WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 60: The Old Sewers (2)
──────
1.
Lesson of the day.
Sewers are full of flammable toxic gas, so do not smoke.
Ha, fuck.
I hadn't expected this either.
Shion kept glancing at me from the corner of her eye before turning away.
“Pfft...”
“...”
The fake Progenitor's shoulders trembled before she burst into laughter.
“Kahahahaha!!!”
“Quit fucking laughing!!!”
“Look at Master's, Master's state...! How could this concubine not laugh!”
The resonator in Shion's gas mask buzzed as she spoke.
It was fucking annoying, but I had no excuse.
I had been walking along with a cigarette in my mouth, trying to look cool.
Then flames suddenly flared up in front of my face like a torch.
I nearly shit myself, thinking I was about to burn to death again, but thankfully, it was nothing serious.
Except my once-flowing bangs had curled up like some fucking gay guy who looked ready to tearfully call someone “big bro” at any moment.
More importantly...
My eyebrows had turned into Sanji's!!!!
“Ha, fuck...”
“Kahahahaha!!!”
“From now on, every time you laugh, I bank one belly raspberry. Got it?”
Anyway.
With Shion keeping her mouth tightly shut, we began our tour of the sewers.
There was something worth noting here.
These sewers had rankings too.
It sounded ridiculous, like sorting shitwater into upper and lower classes, but...
The Old Sewers were clearly a Depth 2 rift.
To fixers, that meant a dungeon where loot dropped. In other words, a hunting ground.
Unlike the Mushroom Factory, which could only be entered through random portals, this was a hunting ground that had surfaced and become fixed in reality.
What happened when a map stayed fixed for decades?
Naturally, people developed strategies and optimized it.
Just like an old RPG, there was a clear divide between outrageously profitable hunting grounds and unpopular ones abandoned because they were not worth the cost.
“I can see why this one isn't popular.”
The sewer beneath D Sector was such a fucking hellhole that it was obvious why people had abandoned it.
Shitwater that meant instant death if you slipped into it?
Fine. Just don't slip.
The godawful smell?
I had accounted for that too.
Besides, the sense of smell dulled quickly.
Even Shion, who had been dry-heaving nonstop at first, was following me without trouble now.
“...? What are you looking at?”
Still, those tufts of hair poking through her gas mask were damn cute, like a little hedgehog.
The real problem was the terrain, which was far worse than expected.
I wasn't a newbie anymore, so I had not expected the sewer to be a smooth walking path built with tax money.
“Boksun, can we even get out of here?”
“Did Master not remember the way?”
“I never memorized it.”
But because it was a rift, its interior had gone so absurdly overboard that it was as complicated as a Backrooms level turned into modern art.
“You go up first.”
“This concubine is wearing a skirt.”
“Exactly why you're going first.”
We climbed ladders, then climbed down ladders.
“Fake Progenitor! Jump!”
“I, I cannot! How am I supposed to jump that?”
There were even sections where the side path had completely broken off and we had to jump across.
Naturally, falling in would make us “belong to the sewer.”
At least the walls occasionally had labels like this.
[D-11]
Without the district and sector markings, we probably would have been fucked.
Still.
It was not entirely bad news.
We had not come here to hunt.
The main quest was to find the slush fund supposedly hidden in the sedimentation tank beneath D-13 Sector.
The worse a place was, the less likely anyone had disturbed it over the past two hundred years, right?
Then...
Skitter!
“W-What...?”
“Shh.”
At the sound of movement somewhere nearby, I immediately raised a finger to my lips and pressed Shion flat against the wall.
I lowered the cover on my headlamp and drew up my mana.
Closing my eyes, I focused on my hearing and waited for my vision to adjust to the darkness.
Shion read the mood from my actions and held her breath tensely.
“...”
There were two reasons.
First.
This was a rift.
Just as the Mushroom Factory had mushroom people that supplied Necropolis with its daily food, the Old Sewers had monsters called Cleaners.
That sound could have been one of them.
Second.
Even an unpopular hunting ground could have people there before us.
And Necropolis players, fiercely territorial as they were, preferred PK to saying, “This spot's taken.”
That was only natural in a city where the war of all against all was the default.
There was no need to get too tense.
A Depth 2 rift was normally where Grade 7 fixers entered.
After killing Sunming, Cedric, king of Grade 7 fixers, had no reason to be scared now.
As long as the people here were not Grade 6 or above.
When I carefully peeked around the corner...
Click, click, click.
I saw a corpse lying on the floor.
And the cat-sized creatures tearing into it were...
The Old Sewers' specialty, sewer box crabs.
I had tried one at Hongshen Market.
They cost five thousand Bios each, yet tasted worse than imitation crab meat.
They should have at least made soy-marinated crab with them.
“Boksun. Breathe. It's nothing.”
“Phew... Hah... Phew... Urgh... I haven't breathed properly in so long that I feel like vomiting...”
As we approached, the box crabs scattered away like cockroaches.
“Disgusting.”
“Bleurgh.”
Still, humans were adaptable creatures...
Even looking at a badly decayed corpse riddled with holes like cheese did not affect me much anymore.
The first time I beat a homeless man to death, I could not even sleep properly.
“W-What are you doing?”
“Looting.”
I crouched down and searched the corpse for anything valuable.
“Does it not disgust you?”
“How do you think you get to eat rice cakes? This is how I earn money, bitch.”
“Hmph. It is only natural for humans to serve this concubine.”
“You really think that?”
“...I was about to say that. Is there anything this concubine can do to help?”
I searched the body thoroughly, but there was nothing.
“Still, this is strange.”
“What is?”
“No matter how unpopular this hunting ground is, there are no Cleaners at all. Did they all take PTO today?”
Shouldn't the respawned monsters be piling up because nobody had cleared them out?
“It has been a surfaced rift for two hundred years. There is nothing strange about it.”
“I think you just raised a flag.”
“What is a flag?”
“It's a thing.”
“Are you calling this concubine stupid again?”
Anyway.
I unfolded the map, roughly checked our direction, and headed toward D-13 Sector.
The deeper we went, the noisier the sewers became.
There had always been the sticky sound of flowing water and noises from the surface leaking through occasional ventilation shafts.
But in areas where wastewater fell straight down, the echoes made proper conversation nearly impossible.
Then, as I carelessly rounded a ninety-degree corner...
“Eh?”
“Hm?”
This time, I had no chance to react before running into other fixers around the bend.
The recognition-inhibiting necklaces Shion and I wore blurred people's perception of us into that of passing strangers, but they were not invisibility cloaks.
If we encountered someone like this, there was no answer.
“...”
“...”
We both stopped dead.
There were two of them.
A middle-aged man covered in facial scars and a somewhat plump middle-aged woman.
A married couple?
They wore respectable coats and carried the aura of people confident in their abilities.
And judging by the woman's well-stuffed purse, they were definitely not riffraff.
The man's hand had already gone to the sword at his waist.
The woman was looking us over from head to toe, assessing our level.
They did not seem to be Mages.
Grade 7? Grade 6?
With that confident aura, they might be Grade 6.
Ha, fuck. What a headache.
If even one of them was Grade 6, could I protect Shion while fighting?
For now, I made a subtle hand signal telling Shion to stay still and do nothing.
“Big brother! Big sister! Nice to meet you!”
I smiled brightly and rubbed my palms together.
“Why do you both look so murderous? Did you have a marital spat or something? Heh, I can tell at a glance that sister-in-law here is so beautiful, shit-flies must have been buzzing around her. Right?”
Necropolis was a world of wilderness and barbarism.
Paradoxically, if two sides seemed roughly equal in strength, they talked first.
The other side must have judged my level fairly high too. The man kept his hand on his sword hilt, but the corner of his mouth lifted slightly.
“What a load of nonsense. Where are you headed, brother?”
“Straight ahead, as it happens.”
“Really? And who is that woman beside you? She doesn't look like a fixer.”
“Come on, big brother. You're a married man. What are you going to do with a background check on someone else's woman?”
“What?!”
“We're just passing through. Let's not spill blood and go our separate ways, yeah?”
I acted cocky enough to show that I would fight if needed.
The woman cut in with a voice dripping with fat.
“The path ahead is blocked anyway. We were heading back after a wasted trip. Good timing. A Cleaner might show up. Shall we travel together?”
Were they insane?
Did they think I was an idiot?
Form a party with strangers in Necropolis?
Still...
The path was blocked?
That was possible.
We had already passed a few dead ends blocked by absurdly thick iron bars.
But this felt suspicious.
I looked the two fixers over.
Beads of sweat on their faces.
A strange wariness, as though they would not let us pass no matter what.
And they were trying to send us down another route...
“Ah, what a shame. Still, travelling together is a little awkward. I'll make a quick trip ahead, so why don't you come by in five minutes?”
“Shall we?”
“Probably for the best. It's a dangerous city, after all.”
“Fine. You go ahead.”
“Yep! Then take care!”
The moment I turned my back on them...
Bang!
I heard someone launch off the ground with enough force to crack it.
I fucking knew it.
I immediately shoved Shion behind me and turned.
The couple rushed at us with Sandevistan activated.
The man held a sword, the woman an axe.
Their cheek fat wobbled as they rapidly closed the distance.
They were fast, but Grade 7.
Ha. I lost out by getting scared.
“Die!!!!”
“Haaah!!!”
I drew up my mana.
“From here on, this is self-defense, right?”
Maybe because I had experienced death again.
Mana even denser than before sloshed through my magic circuits like black tar.
Black mana seeped through my skin like liquid.
It was my first time using this in real combat, but...
I did not think it would fail.
This death was as vivid as Kisara's sword strike.
“Death Sentence: Death by Burning.”
Black flames arose.
A dance of black fire clung stickily to my body and flickered.
“Dear!”
“It’s okay! We can endure it!”
Perhaps they wore Protective Garments beneath their coats, because they charged even after seeing the flames.
“You can't.”
Fwoooosh!!!
The black flames lunged out like a wild beast.
Rather than mere flickering fire, it looked more like a flamethrower blasting burning fuel through a high-pressure hose.
The result was the same.
“Gaaah!!!”
“Aaah!!!”
The black flames instantly swallowed the criminal couple.
They screamed and flailed their arms and legs, trying to shake off the fire, but it was useless.
Death Sentence was that kind of magic.
Splash!
The couple, tap-dancing like mad, instinctively jumped into the wastewater channel.
“No!”
I screamed as I watched them.
Gloop!
Sure enough, the Old Sewers' rules took effect. Tentacles wrapped around them, and they vanished.
“My loot!!!!”
Even Grade 7 fixers carried some pretty decent stuff!!!
What a waste!!!
Anyway, it was my first time using Death by Burning in an actual fight, and its performance was certain.
I had expected a battle against two Grade 7 fixers, but it had been absurdly easy.
“Boksun, are you okay?”
“I-I am fine.”
The fake Progenitor sat there blankly, then belatedly took my hand and stood.
“Your oppa was cool, right?”
“Hmph. To this concubine, it was merely a cute little trick.”
Hmm.
If she had inherited the True Progenitor's memories, that made sense.
“Master...! Master...! I was wrong...!”
The moment I turned around and ran like hell, I got to enjoy the fake Progenitor's cute little trick of panting as she chased after me.
Enough joking around.
“Boksun, report anything strange immediately.”
“Hah... Hah... What do you mean?”
“Just tell me the moment anything feels even slightly off.”
Those two fixer spouses had seemed strange no matter how I looked at it, right?
Wanting to miss nothing unusual, I carefully examined every corner of the passage.
Then I found...
A huge, old sheet of plywood propped against the wall.
“Is this it?”
It was covered in mottled mold and filth, making it hard to distinguish from the wall, but there was a slight gap.
I grabbed the edge of the plywood and flung it aside.
Crash!
When the plywood fell, it revealed a hole large enough to crawl through.
It was obviously man-made.
A faint phosphorescent glow leaked out from within.
Those idiots. So this was why they were saying we could not pass?
If they had just let us through, I would not even have noticed.
Thinking of the stupid criminal couple, I clicked my tongue.
“H-How did you notice something like this? You are amazing, Master!”
“...”
“Why are you looking at me like that?!”
It could not be helped.
It was not that the fake Progenitor was pathetic. I was just too smart.
“Hehehe.”
I was upset that the loot had fallen out of the map, but this was not bad.
It was time to see what they had hidden badly enough to make such a fuss.
It could not be the True Progenitor's hidden slush fund, could it?
Footnotes:
Sanji is a One Piece character famous for his spiraled eyebrows.
Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried
