WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 20: Mushroom Factory (3)
──────
1.
Sunming appearing there was a coincidence.
Akitt and Areng had told me the Mushroom Factory was fucking huge, and the odds of the hotel elevator dropping someone where people already were were extremely low.
“Irasshaimase!!!!”
Me shooting him was inevitable.
Like I said before.
When fixer meets fixer in a rift, there’s nothing but a fight to the death.
And our hands were overflowing with loot.
We’d already had trouble outside.
Every condition was telling me to pull the trigger.
“Ghk!”
So then...
“Fuck, that hurts, you tiny-dicked bastard.”
How was I supposed to explain Grade 7 Sunming, whom I’d dismissed as a total scrub, moving around just fine after getting shot?
Was that another coincidence? Had the bullet gone soft on him?
“Oh, sorry, sir.”
“Sir, my ass. You little shit.”
“Sometimes this just...!”
Bang!
“Fires by accident!”
“Ghk!”
Without hesitation, I pulled the trigger again, and it hit him again.
“You feisty little bastard.”
But Sunming only made a vicious face like some demon. He was still completely fine.
As if he had been punched rather than shot.
“You fuckers! I’ll turn every last one of you into mushroom fairies!”
“Sunming, sir! We were threatened too!”
“We have nothing to do with this guy!”
Those disloyal bastards!
Flames ignited from the hammer Sunming held.
It was no ordinary hammer.
A rocket hammer that boosted its power by firing propellant from the opposite end when swung.
“Don’t bullshit me!!!”
Sunming turned that propulsion into a dash. His body blurred like a mirage, then he smashed Areng with his hammer in an instant.
“Argh!!!”
Hit by the rocket hammer, Areng flew off like a Pop-Up Pirate.
Even with Laplace’s Eye, that speed made no sense.
“S-sir, listen to me...!”
“Fuck off!”
As though he didn’t even need the hammer, Sunming kicked Akitt in the stomach.
Akitt shot off in the direction Areng had flown.
It took Sunming less than three seconds to retire two Grade 8 fixers.
“How much money do you think I’ve spent on augmentation? You think trash like you can even share a table with me?”
Sunming cracked his neck and glared at me with murderous intent.
“Hey, did you really get cocky over that little thing?”
My flesh trembled under the weighty pressure of someone who looked nothing like an extra.
No, Grade 7s were this strong?
Was a Sandevistan already a basic implant at Grade 7?
Then what did that make Akitt and Areng, both Grade 8s who had trembled because they didn’t want to enter the Mushroom Factory?
I had been completely wrong.
Only one grade apart.
But we were on completely different levels.
A Grade 7 fixer was not someone I could kill by shooting Hero a few times.
“Now it’s just the two of us.”
I had no idea how he moved that enormous body, but Sunming blurred again.
I raised my concentration.
My brain grew hot, and my vision changed.
Laplace’s Eye began reading the laws of physics.
Sunming zigzagged toward me.
I timed it and pulled the trigger on instinct.
Clang!
But the bullet only ricocheted into a corner of the factory, throwing sparks.
Even if Laplace’s Eye let me roughly read his movements, he was too fast to react to.
The danger felt like a starving wild bear charging at me.
I had two bullets left.
Bang! Bang!
I calmly pulled the trigger twice.
“Fuck.”
Both missed.
Sunming was right in front of me now. White breath like steam poured through his bared teeth.
Smack!
“Take that!”
“Ghk!”
My head snapped to the side as if I had been hit by a rock.
What had he hit me with? His fist? Had he swung the hammer?
The pain of my neck bones being crushed and the numbness at the base of my tongue rattled my entire skull.
“What? You really were a pathetic loser. What gave you the guts to come at me?”
When I came to, I was hanging in midair by my collar.
The strength holding me was like heavy machinery.
It was the same situation as before, in the hotel lobby.
The difference was that Sunming had lifted me by the collar as though he intended to strangle me.
And there were no hotel employees here to stop him.
“You little shit, try acting tough like before. Huh?”
Sunming’s other hand drove into my hanging abdomen.
Crack!
“Gyaak!”
Ah, wait.
Something had made a strange sound in my spine.
It hurt like hell.
This was completely different from being sliced to death.
My breathing stopped by force.
He had only hit my stomach, but terrible pain spread through my whole body, all the way to my fingertips and toes, as though I were being crushed.
“You’re fucking weak, so why were you acting tough? Funny. I told you to act tough like before.”
Sunming sneered as he shook my limp body with one hand.
If I were him, I’d laugh at how ridiculous this was too.
What the hell had I been thinking?
I’d talked about survival of the fittest, then gotten full of myself just because I had one gun.
Even after Samurai Bitch had cut me in half twice, I had learned nothing.
“Heh... hehehe...”
“What’s so funny?”
“...Hit me.”
“What?”
“H-hit me once more. It tickles so fuckin’ much... I can’t even tell you’re hitting me....”
My words came out slurred.
The places where my teeth had been felt empty. All I had in my mouth were hard bone fragments tasting of iron.
It seemed the side of my face that had been hit had swollen like a balloon, since one entire side of my vision had disappeared.
“You motherfucker...”
Maybe my taunt had pissed him off. Sunming lifted me again and struck my stomach.
Crunch!
If my mistake had been a lack of self-awareness...
Sunming’s mistake was falling for my taunt so easily.
This time, I could definitely feel my ribs breaking.
And a certain urge to vomit.
“Bleegh!!!!!”
I stopped holding it in and threw up everything onto Sunming’s face.
“Argh!!!!!”
Sunming screamed in shock as vomit covered his face and threw me away.
“Y-you, you fucking crazy bastard!!!”
“S-sorry. I didn’t know you were... th-that strong....”
“I was going to give you a clean death, but not anymore.”
Covered in vomit, Sunming raised his hammer with murder in his eyes.
The veins on his forehead bulged. He seemed seriously pissed off.
“I’ll grind you down slowly, from your fingers to your toes.”
Sunming probably had the strength to do it.
I acknowledged him.
He was a man worthy of being called the Sun Emperor.
Before the Sun Emperor, who had ruled his era with a single hammer, I grinned weakly.
“You’re laughing? Do you know how scary I... W-what? M-my speech...?”
His expression twisted by the second.
Stammering, Sunming slumped down as though his legs had lost their strength.
“T-tastes amazing, doesn’t it?”
Of course it did.
The vomit covering him was no ordinary vomit.
It was poisonous mushroom pancake batter, made by chewing up every poisonous mushroom in this factory for nearly two hours.
“Ghk! Khk! Khuhuhk!”
Sunming clutched his throat as his face turned blue and swollen like a melon.
Apparently struggling to breathe, he panted like he was in labor, then began thrashing among the moss and mushrooms.
“Fuck... fuuuck! Khk! Khehk! You... bastard... what did you... do to me...!”
“Bwahaha! Bwahahahaha!!! Y-you idiot.... Cough! Cough!”
Sunming crawled toward me with poison-filled eyes, still trying to kill me.
I desperately scrambled backward with my ass and arms.
The breathless chase did not last long.
“Khk! Grrrk...”
Sunming coughed up blood and died like a choking dog.
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Kill a Grade 7 fixer. +3 pt
“Ah, fuck... it hurts so bad....”
I watched that happen, then got up.
No, I tried to.
But I couldn’t.
“Gyaaaaaah!!!”
There wasn’t a single intact bone in my body.
My spine felt smashed enough to be packed into a holiday meat gift box...
I couldn’t even stand, let alone walk on my own.
This was karma for bleeding Count Montraven’s House dry, coming back to break my back.
“Haah... fuck... this city is complete bullshit.”
This iteration was ruined.
I didn’t think I could reach the exit alone in this condition...
I’d earned plenty of Points, so should I roll the gacha?
No, that would be stupid.
It was only my first day in Necropolis.
If what I was doing was a roguelite game, my current state was like getting wrecked during the first stage.
This called for a reroll.
I had been unlucky.
I had just run into a truck.
Who would have thought Sunming would show up?
Still.
It wasn’t all bad.
I’d gotten a ton of Challenge points, and the Misfortune-Warding Talisman still had uses left.
I spotted Hero, which had flown far away when Sunming beat me.
Rather than get eaten by mushrooms or turn into one...
Let’s make this clean and happy.
“Ugh... ngh... fuck....”
I was awkwardly crawling toward Hero when it happened.
“Boss Guts...?”
The A brothers came walking from a corner of the factory, supporting each other.
You little bastards! You were alive!
Areng didn’t look very well, but thankfully, he still looked better than I did.
If that was the case, I wouldn’t need to move on to the next iteration...
Akitt and Areng, who had been struggling toward me, spotted Sunming’s corpse.
Then they looked at my half-ruined body.
“...”
“...”
In the sticky silence that stretched between us, I saw their greed.
“Ha.”
Fuck.
This was just how the world was.
Yeah, of course it was.
I knew Akitt was left-handed and had hemorrhoids, so he paid attention to how he sat.
I knew Areng was Akitt’s younger brother, liked women with big asses, and followed his older brother well.
To me, Akitt and Areng were comrades I had spent more than a week with.
But no matter how close I felt to them, to them, I was an unknown man they had met only a day ago.
The guy who had taken over their office by force and dragged them into a rift.
And that guy was dying while holding a tempting artifact.
I would probably make the same choice.
The two of them drew weapons from their waists.
Akitt had a machete. Areng had a hammer.
“Hey. Don’t.”
I was saying this for your sake.
Don’t do it.
“Don’t do what, you idiot! Die! Just die!”
“We only just met, and you’re speaking casually? You fucker! Hand over the artifact!”
The machete and hammer came down on my body as I crawled across the floor.
Again and again.
A hammer lodged in the back of my head, driving my face into a pile of moss and mushrooms.
The sound of bones breaking and flesh being crushed shook the ground before flowing back into my ears.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck....
I didn’t think I would ever be able to eat chopped raw octopus again.
I’d feel too much kinship with it.
======
『 ED 2. Golden Goblin 』
You died while holding a single shining pebble against your chest.
Under the blade and hammer of your companions.
In Necropolis, trust is the most expensive luxury.
This was the natural ending brought about by your foolishness in not knowing that.
<Iteration Results>
▶ Achievements Earned: None
▶ Title Acquired: 「Poison Mushroom Appraiser」
▶ Challenges: +89 pt
※ Death Penalty Applies ※
[ Belated Response ]
[ TS Beam ]
- You begin in the body of a cute young woman.
- This applies permanently.
「Misfortune-Warding Talisman」 prevents [ TS Beam ].
Uses Remaining: 3.
May you reach transcendence at the end of pride and foolishness.
======
2.
I floated through the space of death, went through Belated Response, and inevitably landed in my rented room in Necropolis.
I did nothing wrong, as far as I was concerned.
No matter how I thought about it, Belated Response was the problem.
“This starting point is fucking hell!!! Stop screwing me over!!!”
I wasn’t making excuses.
If KakaoTalk had come from America instead of Korea, it would’ve been Instagram!
“Ha, right... At least I wasn’t born a cute young woman.”
That much was fortunate.
Extremely fortunate.
My greatest strength, my wildness, came entirely from my overwhelming testosterone levels.
If I were reborn as a cute young woman in this city without a Misfortune-Warding Talisman?
I couldn’t even imagine the horrible things that would happen to me.
Anyway...
“I still have things to do.”
The beginning wasn’t much different from the previous iteration.
First, I bought a coat with my remaining Points, then restocked Hero and Hero’s bullets.
I wandered the alleys of the slums, reverse-mugging muggers to make seed money.
“Registering as a Grade 9 fixer?”
“Yes.”
“Name.”
“...”
“I said, your name?”
“Wait, I’m thinking. Ah, I can just use Guts again.”
“Five thousand Bios.”
“Here.”
With that money, I registered as a Grade 9 fixer.
Bang!
“I’M FUCKIN BACK!!!!”
“What the fuck?!”
I entered the Get Money Office with picture-perfect door breaching.
Bang! Bang!
With two gunshots, the playing cards burst like tiny fireworks and scattered.
Akitt and Areng were Grade 8, and neither was as strong as Sunming the Fucking Badass.
Akitt lay sprawled across a table with his neck bent backward, while Areng flew away together with his chair.
Red plum blossoms bloomed thickly across the yellowed windows.
“I told you. Don’t do it.”
One minute after breaching the door, I became the owner of the Get Money Office.
“I’m kind of hungry.”
After I finished everything in a flash, I was suddenly starving.
The last thing I’d eaten was poisonous mushrooms, so it felt like their aftertaste was still in my mouth.
When you were hungry, Jjajangetti[1] was the answer.
I roughly moved Akitt and Areng to one side of the office and cooked Jjajangetti.
The pinnacle of chemical seasoning, created by Korea’s finest master’s and doctoral graduates putting their heads together.
In a city where they boiled things salvaged from swill buckets and called it food, the smell alone was lethal.
“Ahh...! This is the taste.”
The salty savoriness clung to my tongue.
If I could pile on some scallion kimchi and slurp it down, I’d need nothing else.
Still, this was good enough.
Every drop of sauce seeped into my bones.
“Slurp, fuck, I burned my tongue.”
Only the sound of slurping noodles echoed through the Get Money Office, quieter than ever.
“Ah, I miss Reverse Bunny Suit Arbel....”
My cursed fourth iteration of life.
Solo play began.
======
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Kill a Grade 8 fixer. +2 pt
Footnotes:
[1] Jjajangetti: a Korean instant noodle brand with black bean sauce, treated here as comfort food.
TS is Japanese online shorthand for gender transformation.
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