WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 33: Build: Necromancer (3)
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1.
Sunming didn't ask a single question.
As if two males needed no reason to fight.
His thick, bear-like body closed the distance in an instant.
He pulled the hammer back with enough force to nearly touch his own ankle over his head, like he was pounding rice cakes.
Twenty-five meters vanished in a single leap.
In less than a second, Sunming's custom squeaky toy hammer, fitted with a thruster, would compress my cervical vertebrae to around three centimeters.
But.
For such a big windup, he was wide open.
Mana circulated tautly through my circuits. I formed a hand seal. The spell was primed.
“Goodbye, Sunming.”
The strongest man I knew.
Whoosh!
Mana, sticky as crude oil, became a thin semicircular slash and flew toward Sunming's abdomen.
Death Sentence.
A spell that declares an imagined cause of death upon anyone touched by refined mana.
I clearly envisioned Sunming being sliced apart.
Now all that remained was for Sunming to become a Summer Hunt ice pop...
“Fuck.”
I hurriedly dodged the hammer falling toward my head.
KABOOOM!!!!
A thunderous blast rang out.
The instant the hammer struck where I had been standing, every mercury-vapor lamp affected by the shock flickered at once.
Tiles shattered and scattered like shotgun pellets, while old dust rose from the walls of the underground passage.
“Ghhh!”
Sunming's hammer, which had struck the floor, reignited.
A vertical blow followed almost immediately by a horizontal swing.
The sequence was unnaturally fast, as if someone had sped up a video.
Whoooosh!!!
The sound of air being torn apart barely grazed the tip of my nose.
If I hadn't awakened my mana and gained the physical ability of level-one augmentation, I wouldn't have been able to react even with Laplace’s Eye.
I used the momentum of my sway to backflip repeatedly, opening the distance.
“Sunming, you're strong after all.”
An uncontrollable smile tugged at my lips.
Right. My rival couldn't go down that easily.
I still had plenty to show you.
“You little bastard... How did you break my protective robe in one hit...?”
Sunming staggered as he rubbed his generously protruding belly.
The turtle embroidered on his blue changpao faded, then vanished.
“You bitch, do you know how much this cost?”
So it wasn't ordinary clothing.
Second-level augmentation wasn't enough, so he even had an artifact?
For a Grade 7, this guy was suspiciously rich.
But now he had nothing left to protect his body.
So, what would he do now?
Crunch.
Sunming took out a glass ampoule, shoved the whole thing into his mouth, and chewed it whole.
My eyes widened.
No, this fucking guy...
“You sneaky bastard! You're doping in the hallowed octagon of honorable warriors?!”
I couldn't hide my disappointment!
The strongest Grade 7, Sunming, had plaster-loaded wraps and was a roidhead!
“I regret ever considering you my rival!”
“Whew... What the fuck are you talking about, you pathetic little shit?”
The amount of steam drugged-up Sunming was putting out doubled.
The steam blasting through his teeth doubled, as did the redness of his blazing eyes.
“I'll turn you into ground meat and sell you at Hongshen Market.”
“You cowardly junkie. You're like Jon Jones!”
Suppressing my rising anger, I prepared my spell.
Death Sentence, the first spell Ceres had taught me.
Over the past two days, I had tested it in various ways and learned a few things.
First.
It could be used without sending mana through a fixed circuit.
Like a fighting game with lenient inputs, it fired as long as the timing was roughly right.
Second.
Mama Ceres had said routine was important, but after trying it, I found hand seals and incantations weren't really necessary.
Third.
This was the most important part.
I didn't have to fire Death Sentence one at a time.
Bang!
Sunming exploded forward in a leap.
Perhaps he had realized my attacks specialized at range. It was the same Sandevistan-like movement he had shown before.
The beastly movement he had used when he rushed me while deflecting every bullet.
With the feeling of releasing a taut bowstring, I unleashed every Death Sentence I had drawn in my mindscape at once.
“Die like a bug, Sunming. You're permanently suspended.”
If they were bullets, he could probably dodge them and keep advancing.
But these were attacks that formed lines, not points.
A straight line splitting his body from crown to crotch.
A straight line from collarbone to abdomen.
A diagonal line from shoulder to thigh.
A straight line cutting from temple to jaw.
A straight line entering through his waist and severing his spine.
The densely packed lines of death formed from black mana were fired at Sunming.
Just as a Sunming cube, as if fed through a grinder, was about to be completed...
“What the hell have you been babbling about since earlier?!”
Hissss!
Steam burst from him, and Sunming began moving in wild afterimages.
His evasive movements threaded through the near-nonexistent gaps between the lines, through the tiny differences in timing.
They were acrobatic movements impossible to believe from such a broad, burly body.
Even Cedric was startled.
His astonishing agility gave me chills, then admiration.
Fuck, that guy.
No matter how I looked at it, he didn't seem like a Grade 7.
“You'd be fucking amazing at dodgeball!”
But my Death Sentence didn't end there.
Perhaps because it was a Rank 0 spell, it required little mana.
At least for me, the cost was barely noticeable.
Which meant...
“I can do this all day.”
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
I poured even more Death Sentences onto Sunming.
He was concentrating on evasion, so he couldn't get close to me.
Dozens of lines rained down on him one after another.
“Huff! Huff! Huff!”
Sunming's breathing grew harsher.
Drops of blood scattered through the air.
I didn't know what he had taken, but augmentation was ultimately an imitation engraved into artificial circuits.
Overclocking past the limits of its components.
The longer he used it, the faster it consumed his life.
As long as I kept this stalemate going, I would be the one smiling in the end.
But then.
Smack!
Sunming, who had been making dazzling evasive movements, struck the floor tiles with his hammer at an odd angle.
Like a golfer raising a club for a full swing.
Fragments floated hazily before my eyes.
Tile shards scattered like a claymore mine.
Crunch.
My head snapped to the side.
One side of my vision went dark as if someone had cut the power.
My concentration broke, and the Death Sentences rushing toward Sunming scattered.
It felt as though half my head had been blown away.
Tile fragments. One hit my eye. Had my eyeball burst? He countered in that state? Was this Sunming's actual combat ability?
No, this wasn't the time.
“You fucking bastard!!!!”
Sunming let out a lion's roar and charged without missing the opening.
I forced my half-turned neck straight and pried open my other eye as it tried to close, fixing him in my sight.
Sunming no longer tried to evade.
He charged straight at me, as if he intended to settle this in a single exchange.
Dark red blood covered the nose and mouth of the bull-like figure rushing toward me.
Even if he was a doper, these were traces of a desperate struggle that had burned through his life.
“Dieeeee!!!!”
Sunming's Rocket Hammer spewed fire.
My fingertips, barely raised, aimed at his bear-like torso.
Now it was a contest of who was faster.
But I was slightly faster.
I could weave a spell faster than Sunming could leap.
Just before the black mana touched Sunming.
I saw the desperate resolve in his eyes.
The venomous determination to smash my skull before he went down, even if his limbs were severed.
“You go down alone.”
Crunch!
Sunming's body wasn't cut apart.
Instead, it slammed into the floor with terrifying force.
The ground was webbed with cracks, as if a person had fallen from hundreds of meters in the air.
The hammer swinging fiercely toward my head also veered off course and embedded itself in the floor.
“You bastard! You're seriously terrifying!”
At the final moment before Death Sentence struck, I saw through Sunming's kamikaze strategy and imagined a different form of death.
Sunming's cause of death was not being cut apart, but falling to death.
I wouldn't allow us to die together.
“Ugh... Kgh... Cough...”
Sunming's limbs were crushed like a bug beneath a combat boot. Pink intestines spilled from his side.
The eyes that had looked up at me as if they couldn't understand gradually clouded over.
The second round was a perfect victory for me.
“Iiiii...”
I crouched down for a moment.
“You fucking bastard!!!! I'm stronger!!!! I'm the strongest Grade 7!!!!”
I surrendered myself to the rush of dopamine.
A sport no extreme sport could compare to.
A life-or-death battle.
After defeating drugged-up Sunming fair and square, adrenaline and Red Bull erupted through the blood vessels of my brain.
I only had a moment to savor the ecstasy.
Then I clutched my eye and collapsed.
“Ah, fuck! Why was that so hard?!”
Mama Ceres! You said Death Sentence alone could handle Grade 7s easily!
You don't give a shit about the power balance of scrub fights, do you?
“Ha, fuck... Thumbing me. What a coward.”
Ever since coming to this other world, there wasn't a single day when my eyes remained unharmed.
I think my eyeball burst again. I couldn't open it properly.
This wasn't the time.
Before anyone could see, I dragged Sunming into a secluded corner.
I had already investigated a place to dispose of a body before the fight.
Of course, I thoroughly searched him and collected my fighting money first.
No matter how hard it was, I had to collect what I was owed.
One 100,000-Bios gold coin, loose change worth about 50,000 Bios in total.
One ampoule identical to the drugs Sunming had taken.
“Is this guy fucking broke?”
There was barely anything for all that trouble.
Then again, this wasn't my main goal.
Clank.
When I opened the manhole cover, toxic-looking green liquid streamed inside.
It was a shame to throw away the hammer and changpao, which looked like they could fetch a good price...
But clean concealment came first.
Splash.
I shoved Sunming and the hammer into it together.
A burning sound rose along with toxic smoke.
There were no witnesses.
With that, Sunming evaporated.
Now, if Mama Ceres connected me from behind the scenes...
I, Rowan, would take over from Sunming as Yiming's ass-wiper.
It reminded me of the first loop, when I gave myself the alias James Bond.
I never thought I'd actually end up doing spy work.
“Ah...”
Once the tension faded, my injury throbbed even more.
What if I lost my eyesight like this?
“That can't happen!”
To think I might not be able to fully take in Arbel wearing a bunny-girl outfit with both eyes!
Come to think of it, Ceres had gouged my eye with a fork and healed it last time, right?
“I should ask her to blow on it.”
I had been told to come to Haeng House early tomorrow morning to receive some materials, so I could just count this as arriving early.
Ceres had to acknowledge this.
I needed to tell her to give me proper information.
I nearly died.
I picked a route where no one would see me and hurried toward Haeng House.
“Don't be alarmed. It's me.”
The elevator doors opened, and I stepped into the luxurious entryway.
“My eye got hurt, so could you please take a look at it quickly...?”
The moment I walked into the living room, dripping blood onto the marble floor.
“...?”
I was left speechless.
“...”
A stranger stood in the spacious living room of Haeng House.
For one thing, she was a woman.
But she wasn't Ceres.
She was around 170 centimeters tall, far shorter than Ceres.
More importantly, her long silver hair and silver eyes, beautiful as finely crafted ornaments, were completely unlike Ceres's black-based appearance.
Here's the problem.
As you know, Ceres absolutely hated letting other people into her space.
The only time there had been “someone else” in her house during the previous loop...
Was when Ceres had lost her life.
In other words, given the information at hand, this young lady might be a very dangerous person!
That said.
“Who're you?”
“And who might you be?”
She somehow didn't seem that scary.
She even felt oddly familiar.
For some reason, it didn't feel like our first meeting.
“...Ah, you're Cedric?”
“Hm, Mother should have said to avoid contact whenever possible. Anyway, come this way. I'll treat you.”
“Ah, yes, yes.”
I followed her blankly, then suddenly came to my senses.
“Mother?!”
Mama Ceres! You had a daughter?!?!?!
Footnotes:
“Summer Hunt” is a Korean ice pop, evoked here by the image of Sunming being neatly sliced.
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