, it looked like I made direct eye contact with you and dissolved in the mist, huh? Yeah, I could see that being a disturbing visual. But don’t blame me. That’s the Sacred Severing Staff’s fault!”
While Dancer Girl was otherwise occupied being mad at me, I pulled off my crown to doublecheck the two flowers in the Talisman Flower Crown. That’s when I realized all the fake flower charms were gone. Forcefield and Reflection must have been consumed when I’d slipped into the pocket dimension. A good half of the Slayer of Elderly Humans of the Male Variety: Never Met an Old Man Worth Keeping! was gone too. And I’d put mithril in that sword! A tiny amount, but it still counted. If mithril equipment was going ghost on me, I shuddered to imagine what would’ve happened with ordinary equipment.
Once the dungeon emperors got all the lecturing out of their systems, I popped into the hidden room. Ah ha. You’re the one responsible.
“Magi Draining Bottle: Intelligence Amplification (mega). MP Conversion Rate Amplification (mega). Alchemy Boost (mega). Magi Absorption Storage. Magi Transmogrification. Magi Adaptation.’ No wonder this dungeon has so little raw magic—magi—in it.”
This dungeon was smack-dab in the middle of no-man’s land. There wasn’t a village or town in kilometers. That, and the fact that the dungeon emitted very little magi, explained how it had evaded detection for years.
“A cool new ring, huh? Oh wait! This is a Klein bottle! An intricate Mobius-strip-looking thing… Aghhh! I can’t stand it! Hrrrrghhhh!”
I was writhing in pain because of the blatant and wretched mistranslation. Klein bottles were theoretical “tubes” first described by the German mathematician Felix Klein, two-dimensional curved surfaces whose “faces” had no meaningful boundary or distinction. They weren’t, in other words, literal bottles.
“See, in German it’s a ‘Kleinsche fläche’ or ‘Klein surface.’ Some English translator confused ‘fläche’ with ‘flasche,’ and it became Klein ‘bottle’ in English. Then that got ported to Japanese, and now we’re stuck with the wrong word.”
I slotted the Mobius-strip-esque ring into its slot and just about died when my MP skyrocketed to an explosive degree. Fantasy world equipment could be scary! Fortunately, I resurrected. Unfortunately, so did the anger. And the lectures. Sorry?
“And I already have high-efficiency mana batteries and a mana converter! If not for that, my optimized, transmogrified body would’ve exploded!”
Yeah, in a single instant, everything from my cells to my blood had turned red-hot! The Klein bottle had sucked up magi from the outside world, converted it into human-usable MP, given it an element type, and released it as a magic spell. In too potent a form, this had manifested as a magical blight, which cropped up in the frontier sometimes. It was also the illness Elf Girl had suffered from.
“And mushrooms are the only cure, huh? That’s because mushrooms grow from magi themselves. They’re nature’s perfect magic converters. There’s all kinds of mushrooms—HP, MP, physical recovery. They break down the basic magi in the world around us and turn it into the kind of magic we can use—MP.”
That explained why people in this world rarely lived in monster forests or areas thick with dungeons! Look at me, solving yet another of the world’s mysteries. Next mystery to solve: When will these lectures ever end? Lemme just…cook some dinner while you’re yelling at me. Yes, yes, I knew I shouldn’t have almost died twice in quick succession. But how was I to know that I wasn’t allowed more than one close brush with death per day? Who made that a rule?
“The first one was an unpredictable accident, and the second was an unforeseen snafu. Life is full of things we can’t predict, right? I agree that it’s foolish to repeat the same mistakes—that’s worth a scolding—but I pride myself on the sheer variety of mistakes I get up to! Surely there’s no need to break me of this entirely innocent and accident-prone habit? Or, to put it simply, I did nothing wrong?”
Blame the universe, not me!
Eventually, I gathered that the disappearing horror show of the first mistake and the gushing blood of the second accident had done little to endear me to the dungeon emperors. I thus made myself very busy stuffing snacks into angry faces and patting tearful heads. Even Slimey was mad!
Wiggle wiggle!
“Look, I’m just saying. The first mistake was me screwing up a spell, and the second accident was me screwing up an equipping. I’m not repeating my mistakes! It’s not even my fault! Blame the world! This wouldn’t have happened if the universe wasn’t so incredibly illogical. I’m perfectly innocent. I blame the world for it all!”
Angry glares crossed with angry munching!
I flirted with the idea of slotting the Magi Draining Bottle into my equipment, but I sensed that this would only incense the dungeon emperors further. But hey—all that Reviving had drained me of MP!
“It’s just cruel, having zero MP when there’s an infinite MP ring right in front of me… It’s like dying of starvation at a banquet… Eek! Don’t glare at me like that!”
The dungeon emperors hoisted me onto a stretcher, trotted up fifty flights of stairs, and deposited me in a carriage—even though I was perfectly fine, physically! They stripped me of my equipment, confiscated my lovely magic-filled ring, and slid into the crisp cheerleading uniforms I still had on me: fetching red for Miss Armor Rep, creamy white for Dancer Girl, and gallant yellow stripes on black for Sleeping Beauty.
“Uh… Something tells me you’re not about to start cheering…”
These cheerleaders were ready for the kill! Carnal carnage-causing cheerleaders hiding behind the excuse of sexual healing! Oh, this carriage was full to bursting of bustling, buxom bosoms and bouncing behinds—fine, fine legs tangling and curling with mine.
“Oh no! I let my guard down, and now I’m caught in a three-way pincer attack!”
There was leg flesh everywhere I looked—pale white slipping and sliding around husky amber brown, a contrast that was as pleasing to the eyes as was being squeezed under their thighs.
Smooch!
Saaaaa-mack!
“Waaaagh!”
Red flirted with white; white cavorted with black; leg rolled over leg. The carriage rocked in the world’s most localized earthquake. The vehicle may have been heading for the frontier, but its inhabitants were on a one-way trip to pleasure town.
“And still the world turns… And still Haruka turns! And shakes! And bounces! And bumps! Aaaaaaagh! Ghrhrhrblllll!!!”
Indistinct lovemaking noises <3
DAY 120: OMUI CITY
DAY 120
Is it really a homecoming if I live in the woods?
OMUI CITY
THE CITY WAS ALIVE. The streets bustled with activity; the air thrummed with excitement.
It had all started when the youngest orphans woke up this morning in a flurry of anticipation. Their energy was contagious. The older kids caught it next, and then the whole fidgety assembly donned their favorite beastfolk-themed pajamas and trooped out into the streets to throng at the city gates. It was catching; it was enthralling. Now the adults were under its spell, and the whole town was astir.
No one dared to voice it, but the same thought lodged in every head: “Is today the day? Are they coming home?”
Excitement dogged every footstep all morning long. Once I finished cleaning the inn’s common areas, I started on their rooms in the fancy annex. The dining hall was quiet and deserted for the first time in its lengthy use. Once, it had been filled with smiles and laughter. Now, only a long, lonely silence walked this hall.
A similar transformation had stolen over the rest of town. Ours was a town of unthinkable prosperity, unbelievable happiness, and just a hint of sadness—just an empty space in the happiness, right in the center of town, where something should have been.
There was a smile for every face, but no eye could avoid straying long. Our gaze drifted to the inn annex, the Adventurers’ Guild, the general store, the blacksmith’s, the clothes workshops, the main streets…and the gate. Always with the same thought—when are they coming home?
“Phew! That’s the last of the cleaning.”
Just outside the window, puffed merchants were peddling their wares. Children ran in and among their stalls, shouting to be heard over the hawkers’ hubbub. Housewives and adventurers bustled from shop to shop. Past the city gates, knights and soldiers from all over the Kingdom poured into the frontier to fight our dungeons, quell our monster forests, and spread peace. It felt like something out of a dream—but then again, so did every day here on the frontier.
But for all that, we longed for more. Here in the empty dining hall, out in front of the Guilds’ bulletin board, at the front desk of the general store, sadness dwelt in every eye. Our town rang with laughter…but laughter wasn’t enough. We weren’t satisfied with joy and contentment and wild, rapturous glee. Our bustle lacked its usual cacophony, its angry shouts, its shrieks of horror.
That chaos was our happiness, you see. That disorder was synonymous with the frontier’s peace. We all knew that. Everyone knew that. That’s why the lack of it broke our hearts. We missed the shouted lectures, the screams of “Catch him! He’s getting away!” and the inevitable outbursts of riotous laughter that had become commonplace. We missed our beloved pandemonium.
It was worth sighing over. So that’s just what I did.
Every time I heard a raised voice, a mysterious crash, my eyes would light up for the briefest of moments before the disappointment settled in. Every time I looked out over our busy, bustling town, I missed that extra special something that gave our days their dreamlike quality.
The name of that lack was admiration—admiration for the older girls in their resplendent armor. Oh, but it wasn’t just the armor that I adored. It was their beauty. Their strength. Their welcoming hearts. Their smiles, the most glorious smiles the frontier had ever seen.
And then there were the older boys—the outgoing, funny, endlessly kind “nerds” and “jocks.” For all their laughter and levity, we slept soundly in our beds at night knowing the boys would keep us safe through thick and thin.
My new friend Stalker Girl was gone, too. She’d gone off to war with the rest of them. That was Stalker Girl for you—heading off into danger to make sure every town and village around us stayed safe. Yes, that was my dear best friend in a nutshell.
The day my loved ones left, I’d watched them don their armor, take up their spears and swords, and march off to war. I’d watched all those kind, funny, always smiling souls leave us to walk into the jaws of battle. All those boys and girls—all those kids, those ordinary people just like you and me. Ordinary people who’d made themselves fight monsters, made themselves go to war, to protect the likes of you and me.
We’d smiled when peace and prosperity had come to stay in this backwater, once danger-threatened town. But we still felt a keen missingness in our breasts, the missingness of our most important people. Outsiders looked upon our inn, our general store, our duke’s palace, and called those the symbols of Omui, but everyone in Omui knew better. Our symbols were gone. The most important pieces of Omui were gone. A hole was open in the center of Omui where our symbols should have been.
The rumors traveled from mouth to restless mouth. “Is today the day? Are they coming home?”
None of the orphans could sit still. Excitement shone in every eye. Men, women, and children dropped by the annex time and time again for no particular purpose, just to see if they were home.
Long, long before I was born, when my own parents had been no more than children and my grandparents had been no older than my parents were now, a monster attack decimated the town of Omui. The townsfolk fled—all save a single soul who fought back against the monster hordes. The hero—the White Loser, as the legends would come to name them—fell alongside the monsters they’d felled. I waited now with the same emotions I reserved for those tales when I was a child. Envy, gratitude—all sorts of emotions I couldn’t begin to name, all bundled up into a simple desire to have met the hero. To live in their presence. To be together.
“There! Spick-and-span.”
We all felt this way—that there was something missing, something that shouldn’t ever be missing. And it hurt. It really, really hurt. There was nothing we could do about it, and how vexing was that? We couldn’t follow them on the path they tread, and how helpless did that make us? Yet still, life went on. And still, little by little, we remade ourselves. We found courage to change, to grow, to keep all those we loved safe.
The orphans were the key to our change. They were good, hardworking kids. They were courageous, endeavoring souls. They worked day in and day out to bring in money for the orphanage. They were model children—everyone thought so. But really, deep down, they were more heartsick than the rest of us.
In the past, they couldn’t afford to eat no matter how hard they’d worked. In the past, they’d grown weaker and sicker until, one by one, they would lie down and never rise again. Those tragedies haunted them. We all wished the children could lead happy, carefree lives…but again, their hearts had been wounded worse than all the rest of us combined.
“Hoo! Hah! Hii-yah!”
As hard as they worked, they never slacked in their studies. Any scrap of free time they found would be turned to fighting practice. Days off were spent slaying monsters, level grinding, and earning extra cash for their savings. We townsfolk—adults and children alike—couldn’t watch them and sit complacent. We, too, set out to transform ourselves.
“Oooh!”
“Take that!”
At first, the local housewives had thought the orphans were just cute, poor little dears. As time passed, however, the housewives grew to admire the orphans’ tenacity and gained a greater appreciation of the importance of levels. Higher levels meant stronger, heartier bodies. Leveling slowed aging and restored youth to ancient bones. Best of all, leveling meant spellstones, and spellstones were the perfect source of pocket cash. And now the city teemed with beautiful clothes and everyday goods the likes of which we’d never seen.
We now knew well all the gifts high levels could bring us, including the most precious gift of all: safety for our children. High-level children were less likely to succumb to injury and disease. High-level children could, should the need arise, run from monsters and live to laugh another day.
“Yippee! I did it!”
“Do it again! Do it again!”
The housewives had paid the orphans a fee and asked if they could join their battles. Day after day, more and more housewives joined the makeshift militia. Eventually, they’d begun bringing their own children along. These civilian fighting groups had started by quelling the demons skulking outside the city walls, then, gradually, they’d dipped their toes into the forest. Then they’d moved further into the forest, then they’d taken on the top floors of dungeons…and before long, the Merry Wives of Omui Militia had been founded for the safety of all Omui’s children.
“Look at them working hard,” I said to myself.
The menfolk didn’t dare let themselves fall behind, so they took up monster hunting too. None of us really knew why the orphans worked so hard, especially as they never seemed to attach any special meaning to it. Someone had happened to catch them once and asked, casually, what were they striving for…and the answers flew around town on the wings of gossip.
“I’m gonna grow up big and strong to save my big bro and big sisses!”
“They saved us, so now it’s our turn!”
“They’re always looking out for us. I wanna return the favor.”
“We’re gonna look out for the town, too, alongside our big brothers and sisters!”
“’Cause that’s what they do. They look out for people. We gotta do the same for them, you know?”
Those tiny, tiny hands did not take up swords to repay a debt. The reason was oh so much simpler. It was just a desire to save when one had been saved and protect when one had been protected—and, most of all, to give kindness when kindness had once been given to them. Payback wasn’t always a bad thing. Payback didn’t have to mean debt. Sometimes, payback could simply take the form of working one’s hardest every single day.
“Our big brothers and sisters have been so kind to us! We wanna be just like them!”
That was the orphans’ reasoning. A ridiculous goal, an impossible goal, one built of love and admiration, held in those tiny, tiny heads. It was that ridiculousness that spurred them on. They wouldn’t have worked so hard if their goal hadn’t been so out of reach.
The light in adventurers’ and soldiers’ eyes changed once the news spread. Expressions morphed on every adult face. I think something shifted inside all of us once we knew all our peace, all our happiness, was safe to leave in those tiny, tiny hands.
The housewives were the most affected. That’s when the Militia changed.
Now armed with the true wonder of protection, the women who once knew nothing but domestic labor left their houses, grinded for levels, saved up spellstone after spellstone, and outfitted their homes with every magical appliance known to man—magical washing machines, magical refrigerators, you name it. They filled their spare time with the spirit of cooperation. They flew to monster hunting with an unmatched zeal.
Now, they outranked any of the adventurers as the fiercest fighting force in the land. Their names struck fear into the hearts of any who heard them. Ogre women, they were called. Any who mistook them for orcs, it was whispered, would meet a painful end. Their children, too, grew in strength.
Taking a page out of our older sisters’ book, we housewives swore it would hurt our womanly pride were any child to be hurt. We armed ourselves with clubs, magical dresses, and armored aprons, and we terrorized the frontier’s monster population from here to kingdom come. A Merry Maidens of Omui Militia formed, and I joined up in a heartbeat.
The militia gave me an apron and dress for self-defense, and a broom and dustpan for my weapons. A mithril broom and dustpan. I was told such weapons could best an orc in hand-to-hand combat. In my first ever battle, guarded by a contingent of housewives, I exploded a goblin with a single strike. I felt a bit guilty then—in my ignorance, I’d been using my new weapons as cleaning supplies—and from then on, I treasured such powerful gifts like they deserved.
And then there were our high walls, our steadfast protectors—our soaring, resolute fortress walls. Just past them, just past the walls of a city once too dangerous to set foot outside, lay fields of verdant prairie as far as the eye could see. The demon scythes kept it mowed, and from time to time, people held picnics. (I attended a few myself.) The first time the town children truly saw the outside world, they were blown away.
Picnicking was the latest fad. For too long, we’d been terrified of the outside world, fearful of the threat of monsters. Now, at long last, the great outdoors was ours once more. Now, weapons, armor, and potions were everywhere to be had, and we who’d only known fear learned that we had claws and fangs of our own.
The orphans were our guides. Any low-level first-time picnicker could go down to the guild and ask for an orphan to come along. The orphans, you see, wore special backpacks everywhere they went. These were “nuclear warhead” backpacks that would protect against monster stampedes, and they were gifts from a certain worrywart we all knew and loved.
At long last, when there was strength aplenty in the frontier, soldiers and adventurers made quick work of the dungeons, and everything was merry. The town was alive with laughter. The future looked bright as stars.
…But through it all, we were lonely. Something was missing. Our eyes kept straying to places…places they were not.
“…Goodness.”
Where was the boy always at the center of the chaos yelling that it wasn’t his fault? Where was the source of the pandemonium denying blame to his last breath? Where was the sheepish person who came to me begging for credit on his rent because he’d spent all his change jumpstarting the economy?
I must set the record straight—we’d never asked him to pay for his lodging. My family had refused to hear of it. Really, we should’ve paid him for the renovations! He’d built us this new, palatial inn building; these now-empty rooms; this now-silent dining hall.
The stronger I became, the more levels I gained, the better I understood why the girls worried for Haruka. Now that I was level 20, I understood the fear all too well. Never in my wildest dreams could I defeat a dungeon king. Strength had nothing to do with it—it was simply impossible for the likes of me! That’s why it was such an accomplishment, such a miracle, when great adventurers cleared a dungeon. That’s why we swept those people up on our shoulders and christened them heroes.
So, I trained every single day. Baby steps, I told myself. Baby steps until I can beat a dungeon king. Haruka was only level 24, and I could reach that. Haruka had fought in the bowels of dungeons time and time again. And he had no money! He had nothing to show for it.
He hadn’t even been level 10 when he’d first come to us. He hadn’t been strong, not at all.
“…I guess that’s why I want to protect him, huh?”
That’s what protecting meant, the way the orphans meant it. The person who kept us safe from all the calamities native to the frontier was weak. So very weak. I’d mistaken him for a mighty hero at first, and for a while, I hadn’t understood why his friends worked so very hard to protect him. Now I did. Oh, now I very much did.
“Which means I need to put in the work too—”
The gates were opening. The restless muttering turned to shouts of joy. Suddenly, everyone was running forward, yelling “Welcome home!” and mobbing the carriages. Stalker Girl popped out of one with a wave. The girls were there, and so were the nerds and the jocks. And…and a pile of orphans…?
“Welcome home! Oh, welcome, welcome home!” they sobbed.
The crying, clinging children brought a tear to the eyes of every townsperson. These hardworking, upbeat, polite, and so very, very good children were, deep down, working as hard as they possibly could. Loneliness came easily to them. They knew just how much happiness meant, which was why they strove not to let it slip through their tiny, tiny fingers once again. They hugged, and sobbed, and hugged some more. They had all the reason to. They had very good reason. Our disastrous calamity was home at last.
“We’re back! Who missed us?”
“I have souvenirs for all of you!”
“Er… By ‘have,’ she means we’ll have them for you shortly! …After we remake them.”
“…After we what now?”
“I mean…Haruka-kun made a bunch of Theocracy-themed luxury manju, soooo…”
“So you ate them all?!”
The respective pebbles and boulders of orphan mountain peeled off and ran over to us townsfolk, eager to share the news. Things were back to normal at last.
“Heh heh heh! Why hello there, poor plebian Poster Girl. ’Tis I, Richy Rich McGee, here with a souvenir for you, if you could just—get off, you—move—ugh! Poster Girl, could you give me a hand? Yeah, could you peel these orphans off for me? They are very heavy. Urgent evasive action is needed; we are currently experiencing a barrage of orphan glomp attacks from all sides; mayday, mayday; captain, we are going down… Oof, you weigh a ton! Could you—urgh—Poster Girl, could you at least get the tiny tanuki off? She’s the heaviest of the bunch. Damn, girl, when did you put on so much we—” CHOMP, CHOMP “—YEEARGH! Yeeargh? Oh, here. Piping hot, freshly made souvenir for you. ’Cause I’m back? And stuff?”
Back to normal. Like it was all written in stone. Same old, same old Haruka. So, just like I did every other day, I said, “Welcome back.” I bit back a sob and managed, in the tone I used every other day, to say, “Your room is ready and waiting for you.”
Happy times were here again. Chaos had returned, and with it, the smiles filling our streets.
They were home.
They were home at last.
DAY 120: EARLY MORNING -- ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
DAY 120
EARLY MORNING
Wow, I give you a souvenir, and this is the thanks I get? No help freeing me from Orphan-Tanuki Mountain?
ON THE ROAD IN THE KINGDOM
ALCHEMY REFORMED MY BROKEN BODY. It breathed fresh life into me, cell by cell, in fierce waves wracking me from my head to my toes. Behold, the powers of magic conversion—an ability that turned deadly poison to desirable panacea, toxic magic to therapeutic medicament. Neidanshu combined with Qi Wizardry and Alchemy’s transmogrification. Capital Lovemaking and lowercase lovemaking knitted HP and MP together into new, more powerful flesh—which did not help me beat the dungeon emperors. Not one bit.
I woke up earlier than any person has any right to, threw on my armor, and buckled down to the serious business of wreaking revenge. The full force of my equipment thrummed through me. My Alchemical engines revved. Energy surged through me and channeled into my poor, defenseless, half-asleep teenage boyness, giving him the awakening of his life. He quivered to attention. He shuddered with the tremulous quality of a newborn fawn. Quivering man-whip in hand, I turned to the dungeon emperors and found…horrible smiles on their waking faces.
So much for a surprise attack! My poor teenage boyness, now ringed in by a wall of feminine foes, was soon spent. He was sent to the point of no return. He was rendered limp and deaf to my commands. The Magi Draining Bottle sent me back to square one, and I went down in a hail of red, white, and yellow pom-poms. My cheerleader combatants descended on my immobile teenage boyness like a pack of harpies. The verdict was in: The cheerleading uniforms were a big hit.
“I didn’t even know it was possible to weaponize pom-poms!”
The girls shook certain spherical objects. These items bounced. They boinged. They traveled up and down the length of my body in a great rustling of cloth, setting my senses on fire and sending my sensory faculties straight to heaven.
“Did you know the word ‘pom-pom’ comes from the French ‘pompon’? ‘Pompon’ refers to a small ball or tuft of cloth. In America, home of the cheerleader, this became ‘pom-pom.’ An unassuming name for such a majestic piece of equipment, in my humble opinion. And this usage of your majestic pieces of equipment should be outlawed the world over, methinks! Especially six at once, all bobbing up and down!”
“Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-bra!”
“Gwaah!”
My recent transformations and the dungeon emperor machinations brought on serious stimulations, causing major elevations and shuddering palpitations!
“Whoa, girl! Easy does it! Didn’t they ever tell you slow down, you’ll mess up if you go too fast? You’re messing me up! I’m about to make a mess in every direction at once, at the rate you’re going! You’re tossing me around like a piece of fruit in a blender! I’m shaking like a leaf in a tornado!!!”
In between all the external tossing and turning, my qi found the time to race through my bloodstream and trace thousands of patterns through my body. I was capital-A Activated. I was stuck in 24-7 On mode. Let the record show that I did not give my qi the permission to do this, but lack of permission never stopped my qi. It just kept on merrily drawing sigils inside me, enabling one inscrutable chain reaction inside of me after another. Neurons fired. Signals flew.
“Safety first! You need, rest! Relaxation!” (Fine print: Tee him up, and…fore!)
“Yes. You must, heal up.”
“From you! I need rest all right! I need a dotted half rest! That’s a rest equivalent to three beats, or in this case three beatings of my mea—I mean, why yell fore when there’s only three of you? Three eager mouths sucking and fu—ghhhk!”
I was so spent, my body refused to cooperate with me. Nothing moved when I told it to, but my musculature had plenty of ideas of its own. It synced with my skeleton and set about putting me to rights. My capillaries cavorted with my cartilage in a convalescent cotillion. Tendons tangoed with tissues. The epidermis and the endocrine glands announced their engagement in an effectualness-enhancing enterprise.
“Which is why none of you will listen to me, huh? You’re too busy remaking me from the inside out to let me move? Oh, but Haruka Jr.’s still in perfect working condition, I see. Figures.”
“Go, fight, win!”
At long last, my attempts to force cooperation out of this sorry excuse of a human body fell flat. My efforts to disguise that I was little more than a shambling, ragtag mess of mishmash body parts disintegrated like sand. Improvisational Alchemy and haphazard Revival on steroids had made me a broken shell of a person. I couldn’t mecha pilot this miserable mess into functioning like an ordinary body—no one could! My only saving grace was Wisdom. Wisdom studied this lumpish hulk of disparate systems and construed a means of indirect control. Wisdom gave me the keys to live ordinary life. Wisdom let me fight.
“TL;DR I’ve pushed myself too hard… And speaking of too hard…”
“Master, master, number one! We’re all here to make you c—”
This very phenomenon, see, was what had caused me to lose control and disappear yesterday. Wisdom had to, via a deft network of mathematical conversions, control every rambling, shambling, disparate system that made up my body, each with its own quirks and characteristics, and madcap, idiosyncratic verve. It was literally running me on an emulator. The fact that I could move at all was a miracle.
“Okay, so if I’m following… You say I put on my new equipment before calculating if it would cause havoc. Then, when it inevitably caused havoc, I lost control. And so that’s why you’re furiously sucking me off? Because what goes around cums around?”
Nod nod. Rattle rattle. Schluuurp.
“Sorry? What was that last one? Gwoooh! Okay, I figured it out!”
My body now recomposed itself. All systems were aligned; all structures were unified. Pieces cooperated like a well-oiled machine. Every body part worked toward a different goal, but in that difference, a common purpose emerged.
“Really? Operation: Intrabody Magical Sigil High School Boy Raising Project is optimizing my Skills to give me better prowess in bed? Talk about a schlong con!”
My Skills and Effects expanded exponentially. Chemistry worked miracles of dark mathematics; Sex Monad multiplied by three sexy dungeon emperors times a cheerleading buff crossed with hot girls mixed with horny thoughts compounded by puberty-powered puissance equaled a very bad outcome for Haruka. Yeah, let’s get out of here!
I nyoomed out of the sex carriages and caught up with the others not a moment too soon. Ah, sweet freedom! (By the way, the other carriage was called the That Damn Horse Who Doesn’t Listen to a Word I Say ft. the Unwitting Nerds and Idiot Passengers Being Pulled to Kingdom Come Express. Snappy name, huh?)
“Yo. How’s it hanging? You finish your dungeon too? How was it? Not that a banal backwater dungeon will amount to much—but you’re idiots, so it’s not like you’d know the difference.”
“Man’s multitrack drifting the insults today.”
“It was lame, dude. We crushed it in no time flat.”
“I’m surprised how fast it went.”
Slimey wanted to ride the rest of the way home with the boys, but I didn’t approve. All this filth, this grotesquery, these unwashed homes of geekery and gormlessness…and don’t get me started on the carriage! “One, there’s no room. Two, it’s full of boys. Three, the furnishings are trash. Four, it’s full of boys. Five, the seats are terrible. Six, it’s full of boys. Seven, it’s not fit for anyone but the geekiest and stupidest of passengers. It’s the worst?”
Bobble bobble.
“You’re the worst!”
“It’s a crappy carriage because you made it that way!”
“Yeah! How come the girls get a swanky carriage and we’re riding in shit city?”
“’Cause why would I sink effort into making seats for guys? I don’t wanna think about where dudes’ butts are gonna go. Think about it. You wanna imagine the best care and comfort for an old man’s ass?”
“…Well…no.”
“Wait, but you coulda just copied the girls’ seats!”
“You’re telling me you made these seats worse on purpose?!”
It was rare to have the whole Boy Bunch back together. And let’s keep it that way! Too many boys in a carriage made for one stinky, stuffy ride. But it could be fun in its own way, especially since we would be going our own ways soon. Before long, we’d have to start hosting proper class reunions to get us all in one room again. The other boys were making lives for themselves here and putting down roots in this fantasy land. Which, frankly, made me feel bad for the fantasy land…
“Welp! It’s been good seeing ya. Nerds, you’ve got a ship to get back to, a beastfolk fluffing paradise to run.”
“Uh…we still want to visit the frontier, you know. Say hi every once in a while, that kinda thing.”
“And the ship’s on loan to the Beast Kingdom.”
“We like the Beast Kingdom’s pseudo-Japanese food, but nothing beats the frontier’s advanced technology and culture!”
“And, uh, we don’t allow fluffing in any of the maid cafés.”
“Or Sex Gods!”
Ah yes, their maid cafés did ban Sex Gods. The discrimination, I’m telling you… We needed a Sex God civil rights movement, and fast. Oh wait—did it even matter? I was a Sex Monad now?
“Yeah, what’s the deal with the Sex God ban? The isekai genre is full of discriminatory crap, but who in their right mind would discriminate against the noble Sex God? I’ll have you know, there’s been many a case of a poor, lonely Sex God crying outside a store that barred him entry! A whole city’s worth of cases!”
“The girls made us do it. They said we had to protect the beastfolk girls from the Sex God at all costs. They wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Side bar, but when they said, ‘Protect the beastfolk girls from the Sex God! He’s dangerous!’ I was like, ‘Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.’”
“Better add ‘no tentacle-groping the maids’ to the rule list.”
“Wait… I’m not allowed to tentacle-grope the maids?”
“…Uh, yeah? You think???”
That was news to me! I knew getting handsy was a no-go, but surely it didn’t count if they weren’t hands!
“What about Magic Hands? Or Magic Threads? Don’t tell me they’re banned too!”
“In what universe would they be allowed, Haruka?”
“Sex God or no, you wouldn’t even be let in with a cloud of ominous, wriggling hands and tentacles.”
Ah, the maid café! The sole paradise of earthly delights available to the teenage boy, the one treasure trove not locked behind an 18+ verification wall. And yet, due to his tender age, so often this pleasure garden’s walls were too high for our fledgling philanderer to clamber over… Why, oh why, did the newest maid café fresh off the fantasy world presses have to be denied to me too?!
“We put up signs in all the cafés: ‘Keep your tentacles, snakes, chickens, and lizards to yourself at all times.’”
“Excuse me? This smacks of oppression!”
Oh, maid cafés! What cruel temptresses ye be, even in fictional universes!
“Meanwhile, the idiots are back to their salacious gasp hand-holding… Psst, nerds! Have you had any luck in developing normie-exploding magic yet? I’m still on explosive grenades myself, and I haven’t had a chance to do a test run yet. Turns out, it’s hard to develop a weapon that targets the socially competent.”
“Bro, you are the last person who should be hating on a guy for getting some.”
“We take our eyes off you for one second, and you’ve bagged another hot chick.”
“You keep whining ‘that feeling when no gf’ while you’re swimming in concubines?!”
“First there’s that Saint girl, and then there’s the beastfolk twins. You’re lucky your anti-virgin grenades don’t blow your own head off!”
Huh. Lotta hot air in this carriage all of a sudden.
“No, you don’t get it. Imagine I ask out a girl, right. Then she looks behind me and sees three drop-dead gorgeous concubines trailing me. You think she’s going to give me the time of day? And you thought you had it rough!”
“I mean… Okay, that’s fair.”
“Kind of a depressing way to look at it, honestly.”
“Ain’t it, though? In my dreams, I’m walking arm-in-arm with a cute girl. But then there’s another girl hanging off the other arm, a second bearhugging my waist, and a third locking me down tighter than the police with a master criminal. I’m too busy being buried in six bountiful bosoms to focus on my date! I’m too trapped in triple titty-twins territory to pay attention to my girlfriend! Such is the bittersweet trouble of having your own private cheerleader trio.”
“Yeah, if we’re talking the three dungeon emperors…”
“It’s hard to imagine a girl who could compete with them for your attention.”
Right? That’s what I’ve been saying! Normal, non-isekai’d girls just couldn’t cut it. What girl in her right mind wouldn’t feel envy’s green sting comparing herself to my line-up of showstopping babes?
“And if I can’t even get a normal girlfriend, how am I supposed to ever get a hot girlfriend? Short of isekai’ing a manga artist into this world to make me a 2D girlfriend, I’m shit outta luck.”
The dungeon emperors were clearly out of my league. And who else was I to date? One of my female classmates? They were just as bad. If I wanted to shoot my shot, I’d have better luck shooting them than asking them out.
“Dude, you’re missing the point… You don’t need to look for a girlfriend anymore.”
“Man’s drowning in a lake and complaining of thirst… Well, he’s certainly not a normie. Normalcy gave up on Haruka long ago.”
“He claims he wants to play the G-rated route, and then he picks all the R-rated scene options.”
“Yeah, well… We’ve all done that.”
I couldn’t even shoot my shot. I was too busy being shot at in a dungeon emperor bullet hell.
“Well, forget games. This is more like a light novel plot point. I’m telling you, Haruka, I’m jealous of you.”
“Haruka’s trying to browse the tender romcom shelf and keeps getting pulled into the erotica aisle.”
“What about Haruka is tender? His Skills and equipment come straight out of the villain protag genre.”
“Yeah. He’s done for. He’s never gonna get a girlfriend.”
“Shut up! You’re gonna make me cry! I mean it!!! My chances of having a non-nonexistent sex appeal are about as high as my chances of having a non-nonexistent girlfriend! And if I don’t have sex appeal, then I’ll never get a girlfriend! That’s basic cause and effect! Or maybe quantum entanglement? Is my lack of sex appeal entangled with my lack of girlfriend? How come you wound up with girlfriends? How come you met their families and popped the question, huh? Huh??? If that isn’t being a normie, I don’t know what is. Explosions! Explosions for all of you!”
“Nothing you said is technically wrong, but it’s so bonkers I can’t keep up.”
Oh, mine was not a tale of tender hearts and intertwined hands! No, I was to suffer rubbed-tender parts and intertwined, iron-gripping legs—fighting in the trenches with three contentious wenches!
“If you’re already getting some, then what’s the problem? You’ve hit your end goal.”
“Did I? ’Cause I feel like the final boss keeled over when I was still on the character selection screen.”
“That’s called being a cheat character, bro.”
“No, that’s called bad video game design. No one downloads OP mods to get shot straight to the ending. What’s the point of playing if you can’t flaunt your OPness?”
Having had enough of these insipid love affairs dangled before my poor, virginal nose, I lobbed a prototype idiot-blaster grenade into the middle of the cramped carriage and made myself scarce. Issue was, the idiots ran too. The nerds threw themselves on the grenade in a panic, trying to stop the explosion, and then there was a great deal of fluster and bluster and also, strangely, mustard—and that was right when we caught up to the girls’ carriages.
Before we could say hi, the girls trooped out and tore me a new one. The dungeon emperors had snitched on me! Now everyone knew how I kiiiiiiiinda sorta maybe died a teensy-weensy bit in that last dungeon. The girls hauled me into their carriage for the lecture of a lifetime, and as we trundled off once more, I pleaded my case of innocence. Alas, even though I needed to make a pitstop at the pseudo-dungeon, I could not extricate myself from the lectures.
“Haruka-kun, why do you never stop to consider if something is even possible until after you’ve done it?”
“’Cause it was just a Vibration attack on overdrive, y’know? It was an accident with unintended consequences. Whoops?”
“He says like someone else did it.”
“It was you, Haruka-kun. You did it. You were caught in the act!”
“Willful negligence is his MO. But this? This is a step above that. This is willful accident-causing.”
“Objection, Your Honor. Willful negligence occurs when the accused is aware of the dangers of their actions and does them anyway. That’s what makes it a crime. But me? My willful accidents were committed with the purest of hearts. I was aware that my actions could be dangerous, but thinking too long about it was spooky, so I didn’t think at all, and then I caused my accidents. They’re accidents because I didn’t have absolute, 100% certainty my actions would be dangerous. Therefore, I didn’t do anything wrong, and I’m innocent of all charges!”
I did not intentionally commit an accident. In fact, I was very careful to disregard acknowledging the nature of the situation. I worked hard to go ‘la, la, la, not listening’ and carry on my merry, accident-sowing way. But for some baffling reason, this argument failed to impress the girls. In fact, it made them furious. Turned out they’d been told about the ring incident too. Fortunately, Horsey began his slow deceleration just about then. The end of the trip—and the lectures—was in sight!
“Damn, you lectured me all the way through the pseudo-dungeon tunnel? Talk about having tunnel vision.”
“Haruka-kun! Why! Do you not! Have any second thoughts! About nearly killing yourself?!!!”
Having (miraculously) survived the lecture to end all lectures, we pulled up alongside the city gates. My last chance to escape the sermon was here! I tossed souvenir beastfolk manju (which came in ten flavors, including two special secret types!) and cathedral of philosopher who-da-what’s-it goodies out the window to the cheering crowd, and then I leaped out after the confections. I tried to lose myself in the throng, but the instant I left the carriage, I was mobbed by a pack of flying orphans. I hadn’t been able to dodge the little ankle biters before my massive body breakdown, and I sure as heck couldn’t after. I’d waited a split second too long, torn between shoving my way through the masses and not knocking people on their asses, and then it was too late. I went down in a swarm of children.
“Aggh! You’re heavy! Get off!”
The unholy terrors had only gotten stronger and faster with more levels under their belt. They targeted me in my blind spots. They went for my legs in deadly low-altitude juvenile homing missile attacks. Fortunately, this was not my first rodeo. I was well-prepared to knock them out of the air with a special sonic frequency then swoop to safety. Aaaand… Oof!Well, this isn’t going to work.
“I’m glad the kids are growing up big and strong, but you, madam, are doing neither. Your growth is firmly localized to the stomach region. And you’re an iron weight! Get off, tiny tanuki! Plus, you came with me to the Theocracy! You do not need to welcome me home! Get on back to acting like one of the kids if you must—just don’t get on my back!”
The kids had all grown in the short time I’d been gone. They were higher level now, too. They had not, however, grown out of their child torpedo tendencies.
“You guys weigh too much! And you do not all need to pile on me at once! Hey—stop biting me, Tiny Tanuki!”
A chorus of chomping and “Welcome home!” followed me all the way to the inn.
“Heh heh heh! Why hello there, poor plebian Poster Girl. ’Tis I, Richy Rich McGee, here with a souvenir for you, if you could just—get off, you—move—ugh!—Poster Girl, could you give me a hand? Yeah, could you peel these orphans off for me? They are very heavy. Urgent evasive action is needed; we are currently experiencing a barrage of orphan glomp attacks from all sides; mayday, mayday; captain we are going down… Oof, you weigh a ton! Could you—urgh—Poster Girl, could you at least get the tiny tanuki off? She’s the heaviest of the bunch. Damn, girl, when did you put on so much we—” CHOMP, CHOMP “—YEEARGH! Yeeargh? Oh, here. Piping hot, freshly made souvenir for you. ’Cause I’m back? And stuff?”
Poster Girl ran up with tears in her eyes. Heh. She sure must have missed us.
“Welcome back,” she sniffled. “Your room is ready and waiting for you.”
But hey, for all those tears, she still had a smile ready. I ruffled her hair (trying to ignore the lead weight of half the town’s kids clinging to me). Poster Girl made no move to extricate me from my load, even though I’d given her a souvenir and everything. So, taking extra care not to hurt anyone, I Entangled myself together internally and attempted to lug the whole mass inside, child mountain and all. If I couldn’t manage to drag them into the inn, like heck was I gonna get them into the general store. And speaking of…oh phooey, we got stuck in the door frame. Huh, is that why that’s the name of this town? Oh phooey?
DAY 120: MIDDAY -- THE MONSTER FOREST -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 120
EARLY MORNING
Ah, senseless girl-driven violence… How I’ve missed you.
THE MONSTER FOREST
ON THE FRONTIER
OH, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Haruka-kun nearly got himself killed again? Twice, in fact! And it wasn’t even a last-ditch effort to save himself in an emergency. No, Haruka-kun simply conceived of a new way to defeat an otherwise unbeatable dungeon king, and Haruka-kun being Haruka-kun, he simply had to try it. And then he nearly blew himself up.
That was near-death experience number one. Near-death experience number two came when Haruka-kun found a ring, didn’t check it if it was safe to wear, put it on, and almost self-destructed. Did he learn nothing from his close brush with death in the Theocracy’s ultimate dungeon?! Did he not care how he left the dungeon emperors crying?
“What was he thinking?!”
“Nothing. That’s the problem.”
Not again. Not Haruka-kun, the jobless self-styled human being with the very unhumanlike ability to destroy and reassemble his body from scratch, putting himself out of action once more.
“…Weirdly, he looks better than when we last saw him this morning.”
“Yeah. He was walking all funny before…”
“Seriously? He nearly died and came back better?”
He was technically immobile, but technicalities never stopped him. He moved with ease, automatically, in such a fluid fashion I couldn’t see any sign of him struggling to control himself.
But outside of a few martial arts moves he had learned, Haruka-kun couldn’t do much. He had lost all of his fancy Skills and fighting techniques.
“He’s like the little mermaid—a foolish, tragic tale of a love that could never be, wherein the titular character trades her voice to walk on land, only to lose everything in the end.”
His body moved however he told it to. Which, y’know, bodies tended to do. The trade-off was everything else. All the techniques Haruka-kun had fought for, had struggled for, had defied his levels for, were gone. All the abilities that he had taught himself in this world of rampant monsters… Ka-poof.
He was less frail now, true. He had exceptionally high defense for someone at level 28, but level 28 was level 28. He was on par with the average level 50 adventurer, tops. That meant nothing in dungeons. Level 50 adventurers could never reach the bottom floors of dungeons.
Haruka-kun had won back his speed, but none of his go-to high-speed techniques. His magic was stronger, but this strength made it uncontrollable. His Skills caused strange, inexplicable phenomena, like disappearing on the spot.
“Haruka-kun doesn’t talk about it, so we shouldn’t either.”
All he did anymore was drill—drill in radio calisthenics, drill in stretches, drill his still-inexperienced wuxingquan, drill slow-motion tai chi. Drill, drill, drill. That’s all he ever did. Everything was gone, and he had to start over from square one. Build it all back up. Teach himself from the top.
“He’d never complain. It’d break Faleria’s heart.”
So…what was he doing gadding off in the monster forest?! His stats weren’t high enough for that. He couldn’t equip proper weapons. He didn’t have any good monster-fighting techniques. Had he lost his mind?
“This is like a repeat of when he rescued Angelica-san and Nefertiri-san. His body was falling apart all around him, and the whole time, he acted like nothing was wrong.”
The monster forest was where it’d all begun for Haruka-kun. Here was where he had learned to fight, back when he was living in a cave and duking it out with tough monsters day after day. That was back before he’d had his autoattack powers, bizarre buffs, and weird autospell cheat Skills—back when he was just an ordinary teenage boy at level 1. Back when he was just Haruka-kun. And here was where he’d saved us, where he’d taught us how to fight, where we’d gained our very first levels. Here.
“Hey! Before we go on a trip down memory lane, we should find Haruka-kun before he, like, explodes himself.”
We discovered him facing down a pack of level 7 goblins. Goblins under level 10 were slow, squishy creatures. They didn’t have any fancy Skills. A level 28 person without Skills of their own, fighting carefully, could handle these foes with relative ease. Well…assuming it was one goblin versus one able-bodied human.
“He shouldn’t be so calm. It’s just not rational.”
“He shouldn’t be smiling. He shouldn’t act like goblins are a piece of cake.”
The goblins converged on Haruka-kun. I lunged, ready to fly to his rescue, but the dungeon emperors grabbed me and held me back. The very same people who’d taught me how to fight were standing back and watching while Haruka-kun struggled along with no fighting skill of his own.
“You know him. He’s stubborn like that.”
“No kidding. He’s always been this way. Always weak and always…well, strong.”
The scene that played out before us could have been a carbon copy of the first goblin massacre all those months ago. Haruka-kun was a flickering shadow of black, a stationary pillar, a smiling menace. His right hand was a blur of motion, and then next thing we knew, the goblins exploded in a mist of blood and guts.
“Yuck!”
Then his left hand followed suit. It moved so fast it left afterimages in his wake, all shivering and blurring like a fire on the cusp of going out. Goblins fell like flies. Haruka-kun whisked from one to the next, ever the picture of composure. We peered closer.
“…Wait a minute. His speed stat is only 800-something.”
“That low? He shouldn’t be flickering in and out of sight with those kinds of stats.”
“His arms shouldn’t be moving too fast for our eyes to keep up!”
“Forget my eyes. My brain can’t keep up.”
One moment, his arm was there. The next, it was not. It was beyond human comprehension. Was he using Life or Death on his arms alone?
“He’s awfully strong for someone so weak.”
“Pretty quick for someone so slow.”
It should have been impossible, theoretically speaking. Life or Death was a highspeed sword attack powered by a conglomeration of physical prowess, magic, and Skills. It was an explosion of one’s whole strength manifested in one perfect, lightning-fast strike. One’s whole strength, mind you. That meant using one’s whole body. Not just the arms!
“His fighting is awful, and yet…it’s working?!”
“He’s all over the place, but he’s so good we can’t even track him!”
We just had to laugh. How could we not? Here was a black-cloaked figure who looked like he couldn’t hurt a fly, swatting down monsters in the most outlandish way possible. Worse, he kept tripping and bowling into monsters so fast he obliterated them on the spot. It made us laugh so hard we cried.
That’s what Haruka-kun had looked like way back when—y’know, back when we had given up all hope. He’d pulled out tricks we’d never seen before, magicked up powerful martial arts from god-knows-where, and displayed the fanciest footwork this side of a ballet studio. All of those things were gone, and yet this overwhelming, inexplicable strength remained. Our savior, our ridiculous and incomprehensible Haruka-kun, ladies and gentlemen: the man with the catch phrase “If at first you don’t succeed, die, die again.”
“Call it throwback Thursday, ’cause Haruka-kun’s back to his old ways.”
“Yeah, unless…?”
Haruka-kun stamped around like a man with two left feet. He wobbled with every step like it was a fight to keep his balance. But compared to before, I saw improvement. He dipped and swerved around the battlefield in a way that would have put his once-fluid footwork to shame. His frantic arm movements flung him about every which way. His own flickering movements made him drift so hard he listed and leaned. Yet, perversely, it only fed into the momentum of his arms. He was, rationality be damned, chaining it all together into a coherent attack.
“Talk about being more than the sum of one’s parts!”
“He’s literally not even dodging.”
It wasn’t even one move. One move did not a Haruka-kun fighting style make. This was an unorganized mishmash of wobbling, swerving, and flailing melded together into one seamless swordfight.
“Yup. That’s Haruka-kun’s old ways in a nutshell.”
“You know what they say. It never hurts to have a firm grasp on the basics.”
The dungeon emperors smiled wearily; they were just as done with Haruka-kun’s antics as the rest of us. It was nice to see a smile on those often-worried faces. They were concerned about Haruka-kun at the best of times, and this was hardly Haruka-kun’s shining hour. Yet, paradoxically, their worry had faded like a weight off their shoulders. This familiar scene couldn’t help but endow us all with a sense of relief.
“It never hurts him. It hurts the goblins plenty.”
“Yeah, well—goblin genocide is synonymous with the basics in Haruka-kun’s book. Just let him have it.”
This was where it had all begun. This was where Haruka-kun had first unlocked his baffling powers and begun decimating the local monster population. Watching him now was like reliving our first days in this world all over again—with a bit more tripping, admittedly.
“I don’t think the speed of his flailing can be attributed purely to his speed stat.”
“His ability to harmonize with his magic is so elegant. He’s cloaking himself in magic to the point where it moves with him as one unit.”
That was Elf Girl. She knew ’cause of her Sensing Skill. Haruka-kun was controlling the very same Entanglement that had blown him to smithereens. Its huge outpouring of energy should’ve been too much for any one human body to handle…but Haruka-kun could use it. He weaponized it.
“It is, his body, doing it. He can move again. Took him, long time, too.”
“He puppets himself. He forces himself, move. Now is, second nature, to him.”
“His magic was, out of control. Hurt him. Now, with ease, he uses it.”
Was Haruka-kun getting weaker? I couldn’t tell. His “weak” version of strength baffled me. All I knew was that it looked painful. If that “strength” was no longer his, if it no longer hurt him, then I was happy. I didn’t care if it made him “weak.” I preferred him weak.
“Not weak enough that anything in the monster forest would give him trouble.”
“Yeah, yeah… Gosh. We’re never going to be able to beat him, are we?”
He was unpredictable. He was impossible. He was practically stationary, except for when he was falling all over the place and whipping his arms around every which way known to man. And he was so fast our eyes couldn’t keep up. We couldn’t tell what was happening. Images flickered past so fast our brains failed to register what our eyes were telling us. Like hell would we ever be able to counter that.
“He’s so good he disgusts me.”
“How? Literally how?! He’s not following any established fighting technique at all!”
“It’s like every weird, flailing movement has a purpose. It kinda reminds me of Oda-kun’s shtick.”
“Yeah, but the nerds don’t, like, mecha pilot themselves. Y’know what I mean?”
“If anything, this messy fighting style and instantaneous reaction time reminds me of the jocks.”
Haruka-kun aped all the movements normal people did by magical gorilla-gluing his broken body together. He went above and beyond like he’d never heard of the concepts of below or behind, and then he made himself even stronger by forcing his body to act out the muscle memory it had yet to acquire. He made the unnatural, natural. He made himself human in such a very, very inhuman way. No wonder he kept self-destructing.
“Let me get this straight. He…achieves the impossible by doing something even more impossible?”
“He put his own body back together wrong to turn himself into some kind of wonder warrior. Now he’s reverse engineering a correct body—and that’s just making the problem worse!”
His bizarre body led to even more bizarre brawling. Mind-breaking movements made for mind-breaking monster mauling. He’d min-maxed himself to the point where he broke logic altogether. And his flexibility! My god!
How long had he been up to this? We’d had no idea. We’d never noticed a thing. We hadn’t even realized that Haruka-kun had started falling apart the minute we were summoned into this universe! We’d failed to recognize his constant pain, his agony, the suffering that’d dogged his every wobbly step. We’d just never known—and we would never make that same mistake twice. Against all odds, Haruka-kun was still pushing himself, and we refused to let him outdo us!
“What was he thinking, hitting up the monster forest the moment he got home?”
“Technically speaking, he does live in the forest…”
“And so, the wild Haruka-kun returns to his lair.”
Haruka-kun’s weird manner of movement evolved, slowly but surely. As the minutes passed, it began to take on the form of something like a proper fighting style. Like a wraith, he flickered through the goblins in a series of fleeting afterimages and frenzied slashing. His wild wobbling began to solidify into sound footwork. He was still nowhere near the graceful, dancer-like Haruka-kun we had once known, a stranger compared to the lightning-fast martial arts master he had once been, but he was regaining what he’d lost. Bit by bit. Bit by slow, slow bit.
“He really is getting better.”
“Yeah. He lost everything…all his greedily acquired Skills, slapdash calculations to make them run, acquired interest, and everything.”
His weapon was a blitz of motion, even as his body crumbled to pieces with him still inhabiting it. He listed, he tilted, but he never fell outright. He swung and swung and swung—and let the motion swing and swing and swing him.
“Is it just me, or are we out of monsters?”
“The housewives already thinned out the population, sooo…”
“Seriously? Is this what monster stampedes look like these days?”
Tall piles of spellstones ringed Haruka-kun, signaling the end of his wild slashfest. Let the lecture begin!
“What the hell was that? Why did you take on so many monsters at once?”
“Oh, that? That was me sucking up all the magi in the surrounding area. Just for funsies, y’know? And monsters are attracted to magi, so I dragged in all the monsters like a magnet. That meant lots of goblins and kobolds for monster mashing time. Oh, and orcs. But not corks. Or sporks. So I didn’t do anything wrong? Yeah, ’cause kicking puppies is evil? So it’s a good thing I didn’t fight any borks. I would’ve had to hide behind the dungeon emperors! They’d back me up, right? Oh, you wouldn’t? But you’re my servants! Cowards! Well, you do have a point. People can get protective of their puppies… Compared to hurting innocent doggos, summoning monsters is practically a community service! Ergo, thus, henceforth, I’m innocent? And stuff?”
Haruka-kun had found a weird dungeon item, the “Magi Draining Bottle: Intelligence Amplification (mega). MP Conversion Rate Amplification (mega). Alchemy Boost (mega). Magi Absorption Storage. Magi Transmogrification. Magi Adaptation.” The first time he’d put it on, it’d turned the magi in the environment into mana, causing such an explosion of MP, it’d boiled his blood and just about killed him. So, naturally, Haruka-kun had popped it on again, because he never learned.
“I was literally in the middle of telling you not to do that because last time you did it, you nearly died! Why the bleepity-bleep did you do it again?! You are so guilty!”
“False accusations, Your Honor! I’m being framed! These accusations do not fit the facts; the ring may have fit my finger, but I’m not fit to be saddled with such unbefitting accusations from this fitful misfit of a prosecutor! She’s fit to be tied just because I fit a ring into my outfit! Her arguments do not ring true, and I refuse to be stringed along on such blustering, blithering attempts to bring me down!”
Oh, what was the point of getting mad at him? Why bother worrying about him at all? He already had the damn thing on before we could do anything about it! I was notgoing to step into the verbal ring with Haruka-kun over a—a ring—but that did not mean I had to put up with his jabbering! He was at fault! He was the—and I hated to say it—the erring party!
“Your little fit about fits aside, you and I are going to have a talk late—don’t put it on again! You know how dangerous it is! No! That does not mean slot it into another ring!”
“Yup, if you slotted together the universal theory of ‘If putting the ring on is the problem, why not just leave it on?’ and the innovative argument ‘If wearing the ring is the issue, why not slot it into another ring I’m already wearing?’ just like these two rings slot together, I’m not at fault? I’ve covered all my bases. You can approach the problem from every angle, and you’ll find my statement of innocence, backed by many a law, has nary a flaw. Which is all to say that my healing Skills were struggling to keep up ’cause of my lack of MP. Yeah, I’m recharging?”
He hit me with such a smug smirk I hit him with my morning star. Or tried, rather. It didn’t land. I swung it with such force the wind coming off the attack bowled him away and out of my reach. I recognized that fluttering, blows-bouncing-off technique, all right. That was Qing Qigong! Oh yes, and we knew what to do about that.
“Girls! All units, switch weapons! Deploy your anti-Qing Qigong gear! Aaand, fire!”
“Ja!”
Qing Qigong was a mythical martial arts ability wherein one made themselves so weightless that blows merely pushed the user along harmlessly, like so much force buffeting a leaf. Haruka-kun had lost all his martial arts mastery, but that didn’t matter when Qing Qigong had morphed into a Skill! The dungeon emperors had been kind enough to teach us how to counter it. All we had to do was not cause any updrafts—aka, prevent even the tiniest puffs of air from escaping.
“Agh! You still have the sickles and chains? Wagh! Ouch! Oof! You’re supposed to—argh—let the counterweight whip around! Not the sickle part! I’m terrified of being on the receiving end of one of those—argh—things; they’re so—ack!—hard to dodge! Who taught you this? The demon scythes? You bribed them with snacks until they taught you?! Well, I guess they’d be in a unique position to offer valuable forscythe… Aggh!”
“Heh heh! Try to run and get impaled! Sit there and take it like a good boy.”
“Waaagh! But I didn’t do anything! Not one itty-bitty thing! It’s the universe’s fault, not miiiiine!”
“Guilty, guilty, 100% guilty!”
Clonk!
SEX MONAD defeated! Now’s your chance! Find his weakness while he’s out cold!
Rustle, rustle.
“…Ohhh my god. Oh no. Um. Now his you-know-what is even…more…”
“Yeah… You don’t need to finish that sentence.”
Gulp.
DAY 120: AFTERNOON -- THE PLAINS IN THE FRONTIER
DAY 120
AFTERNOON
Picnics are the hot new thing—wait, I thought we already had a picnic chapter?!
THE PLAINS IN THE FRONTIER
I SET OFF FOR A PICNIC with the orphan squadron in tow. We gave each of them a souvenir Talisman Flower Crown, and the orphans insisted on returning the favor by making flower crowns for us. Then there was nothing for it but to troop out into the wild. This threw a wrench into my plan—dungeons would have to wait. Flower crown making with faux-flower-crown-wearing orphans was in. Yeah, we were having a picnic?
“Awwwwww! You’re so cute!”
“Oof!”
“Wagh!”
The orphans descended on the twins for a round of furious petting. The twins burst into tears. Are you being bullied? Wait, no—you’re just overwhelmed with feels.
“There, there. No one discriminated against you for being beastfolk back in the capital either, right?”
“Yes, but we…we still feel like we stood out.”
“Oh, not in a bad way!”
“Yeah! It’s because you two are gorgeous. People were too self-conscious to say hi!”
“Not to mention, you both looked pretty freaked out—probably ’cause this was your first time in a city of so many people.”
“Yeah. Your nerves rubbed off on everyone else.”
But people didn’t stand on ceremony here in the frontier. People struck up conversations at the slightest provocation; people trotted up to you with smiles day in and day out. The orphans snuggled up to and petted the twins in genuine delight—here were people who looked just like their kitty- and puppy-ear pajamas! Animal-ear onesies were all the rage when we’d left the frontier, so it was no small wonder that real-life, super pretty animal girls became instant celebrities.
The twins cried when they were happy. The twins cried when people called them cute. The twins cried when people were nice to them. So, when the orphans took turns petting them and ruffling their hair, three guesses what the twins did. In the Kingdom, beastfolk discrimination was dead, and on the frontier, everyone had hopped on the beastfolk bandwagon. You know what that means—animal-ear goods will sell like hotcakes!
“Hey, so…you guys are really heavy? Do we really gotta try to flatten me into a pancake under Mt. Orphan every single day? I can’t move? Kids, I can barely walk, let alone fling myself out of the way of your high-powered child missile launcher maneuvers.”
The whole not-moving thing was why I’d wanted to come back to the frontier, but I’d wanted to fix the situation, not be weighed down by a heavy mass of orphans!
“That was not an open invitation to pile on, No Longer Tiny Tanuki! Ouch—stop biting me! Isn’t that tantamount to admitting I’m right? Where’d your words go? Why is biting always the answer? This is wild animal behavior, and I won’t have it. Back to the wilds you go! Go on, shoo! Into the woods without delay—ouch!”
Chomp, chomp, chomp!
Forget flower crowns, I need anti-tanuki equipment… How did people get ’em out of gardens again? Hot pepper powder? Yeah, that’d work—a Red Cap(saicin). A piece of headgear so explosive it’d strip the hair right off my head!
“How about this spot? It’s got pretty flowers, and the forest is right nearby. That means I can stock up on spellstones and get rich! Money can’t buy happiness, but it can get me pretty darn close since money can buy the frontier’s prosperity and food from the Beastfolk Kingdom. I’m glad I went and set up that trade agreement. I’m also glad I went to the Theocracy and set up an agreement to see pretty girls in tight uniforms. And I got to beat up an old guy! Win-win! But he didn’t turn into a spellstone afterward. Even dead, old men are useless. Anyway, who wants barbecue?”
“Me! I do! Barbecue, barbecue, bar-be-cue!” Ba-da-dump, ba-da-dump, dump, dump, dump!
The earth shook under the rhythmic stomping of the girls. Ladies, please! Wait like civilized people.
“You don’t want to set a bad example for the orphans.”
The girls stamped their feet in time to their song in a terrifying, to say nothing of loud, display of gluttony. The idiots joined in, banging their swords and shields together in a horrible din. This calls for drastic measures. I pulled out my new, Sorcery-powered, highspeed barbecue skewer rocket launcher and let ’er rip! Magic cocooned around each skewer of meat, hyperaccelerating it until they all shot forward with the speed of bullets and…nearly killed my classmates?
“Watch where you’re aiming those things! You could’ve poked an eye out!”
A shame the idiots’ animal instincts caused them to leap out of the way in the nick of time. The meatheads dropped their shields the moment I launched the protein projectiles—I guess they realized these were armor-piercing meat skewers.
“This kebab put a hole in my shield!”
“Jeez! I’ve got friggin’ goosebumps.”
“Uh-oh, not a goosebump outbreak! There’s only one thing to do with gooseflesh—cook it, bake it, fry it to smithereens! Yum, roast goose! And on another note, you all need to calm down. I mean it! Smashing your swords and shields together is just bad manners. The orphans will pick up these bad habits! Your idiocy will spread! And wait a second—I thought you were going to go see your girlfriends? Why do you only come back for meal times?!”
The nerds, on the other hand, had gone to the duke’s palace. Not to turn themselves in (alas), but to present some agricultural development proposal something-something. They’d unlocked the secrets of making organic compost and were now set on implementing the Norfolk four-course crop rotation system.
No matter how often I oh-so patiently explained that we didn’t need the full Norfolk method with so many varieties of fertilizer at our disposal, the nerds refused to listen to reason. They believed in one thing and one thing only: Every isekai kingdom-builder must have the Norfolk four-course farming method. Fertilizer, they said, was an open invitation for growing wheat. It was the rules, people.
“Bro, we’re not gonna pass up free barbecue.”
“Yeah. We’re going dungeon diving later. Gotta load up on barbecue first.”
“Is it ready yet?”
“Go, boys! Get that meat! How come he lets the girls go first? I’m gonna tattle, Haruka!”
“Can I take some to go for my girlfri—waagh!”
Bah! They dodged the surprise shower of fire bullets too. Breathe deeply; breathe silently; be calm and cool. Let the only heat be the burning passion in my soul. My breath sent qi coursing through my meridians, twining with my blood to engulf me in magic.
“Mwa ha ha. You dare, dare ask this forsaken, forever-alone soul if he will prepare a doggy bag—a doggy bag!—for your girlfriend? You demand I cook for your love interest? Oh, I’ll cook all right. And you’ll be the menu! You’re cooked! You’re all cooked! Five well-done idiots, coming right up! Go, ambient magi; go, wild magic; go, O tremulous heart! I summon thee, O ultimate spell: If Thou Be an Airhead, Go in the Oven to Bake! Fly, mine magic, fly; eviscerate yonder oaf—bllllrrgh!”
“Careful, Haruka-kun! What if something happened to the orphans? Or worse, the barbecue?! We’ve told you a million times: no evisceration!”
Huh? Why were the girls mad at me? Hey, ow—what was that for?! Why’d they hit me? Oh, girls… They’d just never understand the uniquely masculine grief known as that feeling when no gf.
“What’s wrong with a little evisceration? That’s just how the world works: some guys get hot sexy barbecue dungeon times with their girlfriends, and loners get to light them on fire. Besides, their meat was getting cold. I was just…helping reheat it. Everyone knows you need to stab an idiot and light him on fire, or he won’t actually die.”
“Or…you could skip lighting us on fire and make our darn food!”
Wiggle wiggle!
Wow, tough crowd. All they wanted was their barbecue. Which was weird, ’cause it wasn’t like barbecue was anything fancy. It’s just grilled meat. You didn’t need magic or Skills or nothin’. But no one tested their culinary chops on chunks of charcuterie, not even Cooking Club Girl. Everyone knew meat tasted better when grilled by hand—that was, my hand.
“Fresh hot barbecue, right off the grill. Eat ’em up, eat ’em up. You’ll never grow up big and tall if you don’t eat your fill, and some of you have some serious growing to do. Big cups to fill and all tha—oouuugah! Vice Rep A, please! I know you can oct-wield swords, but stabbing me with eight skewers at once is a little much! And you’ve got the wrong idea. I wasn’t alluding to your lacking cup size, I was merely…discussing the geographical difference between flatlands and mountain ranges. Yes. That’s all i—yeeargh! Watch where you’re waving those things!”
Eight metal barbecue skewers were not, technically speaking, the most threatening objects in the world. But when Vice Rep A got ahold of them? Yowch. She left eight afterimages seared into my retinas; the eight bits of meat-laden metal moved with a single deadly purpose. Her accuracy was off the charts. I zigged. I zagged. I darted, feinting and lunging that would’ve made a master fencer proud. If I wasn’t careful, I’d end up as the next piece of the kebab!
“Stop dodging! Or else I’ll never stab you! Hiiyah!”
“For a girl with no breasts to speak of, you’re certainly giving this your breast effo—yaaagh! Oh come on, I barely said anything! Hm? I was muttering it under my breath? Maybe so, but at that low volume, you should be able to give me the benefit of the doubt! Maybe I said ‘best,’ huh? What if you’re the one reading too much into it? I’m innocent! Lay off me! I’ll get right on making that new Push-up Pro Bra I promised you! Five centimeters? You want me to add an additional fivecentimeters? Now that’s asking for two much. No, 4.99 centimeters is not a worthy compromise! Now, if we want something reflecting your real dimensions, we should call your bras a Jiggle Jail, ’cause nothing’s movi— Yes, ma’am! Shutting up, ma’am! Making a push-up bra right this minute! Whatever you say, ma’am!”
Yeesh! I didn’t know how she managed to give me a death glare while bawling her eyes out, but she managed it! Fish Girl might have been the best classic fencer in the group, but when it came to decidedly less orthodox swordplay, Vice Rep A was the most fearsome of the bunch. She wielded six swords with six Magic Hands on a good day. Add her two real hands to the mix and you had one very, very threatening mass of shivering steel bearing down on you. Worse, she was the strong and silent type. That made it all the more horrific!
My class had me outnumbered, so I eventually conceded defeat. With my poor control over my magic, I was too hesitant to bust out the tentacles—were those to spiral out of control and feel up my female classmates in front of these sweet, impressionable children…well. Even a tastefully placed censorship bar courtesy of Illusion magic couldn’t sneak this past the OT rating. All the slippering and slobbering and slavering this opportunity presented was just asking for disaster. Last night was bad enough, and no doubt there would be plenty of practice tonight too!
“Let’s dig in!”
At long last, everyone shut up and buckled down to the serious business of stuffing their faces. Poster Girl and Stalker Girl horsed around with the twins. The orphans (and one Tiny Tanuki) gobbled up the goodies with glee. The rest of the girls had welcomed Sleeping Beauty into the fold, and she looked like she was having the time of her life. Three little girls joined the other orphans in chasing my horsey around and around in circles. Man, they turned out tiny…
“Something tells me black ribbon and lace dresses aren’t suited for literal horseplay…”
Sunny scythey silence!
“Oh, let them have their fun. It’s their first ever picnic.”
“Mmmm! That was yummy!”
Welp. So long as Horsey and Slimey (he’d joined in, wobbling his way across the field in slimy delight) were happy, I was happy. The girls could’ve passed for identical triplets with their matching grins. Their doll-like dresses likewise shared an identical innocent air; the only way to tell each girl apart was the color of the magatama on her choker or on which side of her head her black-ribboned ponytail swung.
“Yup, the demon scythes are fitting into life as humans.”
The scythes were—at the moment—roughly the same age as the orphans. They could grow or shrink at will, so creating scythe-sized clothing for size-shifting scythes presented a real problem: How could I guarantee scythe-sized dresses when the scythe sizes were in a constant state of flux? It was a sigh-worthy situation! I “solved” the problem by using elastic lace for the body of the scythe-sized dress, but whenever the scythe-sized scythes decided their scythe size would be that of a full-grown woman…hoo. Things got very transparent all of a sudden. Which, hey! I didn’t mind! That, too, was a sigh-worthy situation!
“How was lunch, kids? Anyone want seconds?”
“Me! Me!”
“Good. Haruka-kun’s grilling up more as we speak.”
Oh, what were those magatamas, you ask? They were drop items from the idol in the eroticathedral—“Artificial Soul Magatamas: A relic that imbues an object with an artificial sapient soul.” I’d initially assumed their purpose had something to do with reviving Sleeping Beauty, but I’d ended up not having to use them at all. Befuddled, I’d put them into storage as yet another extra piece of mystery equipment until I had a flash of inspiration—the demon scythes!
The Demon Monster Sword had a body, right? I mean, like, the sword wasn’t a literal demon; it was a kind of holy sword. By that same logic, the Demon Scythes wouldn’t be demons or monsters at heart either, but rather just beings taking the form of scythes. When they evolved into the archdemon scythes, they became even bigger, more badass-looking scythes, but that was it. They didn’t transform into something radically different.
“And the demon scythes cleared the monster forest of monsters and saved the frontier from the dangerous magi levels in the land itself.”
And in the Theocracy, they’d served as decoys and bodyguards for Sister Girl. They’d fought on the front lines in that war, doing us an incredible service, and they deserved every bit of the petting and cooing they were receiving from the girls in recompense.
I’d wanted to reward them too, and that’s when I’d remembered the magatamas. I put the stones on cords and asked the scythes if they wanted them, ’cause I didn’t know if the scythes wanted to become people, you know? But the instant the question was out of my mouth, the scythes all jumped for joy. I couldn’t say no to that enthusiasm, so I hung a magatama necklace on each scythe, one by one, and watched the resultant puff, puff, puff of black smoke. Boom, they were people. Having human bodies made it easier for the scythes to chow down on snacks and play with all their new orphan friends. It was all very heartwarming…except for the X-rated factor!
See, turning into a human didn’t necessarily mean turning into a clothed human. I’d immediately scrambled to throw clothes on these newborn naked women, but in the hubbub of three tantalizingly terrific and teenaged bodies poofing into existence in my close personal space, I’d ended up dressing them in miniskirts and sailor uniform tops, which did not help matters! Oh god, I can still see it now…!
As I’d furiously whipped up a new set of outfits, I asked the scythes if they wouldn’t rather be kiddos instead. The scythes obediently shrunk down to orphan size, and I made them a set of elastic, all-scythe-sizes-sized dresses for the scythe-sized-scythes. The dresses looked just like ones the orphan girls had, and the scythes fell in love with them immediately. Now they were running around and scrambling about with the orphans like the best of them. The goth loli dresses were a hit.
“The kids are having so much fun.”
“Aren’t they? Cute little boogers.”
I knew full well the scythes were hunks of metal at heart, but nothing could have prepared me for adult-sized-scythes nuzzling me with their usual level of affection. I was much happier having them be kids, and no one was the wiser. I shuddered to think what would happen to my sex appeal were anyone to find out I’d nearly gotten off to a trio of inanimate threshing tools. Don’t look at me like that! They were hot, okay?!
“I’m just doing what’s right.”
I had used Servitude on the demon scythes and dragged them off with me without ever once asking consent. Now I made sure to sweeten the deal with tasty treats aplenty, but if I didn’t keep them fed and happy, I deserved actual hell. The demon scythes had clearcut the forest for me! They’d protected the nerds and the girls countless times over! We wouldn’t all be here today if not for the demon scythes. They’d bailed us out of hairy situations time and time again; it was only right that they got to be our friends now. They deserved to live the high life.
“Thank you for the souvenirs and barbecue, big bro! This is for you.”
Jiggle jiggle!
Stoked scythe stares!
The orphans, the demon scythes, and Slimey banded together to make flower crowns for everyone. Adorned in those same crowns, they moved from one member of my class to the next, handing ’round crowns and tasty goodies.
“Aww, thank you!”
“This is so tasty!”
Wriggle wriggle.
Scythey satisfaction.
Why’d the kids seem so happy? Oh, this was their first ever castella cake? Nice. The girls in my class had eaten fit to burst, but apparently dessert on a picnic didn’t count. Mind you, the location didn’t seem to make a difference when it came to ruinous calorie intake and endless one more s…orry, I wasn’t saying anything. Please! Put the sickles and chains away!
“How come you all have sickles now? Oh no. Don’t fail me now, Qing Qigong…yaaagh!”
“Dessert is nourishment for the heart! That’s our excuse, and it’ll not go to our waists, thank you very much!”
Wasn’t Qing Qigong supposed to be some cool mountain sage thingy? If teenage girls could beat the bejeezus out of sages with sickles and chains…then these were girls you did not want to mess with!
DAY 120: EVENING -- OMUI CITY -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 120
EVENING
Ack! I’ve got an order of faux flowers to fulfill! No time to dilly-dahlia!
OMUI CITY, ON THE FRONTIER
CHANGE IS IMMUTABLE.As the world turns, so does it change. All things must pass; that’s the logic the universe runs on. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is eternal. Stasis is little more than a distant dream. Nothing, and I mean nothing, ever stays the same.
“Except for this bulletin board! I thought a listing might have gone up while I was away. But no! Not so much as a pushpin has shifted! Frankly, I’m impressed. We ought to use this bulletin board to plug the entrance to a dungeon, because it’s clearly immutable and indestructible. I’d like to see a monster try to peel one of these notices off, let alone bust through the board!” Wheeze, wheeze.
Yeah, it was exactly how I left it?
“Excuse me? What right does a non-adventurer have marching himself in here and complaining about our bulletin board? Worse, you had the au-freaking-dacity to start your complaining before you were barely past the front door! You hadn’t even looked! Where do you get off, marching in here with your whining locked and loaded? Who—who!—in their right mind sneaks up to the door, flings it open, and yells in sonorous tones a ‘change is permanent’ diatribe? The world will move on. You need to work on changing yourself first!” Wheeze, wheeze.
Ack! My soaring tenor, strengthened by many an alchemical transformation and breathing exercise, was no match for the guild lady’s roaring riposte! She truly deserved her title as Madam Receptionist, Guardian of the Unchanging Board. She boasted the most stentorian shouts, the most gladiator-level glares. Ah…I loved me a good glare.
“No, no, no. You flubbed your line. It’s ‘Change is immutable.’ You’ll never be ready for the big stage with such shoddy memorization skills! Actually, I’m a bit of a playwright myself, and I’m picky about my actors knowing their lines. No one has asked me to star in their productions yet, but I’ll have you know I was a brilliant child actor. I brought tears to many an eye in my performance as ‘Horse (Hind Quarters)’ in the school play! I stole the spotlight, and from that day on, people spoke with awe about the runaway mustang. I brought down the house!”
My scripts sold like hotcakes, yet I could never win a leading role. The universe worked in truly mysterious ways. Perhaps the philistine theatre scene in this world had decided their productions were too small-scale for a man of my mighty talents. Truly, it was a curse to be so gifted!
“There he goes again… You’ve already talked to the guild master. Go home. And to correct the record, you did not bring down the house in the conventional sense. You sent everyone running and screaming from the literal runaway mustang you let into the auditorium! You were not supposed to be the draw of the show. You were supposed to sit in the back half of the horse and be still! How did you mess that up?! You let in a horse that ran amok and bit people! You stole the spotlight, yes—and took it home with you!”
Wait, how’d she find out that last part?
“But there’s no denying it was a memorable performance. I don’t see the issue anyway. They needed a horse, and I happened to bump into a random horse on the way to the play, so I brought it along? Did I not fulfill my role providing a horse’s hind quarters? Along with the rest of the horse? I don’t see what anyone’s so mad about.”
“How on earth did you bump into a random horse?”
“Wait…I heard about this on the news. That was Haruka-kun?!”
“Yup. That was him. It was a complete disaster. Once we turned the horse out, the teachers did a headcount and realized Haruka-kun was missing. We panicked all over again, and it turns out he was safe at home all along.”
“You couldn’t even handle a role like the back half of a horse?!”
We stepped outside, still arguing, only to encounter the general store lady charging at us full tilt. I raced to meet her, plugged her opening mouth with as many mushrooms as was necessary to defuse her, and stepped back once more. That mushroom addiction withdrawal could sure be brutal! And she had a terminal case!
“Mrrmphh mmmph! Mummmph scrummpff mumph fummph!” (Translation: You’re late! I’m out of stock, dammit!)
“Uh, lemme see… Mmph? Grrmph mmpff scrmmff mrrmph?” (Translation: I thought the frontier was self-sufficient now. Don’t you have a working economy? And trade networks? And stuff?)
There were workshops and factories everywhere now. Every town and village was hooked up to the trade network carrying goods to and from the Kingdom and beyond. Surely my freelance production gigs were obsolete. Right?
“Mmmph! Mmmph grmph ffmfh! Mmrph ffrmmf!” (Bullshit! Who’s going to make me my churches, bridges, and boats? And don’t forget the mushroom bento!)
“Like, mmph? Mrrmpf grrmph fmmmfh?!” (Who the hell is ordering churches, bridges, and boats from a general store?!)
“Haruka-kun, stop talking in the parentheses. And please stop shoveling mushrooms into the poor lady’s mouth. You’re making it hard for her to breathe!”
Long story short, I never got to finish the conversation, the general store lady saddled me with more orders (looked like we’d both bit off more than we could chew), I got paid my dues, I went off to spend my new hard-earned wages at the blacksmith, the old dude wasn’t in, and then I went back to the inn? Apparently, the blacksmith was out directing the construction of an ironworks plant or something.
“Yeah, you can only get so far using charcoal alone. But there’s lots of different types of charcoal, and each one comes with different use cases. I only know what to do with activated charcoal and high-grade binchou charcoal, which is kinda embarrassing… Wait. How do I know so much about charcoal? What am I, a nerd?”
And how come the nerds were a font of knowledge for everything from charcoal up to boiler construction yet knew how to build nothing but steam locomotives and steam boats? There were so many more practical technologies: the power loom, the milling machine, the various nuts and bolts of the Industrial Revolution. How come those didn’t stick in their heads? What was this obsession with steam? What were they trying to do, change the genre to steampunk?
“Heya, guess who’s home? I guess I should say, home away from home. I gotta get back to my cave sooner or later. Gotta clean up, cut the weeds, clean the pool before it grows moss… Plus, Sleeping Beauty ought to see the place. I’ll make her a room too. Funny how I never seem to spend any time at home… For a NEET, I sure spend most of my days gallivanting about the overworld. Whaddya think, Slimey? Is this too novel of a twist for an isekai story?”
Jiggle jiggle.
Some things never changed. Like the inn! Poster Girl had kept the place neat and tidy in anticipation of our return. She didn’t know if or when we’d ever be home, but she’d held out hope just the same. Poor Poster Girl, working tirelessly all by herself day after day. Poor, poor Poster Girl, who was even now…petting the twins? So she worked when we weren’t looking and goofed off whenever we came home, huh?
“Oh! Hello, Haruka.”
It was too early for dinner, so I went to my room first. My to-do list was growing to monstrous proportions; all that procrastination was not doing me any favors. But could you blame me? With a third combatant added to the late-night showdown in the sheets, I was run too ragged to work. All right. Focus time. I had a million drop items from the Theocracy to go through. Let’s start at the end of the list and work my way back. So first up, the Corrosion Fog dungeon king’s drop item: “Diffusion Crystal: Monster Core Diffusion. Computational Parallelization.” So, it was some kind of magic crystal? I’d seen enough weird rocks to know what to do, so I waved it under Slimey’s nonexistent nose. He burbled with satisfaction.
Burble burble!
“Monster core,” huh? Is that like a spellstone?Actually, what’s the difference? So far, Jupiter Eye had failed to find the core on only three monsters: Slimey, the Corrosion Fog, and the Sand Giant. Speaking of the Sand Giant, it had dropped a “Treasure of the Monster Core: Allows for monster core creation and manipulation.” So I could make cores, and now I could scatter or diffuse them.
Wiggle wiggle!
That was a happy, dancing wiggle wiggle! The Sand Giant and Corrosion Fog were difficult foes as-is. Take their lack of centralized core, add it to a dungeon-emperor-class monster so it could produce and disseminate cores… Yeah, Slimey was nigh on indestructible.
Jiggle jiggle.
There had to be more to Slimey than just the visible slime, right? Was he compressing himself or something? He didn’t feel heavier nowadays; his weight had never changed. He could eat an entire metric ton of rock and never grow any heavier… There was probably some Void magic at work keeping him to a certain, fixed size. Run that in parallel with core production and manipulation…and only Miss Armor Rep stood a chance of beating him—but not outright vanquishing him. No, there was no destroying this lil slimy guy.
Bobble bobble!
If even Miss Armor Rep didn’t stand a chance of eviscerating the critter, then I had nothing to worry about—except for keeping Slimey far, far away from the darkness… Slimey’s powers in the darkness’s nonexistent hands wasn’t just bad news, it was world-ending news. Waves of infinitely replicating darkness-powered slimes? Are you kidding me? The world would be gobbled up lickety-split. I had to make Slimey stronger and then protect him for all I was worth. He was my protector most of the time, so it was only right that I took a turn whenever the darkness was the threat.
Bounce bounce.
What a happy little slime. Who would ever want to destroy a cutey like him, huh? Huh? If the universe had it out for him, then that made it a cruddy universe! Cuteness made the world go ’round, no matter what world you were in!
Anyhoo, I didn’t have much time, so I had to turn to other, more urgent matters. I needed more talismans, but the general store lady didn’t sell them. Instead, I had bought up all the components to make them myself.
“With a model to copy and the right materials, it’d be all too easy to make rip-offs and charge a killing… But I feel a little bad for ripping off my friends left, right, and center. Tell you what. I’ll give everyone a friend discount. It wouldn’t hurt to have a heart for my classmates.”
I had the Alchemist title, the calculation and analysis skills of Wisdom and Jupiter Eye, and the “Sorcerer’s Crown: Intelligence + 50%. Sorcery Boost (hyper). Seal Spawning. Sigil Spawning. Skilled Sorcery.” I was primed to be the cheap knock-off king. But with such a treasure trove of Skills and spellstone powder, surely I could aim higher. I mean, look at how OP the rest of my consumables were—surely I shouldn’t settle for the lowest common denominator. And the Talisman Flower Crown had literally saved my life, even though I’d never expected it to be more than a good-to-have-around sort of thing. If there was anything that could give my classmates a higher probability of not winding up dead, then I was all for it. I, freelance production line extraordinaire, had no excuse not to make more crowns!
“And if everyone’s going dungeon diving tomorrow, they’ll have plenty of cash to spare! Small profits and quick returns are time-consuming. Ripping off rich girls is a faster, more lucrative strategy! And who’s richer here on the frontier than the girls? (And the nerds, I guess.)”
The orphans made me a flower crown, too—real flowers, real wishes for my safety and fortune woven into every twist of daisy. And that made it a real treasure, something to be put into the item bag for safekeeping. If I wanted this world to have more bright, happy picnics, then I needed weapons. Armor. Gear to fight for the right to go picnicking, gear to protect the children and their right to make beautiful flower crowns. (And also gear to pay off my lodging fees…)
“Writey, writey, write. Drawy, drawy, draw.”
The stronger the output, the better—but if the equipment consumed too much MP, it defeated the point of the item altogether. I needed many, many subtalismans and a keystone talisman… Whoever’d come up with the Talisman Flower Crown was a real genius, an alchemist of much arcane knowledge. They knew how to make a piece of gear that balanced output and energy efficiency. A merchant may have wanted to prioritize the pursuit of profits above all else, but an artisan could be unrelenting in their pursuit of perfection. Not everyone was cut out to play both roles.
“Designing goods for the general public is always a trial. How do I take this carefully constructed balance, make a knock-off of it, and spin it for personal use?”
I was amazed at the way the crowns’ creator had devised such intricately detailed consumable items. They wouldn’t have been so efficient, really, had they not been consumables. I could feel the resolve to save a life in them—and the knowledge of just how truly difficult that was.
“Mixey, mixey, mixey? Paintey, paintey, paintey?”
I sketched a sigil on paper with spellstone powder ink. I still needed to research the magic charms the talismans used, so I used a sigil for now. To make a very complex process very simple, the nigh impenetrably unintelligible autoactivation schematics had to be activated at a precise instant for fear of causing unintentional and unwanted activation which, as it turned out, was really hard to do?
“Yup, the creator dude must’ve been a genius. They knew when to cave and when to keep going. They pushed maximum performance out of these puppies without destroying that sweet, sweet balance. Major props to this person’s alchemical chops, but I’m even more impressed with their artisanal skills. Their consideration of the end user in tandem with the production of a brilliant final product is nothing short of revolutionary.”
I hadn’t designed many one-and-done products before. I’d never considered gear that let you get hit, and it was an eye-opening experience. This item was designed to be destroyed. I never would’ve considered that design philosophy had I not run across it in the wild. Could I improve on the design, turning it into an even more powerful piece of equipment? Sure, but that would tank the MP efficiency, and I couldn’t afford that. I wasn’t going to squander the value of an item meant to protect, and I also simply couldn’t afford to make endless replacements.
“Foldy, foldy, foldy? Trimmy, trimmy, trimmy? Oh wow, I made a crane out of faux flowers. I…don’t think I should make a thousand flower cranes to sit on someone’s head. That’d probably be too heavy. Foldy, foldy, foldy… Hey, I made a samurai helmet! Now that could go on someone’s head, but presumably you’d only have one helmet at once… Wait, wasn’t I supposed to be making flowers anyway? Okay, foldy, foldy, foldy… Ta-da! It’s…well, it’s kind of a flower. A flower someone sat upon, maybe. Oh, I know what they’re called. Dahlias!”
Maybe these flat dahlias were just the thing after all. The girls had no room for huge 3D flowers on their heads. All the ones who wore armored headgear had giant helmets anyway.
“But 2D origami dahlias are nice and compact. All I need to do is dab on a little paste, and voila. They stick. Not bad for a first try! Tomorrow we’re going dungeon running, so I’ll sell these samples along with the spare equipment I’ve got stockpiled. What do you think, Slimey? Sound like a plan?”
Wriggle wriggle.
Yeah, dahlias were nice. In flower language, they meant elegance and beauty and all that junk. Most people gave dahlias as thank-you gifts these days. However, dahlias could also signify betrayal and fickle, capricious whims. Not at all inappropriate, I reflected from under a pile of girls, as they surged into the room in an elegant, almost beautiful stampede of shoving, backstabbing, and running from item to item in fickle fits of whim-laden greed.
“OMG! New stuff!”
“Yay! He picked up so many cool things in the Cathedral.”
“Ah yes, the usual excuse… I’m sure there were lots of monsters to provide ‘drop items’ in the Cathedral’s treasury.”
It’d been so long I’d forgotten how these scenes played out. The girls were all fresh out of the bath, flushed and sweet-smelling, and wearing far too little clothing. (The lack of nearby nerds will do that to a girl’s inhibitions.) The twins held their own in the bargain bin battle royale, with Bunny Girl kicking and leaping and Wolf Girl darting in and out like an eel to snatch up treasures. This was anyone’s fight, said their animal instincts. A girl had to look sharp or get slashed!
“I wish I had instincts that’d tell me that! Or Wisdom!”
Acting quick, I activated my qi and magic and tried to use Qing Qigong to escape the pushing and shoving fiesta. This did not entirely work. Yes, I leaped out of the way, but only to leap headfirst into something soft and round and suspiciously squishy, whereupon I’d rebound off like a pinball and be thrown back into the surging waters of Girl Rapids. Without a working body, I was a sitting duck! There was no escape for me anywhere!
“Hands off, bub! The red and pink one’s mine!”
“It’s actually not yours until you’ve purchased i—”
“We only get three?! That is so unfair.”
“Uh, you only have one head? Why would you need thre—”
“No, no, wait. Let me swap this for the blue one. It matches my cape.”
“So? It goes on your head. You won’t be able to see i—”
“Ring me up, counter boy! Before the others come along and snatch the goodies right out of my hands!”
“Sure thing, but could you not stand on me firs—”
With my head so bereft of dirty thoughts it was squeaky-clean and my vocal chords so very crushed they were just regular squeaky, I suffocated under a veritable hell of squishy, squooshy girl flesh. Thank god for special qi powers, because I was no longer so easy to crush to a pulp—and curse special qi powers with every fiber of my being, because it meant I was never released from squishy, squooshy hell into the sweet silence of unconsciousness.
“Why are you not wearing enough clothes—why are you not wearing bras when I went through all that trouble making them for you?!”
“We just got out of the bath! Who wears a bra straight out of the bath?”
“Ooh, I want a yellow one! And a pink one!”
“Hey! I had my eye on the pink one!”
“Can the nerds show up right about now? Could the idiots quit making out with their girlfriends and haul their sorry asses back here? Can I not be the single boy in this entire room?!”
“Shut up and fill these orders, Haruka-kun! Chop chop!”
“I want all seven colors of the rainbow, and that’s final.”
Without a bra to keep those weapons of mass destruction at bay, the sproinginess factor rapidly approached fatal levels. Suspiciously pointed objects were on full display. The wombo combo of booba and nipnops dealt me so much psychic damage I was moments away from KO!
“Ugh. I forgot how bad it gets back at the inn.” Squorsh. “Okay, I am concentrating. I am focusing so hard. I am using Qing Qigong and becoming light as a leaf.” Bo-yoing! “Wagh! OH-KO! My unparalleled psychic defenses have crumbled in one hit! Two hits? Of considerable brute force?” Squnch. “Dash my fashe? Shcould shoo not? Shorget me, shese boobsh should shbecome light ash a leaf…” Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiidle. “Don’t rub your boobs across my hands?! Excuse me, that’s a—” Wubbbbbb. “Guh-hyah?! Not the virtue of chastitty! Watch it. Haruka Jr.’s getting ideas—” Smush. “Don’t—” Jigggggle. “Stop—” Gwwrrrp. “No! Help! Wagh!” Shaka shaka shaka shaka shake. Rub rub? Rub rub rub? …Sploosh.
DAY 120: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- ON THE FRONTIER
DAY 120
NIGHT
The pressures of the mercurial time known as junior high are liable to make anyone memorize a cringe-inducing level of facts about mercury.
THE WHITE LOSER INN
ON THE FRONTIER
AMNESIA WAS THE TERM for a temporary memory loss caused by complications in the hippocampal formation. Amnesia patients typically regained their lost memories within twenty-four hours. So what was my excuse? I didn’t remember being cleaned up and having my clothes changed. Did I doze off in the bath or what? How’d I get back to my room, and why did I smell like soap and water? I would’ve asked the girls or the scythes, but the girls were busy in one of their meetings, and the scythes were having a sleepover with the orphans.
“If I’d known the demon scythes would’ve been so happy as humans, I’d have turned ’em long before we got home.”
I’d just been too preoccupied with other things, honestly. The cleanup and sorting work from the Theocracy was astronomical. I had relics galore, tomes aplenty, and enough gold and silver to sink a boat. I had also, of course, wiped the Cathedral workshops clean. The magical devices and doodads they’d cooked up there were nothing to write home about, but if nothing else, I could strip ’em for parts.
My Cathedral cache cataloguing turned up something new and cool: mercury!
“Mercury is a minor metal known for being liquid at room temperature. It plays a heavy role in both Western and Chinese esoteric alchemy. These days, its uses are typically limited to mirrors and thermometers, neither of which are any help to me, as I don’t have the foggiest how to treat glass with mercury. And if I made a thermometer, how would I ever be able to check if it was calibrated properly? And what would I even use it for?”
My Magic Threads and their supertechnological expertise could cut near perfectly flat metal and glass plates. Any imperfections were invisible to the naked eye; in fact, no air molecules could penetrate the plates. With such high precision manufacturing capability, why would I need mirrors?
“Although I’d make a pretty penny selling them… Assuming the girls buy as many mirrors as is humanly possible, how many would I need to make to satisfy the demand?”
Don’t get me wrong—I wanted to open mirror-producing workshops. But I was worried about the deadly poisonous metals usually utilized in mirror production: cadmium, arsenic, the works. Why did mercury have to be such a pretty color and yet so toxic?
Let’s talk mercury. Mercury was element number 80 on the periodic table. Good ol’ Hg. Since time immemorial, people have been fascinated by this strange metal. Up until modern science came about, alchemists couldn’t get enough of the stuff. Mercury formed the nexus of many an alchemical experiment because the alchemists believed mercury was the fundamental element of all other metals. If combined with the right metal, they believed, mercury could turn into gold. (That’s Au for all you chemistry nerds out there.)
“While alchemy has more than its fair share of occultism and woo-woo, we can consider it the precursor to modern chemistry. It’s a discipline of research and experimentation built upon sound philosophical principles. Then there’s Chinese alchemy and its own quest for immortality. Mercury plays an important role there too. Seems like every search for the elixir of life or godhood itself always leads back to mercury. Problem is, if mercury stops aging, no one’s ever lived long enough to find out.”
Yes, every ex-junior high cringelord worth his salt knew everything there was to know about this exciting element.
“The element symbol for mercury derives from the Latin hydrargyrum, with hydro meaning ‘water’ and argyrum meaning ‘silver.’ That’s because this lustrous liquid metal flows like water. Sometimes it’s called quicksilver, or living silver. Oh god, the cringe is real… I thought I’d grown out of this phase!”
Mercury was the only metal to be liquid at standard temperature and pressure. Its low melting point was derived from relativistic effects on its structure, as recent research has demonstrated. It has fascinated would-be scientists since the dawn of time, and would-be demon lords on junior high playgrounds since just about as long.
“To this day, the running joke among scientists is that once you start studying Hg, you can never put it down. If this lusciously lustrous liquid is charming such erudite figures as the scientific community, preteen boys don’t stand a chance. I’d bet my bottom dollar the nerds know just as much about it as I do.”
Anyhow, the high-density metal mercury had all sorts of practical applications, from measurement devices like thermometers and barometers to electronics like light switches, batteries, and light bulbs. The liquid in large-scale liquid mirror telescopes was mercury; furthermore, its use in chemical manufacturing and specifically electrolysis made it an extremely sought-after element. We should also not neglect to talk about its toxic properties.
“The phrase ‘as mad as a hatter’ has roots in mercury. The millinery industry once used mercury nitrate to treat fur, which led to many hatters developing mercury poisoning symptoms. While scientists and alchemists devoted further research into this ostensibly universal curative, the mercury worked its deadly neurotoxic magic. Let’s see now…”
Hg’s unique properties and extensive catalogue of uses earned it the moniker ‘the wonder element.’ Wonders, however, were not always positive. Mercury and its many compounds were all powerful neurotoxins. And, coincidentally, I’ve read that mercury was an essential component in hydrogen bombs.
“Mercury is hardly visible in daily life, and as such, many people don’t give mercury much thought. But it’s out there and around us in abundance! We find mercury in coal deposits, and when that coal is burned, mercury is released in gaseous form. Gaseous mercury is invisible, and like all gasses, it spreads in the atmosphere to cover all corners of the globe. So it’s a part of our lives, even if it doesn’t appear so at first glance.”
Some atmospheric gaseous mercury was deposited back into the ground when absorbed by trees and plants. Other mercury molecules were oxidized via photochemical reactions and returned to the environment as rain, which in turn collected in lakes, oceans, and surface runoff in our watersheds.
“If I gave some to Slimey, I bet he’d turn into a metal slime. Come to think of it, all the mithril, gold, and iron in his stomach might’ve made him pretty metallic already… Funny how he can eat literal lead and never gain weight. Watch out, Slimey! The girls will hate you for that!”
My hands were busy the whole time I kept myself busy delivering my lecture to my audience of one. They worked at their tasks as automatically as if this was ingrained muscle memory. The moment the idea occurred to me, they ran ahead and performed work even my brain didn’t quite understand. First, I shaved down a thin layer of gold and dissolved it in mercury. Then I melted mithril, mixed it into the gold-mercury solution and let a mysterious, inedible mushroom I had lying around suck up the solution. I channeled a bunch of magic into the mushroom until it shone a brilliant platinum white. At last, I had a…Sage’s Soul Mushroom? That’s what Appraisal called it anyway. Welp. No idea what I did, but I made a thing!
Wisdom was as clueless as I was. I flipped through heT Collector’s Complete Best of Magic Items, which I’d only skimmed before, and found nothing pertaining to Sage’s Soul Mushrooms—which in hindsight made sense, seeing as it wasn’t a magical “item” per se and was thus outside of the scope of an alchemist. Maybe it was related to esoteric Chinese alchemy.
“Sage’s Soul Mushroom: ? ? ? The ultimate Elixir.”
Okay, well…it was a mushroom. I knew that much.
“So it’s some kind of healing thing? What exactly, O Skills of mine, are you trying to heal? Do you think I’m touched in the head? You wound me! Now my poor wounded heart needs healing! You know anything with mercury in it has gotta have some effect on the brain…”
Mercury wasn’t good for the body either. But thanks to General Health, poison didn’t work on me. Right?
“Although that makes literally no sense. Being in shape shouldn’t, y’know, keep you safe from megatoxins… And what happens if the dose builds up over time? Don’t tell me this’ll turn me into a metal teenage boy! I don’t wanna be a literal metalhead!”
To be fair, no one was forcing me to eat it…but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from it… Oh wait. Yes I could.
“Because at the end of the day, no matter how OP, a mushroom’s just a lump of fungus. And I’ve got six beautiful bare legs to ogle instead!”
No ordinary bare legs were these. No, these were a transcendent, resplendent, and (technically) appendant collection of legs. Every flesh tone was on display. Milky white tangled with golden brown; soft swells rubbed nonexistent shoulders with firm muscle tone. They were so soft yet so taut, so salacious and yet gracious. They were oxymoron personified; they were the cruelty of beauty’s delicate and rapturous charms taken to their illogical extremes. They were art; they were music; they were some of the finest pieces of ass I’d seen to date. Now was not the time to be looking at mushrooms! Hubba hubba!
“We tried on, new clothes. How do we look? Cute, yes?”
“Yes, very cute. White and red. Pretty. You agree?”
“Pretty clothes! I’ve never seen, so pretty, before. Do they look good, on me?”
The miniskirted shrine maiden triad! Oh, god was dead and we had killed him with the power of hot girls! With shrine maidens like this, who needed gods? If one visited such a shrine to worship, it was not at the feet of gods. Let me worship at these fine feet; let my eyes rest upon those thighs! It was gods vs girls’ legs, and the legs were ready to walk away with the trophy!
“Hoo wee, I am blessed tonight! Let me get down on my knees and pray! Let me assume this most respectful angle from which to ogle your ankles and everything north of them, everything south of the hem, every peep of thigh to grace my eye. Girl, it may be a sin, but I am here to worship your golden calves. Come, oh ultimate upskirt shot, and render me a fool—oh, that wasn’t an open invitation to attack me. Oh no. God is dead, and this teenage boy is not far behind!”
I had made miniskirt shrine maiden costumes as sample products, see. Now the dungeon emperors had weaponized them against me, and I was in no position (being as I was groveling on the floor) to intercept their attacks. I was driven into a corner; I was laid low by their swift diversionary maneuvers. Oh yes. I was surrounded on all sides, and brother, I had no choice but to start blitzing.
“All calculations are finalized; all attacks are coordinated. We have planned this assault down to the most miniscule detail, and we’ve executed the operation with unerring precision. You may have mastered the lore-rich and pervert-powerful virtue of chastitty sex move, and you may have learned from my classmates all the horny shit for which lore has yet to be written; you may be experts of the erotic and ninjas of the nasty, and you may have joined forces to become the ultimate, terrifying, berserkers of the bedroom—wait a second, just what have my classmates been teaching you? What do you guys talk about in those meetings? Huh? That’s for girls to know and me never to find out?”
The moment the dungeon emperors succeeded in grabbing me and holding me down, they stripped me of every ring and bracelet. My chokers? Gone. My headband? Poof. (My cloak, gloves, and the rest of my assorted accoutrements had vanished in the earliest stages of the fight. Teamwork makes the dream work, and tonight’s dream required me nekkid.)
“Curses! The double danger of shrine maiden robes and bare legs have rendered me powerless! Except…I still have an ear cuff, and with that, I can use my Infinite Magic Hands! Mwa ha ha!”
Off went the white shrine maiden robes, baring lovely white skin beneath. In went the writhing mass of hands, the legion of flailing and fondling fingers, going ever deeper, deeper, deeper! That’s right, baby! It was my turn! A swarm of hands stripped off their red hakamas; a snarl of devouring digits burrowed deeper into their quarries, raising screams of passion that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in the lowest circles of Hell.
“Time to test out if Magic Hands are an efficient deterrent for surprise attacks! I’ve pulled the rug out from under those fantastic feet, the shoe is on the other foot, and the noises they’re making toe the line of propriety!”
“Yaaaaaaaaaagh!”
Twin peaches of burnished honey trembled; dual crescent moons of fairest alabaster quavered. Backs bent like overstretched bows and vibrated like so many plucked zithers. Tentacles were getting handsy; posterior chains were developing restless leg syndrome. I could control myself, barely, through the power of intense concentration. Some of the finer complexities were different, but the basic premise of controlling my zealous little friends was the same as it ever was. All the many calculations my internal systems had run allowed me to move my tentacles at will. The more I practiced, the more the tentacles became a part of me. You know what that means: Practice, practice, practice!Practice makes perfect, and I’m perfectly fine with that!
The ear cuff had begun life as the “Oscillation Ear Cuff: Hearing Assistance. Sound Modulation. Slots five items.” Nothing too fancy. Then I’d used mithril to upgrade it into the “Equilibrium Ear Cuff: Sense of Equilibrium Stabilization (major). Autosuggestion Nullification. Hearing Assistance. Sound Modulation. Slots seven items.” The only cuff already slotted into it was the Fortune Ear Cuff. Sooooo I slotted the “Infinite Magic Hands: Magic Tentacle Creation. Magic Tentacle Manipulation. Shapeshifting. Transforming. Hardening. Weaponizing” into it too? Yup, my hands moved house?
“Uwaaaaaaaaah!”
Hey, are you listening to me? Guess not… You seem pretty preoccupied.
“Whoa. Between the vibrating hands and the Sensitivity Boost mucus, you girls look like you’re having one hell of a time. Who’da thought that little tiny cilia and mucus would be such a popular combination? You girls are practically jumping for joy! Bucking, even! Which one’s better, d’you think—the weird growths or the warts? Well, let’s give ’em both a shot and you can tell me once the experiment’s done.”
“Nnnnghhhaaaaaah!”
The shrine maiden costumes were peeled off past the point of shame, allowing globules of mucus to begrime the immaculate expanse of fetching flesh. Carefully coiffed ’dos came undone; beauty writhed in the antithesis of agony. Thousands of tumescent tentacles lavished attention, ravished convention; little bumpy tongue surfaces ran their prehensile palates across bound-fast bodies; faces spasmed in time with the vibrations and flicked between shot after shot of broken ecstasy… Yeah, seemed like it was a big hit? Good for them! Good for them!
“What do I call this move? Vibrating…wave…thingy? Hand ripples? Whipquan? Eh, who cares—it’ll all be handwaved away anyway.”
My bulging protrusions coated the girls’ round posteriors in a thick slick of slime. Tentacles kneaded mounds of pliant flesh. The cilia that coated each tentacle, the same cilia I’d borrowed from one of the plants in this world, swished and slid across each jittering butt cheek, providing an additional stimulation sensation.
“Yeah, I set these things on auto and let them randomize the movements? It’s easiest that way. You guys seem to prefer irregular movements, and I’m always happy to respond to positive feedback.”
“Nyyyaaaaaah!”
The tentacles’ vibration agitation was merciless. Ever shifting positions, ever attacking sensitive spots, ever pinpointing which fondle would elicit the most pleasure, the tentacles maintained their onslaught. Whenever the girls reacted to the ministrations, the tentacles responded in turn, changing shape, switching modes—licking, writhing, sucking, groping, fondling, petting—toggling Vibration magic on and off, ejecting weak pulses of Lightning magic to stimulate and tease their victims.
“It’d be hard to manually control the operation—there’s three of you and only one of me, y’know? Before I put that in action, I’m gonna need a lot of practice. A lot a lot. Guess I’d better allot some time for it now?”
“Waaaaagh!”
The mucus-soaked costumes clung to every convex surface on the dungeon emperors’ pleasing forms, showcasing the finest aspects of their bodily brilliance as the tentacles jiggled the emperors in every conceivable direction at once. With every shudder, every arch of a back, the tentacles took the opportunity to worm themselves into an even more pleasurable position. Bound up and wound up, the dungeon emperors contorted themselves into an art gallery’s worth of pleasant images. Hmm… I think I need to adjust the elasticity.
“Like they say, practice like you’re on the battlefield—although I’d rather not try this out on the monsters… They also say you get better at what you lech, so at this rate, they ought to call me a Thighmaster. Y’know?”
“Aaah, ahh, ah, ah, ah, ah, ahhhh!”
Yes, the only thing to do was practice like a pervert, rehearse like a rake, and drill like a debaucher. Honest work paid off, and whatever the hell this dishonorable activity was promised to have even bigger rewards. Only dungeon emperors could have endured such a test of sexual stamina. That’s right! ’Cause this is a test designed to make ’em pass—or pass out, as the case may be.
Oh no, it just occurred to me…I’m going to have to keep this horrific destructive force in check the next time I do bra fitting. Yeesh!
DAY 121: MORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121
MORNING
Peacock-a-doodle-doo!
A FRONTIER DUNGEON
CROOKED WALLS? Uneven flooring? Who built this dump?
“Tsk, tsk! These middle floors have gone to the dogs. I mean, this layout is just trash!”
Wiggle wiggle?Scythey skepticism.
Well, here we were, faulty architecture and all. I wanted to go deeper, where the good loot was, but I didn’t want to piss off the dungeon emperors more—lord knew they were already furious at me for various reasons this chronicle shall not elaborate on. So, I kept to the middle floors like a good boy. The floors nearest the surface were being taken care of by the adventurers and knights, so that left the middle of the dungeon for me. I thought the dungeon emperors wanted me to stay in baby-sized dungeons, but to heck with that. I’d held my own in the forest just fine yesterday. I’d be fine here.
In fact, I wanted to sweep through this dungeon, but I knew I needed to train and optimize my control scheme. Speed attacks would have to wait. I could run, but anything above a brisk jog inevitably led to me tripping. I could now move myself intuitively once more, but anything that I hadn’t committed to muscle memory resulted in my body going haywire. I simply had to visualize in my head what I wanted to do, and I could do it. Problem was, most teenage boys didn’t sprint so fast the air resistance knocked them over, so I had a hell of a time making a mental image for that.
“When I sprint, the lower half of my body moves so quickly the upper half gets bowled over by air pressure. Next thing I know, I trip and execute a perfect back flip. I don’t remember anyone pulling those maneuvers in track and field back on earth… I guess I can’t control my Wing magic at a subconscious level yet. Entanglement will simply have to make up the difference.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Ah, and now it was battle time. Or should I call it training? One was just the thing I needed but not fun, and the other was exactly what I needed but a bore. I s’pose it came down to the choice of opponent.
“Should I take it slow? Slow fox, fox, fox… Slow foxtrot?”
I let myself move languidly, one action flowing into the next. Being fast came easily, just like how riding a bike at high speeds made it easier to keep your balance. It was when I slowed down and paid careful attention that the cracks started to show—and by that, I meant my bones started to crack. Without the momentum, my balance vanished and I toppled from my metaphorical bicycle seat. That left me with only one choice: Bring on the heuristics!
“I gotta say, though—even in fiction, a Qing Qigong-wielding, Martial Qi Wizardry-mastering teenage boy waltzing with monsters is kinda weird… Even the monsters don’t know what to make of it.”
Wiggle wiggle.
Yeah, I made the jaw drop on the orc I was fighting. Orc, I said! A real orc! Not a terrifying housewife whose resemblance to an orc started and ended at her brutishness! Jupiter Eye enabled me to see every one of those powerful piggy punches coming from a mile away. It certainly made these orcs a lot less terrifying than their distant cousins, the housewives…
“It’s very easy to tell the difference between an orc and a housewife. One is a terrifying force to be reckoned with, and the other’s an orc.”
The orc in question lifted its mighty club and swung it at me with all the force contained in its bulging muscles. Its arm was as thick around as the log it wielded for a weapon. Orcs howled and keened with every swing of the club, so skipping out of the way was almost too easy. They made perfect practice opponents. Like the average frontier housewife, orcs were built like brick houses and had the faces to match, but one was much, much more frightening than the other—orcs were little more than glorified piggies, while housewives were akin to vengeful demons.
“Slow, quick, quick… S, Q, Q…”
The orc tried to slam its club into my side, but I rode the resulting rush of wind to safety, performed a backstep followed by a turn, and leaned into the breeze. I glided on the wind with rare elegance. I weighed nothing. I was a dancer on the gusts of air. (Admittedly, I felt like a bit of a dolt dancing with a macho, club-wielding hog on two legs.)
“Five, six, seven, eight. Two S, one Q, one Q—that’s measure one. The trick is to add a half-beat, an and, whenever you get off track. S, Q, Q?”
I fluttered and flew like a willow leaf on the breeze. I let the wind fan me along, sashaying and shimmying my way into a perfect defense. When I saw my chance, I broke out into a quick step, skipped forward between gusts of wind, and made myself a whirlwind of frenzied strikes.
“Yeah, doing the Charleston might’ve been overkill, but it never hurts to take these things seriously.”
Bobble bobble.
While my torso flipped and flapped in the wind, I forced all my weight into my lower half to keep my legs chugging along. The jitterbug slid into the quickstep as I danced, hopped, and sprang into an ever faster form of locomotion. I was speed, I was grace, I was all beguiling lightness and misleading haste. The jitterbug propelled me forward; the quickstep let me sidle around enemy attacks unharmed. I was doing it! I was moving!
Using the memories of puppeting myself around via massive calculations, I could force myself to move as intuitively as anyone else. Linking my nervous system to my Wisdom-based calculation system became even easier when I used fixed, regular patterns. About the only experience I had with that in this world was that one ball scene—that, and my habitual radio calisthenics.
“It’d be kinda pathetic if I lost to a level 6 snarling, club-wielding monster—excuse me, I mean an orc. Kobolds, at least, are twice as fast.”
The dance ended—or perhaps it’d only morphed into a new dance, a dance of singing swords, a dance of buffeting winds, a dance of whirling about the enemy, striking here, cutting there. Qing Qigong prevented me from ever taking hits. I was a whirlwind of activity, a gale-force of weaponry, a hurricane of cane strikes. Hey! I’m weak to fans, so stop blowing me all over the damn place!
“Sleeping Beauty, knock it off! I know you’re bored, but this isn’t a game. I thought that war fan was Dancer Girl’s anyway. What’s that? She let you borrow it? Just to throw me off my groove?! Okay, well…this is just practice, so it’s not the end of the world. But don’t you dare flap that thing at me in a real battle. It’s distracting, okay? You’re distracting the orc too. Look, see? He’s flapping furious.”
Tee-hee!
Sleeping Beauty had tagged along with me today for some level grinding and gear testing. Slimey made three; his role was to mentor us and guard us as need be. It was nice to be back running dungeons in the frontier in a trio, even if these floors were too close to the surface to be lucrative.
“By the way, how come you guys never talk in dungeons?”
“No one jabbers on, in battle. Just you.”
Wriggle wriggle!
I still had yet to master the art of subconscious moving. Time was a-wasting, so I switched gears. I capped my highspeed movements and ultraquick reaction times, slowed time via Thought Acceleration, and forced my mind to do a better job of keeping pace with my subconscious reactions. It would take more time to clear the dungeon this way, but I wanted to be a good boy and do a proper job of things. Basically, I didn’t want to give the dungeon emperors any more ammunition to be mad at me.
Sleeping Beauty could have soloed this part of the dungeon herself, though. She still had yet to hit level 40, but a dungeon emperor’s level 30-something was not like a regular person’s level 30-something. She was like some OP anime or manga character.
That same logic explained why the nerds were so OP in this world—they lived and breathed anime and manga. Wall-dashing? Duh, they said. Of course that would be a thing. Slicing through a wall of flame with a sword? Elementary, my dear. Their inability to fit in back home was no hindrance here. In fact, their way of thinking was more at home in this world of sword and sorcery than the old one of school and social rules.
“You dungeon emperors are the personification of otherworldly power… Except you look like something out of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.”
Boing boing.
“Like I’m just saying, we’ve lost the plot here. We’re no longer ye olde vaguely Euro fantasy. We’re whipping out moves from the ancient Chinese classics. Are you sure we can really call you a bog-standard isekai saint of prayers? You sure you’re not the saint of say your prayers?”
Wobble wobble.
The worst part was Sleeping Beauty’s holy halberd. It raised howling winds and roaring tempests, neither of which were particularly ideal when one was trying to use Qing Qigong. She scattered monsters, but she also blew me into the next county. I could have used a high winds warning, and so could the level 7 assassin dolls. Forecasts called for heavy routings and decapitated dolls.
For the sake of time, we split up to fight our way through a maze section of the dungeon. The problem was, the paths of the maze were connected. Huge blasts of air kept caroming down the cramped corridors and knocking me into the level 8 Kite Moths I was trying to fight. Yuck! I hated getting up close and personal with a bunch of bugs!
Less than ideal fighting situations aside, I found that I was finally getting back to normal. Everything was starting to fall into place. I was getting the hang of walking, which annoyed Sleeping Beauty—she wasn’t used to me being a self-sufficient, ambulatory member of society. Slimey, too, had to resign from his post of mentor and bodyguard. Heh heh! Early bird gets the worm, and quickest one through the maze gets the, uh, moth.
“Rules? Ha! Leaving some for others? Psh. Cooperation? Get real. Friendship? None of that here!”
There were only three universal truths. Yes, the three truths that reigned supreme across this entire fantasy world, be it in the dungeons, bargain sales, or the checkout lines in the general store! Speed wins, killing the opponent wins, and running to live another day also wins!
I centered all of my weight in my legs as I nyoomed along, then sped up even further and leaped into the air with a dancer’s grace until I was all but floating. I let my weight dissipate to nothingness and let my own speed propel me into a whirlwind of slashing and hacking. I cleaved as I cartwheeled; I sundered as I spun. I had to be fast, or else an unwanted windblast would come along and blow me away! Between that frickin’ halberd’s tornados and the incessant rain of monster blood, we were building up to an indoor hurricane!
“Oh, great! Sleeping Beauty’s already caught up with me.”
It was pandemonium on her end of the battlefield. Not to be outdone by the demon scythes, and eager to try out yesterday’s Diffusion Crystal, Slimey had split himself into three smaller slimes, which bibbled and bobbled around the room in an ultrafast sticky game of lethal pinball. The level 22 elemental spirits must have been a tasty treat, because he gobbled them down fast. He’d forgotten all about his role as bodyguard, but he was having so much fun he didn’t seem to care.
“Really? We’re barely on the 20th floor! I thought a saint would’ve been more interested in obeying the rules and not cutting ahead of me!”
I was starting to get a hang of controlling myself in thought-accelerated slow motion, but when it came to time flowing at a normal pace, I was still at the mercy of my superspeed reaction times. I tried to cheese it with the Equilibrium Ear Cuff’s Sense of Equilibrium Stabilization (major) Trait, which balanced out some of the delay between my senses noticing something and my body reacting, but it was still all I could do to not go tripping over my own feet.
“Geez! This is turning into a regular wind tunnel. At least I’m dodging…by virtue of being tossed into the walls by the wind.”
Yeah, Sleeping Beauty’s brute strength and my Qing Qigong looked like a good combination on paper, but there was only so much we could do together. This became readily apparent when I faced down a fabulous flock of level 23 elemental peacocks. Jeez, this dungeon was full of elemental enemies.
“Which isn’t an issue, except for the wind element part! Could you stop throwing wing attacks left, right, and center? You can’t even fly!”
Peacocks had a natural resistance to poison, as evidenced by their willingness to eat scorpions and other varieties of venomous creatures. Since antiquity, humanity has revered the peafowl and admired the males’ high-pitched “WAAAH, WAAAH” screech often heard at sunset.
To be technical, peacocks are not flightless birds. They can fly; they just don’t. Not that often, at least. Their striking appearances have earned them the title of messengers of the gods. A peacock in flight was breathtaking—divine, even—they just…rarely used their wings. Peacocks flew to get out of danger, and that’s about it.
“Funny how a peacock in flight is supposed to be so godly when a peacock in flight is just, like, a fugitive.”
I pirouetted on the wind. Like a willow, I swayed, and—oh for the love of Pete, could you stop flapping your flapping wings?! I’m trying to be cool here, okay? I don’t need you winging when I’m winging it! And stop making those awful WAAHnoises! The only nocturnal WAAHing I want to hear should come from a dungeon emperor’s mouth!
WAAH! WAAH!
I lurched into action and beaned those birdbrains. I’d had enough of being fancy! It was time for good old-fashioned crowbarlike clobbering!
“A little peacock flapping wouldn’t faze me if not for Qing Qigong, but that’s exactly what I’m trying to practice. It’s annoying trying to get some work done when a buncha noisy birds are blowing me about and WAAHing in my ear!”
I can’t believe I’m being mocked by a couple of pea-headed birdbrains… This is all peacocked up! I’d already been strung up in the Prometheus Chains for revenge this morning, leaving me subject to merciless retributions for my academic study on the effects of tentacle growth last night, forcing me to endure heaping cruelty upon cruelty and sensuous delight upon sensuous delight, sending me on a one-way train to sweet bliss while nevertheless tormenting me and torturing me with injustices and injuries and incessant licentiousness (for what was “service” but another name for my daily morning brutalization sessions, I tell you)? And then peacocks had to come and mess with me on top of all of that?
Incidentally, my chickenatrice plucked the feathers right off the peacocks with her sharp beak. I guess she wanted them for herself—to change her image from chicken to peacock?
“Uh, you’re supposed to be a cockatrice? Queen of the snakes?”
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
Well, a cock by any other name still…smells as…sweet…? And cockatrices were derived from mongooses anyway, so really, who was counting?
DAY 121: MORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121
MORNING
Breathing techniques are crucial in battle, but don’t breathe a word of this to the girls!
A FRONTIER DUNGEON
MY WEIGHT KER-VANISHED, and the earth’s gravitational pull on me ka-poofed, which made walking supremely ea—nope, it was quite difficult, actually. It might come as a surprise to some, but as it turned out, being able to put one’s weight down and push off on the ground was kinda essential to locomotion. I touched down as light as a feather and drifted forward only a feather’s worth. And, still like the similical feather, I would inevitably be blown entirely off course.
“How’d you get your hands on one of the beastfolk merch fans? You bought it yourself?! Well, hey, thanks for filling my coffers—I mean, stop fanning me with the damn thing! As a wise man once said, ‘I am not a fan!’ I would not like it with green eggs. I would not like it with hot legs. I would, however, like thick thighs; I do not care about their size. I would like legs that are quite long; I would like legs that are quite strong. I would like legs in twos or fours; I would like legs in scores and scores. I would like legs of every type, every color, and every stripe. That is, of course, except for pine, olive, moss, and garish lime. So drop the weapon in your hands—I do not like green legs and fans!”
Jiggle jiggle.
The corridors in this dungeon were pretty cramped, and that got me thinking. Mazes were impractical, and open spaces were open invitations to bumping my head on the ceiling, but maybe, just maybe, I could use Qing Qigong to Airwalk in this section of the dungeon.
“Ow! Okay, never mind. My HP took a huge hit from that.”
As it turned out, feathering the Qing Qigong off/on switch wasn’t the only trick I had to learn. I needed to be able to moderate the intensity of the move. Skills meant nothing unless I had them down pat. So, in the meantime, I shuffled down the hallway until I started sliding. Then I put the pedal to the metal, jumped and pirouetted twice in the air, and let my crowbarlike implement travel a triple loop around me. Weightlessly, I danced. With the Equilibrium Ear Cuff’s Sense of Equilibrium Stabilization (major) Trait, I intuitively sensed my various bits and bobs balancing themselves. I could sense how fast I was going! And boy, did the number on my internal speedometer make me dizzy!
“Yeah, I keep crashing ’cause I lose track of which way is up? Remember that time I Airwalked so hard I bonked my head on the ground? And then when I came to, I was lying upside down with my legs sticking straight up?”
Wriggle wriggle.
The key was to not make myself entirely weightless…which was the tricky part. The flittering and flickering feather imagery was necessary for dodging enemy attacks, but it was nigh impossible to walk in feather mode. Driven on by the need for a martial arts move that would enable me to walk weightlessly, to steer myself in buffeting gales, I twisted, I turned, and I flailed about in a frenzied forest of bristling spear stabs and sweeping crowbarlike cudgeling… Oof! I needed a break. Back came my weight, and back I went to bashing.
I used my Jupiter Eye to track gusts of moving air, thus allowing me to predict where they might toss me. What if I could be blown around by more than just wind? Magic had a kind of pressure too. If I used Entanglement and my various magical Skills, maybe I could prevent these unwanted elements from pushing me off-kilter.
I put my senses to work. I let them pick up on incoming stimuli and directed my reflexes to respond. I made magic push me around until I was dodging and dancing with the best of them. All I had to do was step right, and my magic pushed me right through my enemies without them ever landing a scratch on me. I wormed my way through gaps in the thicket of spears coming after me. I soared overhead and mowed down a line of foes in a single strike. The level 38 skeleton lancers all craned their bony necks to watch me pass. Craning craniums stretched out below me as far as the eye could see. And yet, even as I spoke, another force came crashing through the crowd, splintering skeletons into bits of bone and fragments of femur.
“That’s why you gotta keep your eyes on the battle. You never know when a scary saint will come along and polish you all off. Trust me—she was giving me a real scary death glare last night, and when I got my revenge, she, ah, came along all right…before eventually polishing my r—what I’m saying is, she’s trouble. You’re basically dead meat. Or not even that? ’Cause you’re skeletons? All righty now, going in for a landing.”
Aaaaand, touchdown. Perfect! I had my highspeed, complex maneuvering, corkscrew barrel-rolling into a landing down pat. I was a regular aerial ace! How come there wasn’t a ground crew on hand to cheer for my flawless landing?
Bobble bobble.
Ah, how could I forget Sir Slimey? Thank you, my good sir. You’re a gentleman of taste, as ever.And might I ask why Lady Saint wasn’t watching? I would’ve thought she’d appreciate observing my strikingly elegant and ephemeral figure, but evidently, Madam was otherwise occupied bludgeoning skeletons into bone meal!
“Aren’t saints supposed to purify undead monsters with Holy magic? Are you sure the church is cool with sadistic skeleton smashing?”
Mm-hmm!
She didn’t look like a saint to me, but rather just a bog-standard bone basher! To her credit, though, she may not have been radiating feminine charm right now, but she was undeniably of the womanly persuasion come nightfall. She was saintly innocence defined right up until she took her clothes off. Then she made me see angels in a whole other way!
“Ah yes, a saint gripping a long, thick pole… Déjà vu… Okay, but for real—why are you holding your weapon like you’re jerking it off?”
Her weapon, by the way, was a “Saint’s Sacred Staff: All stats +50%. Mana Control (major). Sacred Blade. Sacred Spear. Sacred Hammer. Sacred Axe. Sacred Spike. Sacred Knife. Sacred Club. Divine Magic. +ATT.” “Sacred staff” indeed. It was, for all intents and purposes, a halberd. It was a polearm with a magic blade on both ends that could double as a spearpoint, a bludgeoning weapon, or an axe head. It was like something out of The Romance of the Three Kingdoms whenever she brandished it overhead before charging into a fresh group of foes, leaving nothing but a little pile of bone fragments left in her wake.
“Got to, exterminate, undead! That’s the rules!”
“Yeah, so about that? The skeletons came back as level 38 calcium clusters. Not the most threatening, but hey—gotta get your vitamins somehow.”
Jiggle jiggle.
By the way, a halberd was a complex polearm that you could think of like a spear, axe, and hook all rolled into one. A single halberd could cut, stab, bash, and grab onto enemies. What can’t they do, am I right? Which raises the question…why does she need a blade at both ends?
“And who’s ever heard of a saint using a bludgeoning weapon? Much less a stabbing or hooking weapon! Here you are, prancing around and beating baddies however you please. What are you thinking?”
“All evil must, be destroyed. Right?”
Her halberd was heavy, too. Its long shaft gave every swing enormous centripetal force, but she never let that stop her. She wielded that thing like it weighed nothing, dancing with it with otherworldly grace. Her incredible magic and even more impressive control over it stacked enormous buffs on her. She had an innate sense of good balance between offense and defense, as well as an inherent need to kick ass.
Also an innate sense of horniness! Last night, my god, she’d even used Sex magic. I hadn’t noticed at first, being as I’d been able to nullify it, but I realized later when Jupiter Eye copied “Pleasuring” that it was a Sex magic technique. Naturally, that meant I had to try it for myself. The results were stupendous. I magnified the chain reaction of endless pleasure and brought all three girls to the point of collapse with that fearsome spell. The ahegaos, my lord… They were the lewdest I’d seen yet!
“These monsters, weak. Let’s go further. I’m strong! Let me do, the fighting!”
The skeletons were no match for Sleeping Beauty, clearly. I mean, it wasn’t rocket science—living suits of bone tended to shatter into a thousand pieces when a double-headed halberd came smashing into them at a trillion kilometers per hour. Still, I would’ve thought an army of the undead would’ve been the perfect opportunity to use Purification magic… That’s why I leaped into the fray and distracted all the skeletons by flying above them. That would’ve been the best opportunity to whip out a Purification spell and clean ’em up, right?
“But the only -cation you’re interested in is eradication.”
Between the resident assault-ready archmage and our smash-happy saint, I didn’t know which was worse. Goodbye, swords and sorcery! Hello, halberds and hammers! Elf Girl inclined toward swords and sensory-skilled precision strikes, Sleeping Beauty was a master of the harrowing halberd, and Vice Rep B hammered anything that stood still long enough. What happened to all the magic users?!
“I think I’m the only one who still uses magic… I don’t even have a magic-using job! Or any job! And I spend most of my time putting the trip in cantrip!”
Man, proper footwork was really the basis of everything, huh? All martial arts stemmed from some form of footwork. Without the right footwork, the frontier wouldn’t be standing, and we couldn’t walk the peaceful streets of that city with no name, dodging packs of caroming children as we went… Once again, forecasts called for heavy showers of orphans, with an orphan landslide warning not far behind.
Anyway! Off to the 39th floor! Here, I switched my focus from speed to footwork and watching my center of balance. Think, Haruka, think. Remember your nigh miraculous feetwork feat in dodging a hail of descending morning stars!
“If you can dodge a morning star, you can dodge a monster. All that growling and yowling? Don’t let it get to you. Just focus on the timing and where you place your weight. We’re not shifting our weight, we’re controlling our weight!”
I swished out of the way of the charging hippo—oh, did I mention there were charging hippos on this floor? Well, there were—and glided between two more mighty hippo haunches. A hip here, a hop there, and I evaded every attacking artiodactyl. And then it was time to strike back!
“And if you can’t get out of the way, strike first! Geez…all I want to do is practice Qing Qigong, but these stupid monster spawns keep getting in the way.”
See, every hurtling hippo body generated a huge rush of wind. I was able to ride them up, up, up and out of harm’s way, resulting in my would-be assailants smashing into other oversized herbivores…and then the rushes of air from that tossed me even further. It was hippo hell out here. Dippo under that one, flippo over that other one…Hey! Cut that out! All right, now you’ve done it. Eat this!
“No biting allowed! Yeesh, how wide do those mouths open?”
Wiggle wiggle!
Word of advice: never underestimate a hippo. These enormous creatures’ surprising speed and ferocity would make even a lion run for cover. Worse, although you wouldn’t think it from their goofy appearances, hippos were blisteringly intelligent. To top it all off, their mouths could open wide enough to swallow a full-grown man.
“See, I saw the name ‘level 39 charged hippo’ and let my guard down. I thought they meant charged as in, like, the hippos would be angry. These ungulates are trickier than they look!”
Turned out “charged” was for the electric currents running through their bodies. You could see sparks coming off of ’em and everything. No touchy.
“Not that it matters when they’re just trying to run me over! What is it with me and stampeding idiots… I spend half my time chasing after stampeding meatheads, and for what? I don’t even get to light them on fire!”
The hippos might have had iron-clad defenses, but since when had the Universe Staff cared about iron-clad defenses? Since when had the Universe Staff cared about anything? It had long since surpassed the most OP weapons dreamed up in the insatiable mind palaces of infinite bullshittery that only preteen boys were capable of tapping into. It was a weapon of mystery that eclipsed even our finest selection of divine swords, and it came with a free crowbarlike implement, a versatile must-have for any would-be murderer in a suspense flick.
“Yeah, solid defenses aren’t gonna do jack for a level 39 monster. The Universal Crowbarlike Implement can bash through anything.”
It grew and shrunk at will; it shapeshifted however I pleased. It whacked monsters so hard it sent them flying. It glided through the air like still water and cut enemies to ribbons. It weaponized the principle of leverage and set things rolling. Hell, I could probably use this thing like a pair of hedge clippers if I had the inclination. This weapon was so mind-bending, the only thing about it that made any sense was one extremely rational conclusion: Get on the business end of it, and you’re toast. Hippos flew from each hearty swing. The rushing hippos got batted, and soon, it was raining hippos. No need to reach for the umbrellas, folks—there’s no umbrella that could stand up to a falling hippo.
“Is this a rain of blows or a rain of foes? Perhaps a fair-weather version of Lü Bu’s Heaven Scorcher Halberd?”
Sleeping Beauty, with her Premonition Skill that functioned similarly to my Future Sight, deftly sidestepped the hippos’ charges without ever once being so much as grazed by a raging even-toed ungulate—but when she did, it never looked like dodging. Instead, it seemed like she was simply moving into position to take the next attack head-on and bat the multi-ton creatures into the air with frightening force. Her enormous MP supplied her with equally enormous destructive power. The conversion rates between magic and carnage were alarmingly high, and that was before she even started to learn qigong. Add MP batteries and MP mushrooms to the mix, and well—oh lord, I wanted to be in that number (for my own protection!) when this saint went marching in.
“Oh, when the floor (when the floor!) turns red with blood (red with blood!); oh, when the floor turns red with blooood, how I want to run for my liiiife, when the floor turns red with blood (red with blood!)”
Hers was a precisely controlled rampage that converted heaping swells of magical power into likewise daunting surges of physical force. If not for this ability, she never could have found Dancer Girl at the bottom of that ultimate dungeon and pulled her friend from the darkness’s clutches. It was in the midst of that task that her strength had finally flagged and her body had given out. Dancer Girl had been saved from the darkness only to be clapped with a slave collar, while Sleeping Beauty had been left a soulless husk that was beyond even the power of the convocation of elders to coax back to life.
“I never understood how a healer had made it all the way to the bottom of an ultimate dungeon, but…now I don’t understand why I ever thought she was a healer.”
Boing boing.
With mithril equipment, extra Skills, and qigong, we were going to turn her into a magic-powered machine, ’cause see, it was my job as her “owner” to never let her run out of magic again. Once I loaded her up with all the equipment and tricky tactics I possessed, she would be able to survive to protect this world long after I was dead and gone. And that also enabled her to be with Dancer Girl, no matter what dangerous stuff Dancer Girl decided to get herself into. She was a dungeon emperor, cursed with the gift of immortality, and this was but a brief blip in the timeline of her eternal life. She had only to suffer being chained to me, fated to die so young and so beautiful, for what was, from her perspective, little more than a blink of an eye.
“Which is why I think you don’t have to get so mad at me every morning. Like, it doesn’t matter? Yes, maybe I did my best a little too hard, but what is one’s best in the grand scheme of things?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Anyway, we were out of hippos.
“Nice job! You injured? Nope? Cool. But take this mushroom anyway. I know you’re a healer by job, but HP isn’t everything. You still need to be careful about fatigue. I should know—I wake up every morning freaking exhausted. My spiritual and virile energy, gone! Poof! There’s three of you for only one of me, so you could lighten up, you know.”
“Who, me? Whistle, whistle.”
“No, no—you don’t literally say it. It’s a sound effect.”
Wibble wibble.
“Well, that’s…close…but I didn’t ask you, Slimey. I’m just impressed you managed to ‘whistle’ without a mouth.”
Although, how does one wibble with their mouth… A question for the ages. Anyhoo, Slimey was happy as a clam after his hippo snack. He was all charged up! Literally! I bet he had just acquired some electricity Skills!
Pika pikac—
“Whoa, let me cut you off right there, buddy. And go back to your normal color. We don’t want to get in trouble for having an electric sparking mascot on this series.”
Wobble wobble?
That aside! Learning was my job as a high schooler, and I was doing a good job of it here. I had my basics down, and all that was left was practice, practice, practice. I realized that Qing Qigong functioned more or less like an aerial dogfight, which—for the time being—was a handful for me. Or a legful—’cause it was my legs that weren’t behaving like they ought to, y’know? That meant my next steps would be to restudy everything I’d learned and build back up to where I used to be. It was possible; I’d done it all before. So, back to square one for me. Now that I’d hit rock bottom, the only way to go was up. Right?
“Hff… Hiiiiyah!”
“Hff… Hi…? Ah?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Square one, here I was! The very first trick I’d ever learned: the instaspeed killer attack! I made speed itself into a weapon. I converted velocity into viciousness; I attacked so fast the enemy had no time to dodge or parry. This was the same trick I’d taught the orphans, which they now used against me in their dreadful children launcher attacks. This was how I’d managed to survive in the earliest days in the monster forest. That’s right. Boost your survival rate with this one simple trick! I call it…the B-dash!
“Four i’s, Sleeping Beauty. And a y. Can’t have a good hiiiiyah without a y.”
The B-dash walked so Life and Death could run. I accelerated myself to my maximum velocity within the blink of an eye and charged. I Entangled myself with everything I had, turned all my speed into attack power, and whammed. Needless to say, it did not mix well with Qing Qigong. I’d have to figure out some way to combo those two, ’cause reaching unholy speeds was my first step toward full recovery.
“Hiiii… Hiiii…yah?”
“Wait a second—are you doing the Lamaze method or the Haruka method? I’ll grant there’s a shocking number of similarities between the two, but I’d rather avoid the death stares won by a teenage boy teaching the former of those two techniques! I think it’s best we not conflate the two at all. Can you imagine OB/GYN’s yelling ‘HIIIIYAH!’ and karate chopping the baby out of the mom?”
Those poor babies, having their introduction to this world be a screaming Hiiiiyah!…
“A karate-chopping OB/GYN is bad enough, but what about a punch-out play-acting pregnant lady? That’s next-level scary! The dads would be too terrified to follow the moms to their appointments!”
The one thing faster than a cheetah was a cheater, and you had best believe I cheat-ran down the cheetahs on this floor. I kept a tight watch on my posture and footwork, and from there, it was all about putting on the speed!
“I say footwork, but this is the furthest thing from a ballroom dance… But still, let’s play ball, cheetah! You may be nowhere near as fearsome as a pretty teenage girl at a dance, but I’ll take you on anyway. ‘Level 40 wall-running panthers’… Oh, so you’re not cheetahs after all? You’re also running on the walls and ceiling, so this name is all kinds of confusing. But hey, you’re not special. We can all do that too!”
Huff, huff, puff!
“Sleeping Beauty? Can you get a move on and kill these things? And can you stop with the weird breathing?”
Quiver, quiver.
Sleeping Beauty timed each halberd strike with a breath. It lanced through the air with the ferocity of a raging bonfire, striking first one cat and then another. For a magic-based fighter like Sleeping Beauty, qigong was eye-opening. She was, if nothing else, a huge fan of the breathing techniques.
“You’re kidding me. You say the Lamaze method boosts your speed and attack? I think you just like huffing and puffing to knock me halfway across the room. And no. It’s not the same thing as a good ‘hiiiyah!’ It’s not even in the same genre!”
Well, if we ever need someone to Purify baby diapers, I guess we know who to call…
DAY 121: MIDMORNING -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DAY 121
MIDMORNING
I know an old dungeon that swallowed a fly…
A FRONTIER DUNGEON
DEPENDING ON HOWyou look at it, the insides of dungeons are better for practice. No wind + tight corridors = easy-to-calculate air movement. Take it away, Wisdom.
“Whoa!”
A stray updraft blasted me sky-high. I lashed out, kicking, and went up ass over teakettle.
“Too tall! And long! And spooky! First hippos, now giraffes!”
This being a world of sword and sorcery, I was hoping for a few Questing Beasts, myself. Perhaps a Beast Glatisant? But no, we got generic giraffes—level 41 whip giraffes. Their long, whiplike necks snapped toward me, which was downright terrifying at close range.
“Agh! And they bite! These things are obnoxious and scary. And their heads are huge!”
Those necks generated no end of wind, and the heads kept snaking after me with intent to bite. These giant giraffes could easily peep into a second story window—we’re talking tremendous attack range here.
“Giraffes are the tallest animals alive today, and half of that stupendous stature is all neck. These lanky beanpoles are well known for having the highest blood pressure of all animals, so if they twist their heads too quickly, they…snap clean off…?”
Moooo!
“Moo?! What are you, a cow?”
And these cloven-hoofed critters could hoof it! Perhaps this was to be expected. The word “giraffe” comes from the ancient Arabic zirafa—“fast runner.” But you’d never guess from their laid-back appearances!
“I guess it makes sense; you can cover a lot of ground with legs that long—oh, for crying out loud, could you cut it out with those annoying necks? They whip up so much wind I’m forced into the air, but the ceilings of this dungeon are too low for me to fly out of boy-biting range! Those chompers are prime anti-aircraft technology!”
Jiggle, jiggle.
Oh yeah, just stand there and watch, why don’t you? Glad someone’s having fun! Aw, but I couldn’t be too hard on Slimey and Sleeping Beauty. Giraffes were as rare a sight in this world as they were back home.
“And back home, giraffes are always some of the most popular animals in the zoos. Even I can’t resist a good giraffe print on the right pers—urgh, I’ve had it with those stupid bitey heads! Get off! Kick, kick, kick!”
Moooo!
“Speaking of rare sights, I think a capoeira-kicking teenage boy being chased through the air by a giraffe slightly outranks a plain giraffe on the rare sight scale, but what do I know? You’d be surprised how well capoeira goes with aerial acrobatics. I wonder if the old sages of legend ever did capoeira with their Qing Qigong. It’s good exercise, I’ll grant you that!”
Weightless Qing Qigong kicks packed so little punch it did nothing—save for punt me along via the recoil. Fortunately, I could still put my muscle power behind the move. Concentrate that into a single point, and you had tongbeiquan, baby.
“Or tongbei kick, rather. Kicky, kicky! Get away from me!”
I placed a well-aimed foot right in the face of the giraffe trying to make a snack out of me from below. I roundhouse kicked the snaking head coming in from the left before doing the same to its twin on my opposite side. Here a kick, there a kick, everywhere a kick, kick. A fresh neck swooped in from left field as I twisted and gyrated in midair, so I dropped an axe kick on it, backflipped, and hit a giraffe directly behind it. I landed briefly on the next head, used a powerful stomp to crush its skull, then bashed the giraffes on either side of me with simultaneous paoquan strikes.
“Geez! Give a guy a second to catch his breath. It’s hard to tell where these heads are aiming when the necks are all tangled up in one another.”
With well-timed air kicks, I kept myself airborne and unleashed my Black Demon’s Bladed Wings with a flap of wings. And then I was off for round two!
“It all comes down to what I can do with my body. The moment I add Skills, I self-destruct. Right?”
Nod nod. Wiggle wiggle.
Welp. Them’s the breaks. My radio calisthenics were wretched; my tai chi, terrible; my tongbeiquan, tormented; my wuxingquan, worst of all. But bad as it was, everything was slowly but surely coming together. My footwork could use some work, and everyone said I’d be done for in a dungeon. The billboard in the Adventurers’ Guild never changed; Sleeping Beauty was a chaperone in name and a merciless, Lamaze-technique-learning killing machine in practice; and these giraffes were little more than enormous cows.
“So it goes. All that matters is that I can kill ’em.”
Training was all well and good, but if I couldn’t pull off a trick in training, I had no hope of doing so in real battle. And something learned in training didn’t guarantee its usage in battle. But something learned in battle—now, something learned in battle would become so automatic it could be utilized in one’s sleep. I’d done this all before, I told myself. I was just a little different now. Yeah, I had a different biological, magical, and neurological makeup, but hey, who was counting? There may have been much that still eluded me, but so long as I killed my opponents, did it matter?
“My MO is to wait until the last possible second until I’m royally screwed. I’m the late-riser, slow-starter kind of guy. I do my best optimizing in the middle of fights for my life, y’know?”
There were some things you just couldn’t learn unless your life was on the line.
“Besides, things have cooled down enough that I’m able to keep a hold on myself, provided I don’t go full throttle. I’m not gonna learn anything unless I turn up the heat. And hey—there’s nothing a teenage boy likes better than a little heat and a hot bath!”
All sorts of new powers were coming to life in me—or rather, if I didn’t look alive, I stood on the precipice of losing my life!
“Among the worst ways to go out, being bitten by a giraffe ranks less bad than getting eaten by a hippo. I don’t want to turn into one of those old fogeys who’s like ‘Ah, the old war wound’s acting up. Yup. Got bit by a hippo.’ Or a giraffe!”
Thing was, I hadn’t actually solved any of the issues plaguing my new body. I was simply procrastinating in the hopes that they would all work themselves out amicably someday. God, I wish. Come on, happy future, I’m rooting for you!
“Aaaand, done. Are you eating the giraffes? Hey, if that gives you a Whip Skill, I’m not complaining. I’d say don’t come crying to me when it makes your neck grow, but you don’t have a neck at all, so… Let’s keep going. We should prolly stop around the 50th floor… Unless we go just a little eensy-weensy bit farther…”
Mm-hmm. Jiggle jiggle.
There was nothing wrong with taking my time. I didn’t have an urgent goal that demanded I rush. I didn’t need all the bells and whistles of isekai cheat powers. All I wanted were the skills to give me a nice, happy life, and preferably a big fat wad of cash. Really, what more could a boy need?
So, my first goal was to get myself back to normal. Nothing more, nothing less. I’d learned how to puppet myself in that one battle with what’s-his-face, and when my sensory system self-destructed later, that became the only way for me to move myself. Now I could, at long last, use my senses and nervous system to move intuitively once more. All that was left was—well, everything. Slow and steady would win the race, even if that race involved a lot of procrastination.
“The most important thing is to get comfortable in my body again. Let’s start with learning how to walk and getting a hang of my own nervous system. Or that’s what I used to say, at least. Go, shoulder shield funnels! I’m offloading all the work to you! Slimey and Sleeping Beauty have run for their lives, and I’m following suit! This fight is not for me!”
It was all the lurching, shuddering movements. It was the discomfiting buzzing sound made by their wings. It was their unsettling appearances. It was that every macabre member of the swarm was bigger than they had any right to be—the last one was the size of a truck, but at least that was a lone grotesquerie. It was that they were flies the size of giant duffel bags!
“The last sentence alone is gross enough!”
Yup. I’d never, not once, fought a fly. I’d always managed to run away and pin the disgusting task on someone else!
“Looking back on it, that one giant fly was the impetus for me earning my dubious reputation of teen boy bra maker. You were the foe who shot down my sex appeal! You’re gonna pay for that, you li—actually, never mind. You’re too gross! I’m outta here!”
I did not like giant flies. I did not like swarms of flies. And I especially did not like swarms of giant flies!
“Ewww! The buzzing alone is eww-worthy! I’m getting goosebumps! I’ll take bumpy tentacles, but I draw the line at goosebumpy arms!”
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be using it for this, but I found myself using the “Equilibrium Ear Cuff: Sense of Equilibrium Stabilization (major). Autosuggestion Nullification. Hearing Assistance. Sound Modulation. Slots seven items.” to turn down my sense of hearing. Ahhh. There went that infernal buzzing. Now that I could focus, I trotted back to the stairwell and set about building an enormous ice wall.
“There. I should be able to concentrate without that gross noi—nooo, just thinking about it destroys my concentration! Ew, ew, ew! The memory alone is too gross!”
The flies buzzed about in random, unpredictable patterns. At first, I tried to stay in the air myself and track them with my eyes, but it was too difficult. That’s when I employed Future Sight, handed the reigns to my funnels, and let them get to chasing and shooting down flies. The funnels trailed razor-sharp Magic Threads behind them, sewing a deadly web punctuated by a hail of bullets. I used Area Analyze to manipulate the funnels (while making a point to not watch the flies). Unfortunately, the level 42 variable flies were too strong to one-shot. The dogfight was wreaking havoc on my MP, but the last thing I wanted was to bust out the martial arts. I didn’t want to touch the darn things! And the bug splatter was even worse! I might have liked seeing girls with splatter all over their face, but I hated being on the receiving end of the equation!
This looked like it was going to take a while. While the funnels sorted it out, I plonked down some cushions I’d stolen—I mean, borrowed—from the Beast Kingdom’s throne room and had a nice little tea break with Sleeping Beauty and Slimey.
Sip sip sip. Ahhh.
I had a little agar jelly from the Beast Kingdom, so I diced that up and melted it over a flame. Good thing that agar was best in small doses, huh? I cut it up some more, mixed it with anko until it was transparent, and heated it over a low flame until I could see clear down to the bottom. Then I chilled it. Serves three.
“Ta-da. Yokan—that’s a kind of jelly dessert back where I come from—as a snack with our tea. The latest from Haruka Freelancing, Ltd. Try it; it’s good when it’s nice and fresh like this. I don’t think you guys have ever had anything like it before.”
“Thank you! Is good!”
Jiggle jiggle!
Good! It was a hit. Meanwhile, four of the funnels had set up a blockade around the stairs to stop a fly raid on the ice wall, and the other twenty were whizzing around madly, spraying bullets left and right. Looked like a good 70 percent of the flies were left.
Sip sip sip sip sip.Ahhh.
My ability to control the funnels and send them magic were both improving, and the latter, dramatically so. My Area Analyze abilities and range were improving, provided I focused hard. My accuracy was rising, my lag was dropping, my fine-control was fine-tuning by the day. My ability to touch a fly and not recoil…was making zero growth. Ew, ew, ew!
“Uggggh! This is a level of realistic detail that bodes ominously for underwear making. I guess I have three blindfolds now, but something tells me that won’t help one bit… Oh ho! Fly down! Go, extermination squad!”
Sip sip sip. Ahhhh.
“Looks like they’re done. Let’s pick up the spellstones and be on our way. The bug splatter should have vanished along with the corpses…I hope. I don’t relish the thought of squelching our way across a sticky floor.
…Sip sip?
We collected our (splatter-free) spellstones, opened the room to the hidden door, tossed the funnels inside, and closed it.
“Yup! ’Cause the biggest fly of all is in there! Skewer away, boys. And have fun, ’cause it’s gonna be a close-quarters fight.”
It may have been a level 42 Variable Giant Fly, but all it had was size. It wasn’t a hard fight—it wasn’t a Lord of the Flies or anything.
“Okay, fiiiine. I’ll put up with the gross factor just this once and see what it dropped. Ooh, and there’s a treasure chest.”
Thank you, broken luck stat!
“A ‘Germ Jar: Pathogenic germ fermentation’? Pass! I want to seal this away, but I can’t put it in my item bag. I have food in there! I don’t want to ferment my provisions! Or get mold poisoning! …Why did this world get so gross all of a sudden? Hmm… You know the idiots are so stupid they wouldn’t know what a cold was if they caught it. Think I could convince them to eat this and see if they can digest the toxic mold?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Come on, broken luck stat! Get it together! I sealed the jar tight and shoved it deep into my item bag. The mold wouldn’t even make a good weapon, because it was so easy for those kinds of weapons to backfire. I wanted to destroy it, but how? Burning it was asking for trouble. The idiots probably weren’t a good choice either… The nerds? Maybe they’d be so horrified they’d die on the spot. Wait. No, no, no! The last thing I wanted was some grotesque fusion of nerds and molds, a new single-celled organism biohazard on steroids!
The treasure chest coughed up a “Magi Elemental Bangle: Magic Conversion Rate Multiplier (large). MP Absorption (large). Four Elemental Magics. +DEF.” Now that was a good find, especially when we weren’t that deep in the dungeon! It would be just the thing for Sleeping Beauty. The buffs would help prevent her from running out of magic, and while she was a Holy magic main, it never hurt to have a buff in the other elements.
“I thought these monsters were annoyingly tough for such a shallow dungeon, but if we’re getting gear like this, I take back everything I said. Here ya go, Sleeping Beauty. Energy efficient and buffs your elemental magic. You don’t have a full set of gear yet, so outfitting you is gonna be our main goal, okay?”
“Thank you, so much… Is lovely! I will, treasure it.”
Sleeping Beauty was enchanted by the bangle’s pretty silver filigree. She bowed super, super low, but I just felt bad—I hadn’t added mithril to the Magi Elemental Bangle, so it was nothing compared to Dancer Girl and Miss Armor Rep’s equipment. Oh well. If she was happy, she was happy.
I would’ve put it first in line on my mithril priority list if it also boosted intelligence, but it didn’t. Still, Sleeping Beauty loved it, so that was reason enough for me to plan to add mithril tonight. It might not have been world’s best ring, but we had a glut of treasures. Why not prioritize the one she loved? She’d been separated from her body for centuries, and now that she was back in one piece, she deserved a little fun. …Maybe a lot of fun, if we included our nighttime activities. The flesh is willing, and so is the spirit…
DAY 121: MIDDAY -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON
Day 121
MIDDAY
Some dungeons are real holes-in-the-wall—or holes-in-the-ground, as the case may be.
A FRONTIER DUNGEON
GREED, THEY SAID, would be the downfall of us all. And, as I got a bit greedy and started air running with hyperreflexes, tripped, bashed my head on the ceiling, and fell down—I thought I’d have to agree! Downfalls, falling downs—same diff.
“Had I not lessened the impact with Qing Qigong, that would’ve been two dead Harukas with one stone ceiling!”
I got sloppy because I’d wanted to rush through this battle, head outside, and have lunch. I hadn’t planned to meet my doom at the hands of a fantasy-world dungeon ceiling, but life always conspired to find a way to trip us up. Literally, in my case.
“Shouldn’t I have a way to negate this issue? Wisdom, have at it!”
The level 49 gravity phantoms could, you guessed it, manipulate gravity. Qing Qigong wouldn’t do nothin’ on them. The phantoms didn’t cause air movement when they glided around, and they frequently yoinked me straight to them with their gravitational powers while I was up in the air. This made for highly unsafe flying conditions. Fighting them was turning into a bit of a hassle, so I whipped out the spirit-banishing charms I had purchased in the Theocracy and waved them in their phantom phaces. The phantoms phell like phlies. Phrom there, it was a simple matter of sweeping across the room until the last phoes had phainted.
“Phighting would’ve taken phorever. Exorcism is much phaster! We have to make up lost time from the phunnel battle, so let me multitask a bit. I need to get the phly juice off my poor phunnels. Phortunately, it’s nothing a little Water and Vibration magic can’t phix. Lemme just scrub them down a good seven times over. God, I wish I had more insect-repelling plants…”
Slimey mopped up the phinal phantoms for a quick bit of phood to tide him over until lunch.
“Is that Sublimation or Digestion? Either way, guess what’s up next? The 50th floor.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Oh good, more undead.
“Hmm… The floor boss is a darkness-element wraith, so our Holy-magic-main Saint should be able to hold her own. Its stats are pretty high, but it’s a scaredy-cat. Oh look, there it goes, falling to the floor.”
Wiggle wiggle.
The level 50 Dark Wraith, a beast cloaked in the twilit trappings of death and darkness, was fortunately not a servant of the darkness—it was just a regular old undead Dark magic main. It was equipped with a rapier imbued with the Instakill Trait and a robe that erected a protective Dark magic wall. Worse, it slung Instakill spells—or it would have, had it not been stuck on the ceiling. Why had it been stuck on the ceiling, you ask? ’Cause Sleeping Beauty had skewered it with her halberd, where it’d wriggled and writhed until, upon exhausting its strength to free itself, it collapsed to the ground and died of fall damage.
“Um… It’s true that the Saint’s Sacred Staff’s blade pierced the Dark magic wall. But the rest… The wraith fleeing up to the rafters, the ensuing stabbity-stabbity-stab, the falling, the collapsing into a spellstone upon the ground… I don’t know if I’d call that an epic battle betwixt the forces of darkness and light. Rather, it’s more an epic failure to defeat the forces of physics.”
But this did prove one thing—Dark magic wasn’t affiliated with the darkness. Sleeping Beauty’s Holy magic tore through this creature’s barrier with such ease that, had she been so effective against the darkness, she would never have lost her fight in the ultimate dungeon. The darkness wasn’t magic, then, nor an element of its own. Its only weakness was my divine swords, which suggested it was an enemy of god—oh no. They said an enemy of an enemy was a friend. Did that put us on the same side?
“Nonsense! I don’t vanish when you stab me with a divine sword. Unless I’ve just built up a resistance to them after being around them for so long…”
Bobble bobble.
Slimey interrupted my doomspiraling to bring me the boss’s drop item. Good boy! Head (?) pats for you.Hm? Why are you lining up, Sleeping Beauty? You want head pats too?
Back to the drop item. It looked like some basic-ass black ring, but Appraisal labeled it thusly: “Dark Ring: Intelligence +30%. Dark Magic. Shade. Dark. Smokescreen. Blind. Instakill.” Ooh, I liked the intelligence buff…but Dark magic was meh at best.
“All it does is turn off the lights, y’know? But creating darkness could be kinda cool. I could put it with the other ring and make a darkness futon. Maybe I’ll have to reconsider tossing this guy.”
Intent on wasting no more time, I zwooped off to the next floor and broke out into a trot. Bullets whizzed overhead; I shot magic spell after magic spell. Ice magic unlocked new frigid Freeze Bullets. I didn’t have stellar control over them yet, but they were certainly fast and energy efficient. Packed a pretty good wallop, too. I could fire off these babies in rapid succession and never break a sweat.
“Freeze! Get it, ’cause—’cause it’s Ice magic? Get it? Man. Talk about a cold reception.”
Shards of ice and balls of flame skated around each other, riding the rush of wind off the various exploding golems around us in a delicious chain reaction. Level 51 bomb golems were, apparently, exploding flame-element monsters. The church’s exploding old dude suicide bombers were based off these monsters, or so I’d heard. I was also told the monsters were a lot less cute ’n’ cuddly than their churchy counterparts, but I was more willing to snuggle up to a fireball than an old man. Explosions were awesome enough as they were, and really, nothing could beat old men in the not cute department. I must have been given wrong info. Oh well. Anyway, let the fire-and-ice bullet hell commence!
“Huh. Mitigating the thermal energy via an ice bullet equals a smaller explosion. I guess it’s true what they say—you don’t know how ice you have it until it’s gone.”
Wiggle wiggle.
These would-be arsonists kept rushing at us and detonating the moment they got in range. Their fires refused to go out, creating balls of flame with major staying power. Attacking with ice bullets weakened their explosions and stopped the fires from spreading literally everywhere, but still, I didn’t want the golems to get too close—it was tedious, having to dodge all those bombs. You know how it is. So I launched a quick salvo of ice bullets to keep the bomb golems at arm’s length.
The splinters of ice froze the ground solid, and in its mirror reflection, a galaxy’s lifecycle played out in miniature: supernova explosions, star clusters of sparks, twinkling comet shards of ice. The chain reactions kept getting a little too close for comfort. Sleeping Beauty wasn’t even level 40 yet, after all. The last thing we wanted was a golem ramming her and blowing her sky-high. She, armed with an ice spear, and Slimey, armed with his slimey self, rushed into the fray heedless of my worries. Even with Sleeping Beauty’s Magi Elemental bangle, I felt like a spear shouldn’t be the weapon of choice against a bomb… But what did I know? She got through it without so much as a singed hair.
“Nice going out there. You okay on MP? Keep an eye on your breathing and lianqi, ’kay? No, no, no. Not the ‘hoo, hoo, hah’ thing. That’s different. Well…you’re having fun, so who am I to stop you?”
Jiggle jiggle.
“What is, inside, magic spells? That thing, you added to spell. What, that? Strong, whatever it was.”
Oh, the warheads? Being a fellow magic main (kinda), Sleeping Beauty was quick to pick up on the purpose and unique traits of my magical ammunition.
“Here, check ’em out. I call them spellstone warheads. I take a chip of a cheapo spellstone, put it on a magic circle, and harden it into a point. In the same way that magic alone struggles to stop physical attacks, physical weapons alone often fail to deal damage to magical beings. A bullet with a magical warhead, then, is almost impossible to stop. It also saves on MP and decreases the chances of the enemy reflecting the bullet. Just watch out for ricochet.”
I gave her one to play with, and she was quite intrigued, adding her own MP to it and running it through her fingers. I, too, was a fan of pulling on and tweaking and twisting and rubbing certain bullet tip-shaped obje—please don’t aim the magic bullet at me! A glare is one thing; a weaponized flare is another!
“It’s difficult to defend against a combined magical and physical attack—that’s why there are so many magic swords out there. But no one’s put much research into magical weapons of mass destruction. It’s a waste of MP to bull your way through magical barriers via magic, and losing kinetic energy defeats the purpose of a physical attack, so that’s why it’s a must to think outside the box and penetrate barriers with a third kind of energy. Yes! When it comes to penetration, se—”
Glare!
The downside of magic warheads was the impracticality. Turning all those lumps of spellstone fragments into bullet tips was a tedious task. Rock, however, was in ready supply everywhere, so it was nice and practical to commandeer it into magic weapons. Although, come to think of it, there weren’t a lot of rocks just lying around in dungeons…
“It’s most effective to use a warhead that matches the element of whatever bullet you’re casting, but we sometimes have to make do. Low-rank spellstones are free to come by, and what other use are we gonna have for them? Make ’em into cheap and easy bullets, that’s what I say. You could also make better, high-quality warheads from more powerful spellstones, but that’s a waste of resources, by my count.”
Boing boing.
’Cause I didn’t want to run up too big of a Bullet Bill, y’know? No point in throwing away money.
“The adventurers’ guild doesn’t teach this kinda stuff. That’s ’cause they have a lack of sound magic users and an even bigger lack of sound economic principles.”
I figured most people in this universe would struggle to master the art of magic bullets. Spellcasting was a matter of imagination, and whatever you could conceptualize could come true…but people here had no idea what guns were, so that severely limited their options. Or so I assumed—but Sleeping Beauty had no trouble copying me. I guess she’d picked up on the concept well enough just from seeing me in action.
“Right, but lemme correct you on one point—I’m not the target? Don’t point that thing at me? If looks could kill, that look in your eye could take me out? And stuff?”
Slimey, not wanting to miss out on the fun, created bullets of his own and began shooting level 52 blaze bats right out of the air. Between our three anti-aircraft firestorms, we extinguished these blazes in no time at all.
“This feels like a set-up. Was the dungeon trying to get us to concentrate fire and open up holes in the ceiling? We could’ve at least spread ’em out a little… Too late, though. We’re all out of bats.”
Judging by the sounds of explosions, the reflecting bullets were working all too well. My ears were ringing worse than a cathedral’s worth of bells at noon.
Anyway, with that behind us, we went down the next set of stairs. Sleeping Beauty went to work with her dual-headed halberd (which she still insisted was a holy staff) while I messed around with Slimey.
“Polearms shouldn’t have two heads, because that defeats the purpose… Reach is everything in a polearm. In Chinese martial arts, double-headed weapons are just for show, because they’re too cumbersome to effectively cut. But that never seems to stop Sleeping Beauty.”
Double-headed swords, too, shared similar impracticality issues. But hey! With magic, anything was possible. This was fantasy, where common sense only served to get in the way of the fun. We couldn’t all be smart, sensible people like yours truly. Creativity, take the wheel!
“That’s the theory behind Gundam beam sabers. God, I hate that we live in a world where nerds are the right ones…”
Jiggle jiggle.
Sleeping Beauty was quite taken with the whirlwind staff attack I had shown her. So, ever eager to impart on her more wisdom, I talked as I walked, starting with the thirty-six moves of staff fighting as made famous by Shaolin kung fu, at which point Sleeping Beauty switched tactics and went full Water Margin on me.
“Um… I think the Sainthood went out the window the minute she turned her weapon into a three-section staff. And that wasn’t my fault? So quit while you’re ahead, level 53 elemental rhinos? Honestly, after hippos and giraffes, rhinos are kind of a letdown. Yawn.”
One rhino was tossed on its rhinose with a whirlwind staff blow. Another was added to the endangered species list via death by a thousand halberd cuts.
Funny how the nerds, evidently masters of the most mystical martial arts, clammed up and turned stiff the moment they faced a dungeon emperor. Perhaps the art of talking to girls needed an extra five hundred years of esoteric practices before the nerds could take a crack at it. If there was one thing that set a nerd’s nerdy nerves on edge, it was a cute older girl. This, incidentally, was why the nerds had barely managed to string a sentence together around Bunny Girl when they’d first come to her aid. Her well-ordered facial features (and well-developed body features) had made her seem much older than she looked. Poor nerds. They’d been helpless.
It was nice to see the nerds again when we’d reunited, actually. I’d been worried about those gormless gremlins. Every time they split up, their combat capability took a nose dive. I forbade them from fighting solo, but that only conspired to backfire on me. I felt responsible, so I returned to them, free of charge, the equipment they had given to Bunny Girl. I may have shed a tear or three, but yes, I parted with my items for free. It was just one lost equipment sale, I consoled myself. I’d charge them out the nose for anything else!
“Right… So why is our Saint fighting with a battering ram, again? She’s doing a great job, don’t get me wrong, but this just doesn’t seem right? Or appropriate for this dungeon’s difficulty level?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Now that the twins were fighting alongside us, I had to figure out the matter of their equipment. A tricky puzzle, that. Sleeping Beauty needed more equipment too… The equipment she’d come with was next-level OP, so matching that was sure to be time-consuming. And before all that, I wanted to make sure Sleeping Beauty was proficient at fighting on her own. She would need those skills, along with a full set of gear, were she to join me ’n’ the other dungeon emperors in the deepest dungeon dives. And her kit needed to be cute, too, ’cause she was a real looker herself!
“I was hoping to see how a magic-user fights, but all I’m getting is déjà vu from Vice Rep B’s battles?”
Boing boing.
“Yeah, there was plenty of that with Vice Rep B too.”
For now, Sleeping Beauty could keep the clothes she had on. I now had a good grasp on the way she fought and the kind of equipment she might need. I also had undertaken a systematic study of her magical abilities at night and had intimate knowledge of her measurements. My tentacles had wormed their way into every wrinkle, every pore, every valley and fold on her body to record them down to the last detail. And tonight, naturally, I would check my work! Because I needed revenge for this morning!
Anyhoo, we stopped at the 54th floor. The dungeon’s final boss was on the 55th floor. This was actually kind of a deep dungeon, come to think of it. It was so out of the way it must not have received much foot traffic, which had let it grow in peace.
“Not a bad trip, all things considered. Sleeping Beauty got to see a giraffe, and that was fun. Not half as fun as seeing her blissed-out, drooling face aimed at my long-necked append—oh, don’t mind me. I’m not saying anything. You can put the three-piece halberd away. Broadly speaking—that is, speaking about broads—I’m wary of that sickle and chain you’re carrying; narrowly speaking—that is, speaking while narrowly escaping certain death—this is targeted harassment against teenage boys! Right! Shutting up!”
Ah yes, Sleeping Beauty was fitting right into the local culture. She’d even developed a habit of lecturing me! If by “lecturing,” we meant “violence.”
I used the walk back to the surface for more fine-tuning, sprinting on every first step and slashing on every second. Because it was such a disjointed action, I was able to point myself in a specific direction and take ground-shrinking steps. It all felt more natural now, more an intuitive part of me. Maybe it was because it was integrated into Martial Qi Wizardry, or maybe it was because, it being a specific technique now, Hoplology took care of controlling it for me. It wasn’t like my old Skill Ground Shrink, which, once activated, couldn’t be stopped until I crashed headlong into something. I had control over it. I couldn’t stop, per se, but I could steer (a bit) and decelerate. Best of all, I could do it without turning myself into a clanky, stiff robot. Wisdom had run enough calculations to smoothly animate me, and I couldn’t tell you what a relief that was. One small step for me, one giant leap for—oh no. Giant leaping was a bad idea. Here came the chaos.
“I would’ve tried running headfirst into them had I thought about it, but alas, the idea occurred to me too late. Oh well. They’re all enemies, so let’s do what we do best.”
I took the center position in our little group, and the three of us—Slimey, Sleeping Beauty, and me—launched ourselves in a united front against the level 54 devil plants. Um. Less a united front and more a united front lawn landscaping team, I guess. The silhouette had made me get my hopes up for another tentacle monster, but alas… We can’t have everything in life…
“This dungeon might’ve been a better fit for the mean girls. Yeah, it’d really give them something to sink their teeth into! Literally!”
Wriggle wriggle.
“Incidentally…plant monsters are basically tree mimics, right? But, uh… Missing the forest for the trees here, people… A dungeon has nothing but monsters. Your camouflage is ruined. You can stand real still and think leafy thoughts, but we’ll still know you’re a monster!”
Jiggle jiggle.
I had hoped to be done and out in time for lunch, but we’d gotten held up in here longer than planned. Level-grinding Sleeping Beauty and fine-tuning me both presented precious few opportunities for speed attacks, so in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so eager. I kiiiinda wanted to sneak off on my own and accidentally wander into two additional dungeons, but Slimey and Sleeping Beauty were pushing me toward the kitchen tools, so oh well on that.
I could reconsider the idea once we beat that Dungeon King on the 55th floor. Sleeping Beauty was adjusting to her new equipment and developing lianqi powers via the Lamaze method, which… Okay… It was a little distracting hearing her puffing like a bellows during battle, but I’d live. (And if I pricked my ears up to listen—and if my prick pricked itself up—that was no one’s business but mine.)
DAY 121: OMUI CITY -- THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD MASTER'S OFFICE
DAY 121
MIDDAY
If the guild master weren’t so darn stingy, that board might update for a change!
OMUI CITY
THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD MASTER'S OFFICE
IT WAS AS THE SONGS said. As if the city itself was a giant flower in bloom, color seeped into the streets, laughter crept into the people’s voices, and joy populated every face in the form of a smile. Ah, fortune had come home to stay.
The local lord, Duke Omui, was still away on his journeys, but his delightful daughter, the lady Merielle, had recently returned to us from her sojourn in the Beast Kingdom. Her companions, fair young maidens with signature ebony locks, were likewise home. Thoughts of peace and presentiments of new wealth quickened in our peoples’ bosoms. Smiles spread across the faces of our kin and countrymen, for the return of the battle maidens meant the dungeons would be eradicated even faster.
But a smile, I thought, was inherently a meaningless thing. I watched the boy return and just as quickly vanish underneath a pile of crying, hugging children. To seek meaning in their tearstained smiles—or, more precisely, to search for logic in this action—was a boorish task. These smiles were simple expressions of pure joy that someone had arrived, and let that be enough.
It was well known and never spoken that this group of black-haired children were the benefactors of our fortune. We felt their absence as a palpable thing, and upon their return, the whole frontier found reason to celebrate.
The bustling city streets were now lined with shops selling goods of every variety and color. Merchants strolled the streets dressed in the garb of every foreign land imaginable. With so much foreign trade, an ordinary stroll in the streets captured the eyes and rendered one giddy and confused.
The only mar on our happiness was a nascent bandit problem. We had never before struggled with would-be adventurers turning to robbery and pillaging. With our ever-swelling ranks and ever-increasing strength, we’d thinned out the monster population of the nearby dungeons and forest, which had enabled us to curate a force of only the most elite adventurers…but this had done little to stop the problem.
Then, the local housewives formed a women’s union and assembled, with startling speed, an enormous, weblike information network stretching across towns to villages—this, finally, had done much to quell public unrest and let us sleep safe in our beds at night. No bandit or monster dared attack these fearsome women. At long last, we had enough resources to patrol our lands as we ought, and our rescue teams could now keep pace with the demand.
However, the surge in new adventurers brought other issues. Our once-overflowing weapon stores could not keep pace with the demand for equipment. Our lending system was stretched to its limits. We could not complain much—too much peace and prosperity was hardly an evil—but we were forced to rely on the boy yet again.
Yes, the boy—the boy who could not even have become an adventurer had he wanted to, the boy who took on the deepest dungeons and the most harrowing risks. We had the effrontery to make him craft more weapons and armor for us. He was a mere level 28, and we demanded the world of him. Truly, there was no way we could ever make amends for this grave injustice.
The city rang with songs of dungeon destruction—great feats, yes, but our adventurers could as of yet only eliminate the smallest of dungeons. We made forays into larger lairs, but it was all we could do to hold our own. We never slew the bosses in the deepest of dungeons, and as much as we hated to admit it, we could not even slow the growth of those dreadful pocks upon the landscape.
Despite the kingdom’s army swelling our ranks, and stouter weapons in our hands, we still could do so little. We were exposed for the powerless organization that we were. Even with all the riches we could never before have so much as dreamed of, we still lacked the strength to hold onto our new way of life. The guild was alive like never before, and yet we could only throw ourselves against the wall that was the dungeon system. We could not hold it at bay, nor could we so much as dream of eradicating it entirely.
“Mr. Hakiess, sir? Please don’t let it trouble you so. An entire country’s forces would not be enough to slay a dungeon emperor. The legends say as much. ’Twas a continent-wide crusade that finally toppled one such foe. We live in troubled times where deep, dark dungeons riddle our land, and no one expects us to be able to hold our own against them. Just please write a request to the boy, sir. It’s your duty as our guild master.”
“My hand will not move, child. Why must we continue to trouble this boy? My head understands, but my heart cannot. We cannot pay for this fortune! He has given us the world, and we think to send him back into some bottomless hell?”
The pen trembled in my hand. The pen itself was a symbol of everything the boy had brought, every bit of trade and wealth, from all across the continent. And with this treasure bestowed upon the frontier, I would send the boy to his sure death.
To petition him was no request. It was as sure as an order. The boy never refused any requests, readily accepting even the most rushed and inconvenient solicitations. Writing a request was equivalent to ordering the boy to march into hell.
“Even if you don’t send him, sir, it won’t stop him from going on his own. He was back here again this morning, badgering me to give him a dungeon that would earn him lots of money. You should have heard the racket he raised about the lack of dungeon missions on the information board. Frankly, if we had all the wealth of every kingdom on the continent, we would still lack the funds to pay him for his dungeon diving exploits. But there’s no reasoning with him, sir. Just give up and please write the request.”
Yes, I know. I know. I hear you. I know what I must do.
“If not for him and his companions, we would never have been sent dungeon-slaying task forces from the Theocracy and the Beast Kingdom. Long has it been since other kingdoms have raised banners in service of Omui. Too long. I never thought I would live to see the day when Diorelle was made whole once more and the rest of the world came to our aid. And you would have me sentence the boy who made this happen to hell? Can you not understand why I hesitate, why I cannot bear to pen the message that shall send him straight to a dread dungeon king?”
I could not conceptualize, much less count, all the blessings he had brought us. Every scrap of happiness on this frontier, every day that peace reigned, belonged to him. And I would repay it with this? This perfidy?
“He is our savior. He has solved every problem, relieved every woe from here to the far corners of Gamehlein and Aryuca. Our cities grow richer by the day due to his benevolence. He would not have us attempt to repay him—and we utterly lack the means to do so—and there are no lengths he would not go to to protect Omui, but still, I…I cannot find it in myself to pen these dreadful words…”
“…Sir, please. You shouldn’t think so little of him. This boy walks into hell every day only to come back and beg us for worse. You are only granting him permission, sir, to do what he already does. If you deny him, he’ll only sneak—sorry, I can’t use that word in good conscience—march off to the dungeon with all the stealth of a marching band. We may think a dungeon king is certain death, but he sees a dungeon king as nothing more than the next ladder rung on his ascent to precious treasure! He and his friends are nothing like us, sir! They are cut from a very different cloth than us!”
Yes, I know. I know we’ve written him a disgustingly long list of favors already. I know he’s fulfilled them all and trotted back in triumph. I know.
“But be that as it may, we can do naught else but measure ourselves with the small measuring stick known as justice. I care not what the boy thinks, only what is right. Nothing he says will lessen this enormous debt we owe him.”
“Sir, the two deepest dungeons are still growing. Think of what will happen if we leave them until it is too late. Please, put down your stubborn pride while you still can. You are our guild master, sir. If you refuse to write this request, you are making the decision to leave danger unattended to. If nothing else, sir—I am very, very busy right now, so it would be fantastic if you could please hurry up and write the request.”
When all was said and done, I would write. Yes. Just as I had done oh-so many times before… I knew, no matter how much the decision grieved me, that I had no other choice. I knew all too well. We could not hope to reach the lowest levels of these deep dungeons; no one could, save the boy. Whole armies, for all their numbers, could do no more than plumb a fraction of their depths.
“Damn it! It shames me to do this.”
All I had to do was lift the pen with my trembling fingers and sign the missive. I had no other choice. I knew what doing so would mean. It tortured me, but I forced my revulsion back and wrote my name in shaky letters. It was done. The task was done. And still I could not put down the pen.
“Oh come, sir, there’s no call to look like that. You haven’t forgotten, have you? He went to an ultimate dungeon and came back. He went, all by himself, to face the deepest depths of a force said to be powerful enough to end the world. He fought. He won. And he came back. We shouldn’t trouble ourselves, sir, with something that can’t be measured on our tiny measuring sticks. We shouldn’t think so little of him as to worry about him. He can take care of himself. He’s no innocent boy. He’s the dungeon destroyer.”
And then the request form was out of my hands and off to the girls who were rapidly earning the moniker of the black-haired beauties. Anything that went to them, even in an unofficial capacity, would wind up reaching the boy. I could only imagine the sour looks on their faces, yet I prayed they would not ignore this earnest plea for help.
My grip tightened on this pen that refused to drop from my fingers. All our reorganizing our equipment stores, all our broadening our training programs, all our calls for recruiting new adventurers, and still we were reduced to this.
It needed to be done. The dungeon needed to be defeated before it was too late…yet with all the equipment and training gifted to us by the boy, all the treasures that had fallen into our laps, we’d still failed in our task.
“The continent will never come together as one again. It falls to us, the frontier, to keep the world safe…and yet we forsake our duty. We push it onto this boy’s frail shoulders—and that should never, ever be allowed to happen.”
I turned to look out the window. The sight of the city below could always bring the duke to tears, and little did I blame him. This prosperity was nothing short of a miracle. How much would we lose, I had to ask myself, when I sent this boy to certain death? The boy who was responsible for all our smiles? All our continued prosperity?
The boy would never say a word in refusal. He would not complain, would not grumble, would not so much as mutter the word “no” under his breath. He would accept no recompense, save money. He simply and unflaggingly came to the guild to sell his spellstones. Even when we could not pay him, he never stopped. Not once.
“I wonder if it might be possible to ask him to sell his spellstones to us, and only us…”
The majority of the frontier’s spellstone trade was borne on the back of this boy. He even had his fingers in the manufacturing and reselling pies. It would have been so easy for him to cheat us of our guild rights and monopolize the spellstone industry himself, yet he dutifully continued to bring us bag after bag of spellstones for little reward.
I could only imagine what horrors he had experienced in his few weeks of absence. What dank dungeons did he fight in? While we’d failed to hold our own, much less make progress, what ills had he suffered? All our armies and adventurers, yet he still eclipsed us… All I could do was grant him permission to go. Never mind if it was safe enough. Never mind if he cared that it was safe enough.
No, I could not let myself get complacent and accept this cruel reality. I could not. The day should never come when I forgave myself for sentencing this boy to his death.
“I deserve to be lambasted. There is not scorn enough that could be heaped upon me. All I do is hurt this poor boy. Could you not have mercy on me? Could you, if nothing else, stop telling him I refuse to send him to these dungeons because I’m stingy? An endless stream of these sinful papers crosses my desk, and the whole time I’m listening to him badmouth me from the floor below.”
“Oh god, is he back already? I did ask you to be quick about it, sir. Now you see what I have to deal with every morning! Please, carry on beating yourself up if you must, but do it in your head. Less talking, more writing! I have dozens of these things, sir. You do not need to agonize over each and every one!”
It was not my desire to stint the boy, of course. Would that I could send dungeon-diving jobs all across the continent instead of localizing them on one single boy. I wanted nothing more than to avoid heaping more on this poor boy’s plate, but…I supposed that translated to being stingy.
Sometimes, all one could do was cry into their hands.
DAY 121: AFTERNOON -- A FRONTIER DUNGEON -- 55TH FLOOR
Day 121
AFTERNOON
The sole way to wound my soul? Misleading names.
A FRONTIER DUNGEON
55TH FLOOR
UNABLE TO JOIN IN the fight against the dungeon king, I sat on the sidelines and watched. For, you see, I had lost—and all by one careless move. Now I was forced to stay well in the back, immobile and guarded by my trustworthy Slime, with little else to do but observe Sleeping Beauty’s attempt to solo the boss.
“Curses! If I only I hadn’t been so stupid. If only I hadn’t lost that match of rock-paper-scissors! Don’t you start moping, Slimey. You lost just as much as I did, but you were never supposed to be on the front lines to begin with.”
Jiggle jiggle?
The cyclops leveled a powerful blow at Sleeping Beauty, which she turned with a deft flick of her halberd. The rotation carried the blade to the beast, slashing it—again and again and again! She was using a three-part staff whirlwind attack! No one would ever believe the legends of the Theocracy’s saint again. If she could lop a cyclops’s tree trunk of an arm clean off, she was no saint—unless she’d learned about sainthood from a cut-echism!
“No, a cute little ‘tee-hee-hee!’ does not absolve you of violent murder.”
Wiggle wiggle.
The creature was over four meters tall—that meant over four meters of mammoth muscle shuddering when the beast roared and fixed Sleeping Beauty in its one-eyed stare.
“Ham it up, big guy. We all know the giraffes had you beat in the height department. Yeah, and the hippos’ mouths could open wider?”
Boing boing.
“Not to mention I thought the flies were scarier.”
Bobble bobble.
“Hey, you know I’m no good with bugs!”
The cyclops stomped the ground so hard it shook. It bellowed, producing an air-splitting cacophony, and raised one mighty limb only to have it sheared off with a merciless blow. The halberd sliced through flesh, shattered bones. In short, this big, beefy, brawny beast had had the upper hand against Sleeping Beauty in everything from levels to leg muscles, but she knocked it to the ground and made it cry for its mommy. So much for the level 55 Strength Cyclops. And it wasn’t just another musclehead—it had magical strength boosters, too.
“Fighting with magical strength boosters… Ha! Rookie mistake. Sleeping Beauty may look like she couldn’t hurt a fly, but she’s a dangerous dame with a damn good body to match! You may think you could snap her waist like a twig, but one shake of those hips and she’ll lay you to waste. And I’d lay he—nope, I wasn’t saying anything! Get back to it, champ!”
Sleeping Beauty was a champion of double-tasking—defeating the boss with uncommon flair and browbeating her boss with an unwelcome glare.
“The cyclops’s moves are too easy to predict when you can see the magic pooling in its arms. Sleeping Beauty, in turn, packs down all her magic into a tight, compact point of magical charge, and then slaps the hit right back into the cyclops’s face! Also take careful note of her tight, compact waist and the slapping of her beautiful pale thi—hey! I’m not lewdposting on main this time! I’m just narrating advice?”
“To whom? The enemy?!”
Sleeping Beauty crushed my teenage dignity with just about as much force as she destroyed the cyclops. All that nonstop, minute, high-speed jiggling was next-level powerful—although the cyclops didn’t seem to agree? I guess it didn’t have the eye for eroticism I did.
The cyclops had the edge on Sleeping Beauty in terms of level and sheer brawn, but muscles meant nothing if they weren’t utilized correctly. It flailed around like an untrained brute, simply wasting energy. The cyclops turned Herculean strength to Hercu-lame strength. It was no match for all the strength contained in that tiny, sexy, body with its perfect physical and masterful magic control.
For the finishing blow, Sleeping Beauty wound all her magic and qi into a spiral, then shot it all at once for total devastation. God, and the way it shook her butt… Devasstating indeed.
“See, cyclops, you have the aim down. Your problem is your timing. See how Sleeping Beauty does it? She matches her attacks to the rhythm of her huffing and puffing.”
Huff, huff, puff.
The Lamaze method tempered her qi, turning her delightfully slender body—brimming with magic and youth in all the right places—into an even bigger threat.
Once her lianqi mixed with her ample magic reserves, she used her fine-grained control to begin the process of turning it all into pure power. It still required some prep time, but against slow enemies, silk-reeling force—chansijin—was the best counterattack tai chi had in its large arsenal. The spiraling, Lamaze-enhanced mound of magic slammed into the cyclops’s club, yanked it out of the creature’s arm, and then hurtled onward to tear off the cyclops’s other arm and smash its bones to dust.
“The cyclops’s Revival Skill is working with all its might to keep up, but Sleeping Beauty has too much might to counter! You can’t beat a Saint in her own territory of healing spells!”
Bobble bobble.
Sleeping Beauty had trained under the prestigious tutelage of Miss Armor Rep, Dancer Girl, and Slimey. They had each equipped her with hyperpowerful techniques, and the girls in my class taught her how to deploy each one in her arsenal depending on what the situation demanded. For her final training, she’d squared off against the demon scythes—which was puzzling, because somehow the only one to come out of that match injured was me? I hadn’t been able to beat Sleeping Beauty since back before she hit level 10. Of course, back then I was too messed up to move. I was in no state to fight a dungeon emperor. Now, though, things were different. Once she and I were battle ready, a dungeon king in a mid-sized dungeon like this wouldn’t present a problem for either of us.
The cyclops’s indefatigable spirit grew fatigued. Revival gave up the ghost. Sleeping Beauty cut circles around it, her halberd describing winding helices around the creature’s body. Every blow she landed only made her faster. The cyclops could do nothing but stand there, tears beading in its single beady eye, and get clobbered to a pulp.
“Hmm. I need to adjust her armor design in the arm area. The legs could also do with some touching-up for movability. Sleeping Beauty uses a lot of flowing, elegant movements for a brute-force barbarian character. She’s fast, too. She’s as quick on her feet to evade as she is to attack. So yup, her current loadout will work for now. Just gotta touch up the joints.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Her ever-shifting attacks would have turned a baton twirler green with envy. Her flexibility was unmatched, giving her incredible range. Her Premonition Skill lent her a god-like ability to dodge hits, and her countering was just vicious. And just like that, she defeated her first Cyclops! Yup, that final attack was the nail in its coffin.
“Nice job. You wanna head back up and have lunch? While we wait for the drop item to materialize, let’s check out the hidden room. Slimey’s already eaten. You just rest here, and I’ll pop on over to check out those treasure chests. It’ll be fine. There aren’t any monsters in the hidden room.”
“Not, tired. Will, go with you.”
Jiggle jiggle.
Jeez. The heat might have been turned up for the cyclops, but Sleeping Beauty hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“You’re still not ready for any big dungeons, but we should be fine on the lowest floors of smaller dungeons. Let’s get you a few more levels, equip you with better armor, and train your fighting skills a bit more. Your coordination…doesn’t matter, since everyone does their own thing regardless. Your battle tactics…also don’t matter, because no one listens to a thing I say. It’s first-come, first-served with this group.”
Honestly, between the two of us, my training was going to take longer than hers. Nothing less fun than endless Skill test runs… I needed to reoptimize and reconfigure everything again. What a pain.
“No traps or locks on this chest—as ever. I feel like I’ve never once used the Magic Key or the Trap Ring on the frontier. Let me ransack my memories… Nope, not once. Well, with that nice little trip down memory lane finished, let’s see what we got. “Sense-O-Feel Ring: Intelligence, Resistance, Dexterity +30%. Sensory Perception Amplification (large).”
For a moment there, I trembled with untold joy. Then I took a closer look, and a wave of despair rolled over me. I fell to my knees, curled into a ball, and sobbed to the familiar cadence of Slimey rubbing my back with an oozey appendage. Sleeping Beauty gave me a funny look before she, too, joined in the cheer-up fest.
“It totally looked like a sex appeal ring! I was so ready to accept it. I wanted it to be a sex appeal ring! I’ve trawled dungeons in the farthest corners of this realm, searched and searched for this object of my dreams, and thought I’d finally had it in my hands at last. I thought my quest—me, questing! This divine object had moved me to questing!—was complete! But no! It’s a Sense-O-Feel Ring. To add insult to injury, I can’t even chuck the wretched thing—it’s actually a good piece of equipment! Waaaaah!”
Pat pat pat.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to lift the ring in my shaking hands for a closer look. Yes, the Sensory Perception Amplification (large) Trait would do wonders for me. As much as it pained me to admit, keen senses were often the difference between life or death, and here I was struggling with my ability to control mine. I needed this ring.
“If only it didn’t have that stupid name… No, no, there’s nothing wrong with the name. It just…reminds me of the one who got away… Forgive me, I mistook you for something else… My poor, poor sex appeal… Waaaah!”
Today, I learned a valuable lesson. Oh yes, today I learned just how very cruel the universe could be. Stewing in my own despair, I slid the ring onto my finger. My Area Analyze and Presence Sensing Skills sharpened. Suddenly, I could sense at farther ranges and with greater detail. I think the boost even helped Jupiter Eye, as the ring compensated for some of the fine control Jupiter Eye usually demanded.
“Jupiter Eye is such a powerful Skill I can’t check if it’s actually working properly. My senses can’t keep up, y’know? But now I feel like my senses are stronger. Uh-oh. This bodes ominously for Sensitivity… Sleeping Beauty? Why did you just fist pump?! These Sensory Amplification Traits are dangerous things in the wrong hands… I might be wrong, as this theory is tested every night, but I’m pretty sure there’s no market demand for blissed-out, sex-broken teenage boys!”
My sense of magic was stronger now too. I used Heat and Lightning magic to heat up magi, then melted it together and spun it in a kind of centrifuge until it produced thin filaments I could manipulate. When I had enough ultrafine fibers, I spun them together into a mass not unlike a ball of cotton. And from there, the crafting was just beginning.
“With better senses, I now have tighter control over myself. With better control, I can challenge myself to reach new heights! Behold, the pinnacle of human technology and innovation: cotton candy! Enjoy? Yeah, it’s tastier than it looks. It’s not actual cotton, I promise. Stalker Girl swears by it.”
“Wow! So sweet! Soft! Melts in mouth! Thank you. I, love it.”
Wiggle wiggle.
Even Slimey, who only rated the taste a wiggle wiggle, was shocked at just how fluffy the cotton candy was. It was so airy, in fact, it lacked the usual sensation of biting into a bag of sugar. And that was just sad. No matter how much my control abilities improved, it didn’t matter if my senses couldn’t keep pace. Powerful senses were a lucky thing indeed—but I, personally, would’ve preferred powerful sex appeal.
“Yum! So good.”
Boing boing!
“Please. Save your ‘call in the chef; I want to have a word’ smug boing boings. You know full well I’m the chef. I made the cotton candy right in front of you!”
Jiggle jiggle!
New options had opened up for me, but all the same, I hesitated to use these same fine threads in clothing. A thin, soft, comfortable magical fabric was technically possible—to say nothing of its incredible elasticity—but these threads were simply too easy to snap.
“So, when this thin fabric stretches over certain convex objects, they’ll be liable to tear and make a hot, sticky mess, a collaboration of sensations and dreamy temptations! Well, when I put it like that, I need to give it a shot! I fear the first test runs of prototype magic clothing will end in tears when a teenage boy tears the fabric right off a hot bod, and hey, in the spirit of good scientific curiosity, I say this needs to be done stat! Ooh, and I bet it turns see-through when it gets wet!”
Chomping on cotton candy as we went, we returned to the surface. The sun was still high in the sky. Wind rippled the plains; the sky was a clear blue plain stretching as far as the eye could see. The world positively brimmed with excitement and mystery. And right in the middle of it all, some idiots were raising a ruckus, and in the brief moment where I wondered if I should intervene, things turned ugly.
Yeah, ’cause some bandits—a buncha would-be adventurers dressed in tattered leather armor—had made the rash decision to attack a group of young housewives and their tiny tots on a picnic.
“The scene of the carnage is visible from here with Clairvoyance, but that bandit raid is pretty far off in the distance, huh…”
The bandits bristled with swords. A tiny child stepped forward, a short dagger clutched in their chubby fist, intent on protecting their mama. One of the bandits sneered and kicked at the tyke with all his might. It was a bloodbath—on the bandits’ end, of course. More foolish of them for underestimating the average frontierperson.
The child seemed to vanish out from under one bandit’s nose and reappeared behind him, lobbing a powerful thwack at his head before spinning around and dashing toward the next target. The first bandit’s head exploded like an overripe pumpkin. With no less astonishing speed, the other three bandit brains completed a similar feat of detonating vegetable mimicry.
“I told them it was gonna be a bloodbath… That kid’s an orphan.”
Wiggle wiggle.
These level 30 old dudes didn’t have the reaction speed to keep pace with this zooming kiddo. All the days spent training in Overclock and Super-Speed for the purposes of running from battle were finally coming in handy. And that’s before we considered all the speed boosts I’d added to the orphans’ clothes and shoes.
“I bet even a pack of kobolds couldn’t catch up to one of those junior rockets.”
Boing boing.
Then the little tyke reached into the item bag hanging around their neck and whipped out an electric-charged self-defense paper fan. While the kid was busy whacking the remaining bandits into submission, the last few villainous thugs broke off from the group and charged the rest of the women and children.
“Those ladies are on the younger side, but a brutish housewife is a brutish housewife. I bet they’re still in the reserve corps, but they’re well on their way to gaining the terrifying strength the frontier housewives are known for. Yowch… That’s gonna leave a mark.”
Enormous cudgels stained with the blood of countless monsters emerged from the pockets of those frilly white aprons. Chaos ensued.
“Yeesh! Gosh, my legs gave out just watching those gals. What possessed the bandits to attack a picnicking monster-hunting group? Such a small group means these folks must be pretty seasoned monster hunters. Ah, but they’re going easy on the old dudes. They must want ’em for a bit of pocket change—that is, to sell ’em off as criminal slaves.”
“Why hello, Haruka. Fancy meeting you here! Dungeon running today, are we?”
Oh hey, I recognized this lady—fine young woman. She was the one who ran the okonomiyaki stand. If I remembered correctly, she had once destroyed a level 15 goblin in single combat with a secret technique called Goblin Reversal. She was young, compared to many of the housewives, but a seasoned member of these domestic dominators.
“Hey there. Looks like you caught yourself some baddies. I hear the mines need extra hands these days. You’ll get paid an arm and a leg for every pair of working arms and legs you turn in. Yup, bad guys are more lucrative than goblins these days. And stuff?”
“Hey, look! It’s big bro!”
Ha! Thanks to my training, I could now evade these flying children rockets once more! With flashy footwork, I dipped and danced around the whizzing kids. Some of them got close, but I still held out.
“Wait a sec—not only are the orphans getting better, but they’re teaching the town kids to fling themselves at me too!”
“Wahoo!”
Boing boing.
Progress on the frontier knew no bounds… I wasn’t keeping pace. Yup, better get an extra dungeon run in, just for practice!
“I was a sweet, sweet fool to think I could dodge all these children… Oh, and speaking of sweet, try this sugar cluster I just made.”
I streamed cotton candy behind me as I ran, thin wisps of cottony cloud drifting through the sky… Ah ha! The kids fell for it and began pursuing the candy instead of me!
“Whoo! Candy!”
Jiggle jiggle!
Crime perpetuated by non-frontier residents was on the rise. We captured many of these criminals and pressed them into indentured servitude, either working in mines or clear-cutting land for new farms. These involuntary laborers were in high demand, and I heard one could turn a quick buck by selling them. I’d never seen that with my own eyes until now, though.
“Honestly, attacking monsters is safer than attacking women and children at this point…”
The kingdom did not have chattel slavery, but criminals were a different matter. The best way for criminals to pay back their debt to society was to set them to work! Whenever a frontier citizen caught a foreign criminal, they hauled them off to the duke’s palace for the criminal to be sentenced. The length of the indentured servitude depended on the severity of the crime. These criminals were then sold to the mines or the clear-cutters, and the proceeds went to the housewives who turned them in. The news traveled fast. Now every woman on the frontier knew the quickest way to a full wallet. Even the general store lady turned a fond eye on those robbing her shop.
“Y’know, if they let you into the frontier without running an ID check, that’s ’cause they think you’re too low-level to do any harm. Frontier equipment’s not like the equipment they have back home. You can’t mug someone with an iron sword here. Do you have a death wish?”
When all was said and done, I served up spaghetti with meat sauce for the whole gang’s lunch before we went back to town with the would-be adventurers, aka new slaves, in tow. I paid a quick stop to the Adventurers’ Guild, took a look at the bulletin board, and sighed. I knew the girls had the location of a super cool, super huge dungeon, but they refused to tell me where it was on the outrageously false belief that I’d break my promise and sneak off to said dungeon posthaste. Thus, I asked the guild reception ladies to pin it to the board when I left this morning—but of course, they had done no such thing!
“This huge board doesn’t have a single job on it! I was doing you a favor by asking you to put one up. But no, this board looks identical to when I last saw it this morning. This is an outrage against the entire purpose of a bulletin board in an Adventurers’ Guild. You are stinting me on jobs! This bulletin board is an active obstruction to my ability to conduct business! Why must I sneak in here every morning, only to be rewarded with the knowledge that you have once again cruelly hidden all the jobs from me? I won’t stand for it! No more stinginess, no sir! I will not have it in my guild! Oh hey, where’s the usual reception lady? Out stinting, is she?”
“I believe she’s having our guild master approve those cruelly hidden job requests you’re referring to. I do wish he’d hurry up and sign them, though… We have enough on our plate as it is!”
The girl speaking just then was the non-spellstone appraiser guild lady, in case you were curious. Anyway, that didn’t matter—what did matter was that the guild master was revealed as the true job thief!
“That diabolical old geezer! Even if he weren’t the guild master, he’d still be an old man, and that’s diabolical enough. Then to add this crime on top of it? Monsters would be rolling in their graves if they saw the monstrosity this man was capable of! (Also, someone’s digging graves for a monster? Must be a well-loved monster.) Stop being so stingy, sir! Hand over the job requests, or I will revolt! I will rebel! I will even, dare I say it, revolute! Down with stinting on jobs! Down with stinginess! Down with old men!”
“Why must you raise holy hell every single morning and call it sneaking? Where in the dictionary does sneaking have anything to do with causing a wild rumpus? Oh, for—here, please hand this to Lady Class Rep. Tell her it’s the stinted jobs the evil stinter has been hiding from you all this time. Please, I really do mean it. I think the two worst dungeons have grown even bigger since we last checked.”
Oh word, some letters? I gave ’em a quick looky-loo, just to make sure they didn’t say anything bad about me that would invite a lecture, and realized they were dungeon jobs.
“Says here a legion of adventurers made it to the 10th floor before they had to turn back. That’s why they wanna bring in the big guns? And then this one says… The guild’s managed to thin out some of the monster spawns but has sustained heavy losses. This one’s over ninety floors long? Well, shit. Why don’t I accidentally wander into that one tomorrow?”
Ninety floors meant lots and lots o’ cash. And two giant dungeons? Be still, my beating heart. Right-o, now that I had a steady source of income, it was time to shop till I dropped at Miss Cheapskate’s general store.
“Sleeping Beauty needs a set of clothes and toiletries. Outside of that brief splurge in the capital with the girls, she’s never had the true adult experience of shopping with a disposable income. You know what they say, before one takes the next step to becoming an adult, one should first learn how to buy their own groceries. So off we go to the general store? And I’m the one who made all these groceries, so I know I’m right?”
Shopping time! Sleeping Beauty had spent far too long without any clothes to her name (nor a body on which to hang the clothes, but let’s not split hairs). She needed to lay in a steady supply of attractive attire to make up for all the long centuries she’d spent butt nekkid. We needed a smile for every moment spent in agony, dammit! What was the point of rescuing her if she couldn’t enjoy her freedom? If I made this much today…multiply by seven, carry the one, and that’s how much I make in a week… Looks like I’ve got enough to buy the whole shop’s worth and, uh, pay the bill next week?
DAY 121: AFTERNOON -- THE FRONTIER GENERAL STORE
DAY 121
AFTERNOON
I spend so much time on these side jobs I think I deserve benefits.
THE FRONTIER GENERAL STORE
THE GENERAL STORE was packed with familiar faces. Yup—the girls had the same idea I did. The day was still young, so it was time to get our shopping on!
“I don’t blame ’em either. The Beast Kingdom had only foodstuffs, and the Theocracy had no shopping to speak of. The Kingdom goods aren’t as good as their frontier counterparts. The womanly shopping pangs must be panging something fierce. Yeesh! You girls sure know how to shop.”
I thought they didn’t have any money? They’d spent days without dungeon running. And they had the nerve to blow up on me for going bankrupt in the Kingdom… The Bank of Class Rep had seized the rest of their funds for safekeeping, only to blow them all on the girls’ dessert budget. Who knew if today’s dungeon earnings would be enough to support this latest shopathon…
“Ooh! It’s so cute. Oh, hey, Faleria-san! Come over here and look at this.”
“This is the best place to get toiletries and cosmetics. Here, try this one. It’s got that Haruka-kun-made seal of excellence.”
“This toiletries kit is such a lifesaver. Haruka-kun’s bespoke goods are great too.”
“Try this! It’ll look so good on you.”
“Totes! It’s part of his hoity-toity elegant lady lineup, but it’s wicked sexy-cute.”
“Ooh! It’s perfect! Oh my god. We gotta get you an outfit to match. To the changing rooms, girls!”
“Huh? Me? I, not sure…”
“Faleria-san, what do you think of this? It’ll totally go with your slim legs.”
“Yeah! That’s so fashionable.”
Yup. Let’s leave Sleeping Beauty to the girls. She’s in good hands now. A band of girls was the best shopping assistant a dungeon emperor could ever ask for.
Oh no… The latest request list was in, and it was so long it snaked out the door…
“Get back here, boy! Do you know why I asked for so many products? Because your friends are busy buying all my stock! Make more! Make extra! Make mountains of surplus, because I’ll need it!”
I got caught before I could get far. The general store lady, I noticed, was looking much younger these days. Her old wounds had healed, and between her recent rehabilitation and plenty of healing mushrooms, she was now well enough to go off on mushroom hunts of her own. She looked healthy and trim; there was color in her cheeks and a spark in her eyes. Her brain, alas, had received no such rejuvenating glow-up. Although she did have a point—a pushy, unwanted point—as I realized a shortage of clothes would be a very big issue. I didn’t want to disappoint Sleeping Beauty. And besides, shopping was good, honest fun. That was just a fact of life.
“If I’m the one making all the stuff and the girls are the ones buying it all, why bother with a general store at all? I mean, I’m still gonna make your stuff. I assume these are all rush orders.”
“You know it! I’ll sell ’em at cost, so make extras. My inventory’s suffering from a lack of luxury goods. You know the housewives of this town want nothing but the best, and they finally have the wallets to afford it. But the local manufacturers just can’t keep up with all the demand. People are making so much damn money these days, I swear… The town’s awash in clubs now!”
Sure, the frontier was well on its way to being economically and productionally self-sufficient, but folks always liked to have a little extra on hand. There was no limit to some people’s greed, especially for the female clientele of this boutique. One look at my classmates was enough to prove it.
“It blows my mind that monsters ever used to attack the women and children in this city. Arm a housewife and goblin with the same weapons, turn ’em loose, and the housewife will win ten times outta ten. So hey, looks like the clubs are being used effectively—and scarily!”
“Less talking, more crafting! I need more, dammit! More, more, always more! More of everything, and an extra order of mushroom bento!”
People in the frontier were just built differently. Everyone was higher level than they shoulda been, even the kiddos who hadn’t trained in monster hunting. It took me the longest time to figure out why—I’d never cracked the code until one day when I was poking around in the back lot behind the inn.
See, there were little tiny bug and grass monsters running around everywhere in the frontier. They were too weak to be noticeable—I’m talking critters like a level 1 biting briar or a level 1 stinger bee—but they gave experience to ladies and kids employed in the basic household tasks of pest extermination. It may not have been much experience per pop, but it added up quickly.
“Lessee here… Blouses, dresses… Lace is popular right now, huh? I’d better make lace sewing machines for the workshops, or else I’ll never be able to meet this demand. Frilly tunics? Ah, the mean girls designed those. No wonder they’re flying off the shelves.”
Jiggle jiggle?
Going back to the level thing for a sec—considering the low levels of the Theocracy’s civilians, a low concentration of magi in the earth must have made it harder to gain levels. The frontier, which was thick with magic and mushrooms, was therefore a prime place to level up. I’d seen proof of this in the Kingdom orphans, who ate mushrooms every day and took to “landscaping” as their chore of choice. The kids’ levels shot up like beanpoles. These kids were fast learners—too fast. They picked up the art of flinging themselves at me sooner than I would’ve liked.
“Long flared skirts… Three-roll-two suit jackets… And fringes? Sure, I’ll give those a shot. Grunge isn’t in, but the locals are a fan of folksy vibes. Let’s make eighty of each variety, all sizes.”
Bobble bobble.
Book Club President had the same idea as me. We could chalk that one up to her Organization Skill, which analyzed trends and organized them into coherent conclusions.
So with this, we’d just solved the problem of disease for the entire frontier. When exposed to enough magi, one’s level would rise, thus consuming magic in the body. We’d turn the people into a legion of spellcasters ready for monster- and treasure-hunting and, in the process, increase public health. If people just ate their mushrooms, they would have nothing to fear in the way of disease. The issue was that the source of the mushrooms, the forest, had grown unchecked and had started spawning too many powerful monsters—which was what had caused the initial downfall of the frontier—but now, the balance was being restored. If anything, the monsters had the worse side of the deal. Oh well. Not my problem. Goblins came back the minute they went extinct anyway.
“Phew! Well, I knocked out the whole list. Did I make too much? Nah. This would be enough to satisfy the local housewife population, but my classmates can buy goods as fast as I can make ’em. Or faster!”
Wriggle wriggle.
Perhaps the “Sense-O-Feel Ring: Intelligence, Resistance, Dexterity +30%. Sensory Perception Amplification (large)”, the ring I’d almost unceremoniously dumped when I’d done a double take and read the name properly, was to be thanked for my greater control and accuracy over my Magic Hands. My production output and quality had made a noticeable jump. I was whizzing through products now. Exciting stuff! I’d have to run no end of tests on this hypothesis this evening. Yes, I’d have to get all handsy—I mean, Magic Handsy.
“Look at you go, whiz kid! This is top-notch stuff. Everyone’s going to want it when they see it, and then there’ll be no end to the development of new goods. Oh, before I forget—I’ve had an influx of furniture orders recently. Be a dear and whip those up for me, will you? Lots of cute girls are buying them up. Make ’em at cost and then beat it. I’ve got more orders for you to work on at home. The Kingdom branch is outta stock too.”
“Didn’t I just top them up when I was there? Yeah, I totally did. I remember the shop girl was totally in manager mode. The look in her eyes terrifies me to this day.”
More and more people were coming to the city from the villages to do their shopping. Magical farming tools mechanized the tedious task of clearing land, and all this work to cut back the forest had opened up huge swaths of fresh farmland. I’d invested in the magical farm tool industry, convinced that was the next big money-making opportunity, and placed as many speculations on future vegetables crops as I could. Funny how, for all the money I seemed to have, I’d wound up fresh out once more. Turned out there were a lot of veggies to buy.
“And I hear my natural fertilizer plans are going well. That’s sure to be a big money-maker too—and yet again, I wonder why the nerds insist the Norfolk crop rotation system is so essential.”
Wiggle wiggle.
“Your guess is as good as mine, Slimey. What’s the big obsession? I ask ’em, and all they say is that every isekai has to have a crop-rotation scene. I’m not gonna argue, though. So long as we have plenty of folks farming, I’m happy.”
Bounce bounce.
Livestock was the bigger issue, really. Cows and sheep were a lot harder to pull out of thin air. Immigration could make the human population boom, but cattle weren’t exactly lining up at the border to go through customs. I would’ve shipped in more myself, but the Kingdom didn’t have enough to meet demand. I needed to do something, though. Meat prices were starting to soar.
“Why is everyone and their mother ordering shelving units? Wardrobes, kitchen cupboards, the works… Ah, I see. This is what happens when you go from owning nothing to owning lots of things.”
Used to be, folks on the frontier could work from dawn to dusk and still barely scrape by. When there was too little to eat, basic survival was the greatest luxury anyone could afford. No one had anything but the bare essentials. Why have a shelf with nothing to put on it? Why craft anything but the absolute necessities?
“Industrialization can’t come fast enough. I just wanna be free of this endless freelance grind! A second of my teenage nightlife is worth more than an old man’s whole lifetime! Give me my nights and evenings free, please!”
Bobble bobble.
Furniture filled once-empty houses. This visible marker of success was a symbol of the frontier’s new golden age.
“The blacksmith gave me a huge list of orders too, but I’ve got plenty of loot from the Theocracy I can pawn off on him. Any extra can be given to the Adventurers’ Guild for their rental service. And if I still have spares, I can always cut them down to size and hand ’em out to the local kiddos.”
Jiggle jiggle.
There was no end to my workload, but if not for the work, then there would have been a very definite end to my money. I needed the work! Sleeping Beauty was much too expensive of a servant otherwise!
I saw her now, she and the rest of the gang, visible as a sentient mountain of shopping bags staggering down the city’s main streets. Clothes, accessories, and hair care products bulged from every bag. There were more than enough skirts and scarves and shirts and socks to go around. That, and smiles. Every exhausted yet happy girl had a smile just peeking out above her mound of purchases. They marched through the streets with their spoils of war proudly on display. You know you can put all that in your item bags…right?
“Whoo! We have officially shopped till we dropped.”
“Yup. I did a whole half months’ worth of shopping. I have graduated retail therapy with a clean bill of health.”
“I can just barely hear the weeping of our resident teenage manufacturing line over the sound of my non-stop impulse purchases.”
“Well, who can blame us? He pops out cute items one after another. We need to buy them all.”
A good 90 percent of the items in those shopping bags were made by yours truly. I was in the black, and the girls were teetering on the cusp of bankruptcy.
Sleeping Beauty had been shy and sheepish at the start of the shopping spree, but then she’d said, “Can I buy, all things, Miss Armor Rep and Dancer Girl, have? So we, match?” And it was all downhill from there. Now she had a giant pile of new possessions, and an even more giant grin to top it off.
“Is that gonna be enough? Miss Armor Rep and Dancer Girl have a ridiculous number of outfits in their wardrobe. Most of which just get taken off at night anyway… And to be fair, I’m the one making and gifting them to you girls anyway.”
Which meant it was high time I got home and made matching outfits for Sleeping Beauty! She would feel left out if she didn’t get to match after she joined in on the nightly necking about. She was, in some sense, a more frequent nudist than Nudist Girl, so it was only right that I buried her in clothes.
So, back to the inn I went. We had a meeting in the dining hall, which was approximately 10 percent debriefing on the dungeons and 90 percent the girls showing off their new threads. The nerds reported that they had been at the duke’s palace all day and would head out to do a dungeon now before it got much later. The idiots had spent the morning schmoozing with their girlfriends in between crushing monsters in a dungeon of their own. At this point, I should blow up the whole damn dungeon!
And little did I know, as I sat there suffering through the tedium of our daily discussions, that tragedy (one that starts with an l and ends in an ecture) loomed just over the horizon. Yes, even now, the glares were popping up and readying me in their sights.
DAY 121: EVENING -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- ON THE FRONTIER
Day 121
EVENING
Candyfloss clothing makes for great eye candy!
THE WHITE LOSER INN
ON THE FRONTIER
BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. More chatting in the guise of a group meeting.
We had left Sister Girl behind in the Theocracy, and Royal Girl and Maid Girl in the Kingdom. On the flipside, we’d gained the twins. With them and Merimeri, that put us at a total of twenty-four girls plus three dungeon emperors, a Poster Girl, and a Stalker Girl. The girl population density was off the charts high.
Since I was bored, I started fiddling. The level 50 Dark Wraith had dropped a “Dark Ring: Intelligence +30%. Dark Magic. Shade. Dark. Smokescreen. Blind. Instakill.” I liked the intelligence boost, but the rest of the Traits were meh at best.
“Yet compared to the rest of my shady shit, this is but a shadow of true meh.”
Dark magic was all about low-accuracy Death or Dark spells. Totally useless, to my mind. On the one hand, this ring also helped with Shadow magic. On the other hand, I rarely had a chance to use Shadow magic. Shadow Incarnation and Shadow Crows weren’t effective on truly strong enemies, and anything weaker, it was faster and simpler to bonk ’em to death.
“Hmm… I can’t deny, I do like the blindfolding potential, though… But then again, the dungeon emperors can use Presence Sensing to mitigate a blindfold entirely.”
I grumbled and grumped my way through more complex fiddling. I did have spare ring slots, and I didn’t want to sell the ring and have it end up in the wrong hands—Instakill wasn’t a Trait to take lightly. But if I couldn’t sell it or use it, what good was this thing?
“Now, if a cute girl walked by and things got a little heated—in the bedroom sense—an instant blanket of darkness could come in handy… Dee-da-dee-da-dee-da-dee… Ta-da. Look what I did.”
By combining the powers of Darkness and Shadow magic, I drew a magic sigil of pure darkness in midair. Then, upon my charging the sigil with magic, it cast its Dark Wall spell, and a thick wall of darkness that no light could penetrate sprung up around me.
All it did was make me invisible, so it wasn’t a gamechanger in the defense department. But if I took this wall and folded it into something like a box, this could make for a good blindfold. The inside was pitch black—and that’s exactly what I wanted! Excited at the new use case for this ring I’d just discovered, I looked up and found all my classmates glaring at me. Hmm…if it requires drawing a sigil in midair, I might as well draw the sigil inside me with Alchemy. More efficient, y’know? And if a blindfold’s a possibility, maybe I should build a shack out of Earth magic first, then slap a darkness wall on that. Could get more use out of it that way.
“I guess? ’Cause it’s possible; I’ve just done it. Is that what’s next? A darkness shack?”
Huff huff puff?
“Wait, wait, wait—don’t bust out the Lamaze method in a conversation about doing it! People are gonna get the wrong idea, then I’m gonna be told off, and the telling off will switch partway through to beaning me with morning stars, and should I fend those off, the girls will switch to sickles and chains like some kinda freaky warrior monks, and then they’re gonna demand I make them new miniskirts (with a hidden chainmail layer), and then next thing you know, I’m gonna be crafting the latest in knight fashion, and I have a very bad feeling these will be used for sinister, possibly ninja-y, purposes, namely sexy snaring and sexy slaying? And I’ll fall for it every time! I know I will! ’Cause every time I so much as sneak a glance at she who wears full-body chainmail tights, I get attacked! Making new clothes is signing myself up for defeat, but…I just can’t help it! My body does it on its own! It’s made three sample costumes for three special souls just while we were having this conversation! I’m bursting at the seams with experimental energy, apparently. I have to test the strength! The feel! The fit!”
Jiggle jiggle.
Unfortunately, this was the moment when the meeting devolved into an epic glare fest. Sickles whirred ominously on their chains.
“Why, pray tell, is Faleria-san doing the Lamaze breathing method? What did you do to her in that dungeon of yours?”
“Someone fetch a lowwife! A highwife!”
“Or a wife halfway in between, perhaps.”
“Is there a doctor in here? Oh! We have a Saint. Maybe that’ll do.”
I sensed this was my time to make myself scarce, so I skedaddled. The Track Down and Exterminate Haruka unit was on red alert. I think I’m trapped! …Which is what I get for trying to barricade myself in a dining hall. Does it count as being a shut-in if I’m shut up in an inn dining room?
“No, no, no! It’s a purely virginal huff-n-puff. I may be especially fond of girls in heated breathing situations, but I swear this is just a qi-refining breath technique that, uh…somehow turned into the Lamaze method. But she didn’t learn it from me! My humble ‘hiiiyah’ morphed into the huffing and puffing of late state pregnancy. A mystery, really, how this kind of thing keeps happening.”
Dark magic could absorb other magical attacks and had high magic defense overall. Alas, its physical defense was just terrible—as was readily proven when the morning stars crashed through the walls of my literal black box. Sickles and chains sliced the shadows to shreds. Yup, I was on the lam in Shadow Skulk, but Elf Girl found me out and sicced the rest on me. Curse her magic-sensing powers!
“There he is!”
I unleashed a massive murder of Shadow Crows and threw in a few illusions for good measure as I once again attempted to make a break for it. Alas, it was all for naught. I was caught fast the moment I left Shadow Skulk. I tried to take to the skies, but one of the Volleyball Girls and Bunny Girl teamed up to spike me back to the ground. I slammed into the floor and was immediately jumped by a pack of teenage girls doing their best orphan impression…but I was too crafty to be caught. I used Qing Qigong and slipped through the gap between girls on the wings of a girl-generated gust.
“Gah! I got past Class Rep’s squad, but Book Club President’s gang is lying in wait! And they mean business! Not the short shorts! The bra-ometer’s reading a sudden increase of pressure on my nether regions!”
With two commanders leading the bunch, the girls made themselves into an iron curtain—and much like a curtain, this one had fabric draping over all sorts of bulging objects.
“I’m innocent, I tell you! I’ll have you know, everyone at False Accusation Victims Anonymous tells me I’m the guiltiest of guilty criminals, and if that isn’t proof of my flawless innocence, I don’t know what is. I didn’t do anything! Except try to Ground Shrink my way to safety. Yeah, could you not fling yourselves at me? Trying to Ground Shrink here, and it’s a bit distracting. Let’s dial back the launching, ladies. Unrelated, but—those new short shorts and wrap top combos are doing a number on me. I never knew sportswear could be so R-rated! Wait, Princess Girl’s not here, right? That means we’re all under eighteen! We’re not supposed to be in an R-rated scene! There is too much tight clothing clinging to outrageous curves for a sermon targeted to the teenage male audience. Is this even ethical?!”
Meteors streaked across the skies; the morning star Venus and her twenty-three lovely cousins cartwheeled through the air; twenty-four bits of spiky metal on sticks descended in savage arcs to maul my pitiful person. Each attack was unerring in its motion. The girls had mastered the art, truly. They waited for just the right moment before unleashing a flurry of furious blows. Sickles spun; chains cavorted. I did not like my chances against this chain gang!
“What. Did. You. Do. To. Her. In. That. Dungeon?!”
“Nothing! Nothing at all! I keep telling you, you have the wrong idea! We are approaching levels of wrongness outlawed by the Geneva Convention. Let me put it simply. That’s not actually the Lamaze method. It’s just a really, really weird ‘hiiiyah’. Okay? Okay. I don’t know why she adopted that as her breathing technique of choice, but that’s her prerogative. I’m only interested in the ‘huff, huff, huff’ variety of huffin ’n’ puffin, and hers is clearly a ‘huff, huff, puff’? Big difference?”
The air was then filled with whirling sickles. The merciless blades sliced the air to tidy ribbons of gas particles. For a moment, I saw nothing but bits of flying steel. I was lost, trapped in a crucible of chains, a hell of hooks, the fire and brimstone of flying farm equipment. Behold! The lecture in all its glory.
White flashes of whirling chains crisscrossed with flying scythe heads, and I wove in and around them, slipping through the gaps between milliseconds and the cracks between molecules in order to leap across the threshold of death into life. Alas, my flight was short-lived when Lucifer himself (that’s a morning star for all you non-Bible fans) came down to block my path. The wind it raised bowled me right back into the sickle-swinging Sheol; down, down, down I fell into the Gehenna of gladiatorial girlhood. If all that purple prose was too difficult to understand, try this: the girls whipped out both the morning stars and the sickles and chains.
Trapped in the windstorm of wildly swinging spiky iron balls, unable to flee with even the powers of Qing Qigong, I was doomed to die a death of a thousand cuts.
Or I would have, had I not acquired that recent buff to my powers of sensory perception! The scytheheads gave off a very, very faint tinge of magic, and that was all my body needed for it to leap and contort out of the way. My biggest concern, truly, were the human projectiles. Oh, the ultrathin fabric! Oh, the ultratight shorts! Oh, the ultrafat boobs! I was hemmed in on all sides by short-hemmed clothing!
“Stop running! How are we supposed to hit you?!”
“You know, I always thought ‘candy-coated’ was a synonym for ‘milquetoast’…but I see now the truth is nothing so sweet.”
See, the Sense-O-Feel Ring’s sensory boost enabled me to spin ultrafine fibers and, ultimately, a new type of fabric through the help of microtentacle weavers. Like its edible counterpart, the humble cotton candy, these threads were so thin they seemed like they’d fly apart if you blew on them too hard…but they were actually sturdy, flexible (oh god, were they flexible), soft, clingy, and so light you would hardly remember they were there. They were, of course, the material for my latest offerings: short shorts and halter-neck tank tops.
I wove no end of magic sigils into the fabric and pumped the fibers chock-full of magic. Wearing these clothes was akin to wearing the latest in magic armor technology. It was just. Um. Appearance-wise, it was more like body paint?
Like it was too clinging. Curves were on full display; it was like the clothes were not even there. There was a dangerous lack of concealment. Clingwrap would’ve been less revealing!
This was bad, bad news for me. Even I, the epitome of rationality and keeping my head at all times, found it to be too much. It would’ve been less sexy if the girls were all stark naked. At least then it wouldn’t have been a clinging, rubbing, static-electricity fest of boob after boob after boob after boob after boob after boob after boob jiggling on full display.
“You can’t candy-coat the truth, Haruka-kun! And the truth is this: You’re guilty as charged!”
“Get him!”
Mayday! Mayday! The jiggling was out of control! Jupiter Eye kept pulling up multiple high res images and splaying them across my vision in one dreadful kaleidoscopic flesh display. Wisdom was pushing my hardware to the limits, parallel processing on all threads, in its effort to enlarge and save all images to storage; alas, all discs were full. Future Sight was bricked. Strategy simulations were offline. All I could do was drown in this deluge of diving damsels.
Somehow, I managed to squirm and shove my way through an empty brick hole in the wall of bodies, but my teenage boyness was reaching critical levels of overstimulation! You try getting stuck under a pile of furious females, see how you like it! What chance did I have?
Concentrate, Haruka, concentrate. Think! Think, think, think! I dipped, dived, and ducked. I tried with all my might to toggle Thought Acceleration on, but it refused to boot. I’d have to win my way free without even the luxury of slowmo!
Long legs fluttered across my vision. Snippets of bare skin swam in and out of my field of view. Plush, plump, pillowy masses shook whenever a fresh girl flung herself at me in an attempt to crush me flat. In that moment, the whole world seemed to comprise stampeding girls. Girls with generous chests leaped at me. Girls with healthy growth in the derriere department lunged for me. Danger loomed—the sight alone did terrible things to my nether regions, and that was before two perky tails attached to two equally perky rears came running up. That’s right, the twins had joined in—and that meant real danger. I was to be crushed flat as a pancake before I ever got to say a word in my defense. I had only one trick left up my sleeve, and if I didn’t use it now, my teenage boyness was never going to make it out of this hussy hell alive.
“Eat this! Yeah, I mean literally? Go, cotton-candy-no-jutsu! Candy for candy-coated girls! Just know that you forced my hand. I wouldn’t have unleashed the sweets—I know you’re trying to lose weight—but I had no other choice. I’m so turned on I can’t bend over to hide my nethers any further!”
Note to self: Certain maneuvers did not mix well with candyfloss clothing—namely, spreading one’s legs! Anyway. The threat had finally passed. The cotton candy stopped the booby bunch in their tracks and stole their attention. The girls were, in a word, obsessed.
“OH. EM. GEE. It’s soft as air!”
“It’s so floofy!!! Floof, floof, floof!”
“Yummmmm.”
This was my cue to scoot. No Re:Lecture for me! (Also, no watching the girls do one more sets in these dreaded outfits for me.)
Well…that whole event was something else. Something not fit for the public eye. Yeah, can we slap that last scene behind an 18+ wall?
DAY 121: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN -- GIRLS' MEETING
DAY 121
NIGHT
Getting inside your opponent’s head is somewhat easier when he’s using Blockhead.
THE WHITE LOSER INN
GIRLS' MEETING
HARUKA-KUN WIGGLED OUT of his daily lecture. But if there was any lecture for him to miss, it would’ve been this one. Today was more of a test of Haruka-kun’s abilities than anything, and besides, he turned out to be (mostly) innocent for once. All he was guilty of was teaching Faleria-san some weird breathing technique.
“If he can dodge our battle formations, he can dodge anything.”
“Yeah. It looks like he’s got his old evasion skills back.”
“He should be fine in most dungeons, provided he doesn’t go too deep.”
“Yeah… That stirs up old, unpleasant memories.”
So, what’d happened this evening? We put Haruka-kun through his paces. We learned he taught the dungeon emperors the Lamaze method, but lord only knows why, as the dungeon emperors couldn’t procreate with Haruka-kun to begin with. We learned he was innocent of more untoward actions, although he did teach Faleria-san his patented “hiiiyah” scream, and while we were busy lecturing him for something he didn’t do, he distracted us with heavenly cotton candy and got away scot-free. How dare he, giving us this, this, sweet, gooey, tasty, high-calorie treat! You know what? That calls for another lecture!
“God, was it good though…”
“It just melted in my mouth. I’ve never had anything like it.”
Haruka-kun also informed us that our new undergarments, which the test lecture had also pushed to their limits, provided better defense than our old ones. I definitely felt something, like an extra skin made of magic over my own, when I put them on. It wasn’t a bad feeling, though. I felt more secure. Well-defended. The new underwear used less MP than the old set, and if it gave an extra layer of security, then it was downright miraculous in my book.
“I’m surprised the underwear is so comfortable when it’s riddled with sigils and talismans.”
“Right? This level of comfort and breathability is out of this world.”
“Not to mention, it lifts here, tucks there, and makes me look way slimmer.”
“Yeah! They’re so easy to move in, they make me look way more athletic than I really am. But…is anyone else embarrassed to be seen wearing these things, or is just me?”
“Nope. Not just you.”
Hence the need to lecture Haruka-kun. These clothes left nothing to the imagination. I’d never worn anything so thin or clinging in my life. But as a perk, they did a number on Haruka-kun. You should have seen him in that meeting. He turned red to the ears, and his eyes wandered around the room so fast it made me dizzy to watch.
“We’ve told him a million times we don’t mind him looking, though.”
“You know him. If there’s even a sliver of a smidgen of a chance that we mind, he won’t believe us for a minute.”
Speaking of people we didn’t believe for a minute… Haruka-kun had the unique knack of landing himself in certain-death situations and walking out relatively unscathed. It didn’t mean I could believe him when he said he would be fine, and it didn’t give me peace of mind. This stupid boy worried me to death, and that’s what made all of this so darn complicated.
“I wasn’t aware Qing Qigong could do that twisty thing he showed off earlier.”
“It can’t. That’s silk reeling, chansijin. It twists an incoming attack to essentially nullify it.”
“Oh, I see. Is that why he was walking all hunched over?”
“No, that was just him hiding his crotch.”
That’s why we treated Haruka-kun like the enemy. And so we tested him. We formulated strategies to kill him, because the first step to keeping someone safe was to put ourselves in his enemy’s shoes and figure out all their tricks. Every time we tried to hurt him, we discovered Haruka-kun was much weaker than we’d known—and, in turn, much more of a wily bastard.
“If I was Haruka-kun’s enemy…I would be so annoyed at him!”
“Right? The way he clowns on you while dodging every hit makes me want to punch his lights out!”
Haruka-kun had the defenses of a sheet of paper. We could have killed him easily with brute force alone. But, from the moment we’d first attempted to place ourselves in a would-be killer’s shoes, we realized how absurdly difficult he was to destroy. And if that wasn’t an unsolvable puzzle, killing Haruka-kun and not being immediately eviscerated by his companions presented a second, thornier problem.
“We can swarm him because he doesn’t fight back.”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t dare touch us if his life depended on it.”
“At the same time, he’s a force to be reckoned with in dungeons. You never know what bizarro weapon he’ll pick up and slaughter you with in some weird-ass way.”
“That’s Haruka-kun for you: baffling to friend and foe alike.”
We’d tried crushing Haruka-kun to death during the lecture, knowing he wouldn’t dare fight back—Haruka-kun would rather have bitten off his own hand than touch one of us in an inappropriate area. But in true battle, that reticence could have been the death of him. Haruka-kun could have mopped the floor with us easily; Sex Monad was lethal to us teenage girls. It could, we were told, reduce a girl to “death” multiple times per second!
“Even as a thought experiment, fighting Haruka-kun is a mess of contradictions.”
“Yeah… At this point, the existence of monsters makes more logical sense than he does.”
Haruka-kun could die easily, yet he couldn’t be killed. A single hit could do him in, but he was the strongest fighter of us all. He canceled out logic. He was a paradox, a perversion of the iron law of Gundam memes—he would die if hit, but by virtue of being unhittable, he was unkillable.
“You can try to apply logic to him, but there’s no winning a battle of wits against his Wisdom Skill.”
“Any human being is theoretically killable. The question is, is Haruka-kun a human being?”
“Yeah… You can’t even attack him where he’s weak.”
Right? Like, Haruka-kun was so darn weird you couldn’t even use a hostage situation to keep him in check. He’d straight-up kill you before you could try to negotiate with him. Kidnap a friend, and he’d never show up to the ransom meeting. You might get a letter if you were lucky, but whether that letter was in any way intelligible was another story. Then, the minute you turned to leave, he’d jump you and kill you. It was like getting a nightmare in the mail—Haruka-kun was always, always sure to show up.
“Poison doesn’t work on him. He doesn’t fall for traps.”
“And he could disable both anyway. You could cast magic, but he’ll simply absorb or reflect all of it.”
“Physical attacks seem like a surer bet, but coming up with a way to physically kill Haruka-kun is a nightmare.”
“He has enough food in his item bag to last a lifetime, so you can’t even siege him and starve him out.”
“You could try to lock him away somewhere, but he’ll inevitably wriggle out and wing his way back home. That is, if he doesn’t blow the enclosure to smithereens first.”
Not to mention, Haruka-kun seemed like the type to sit down and get cozy if held under siege…
“We just have to catch him off guard! Exploit his weakness!”
“Yeah, and he’s very weak to those short shorts…”
“Problem is, we always run up against the same wall. It seems impossible to trick both Jupiter Eye and Wisdom.”
“He’s super weak to anything erotic.”
“So, the only way to beat him is appeal to the human element?”
“But when it comes to sex, we don’t stand a chance against Haruka-kun.”
“The one thing that can trip him up, the one thing he goes out of his way to get tripped up by…”
“Say it with me: Sexy. Female. Assassins.”
“You think sexy female assassins can stand up to Sex Monad?”
“…Run away, sexy female assassins!”
We ran this meeting at regular intervals to give the problem serious thought, but unfortunately, we’d never hit upon a satisfying answer. We wanted to protect Haruka-kun, but his unkillability made him too darn hard to protect. At the same time, he had zero sense of personal danger and walked blithely into bad situations constantly. It made no sense! He had amazing detection Skills; he was a treasure chest of Skills and amazing equipment. His ridiculously OP gear may have left him with terrible defense, but he had virtually infinite offense.
“Hey, I have an idea! How about we wait for him to die of old age?”
“I think that’s our only hope.”
Even living on the frontier couldn’t save people from the ravages of age. The sheer amount of magi in the land poisoned people, shortening their lifespans. But then Haruka-kun sucked up magi by the truckload and came out of it healthier than ever. So I just didn’t know. People could live up to a hundred and twenty years, or so I’d heard, and reaching level 30 stretched a person’s lifespan a good 10 to 20 percent longer.
Old age would someday claim Haruka-kun, but that would be an issue another hundred years down the line. As for us, who were over level 100, we would probably live twice as long. I wouldn’t be surprised if we lived to be over two hundred. The dungeon emperors… Sheesh, they would probably live forever.
Man, imagine an eternity without Haruka-kun in it. That was a scary thought. But one that only applied, I suppose, if he was human.
Let’s talk about what it means to be human. Okay, yes—I knew he insisted to high heaven that he was still human. But even he wasn’t sure, and it was impossible to predict what exactly might be his fate. Human beings didn’t transmogrify their insides to be stronger. Humans didn’t draw magic sigils with their own nerves and blood vessels. Humans couldn’t gain the wisdom of the immortal sages, couldn’t master qigong, couldn’t suck up magi from the earth and use it to heal themselves. So I thought…I thought maybe we didn’t have to worry about old age claiming Haruka-kun? Maybe?
“Um… We could hit him with a crucifix and see what happens.”
“Ooh, that might do it. He is an enemy of god.”
“No, but he’s made and sold rosaries before. And it’s not like crosses have the same meaning here.”
“Oh, that’s true. Then…how about a wooden stake through the heart?”
“That would kill anybody! Haruka-kun’s just the one person likely to bounce back from that!”
If there was one thing that would do Haruka-kun in, it would be himself. His powers were so strong they exceeded their own limits and rolled over into self-destruction. Or, possibly, the darkness could do him in. We still didn’t know what this was, nor how we might prevent it from hurting Haruka-kun. Self-destruction, on the other hand… Our only recourse against that was lectures, but Haruka-kun seemed to remember lectures for half a day at best. If we took our eyes off of him for one second, it all went right out the window again.
Oh, these meetings never amounted to anything. But even so, if we could convince ourselves we hadn’t forgotten anything, we hadn’t missed any weakness that might trip up Haruka-kun later, then it was worth it.
“He’s still having movement troubles, so we should strike while the iron is hot and overwhelm him with a saturation attack.”
“But he has a Boundary Skill.”
“Now’s our chance! Let’s do a close-range sneak attack on him.”
“But he has Area Analyze and Presence Sensing.”
“We could try crushing him to death.”
“That’s if you can catch him first.”
“We could, uh…explode him.”
“He’ll just steal the bomb.”
“Okay, what’s his weakness, then… Hit him with a lecture?”
“Ah, that’ll do it.”
“Something tells me we don’t have to worry about assassins armed with lectures.”
“Sure, but if one did exist, I’d be on the side of the assassin.”
To keep him safe, to train ourselves, to find every possible weakness that could be used against any of us, we plotted and fomented and schemed. I was sure the dungeon emperors practiced a similar ritual among themselves.
We’d thought and thought and thought like women possessed. We’d approached the problem with every serious effort we could muster, and yet we never came up with an answer. That’s why we had to talk to each other—to share viewpoints. Two heads were better than one. And we put all our heads together in the hopes it might help Haruka-kun, might help us, might help the dungeon emperors and every other kind soul who wanted nothing more than our safety and happiness.
“Man! I’ve got nothing.”
“And that’s the most anxiety-inducing part.”
You could look at Angelica-san’s armor and see how much Haruka-kun cared. Her august armor set had been steeped in the thick magi of the dungeon she had suffered in for so many centuries, and those years settled on her armor like a second set of protection. Then, on top of that, Haruka-kun had dumped hunk of mithril after hunk of mithril, never begrudging a bit of it. He’d used his most powerful spellstones to upgrade her gear. He’d applied every Trait he could think of on the already legendary armor the three dungeon emperors owned. The same two Traits were a constant refrain: Indestructibility. Revival. Indestructibility. Revival. Two Traits to last forever, and ever, and ever.
Because that’s how long the dungeon emperors would live: forever, and ever, and ever. Long after Haruka-kun was gone. But still, he wanted to watch over them and keep them safe through all the centuries.
Their clothes and accessories, too, were made to last to the very limits of Haruka-kun’s ability. Maybe that wouldn’t be forever, but if he could eke out another year, another decade, for our friends to enjoy their new clothes, then Haruka-kun would do whatever it took. Because he loved them. He loved them very, very much. And even if, many centuries down the line, the threads should unravel and the seams come apart, that love would still remain.
“You know how much fun he has tossing people sky-high? I guess we don’t have to worry about him being overwhelmed by numbers now either.”
“Yeah, I don’t even know he does it. That’s not how martial arts work!”
Nefertiri-san’s one weakness was the strength of numbers. If she was caught and crushed by the sheer weight of bodies, she couldn’t flit about in her fast dancer’s style of combat. So Haruka-kun studied relentlessly, experimented and fussed and practiced, until he unlocked the secrets of tongbeiquan and taught it to her. Now, whether this was real tongbeiquan, no one knew—least of all Haruka-kun—but hey, that’s what we called it. We trusted that it could keep our friend safe for all eternity, and Nefertiri-san, knowing this gift of love for what it was, took it to heart with no hesitation.
Haruka-kun also realized that magic was Nefertiri-san’s best friend in a close fight, so he taught her qigong and Qi Wizardry before loading her up with magic-buffing accessories. Finally, knowing her weakness to close-quarters combat, he taught her tai chi. These combat arts would live on even after he passed away. And that Lamaze method…whatever. Let’s split the difference and call that a breathing exercise.
“Haruka-kun functions kind of like a Summoner job.”
“What, in that he puts his Servants’ happiness and wellbeing first? Which he uses as an excuse to throw himself in front of danger…”
“His Servants live cushy lives while he works himself to death fighting and trying to protect them.”
And because he did all that, we had to rack our brains and devise a way to kill him. We couldn’t dare lose Haruka-kun. Duh! D-don’t read too much into it, okay? I’d say the same about anyone who did so much for me.
Like, our equipment was just like the dungeon emperors’, you know? He’d taught us the same techniques and outfitted us in the same armor. He’d planned for everything to last a hundred years—more than that! Centuries and centuries. Haruka-kun had the shortest life expectancy of any of us, and he used it to ensure we could be safe long, long after he was gone.
How could we not care for him after that? How could we not not want to lose him, and thus work our hardest to bump him off? And no matter what we tried, we never stumped up a single way to murder that man. I could not think of anything short of himself that could manage to do him in. Frankly, I couldn’t imagine him dying at all!
We’d broken Eye Mastery’s spell and suffered many nightmares for it. Every time I woke up from one, my heart ached so badly for him I felt it as a physical pain in my chest. I had to do something to prevent these wretched dreams from ever coming true—but I couldn’t think how such a nightmare could even occur. How the hell did one slaughter Haruka-kun?
“He’s too low-level to equip good armor. His HP and vitality stats are awful. But through a ridiculous Trait load-out, he’s made that cloth cape of his better armor than a suit of mail.”
“Speaking of mail, he’s started to be more careful these days. I caught him wearing a breastplate before.”
“Yeah, but that’s only because it shoots out shoulder funnels.”
How to make Haruka a has-been…was it even possible? He was such a slippery weasel, and while he was vulnerable during his attacks, you did not want to be on the receiving end of those. I guessed there was one scenario where he wouldn’t attack—if you were roughly twenty-five scantily clad teenage girls—but beyond that, you didn’t want to be anywhere near him and his Universe Staff. His ridiculous offense was his greatest defense.
“Low HP and vitality mean nothing when he’s impossible to hit.”
“And if you aren’t fast enough to finish the job, he’ll just use Revival and pop right back up.”
Whittling his HP down was impossible, and going in for a one-shot kill was too dangerous. Haruka-kun may have been flimsy enough to go down in one hit, but no matter your armor, you couldn’t possibly be strong enough to survive the counterattack.
Yup. Whichever brilliant beast managed to take down Haruka-kun would be in for a world of pain afterward. The dungeon emperors won a hundred battles out of a hundred, and killing Haruka-kun in front of them was signing a very scary death sentence.
“Honestly, Haruka-kun isn’t very good at combat.”
“Nope. He’s very good at killing and destroying. Combat’s just what gets him there.”
That’s what informed his MO: attack the attacker; kill before being killed. That, and only that, was his secret survival tactic. He refused to give up until the enemy was dead, and he refused to die until that was accomplished. It was pure stubborn, selfishness.
“Speaking as his would-be guards, I feel worse for the ones who attack him.”
“Right? The poor things… Attacking Haruka-kun is the worst misfortune in the world.”
“Not only is it nigh impossible to kill him, but I doubt he’d even stay dead.”
“Yeah, the more I consider this, the more bonkers it becomes.”
“Poor, poor unlucky Haruka assailants…”
And what’s worse, us worrying over this every day made Haruka and the dungeon emperors sad too. I just had to hope no unlucky sexy female assassins ever came along. The dungeon emperors, even though they were practically invincible, even though there were a full three of them guarding Haruka-kun, still wept to wonder if Haruka-kun would survive the day—and so they were the biggest danger of all.
If a whole harem of sexy assassins came along, they could kill Haruka-kun in an instant. That’s why we had to be there to stand in the way—although the debate was still out on what, exactly, we could do against an assassin harem.
“I say we have Class Rep take one for the team and make all the tentacles focus on her.”
“Ooh! Let’s look for the Incarnation Skill to give to her, and then we can have a whole army of meatshield clones!”
“That’s genius.”
Excuse me?! How was that supposed to help? And why couldn’t we use Phantom? Incarnation would result in me feeling all the stimulus from the tentacles!
“Is there a costume we can make for Class Rep that’ll draw Haruka-kun’s tentacles to her?”
“Definitely the bunny girl costume. With full-body fishnets.”
“That’ll do it! If we wait for them to get busy and then attack, I think we might actually have a chance!”
“Whoa, whoa, wait. Who’s wearing this full-body fishnet bunny girl costume? Because it sure as heck ain’t me! I don’t care how many clones I have, all that stimulus on me alone would kill me!”
“Hmm, let’s see… Let’s assume the battle drags out long enough. We’ll need Class Rep dummies to serve as dummies while we’re Reviving the real Class Rep.”
“Mwa ha ha! That’s it! Infinite Revival Class Rep dummies is the Sex Monad’s one weakness!”
“Now that’s one battle that’ll last forever… A million rounds, and they still won’t be done.”
“ONE MILLION?! I would die of pleasure, if nothing else, long before that! Going…going a million rounds with Haruka-kun would be…” KA-BOOM! Plunk.
“Mushroom squad, give her the usual.”
“Ja!” Plonk.
One…one million… If that’s ten o*g*s*s per second…that’s one, fifteen…seventy-four… That’s over a whole day! Oh god, I really would die.
DAY 121: NIGHT -- THE WHITE LOSER INN
Day 121
NIGHT
I’d trade a sheepless night for this sleepless night in a heartbeat!
THE WHITE LOSER INN
AHH, CRAMMING SIDE-HUSTLE WORK in my inn room… Nostalgia. I finished the general store lady’s orders in no time flat. Previously, my sensory perception powers had been the bottleneck in the great assembly line that was my body, but that roadblock had been lifted thanks to my new ring. Now, thanks to the synergy of Wisdom and Magic Hands, we were opening new doors and ushering in a new age of production. Oh no. I know what that means. There’s no end to side hustling in sight…
“This fiscal quarter, our finest offerings include ultrathin, ultra-clingy short shorts. My powers of concentration are unmatched!”
Eventually, I reached a point where I was satisfied in calling it a day and switched into tinkering with my own equipment. One of these days, I’d run into a wall known as the saturation attack. My full-body magical cloak and endless evasion could only take me so far. I needed to make plans to handle massive numbers of foes before it was too late.
Back in the Theocracy, the girls had handled all the army-scale battles for me. They’d gotten through it unscathed, but I knew I couldn’t leave them to fight all my wars for me. Self-evidently, I needed better defense.
“The flower talismans are consumables, y’know? I can’t keep ignoring my low defense and resilience stats. The girls won’t let me into the biggest dungeons until I do.”
Wiggle wiggle.
I only had two pieces of armor I could equip at level 20: the shoulder funnels and the “Minotaur Leather Breastplate: Strength +30%. Physical and Magic Resistance (hyper). Slash and Penetration Resistance (hyper). +DEF. Slots three items.” I had no armor for my arms, legs, or waist. I didn’t want to sacrifice on quality, so that inevitably meant I would have to make my own. Still, I wished I had pieces of armor I could use for models.
“On the flipside, armor that’s heavy enough will just slow me down. That’s its own form of danger.”
Jiggle jiggle.
First things first—I used mithril on the Minotaur Leather Breastplate. C’mon, new Traits!
“Mithrilizing level 20 equipment is usually a waste of mithril, but that sweet, sweet ‘slots three’ hints at further upgrading potential.”
But that was where the upgrades ended. This called for a little elbow grease and old-fashioned tinkering.
“Add mithril here, some sigils there… Hmm. This still isn’t good enough to add to my routine kit. I can add more spellstones to it, but yeesh! This is eating up too much of my mithril! Oh well. Gotta protect the heart. Or maybe I should put my lungs first? ’Cause I use my breathing techniques a ton, and I’m sure I can lose my heart and still use Revival to pop right back up. I should min-max for a better defense build, but I’d also like to stick some concealed weapons on me. Hmm… Which is more important?”
Bobble bobble.
Oddly, building my own kit was quite a bit trickier than anyone else’s. I always took it seriously when making armor for other people—other peoples’ lives rode on it, y’know?—but whenever I worked on my own gear, I just got that itch to experiment. The desire to goof off was just too tempting.
Goofing off, that tantalizing mistress, explained why my defensive equipment flew away from the thing it was sworn to protect (me). Exhibit A: Shoulder funnels that did nothing to guard my shoulders. I’d get myself killed goofin’ one of these days, and the girls would be furious. That fury, if nothing else, was reason to take self-defense seriously.
“Right. So, for a defense build, maybe I should use this ‘Minotaur Cuirass: Strength, Vitality +50%. Physical and Magic Resistance (mega). Slash and Penetration Resistance (mega). Magic Armor. Multi-Layer Barrier Creation. +ATT, DEF. Slots seven items.’ I like the defense buffs, but I’m kinda worried about my lower half? For teenager reasons?”
My head was absolutely essential, because that’s where Wisdom and Jupiter Eye were stored. Pop my head clean off, and I couldn’t Revive back to life! I also needed my lungs for the breathing techniques that formed the backbone of my qi manipulation. If I kept those two areas safe, I could avoid an untimely demise.
“So, all that’s left are elbow and knee pads. I could totally make those myself. That’ll take some experimenting and prototyping… I probably shouldn’t attach drills to them. I think the girls won’t like that. Yes, for the sake of my sex appeal, I think I won’t do that. Even if it’d be really cool!”
“Baaah~!”
That couldn’t have been Slimey. Was that a sheep? Wait…make that three sheep! My latest invention: cotton-candy cotton fibers turned into woolly sheep bikinis! And Slimey had made himself scarce!
“Wh-what’s all this about? Y’know? I-I thought sheep were herbivores! These sheep bikini babes have the eyes of predators!”
“Baah, baah, baah!”
The sheep sisters advanced on me, one in black, one in white, one in pink. Their bleating warned me that there would be no escape. Counting these sheep wouldn’t have made me drowsy, as everything else about them made my nether regions wake up and take notice. The question begged: fluffity fluff the wooly bikinis or strip ’em off to get right to the fun part?
“Baah!” Slurp.
“Baah!” Suck.
“Baah!” Smack.
“I was right! You are meat eaters!”
The sheep made a beeline for my ear cuffs and anklets, ridding me of the accessories. Wary of any stray tentacles, the sheep worked quickly to disrobe me of my cloak, gloves, and boots. Then, these baahd, baahd beauties scrabbled all over me, legs a-tangling, to rip off my breastplate and bracelets and anything else standing in between me and my person.
“Not the virtue of chastitty in action! You’ve weaponized your full bodies in a horrible, sheepy trap! Shame on ewe!”
“Baah!” Slurp slurp.
“Baah!” Suck suck.
“Baah!” Smack smack.
Sensationally sexy sheep blanketed themselves over me, baahing in time to the writhing of our bodies. These sheep were eager grazers, devouring me right down to the root. I lost track counting how many sheep whizzed before my eyes, faster and faster, giving me no time to recover after each successive squirting!
But little did they know, they had forgotten one very important thing. In their wariness of the tentacles and their eagerness to put me through my teenage paces, they’d neglected to remember their sworn enemy!
“It hasn’t had its chance to shine in some time; it’s been kept under wraps for too long! Snake squad, I choose you!”
And then I unleashed the necklace! The hydra, chickenatrice, and lizardisk exploded out with gusto and swarmed to squirmy action. Maybe it was because the quality of my magic had changed, or maybe it was the change in magic density or purity—whatever the reason, the snakes ran rampant. They’d been ignored for too long and had gotten pretty bored trapped up in there. Have at ’em, gang!
“Aaaaaaah!”
Hisss? Cock-a-doodle-doo! Fssssk!
Off went the fluffy bras and bottoms—but the sheepy headbands could stay. Poor sheepies, bound fast in a cluster of snakes with fresh hydra heads beginning to worm their way up the bovid flanks.
“Huh? Why does the chickenatrice have a peacock tail now? You totally stole that!”
The rainbow plumage tickled the dungeon emperors’ bare skin, making their beautiful backs bend like bows. The chickenatrice wasn’t the only transformed beast—the lizardisk had grown new tongues, and this legion of red lollipop-lickers lolled from its maw to tantalize and tease the girls. The venom dripping from its mouth only served to heighten the overwhelming feast of the senses.
With patient, painstaking, persistent care, the tongues lavished attention and sweet, sticky venom on every scrap of skin. Ribbons of red writhed up white thighs like stripes on a barbershop pole. Sleeping Beauty’s long eyelashes fluttered, and she shivered as she saw star after star after star after star.
“First time, huh? Take it easy on her, guys—oh, that warning may have come too late, huh…”
Fssk?
The blissed-out blitz combined with the fearsome Sex magic to make a terrible confirmation, and when I used Entanglement, the effects only increased in an ever-mounting synergistic effect. The girls’ faces spazzed out, and their bodies quickly followed suit.
“Well, the snakes had their turn, and the new sensory perception had its turn, but my teenage boyness hasn’t had its turn. Geez, how sensitive are these girls? A light touch on the back and they’re twisting and turning.”
Poke poke? Twitch twitch!
Flick flick? Shudder shudder!
Stroke stroke? Quiver quiver!
“Dang. The dungeon emperors were already in a bad way, but with a single touch, they’re down for the count. Just how bad was this sensitivity boost?”
Hiss. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Fssk?
Then, with all the destructive powers of Sex Monad behind me, my gonads assumed their monadic form and—huh?
Silent screaming!!!
As it turned out, Entanglement’s exponential effects might’ve been a bit strong. The effect extended to the snakes, strengthening them too. I’d have to watch the footage later—for, ahem, research purposes—so all my recording equipment was locked and loaded, taking down every detail for further review. Okay! Time to do my best!
EPILOGUE: A NEW DAWN FOR THE CATHEDRAL
EPILOGUE
◆
A NEW DAWN FOR THE CATHEDRAL
THE FALSE TEACHINGSthat had allowed corruption to flourish were no more. A new wave of reformation—a restoration of the older, orthodox views—swept across the church. Now the church joined hands with the demi-humans to fight against the monsters, a doctrine born from the necessity of basic survival.
“So, you’re telling me the old teachings were lost? The Empire took over the church via a bribery scheme and injected the notion that people on the Western side of the continent were inherently superior to those in the east?”
“So the church lost sight of god?”
“God was a good guy all along.”
“God was an old guy all along, so really, how good could he be? I got him so worked up he’s probably out there working himself into a heart attack. Last I saw him, he looked like he was on death’s doorstep?”
“Ah, right. You gave him a nervous breakdown and left him there, didn’t you?”
“A heart attack vs Haruka-kun? Which is worse? …Definitely the heart attack.”
“I beg your pardon? My dear friends, what in Heaven’s name did you do to Our Lord the Father?”
Changing those teachings was enough to reform the church’s entire goals. Fabricating those beliefs was enough to remake the church in the image of man, not god. God never once gave his authorization. The church’s holy text was something like the thousandth edition. The original text was probably long gone.
“Now, you listen. I think this god guy is one shady character. He’s the reason I’m stuck with these stupid titles! Apparently, I’m a loner who spends all his time stuck in a sea of girls wearing sexy nun habits! I’m a NEET who works his ass off every day churning out habits and drowning in side-hustle orders. And must I remind anyone that I’m a shut-in who hasn’t been back home in days? And yet none of my awful titles vanish!”
“Oh, so now you care about stats screens? After you renamed us Mean Girl A, B, C, and D, hmm?”
The church’s holy text was a massive tome, but in its original form, it was no more than a few loose pages. No rising action, no falling action—not even any good sex scenes!
“Not sure how someone managed to take ‘let’s all love thy neighbor and work together to battle the monsters in the east (etc, etc)’ and stretch it out to fill so many pages…”
“Right? Honestly, this makes me more curious to read it.”
“Are we sure it’s okay to change the doctrine so radically now?”
“Good question. There’s a lot of mistrust aimed at the church these days.”
Yeah, misrepresenting the word of god or otherwise making unauthorized additions and deletions kiiiiinda seemed like blasphemy…but hey, what did I know? Everyone else was doing it, so maybe it all worked out in the end. No one was complaining, so my guess was that no one read the holy book in the first place.
“The church is all but show biz anyway. It wouldn’t exist without public support, and right now, it’s in hot water in the public eye. A flashy renewal may be just the thing it needs. Y’know?”
“Haruka-kun, dare I ask what your definition of religion is?”
“Nah, don’t be like that. You know it’s always a big, flashy event whenever a Buddhist temple puts up a new building.”
“Well…that’s true… But do we really need the ‘Grand Reopening!’ banners?”
In the Theocracy’s system of government, which combined religion and politics into one, the church had had free reign to extort the people and commit whatever inhumane acts they pleased. Normal, humdrum operations, then, were a huge improvement. Honestly, things had been so bad that the church could still have been kinda cruddy and public approval would skyrocket nonetheless.
“This feels like a popularity contest…”
“Yeah, and? The old pope and his faction used to run it like a popularity contest too.”
“Unpopular religions only manage to sputter along through sheer inertia, y’know? That’s ’cause way back in olden times, religion was the hot new thing. Religious services were new and exciting, not some everyday event.”
“Are you sure we’re still talking about the same thing?”
As present events passed into history, religion became linked with power. As religious doctrine pandered to public opinion, dogma became stricter and stricter. Then, once the reason the religion had captured the public attention was all but lost, only the authority remained. The religion stagnated, and people lost interest. Religion became a bore. Yup. Old-time religion could largely be summed up in two sentences: 1. Sex is bad. 2. This is just a passing fad, baby.
“All right, wise guy. What would that make a popular religion?”
“Yeah!”
“So, religion’s built on the backs of the most fervent believers, y’know? The ones who wanna go to church anyway. To drive more people into the pews, the religious organization’s gotta turn service into entertainment. Make it hip and happening enough, people feel that devotion, and churches get butts in seats. Boom. Megapopular religion.”
“…Your point isn’t entirely invalid, but you make it sound like there’s no consideration of religious beliefs at all. Whatever happened to god?”
“Oh, god and the pope were both just some old geezers. Nobody likes old men. That’s why the church is putting nuns front and center. And thank god for that—it’d be worse to have a flock of old dude likers.”
As we spoke, people from all over the holy city were flocking to the cathedral’s doors, eyes alight with religious fervor. Religion was in.
“Whoa. I didn’t realize there were so many new converts.”
“What a crowd! The Kingdom’s population looks miniscule by comparison.”
“I’m not sure if I’d call this religious fervor, though…”
“Hey, if a bunch of people stare at the same thing, it gets that object imprinted in the mass consciousness. That’s mass psychology at work, baby. How do you think fads get started?”
“Yes, but the ‘same thing’ in question are the habits’ thigh slits!!!”
“Yup. Popular, ain’t they?”
“And what does any of this have to do with god?!”
Well, whatever drew a crowd was an event, right? There was no point in an event, no matter how cool, if it didn’t attract an audience. Religions that couldn’t compete on the free market would die out in time. Only the religions that could hold the most exciting, attention-grabbing events would survive to churn out their propaganda—excuse me, doctrine—among the public consciousness. Yeah, and we had good propaganda? Getting a proper gander at those sweet, sweet thighs?
“Hey, when it comes to progress, the journey is more important than the destination. The church is just another tool among many. Yeah, it’s our propaganda machine? Nothing more, nothing less?”
“Nothing more—Haruka-kun, that’s already huge on its own! And why, oh why, is the propaganda sex?”
“This isn’t about worshipping god! This is about worshipping nuns’ thighs!”
“We’ve got faith, hope, and starity. Sex sells. What more can I say?”
’Cause those were the best ways to grab attention: humor, pathos, and eros. And some portions of the population, particularly the teenage male demographic, were most susceptible to the last on that list.
“Back up, back up, back up. Propaganda and religion are two very different things, Haruka-kun!”
“You sure? The word propaganda comes from the Catholic missionary congregation Congregatio de Propaganda Fide.”
“Wait, it does?”
The cathedral’s unique architecture and design sense also drew a curious crowd, many of whom were then enraptured by the cathedral’s sisters of the perhaps-too-little cloth. This ethereal, otherworldly aesthetic was so divorced from the concepts of everyday life that it suspended people’s habitual wariness to the unknown. Then, the pipe organ, a musical implement not native to this world, engendered a feeling of sanctity, sublimity, through its ringing tones and fine acoustics. The stained glass windows, the flickering candlelight, the aroma of incense—it was a feast to trick the senses, the ultimate performance. The staging was perfect. All the nuns needed to do was flash a bit of skin, and the miserable rubes fell for the doctrine hook, line, and sinker.
“What is this lovely music? It’s almost godlike; it… Oh are you kidding me—is this Vocaloid?!”
“This is literally ‘Senbonzakura.’”
“And it’s a bop!”
“We do not need to play music that goes this hard in church!”
“This is supposed to be about the lord and savior, not the lord and savior Hatsune Miku!”
“Ooh, wow, all the parishioners are headbanging… They must like it.”
“Don’t stagedive, knife-licking priest! What if you stab someone?!”
“I know people say god owns the world and everything in it, but playing ‘World is Mine’ in church is not it, Haruka-kun.”
“The church is a servant of god, not ‘The Servant of Evil’!”
“Hey, whatever gets the crowd going.”
“We will, we will, Godness!”
“Oh, so we’re jumping from Vocaloid to Queen?”
The nuns on stage began a cross between disco dancing and praying to their god in time with the music, and the thigh-slit worshippers lost their damn minds. The pipe organ pumped out pop tunes at thundering volumes; when the beat dropped, the crowd reached the point of ecstasy. For, in accordance with His Ancient Upskirtness’s magnificent technique, we got to see right up the headbanging nuns’ habits!
“At least everyone’s having fun…”
“Yeah. I’ve never seen this many people so into something before.”
“Before, religion was more like a chore that would someday lead its worshippers to a promised better future, but now people will go home with smiles and the desire to come back again. And maybe that’s what religion is all about.”
“Yeah, but…this is more like a party than a service.”
“You think?”
“I’m getting total rave vibes myself.”
“That too.”
“‘There is a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.’ Ecclesiastes 3:4. ‘Let them praise his name with dancing and make music to him with timbrel and harp.’ Psalm 149:3. So this works?”
“Does it? I think the only things being praised are the thighs!”
Why not have a party? No one would show up to church if it wasn’t interesting, and if a party wasn’t interesting, well, blame the event throwers for being lazy. The tickets for the next concert—I mean, service—had already sold out. What’s that? They’re sold out for the next three days straight? Rad.
“Listen, children, to my sermon…”
“Whoo!”
“Religion as a means to dream of happiness… I can see it. I mean, look at all the smiling faces.”
“Don’t let Haruka-kun trick you! They’re only smiling because they’re horndogs!”
“Did not god create all beauty on earth? It only stands to reason, then, that beautiful women are god’s domain, and should we ban sex with beautiful women, are we not committing blasphemy against god? If god is our creator, then by creative ownership laws, does he not own the rights to all our sexualities?”
“God, run for your life!”
Everyone was smiling. Everyone was happy. And that, for the first time in this church’s history, gave this place a meaning. That’s why churches are gathering places. That’s why these structures are built. To make people happy.
“Everybody dance now!”
“Whooo!”
And if this cathedral was more of an eroticathedral, then so be it? After all, the peep of thigh wrapped in a garter belt and fishnets was nothing but divine.
“Looks like the church has successfully been reinstated.”
“Its popularity may be higher than ever before, but…do the believers still remember what this whole god thing is about?”
“I fear we’ve turned a religious state into a nation of rave-goers.”
Red and pink spotlights flicked on, the sexy sisters fell into line, and the whole congregation began waving their books and dancing hallelujah!
“God has one message for us—slay the monsters!”
“Destroy ’em! Destroy ’em!”
“Oh my god. This is one scary service.”
“Fits with the doctrine, though.”
“Bring down the monsters! Earn lots of spellstones! And make money, money, money for this best of all possible religions!”
“Whoooo!”
Yup, that was the one and only doctrine that mattered. ’Cause it was the one way to save the world, y’know? Love your neighbor, work together, and kill monsters. I dunno what the point of all those other pages was in the thick book of doctrine.
AFTERWORD
◆
AFTERWORD
◆
WELL, WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT? What do we have here? Another afterword. Four pages of it, no less.
You might think that old trickster Y—da-san is to blame, but no! The new editor, K—guchi-san, is the culprit. New editor, same mistakes.
On that note, I would like to congratulate Y—da-san on their promotion and thank them for all their work on this series.
To K—guchi-san, who is no doubt swearing up a storm because this series was dumped on them, I offer my best wishes and the promise that I’ll continue to tortur—I mean, write for you. That’s right, I’m dumping everything in your lap. Have fun! (Ha ha.)
K—guchi-san enjoys camping and mountain climbing. Their dream is to one day push Y—da-san off a mountain. A big thank you to the Overlap editorial department and its various tangled interpersonal affairs.
Moving along, it is my pleasure to announce that Volume 13 is complete. Thank you very much to all my readers. (Psst, Enomaru-sensei, blame the hellish production schedule on K—guchi-san. Thank you for another volume’s worth of lovely illustrations (particularly on a non-existent time table.))
My thanks also to Bibi-sensei, along with my apologies for once again dumping all the work in your lap. The obi—the paper strip that runs along the outside of Japanese books—was entirely at their discretion. (Ha ha.)
I mean, if I’m leaving all the creative decisions for how these characters and world look to Bibi-sensei anyway, I might as well have them listed as the author. I’ve pushed for this incessantly, but alas, I am still credited as the original author. I’m so sorry, and I really can’t thank you enough for all you do. (sweat smile)
I would encourage everyone to check out Bibi-sensei’s world in motion—that’s right, we’re getting an anime!
Which means further acknowledgements. Thank you to the director, the animation studio, and the voice actors. I’m sorry I didn’t come say hello to you myself—this story has ballooned to such an alarming degree I felt too shy.
They say too many cooks spoil the broth, so I was more than happy to pawn off the work—ahem, ahem! Excuse me, rogue coughing fit—leave the anime adaptation work in the able hands of the director and Bibi-sensei.
Y—da-san, who was still my editor at the time, first reached out to me by asking, “If I told you Loner Life was getting an anime, what would you say?” I said, “That you’re touched in the head. Please get a grip on yourself.” He laughed. I laughed. And then they went and made an anime of Loner Life anyway. Ha ha ha.
I’ve been slow to update the web novel for assorted reasons, so I apologize to my web readers. Take this as a life update, if you will (or an excuse, if you will), but my eyes have been so habitually glued to my monitor that I’m extremely behind on writing new chapters. I haven’t been able to keep up on responding to reader comments either, but I read them all and cannot thank you enough for them.
Oh well! Blame it all on K—guchi-san and the impacted schedule. Please direct your complaints, anger, and sharp rocks at the Overlap editorial department.
I know I say something to this effect every time, but to this day I still think “How?? What? Huh??? How did we get so far?” First a manga, now an anime. I’ve cycled between shock and horror roughly ninety-nine times to the point where now it all feels so far away from me.
I mean, let’s be real. Prior to LL, I’d never written a thing in my life, much less a novel. I had no aspirations to be a novelist either. This series began life as a shitpost I uploaded to Naro, and it was picked up by a publisher, turned into a manga, and finally adapted into an anime. Back when Overlap first approached me about making this into a book, I thought “This has to be a prank.” If it is a prank, it’s taking them an awfully long time to get to the reveal.
So, thank you to the many, many people who have brought me so far and to the point of this nigh-miraculous anime adaptation.
Let me repeat myself once more and thank you for reading. Truly, you are doing me an honor.
And that is the end of the afterword. I have filled four pages with acknowledgments and accusations against K—guchi-san. This afterword would not have seen the light of day had K—guchi-san not called me, sometime in the evening, and said, “We have four pages left! Can you write us an afterword? …By EOD?”
Bafflingly, the change of editor has done nothing to slow the breakneck pace of production. These glimpses I catch into the inner workings of the Overlap editorial department are frightening indeed.
I plan to write a few detailed—so very detailed it will make K—guchi-san cry—pages for the Overlap website in regards to the anime announcement. (Please look forward to it. Mwa ha ha.)
Finally, while the base story is unchanged, I hope you will check out both the manga and anime.
—SHOJI GOJI
BONUS STORY
BONUS STORY
I Feel Like Animism Is Easier to Come by than Anime? Yeah, ’Cause This Is Fantasy?
“WAAAAAH! HARUKAAAAAAA! I miss animeeeee!”
Ha. Neeeerds.
“We don’t even have manga here. How do you expect us to reinvent anime?”
“Magic.”
“Magic can do anything, man.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with movies first.”
“Fine! Then I’ll settle for an OVA!”
“We are not reinventing anime.”
Animation was a grueling art, demanding enormous amounts of time and labor. We were not reinventing it, and that was final!
“First, we’d need the cultural shift from paper-art street shows into manga. And then where are we gonna get artists from, huh?”
“We can be the artists.”
“You? Well, then who’s gonna voice act? You know you won’t settle for second best, or you’ll riot.”
“Because VAs are king! Second best is sacrilege!”
Oh my god, dudes… Shut up.
“What’re we gonna do about the ‘eternally 17’ problem?”
“Nothing to worry about! We’re up to our ears in people stuck at age seventeen!”
“Okay, but like… What would our anime even be about? Dungeons?”
“Nah, that feels too ordinary.”
Fiction, from sci-fi flicks to weekly anime, needed a vision. A grand imagination, something that departed from the everyday. Which, in this universe, meant no battles.
“Building off of the dungeon idea… Adventuring, maybe?”
“Girls, form up! We’re going to earn dessert from this!”
“Ja!”
“Adventuring in a dungeon is just shorthand for a massacre…”
There were thousands and thousands of stories out there, no end of which manifested as battles in dungeons.
“Somehow, I don’t think the isekai fans would be satisfied with a story about a bunch of girls demanding dessert from me at every opportunity. That would never make it as anime. Heck, what publisher would even think of picking it up?”
“True.”
In a story like that, there could be a boy-meets-girl element. Passions would spark; a romance would bloom. But a gang of girls who chased down monsters to fund their sweet-eating habits…just didn’t sound like the ideal heroine backstory.
“Oh, if only your spellstone were made of chocolate…”
“Right?!”
Rrrraaargh!
Stories also needed twists and turns, but here the only twist was the girls twisting my wrist to hurry up and make more chocolate. Before making an anime, I had better get on making a chocolate factory!
“I mean, it just sucks, dude. We got isekai’d and everything, but there’s still no anime?”
“You mean, you want to see an anime about waking up, going to a dungeon, fighting monsters, eating lunch, fighting more monsters, beating the dungeon, getting pressed into making snacks, eating the snack, doing one more set, fighting even more monsters, going back to the inn, eating dinner, and going to bed? That doesn’t strike you as, uh, boring?”
“Yeah, I feel like that leaves something to be desired in the fantasy department…”
Yeah…that “fiction” was now just our daily life.
“Gimme chocolate!”
“CHOCOLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE!”
“Forget heroines, we have a whole class of villainesses…”
“And a chocolate parfait, Haruka-kun!”
“Ooh, yes! Me too.”
“Die, monster! Be my parfait money.”
Yeeeoorrrgh!
The girls couldn’t wait for the still-cooling chocolate to set before they, well, set into it. Next thing I knew, they were back to bashing monsters with chocolate-covered lips. I guess next is parfaits?
“I’ve heard that fact is stranger than fiction, but an anime built on these factual grounds…would be a gorefest.”
“Whatever happened to our sweet, sweet bog-standard isekai anime?” Sniff sniff.
Yeah, it probably wasn’t a good idea to put teenage girls in dungeons, if for no other reason than that it threatened the local monster population. ’Cause I just knew the girls were gonna ask for chocolate ice cream next. Yup. There was no making an anime out of this mess.
Footnotes
Footnotes
DAY 117: NIGHT -- THE REPUBLIC OF GAMEHLEIN
[1] A procession of dancers, musicians, and oiran—top-ranked courtesans—traditionally done during the Edo period. Fox masks worn by dancers and musicians symbolize Inari, the Shinto god of prosperity and patron of the well-known Yoshiwara red-light district.
DAY 118: EVENING -- THE ROYAL PALACE OF THE KINGDOM
[2] Referring to kiku ningyo—dolls displayed with outfits made out of chrysanthemum flowers—which have become a common sight at chrysanthemum festivals held in late autumn.
[3]Alaya and amala are the deepest of nine consciousness levels in Mahayana Buddhism, persisting beyond death as the storehouse of karma and the Buddha nature.
[4] An extremely large unit of measurement mentioned in Buddhist teachings.