WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 62: The Old Sewers (4)
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1.
The sedimentation tank concealing the True Progenitor’s slush fund.
Xuan Sunming appeared like a boss.
He was Brother Yiming’s half-brother and my predecessor.
He’d never properly handed anything over to me, but he was one of the people who’d personally taught me the attitude needed to survive in this shitty city.
Still, I wasn’t exactly glad to see him.
He was a cowardly druggie I hated.
“Sunming, you bastard, how much shit have you shot up? What’s with your complexion?”
“Kh... Kheh... Khah...!”
At my icebreaker joke, Sunming made a strange sound and his jawbone rattled.
He was probably laughing.
Fluorescent liquid dripped from his mouth like drool every time he did.
“How the hell are you still alive?”
No, was he even alive?
He didn’t look alive at all.
Half his face was bone. One eye was gone.
I vividly remembered dunking his corpse into the sewers after his guts had spilled out.
“Master, conversation is meaningless. That one is undead.”
“Undead?”
According to Boksun’s brief explanation...
The wastewater flowing through the Old Sewers wasn’t ordinary sewage.
The sewers were a rift thoroughly overtaken by Black Dust.
They held a power capable of twisting and distorting reality.
On top of that, the Twilight and Overnus corporate duo had dumped industrial waste into them.
The wastewater had become a cocktail of chaos where nothing strange would be surprising. Occasionally, someone who died with a lingering obsession would rise again within it.
Feral undead like Sunming were one of the consequences of environmental pollution.
“So that means he’s undead?”
“That is correct, Master.”
“I can’t believe it!”
But then again...
“It could happen.”
This was a world where zombie viruses existed and vampire clones wore bunny suits.
Was opening a fermentation jar to find the soy-marinated crab alive really that shocking?
“Boksun, stay back.”
I drew up my mana.
I couldn’t turn back after coming this far.
A champion had to accept a revenge match, no matter who the challenger was.
Besides...
Honestly, I didn’t think he’d let me run.
Conversation obviously wasn’t going to work.
“Kh... Hrrr...”
Sunming ground his teeth.
His head rolled around like a drug addict’s, and his body swayed unsteadily.
But his hatred-filled single eye was firmly fixed on me.
How strong was he now?
Blood was thicker than water.
True to being Yiming’s half-brother, Sunming had been the strongest Grade 7 fixer I knew.
And by the rules of the genre, a returning enemy always leveled up at least once.
Looking at the dead Cleaners scattered everywhere, he wouldn’t be an easy opponent.
Then what about me?
I’d killed Sunming shortly after learning Death Sentence.
Now I had an Engraving I hadn’t possessed back then, along with the experience of killing dozens of fixers.
Roooooar!!!!
Between Sunming and me, multicolored wastewater poured down in arches.
Beneath pale vertical lights, the roar of water threatened to split my ears.
Splash.
The moment an unidentified lump sent ripples across the black lake,
we moved at the same time.
Hissss!!!
Sunming’s rocket hammer ignited.
Using its thrust, he charged at me in an instant.
Fast.
He moved at roughly the same speed as the Gold Carp hitman who’d nearly killed me before I could even touch him in the previous loop.
It was acceleration so extreme that one blink would make me lose him completely.
Green vapor spilled from his teeth, clenched jawbone, and even his empty eye socket, trailing behind his charge.
“I am the only younger brother of Brother Yiming! Sunming!!!!”
I widened the distance and formed hand seals.
I overlaid the mana I’d prepared with mindscapes of many different deaths.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Death by slashing, death by gunfire, and death by falling flew toward Sunming, densely filling my view like a barrage.
The Death Sentences unleashed through the Engraving I’d developed from my accumulated experience had a density, power, and speed incomparable to our first fight.
Sunming charging straight in without hesitation looked reckless.
Until his rocket hammer ignited again.
Hiss! Hiss! Hissss!
Having successfully lost some weight through an organ diet, Sunming’s slimmer body began moving acrobatically.
There it was.
Sunming’s signature move!
“Hoo...! Hoo! Hoo!”
Even if his mind had grown hazy, his body remembered the movements he’d honed over and over.
Like a jazz singer with dementia humming along to the accompaniment.
Undeadming’s body danced, leaving afterimages behind.
He was even faster than before, perhaps because he’d been thoroughly steeped in more drugs than the allowed dose.
And being undead, he showed no sign of tiring.
“Fuck!!! Stop dodging!!!”
I never thought I’d feel this thrill again.
After slipping past my final slash, Sunming seemed to decide there was no more reason to delay.
Boom!
He kicked off the ground hard enough to crack it and leaped straight at me.
I’d expected this much.
I held two fingers out toward Sunming.
At their tips flickered mana shaped into something completely different.
Something Sunming had never seen while alive.
The most effective kind of death for restraining an opponent who darted about like a gnat.
“Death by burning.”
Mana I’d scattered across the floor beforehand, bit by bit as though fuel had been leaking, transformed into a wall of fire.
Sunming’s feet had left the ground.
Even if he moved using his rocket hammer’s thrust, dodging flames spread across such a wide area was impossible.
Whooosh!!!
Sunming was swallowed by the flames.
“Gyaaaahhh!!!!”
Sunming let out a tearing scream.
I knew that pain well.
These were no ordinary flames.
They were magical fire that perfectly recreated the death by burning I’d experienced.
Undead were supposed to be weak against fire. It was a rule of the genre!
Then...
“What?”
The curtain of flames was violently torn apart.
For an instant, all I could see before me was Sunming, more bone exposed as his skin melted away.
His single eye burned with deeper hatred.
And then...
Like a baseball player taking a full swing,
the hammer swung with all his weight behind it, leaving a blurred afterimage.
Everything felt slow.
Crack!
The elbow I reflexively raised over my side twisted outward at a strange angle.
“Ghk...?!”
The hammer’s end dug deep into my side, folding my body through the air like a shrimp.
Gravity vanished, and my body was thrown into the air.
My vision spun as if I’d been tossed into a drum washing machine.
Ceiling, floor, black wastewater, and gray walls all mixed together in my sight.
I felt dizzy.
What was this? I suddenly felt like throwing up. It hurt.
How was I still alive? Was I still alive?
Maybe I had a concussion. My thoughts churned like muddy water.
What was I... doing again?
What had hit me? Why was I lying down?
“Master...!! Are... you... all right...?!”
I heard Boksun’s shrill voice.
It was faint, like I was hearing it underwater...
Ah, whatever.
My eyelids were too heavy. I just wanted to sleep for now.
“Boksun... five more minutes...”
At the moment my thin thread of consciousness was about to snap,
a clear notification rang beside my ear.
Ding!
[ The subtrait of “Burning Life” activates. ]
[ Prevents combat incapacitation once and lets you continue fighting. ]
It was like injecting a cool liquid into the blood vessels of my brain with a syringe.
A cold, sharp sensation forced me awake.
The pain went numb, and my blurred focus sharpened.
“Huh?!”
I sprang to my feet.
With piercing pain, my left arm dangled against my will.
When I flinched and looked down...
“Fuck!!!”
My arm had turned into a three-section folding arm!
“You fucking bastard!!! How can you swing something like that at a person?! It hurts!!!!!”
Rage.
Rage fiercer than the horrific pain numbed it.
“Khah...! Khahahah...!!!”
Sunming came rushing over, excited to flatten Cedric into a pancake.
That fucking bastard.
He was having the time of his life.
Death Sentence hadn’t worked properly.
I didn’t know why, but I had a feeling.
In the end, my firepower was insufficient.
Just like when I’d fought the Cleaner earlier.
My Death Sentence had improved greatly in quantity, but its quality hadn’t improved much at all.
Like leveling up and entering a high-level hunting ground, only to find monsters that could no longer be cleared with a single skill.
I lacked the ability.
Then what did I need to stop Sunming?
That sensation from before.
I didn’t need to recreate all of it. Even part of it would be enough.
If I could recreate even a little of that sensation, like looking down from a high place in my memories.
“...”
Despite the terrible pain tearing through my magic circuits.
Despite Sunming’s charge drawing ever closer.
I followed only a faint clue and shaped mana in a trance.
It felt like playing a piano piece I’d performed a very long time ago.
My hands had stiffened, even my muscle memory had faded, and I could only stumble through it while looking at the sheet music.
Was this it?
Had this been how I did it?
I didn’t know.
As always, this world had never given me a clear answer.
There was only one thing I knew for certain.
What was true death?
I had seen death’s true form.
Death was when that which existed no longer existed.
When ties and causality that had continued were futilely severed.
Its essence was severance.
Whether it was a living thing or not didn’t particularly matter.
I brought my fingertips together.
And swung.
There wasn’t even a sound.
A black line extending from my fingertips passed through the world, bisecting it horizontally.
It was a strange sight.
The poisonous gas bubbling upward split diagonally.
Sharp slashes appeared on the filthy walls.
The multicolored waterfalls pouring down from the ceiling were all smoothly cut apart at once.
The moment that cutting line overlapped Sunming’s body,
Drip.
A thin red line appeared on his swollen side.
His rotten skin steeped in poison.
His thick muscles and bones. Even the shaft of the steel rocket hammer he’d been so proud of.
All were cleanly cut apart.
Thud.
And then...
He never rose again.
“Ugh...”
What came out of my mouth wasn’t a victory celebration.
“Urrrgh...”
My vision suddenly grew cloudy, and before I knew it, I was sprawled on the ground.
It felt like the blood vessels in my brain were going to burst.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
A nosebleed poured onto the floor like rain.
“F... fuck...”
What was that? Did I do something I wasn’t supposed to do?!
I used a cool new technique!
I overcame adversity!
When other isekai protagonists do it, they go, “Hmm, I see. Ah, so that’s it,” and start throwing around new techniques!
“Why... fuck, why only me...?”
Step. Step.
As I writhed in bitter injustice and pain,
I heard footsteps.
Boksun stood there, her face stiff.
“...”
This scene gave me a chilling sense of déjà vu.
Back when I was still a social disaster who kept screwing up.
Sunming had beaten the shit out of me and left me half-dead, just like this.
Then Akitt and Areng found me and turned Cedric into minced meat with a hammer and a machete.
Now Sunming was gone, and so were the Cleaners.
And the master who casually sexually harassed Shion was half-dead.
Even though I knew it couldn’t be that, I couldn’t shake the ominous feeling.
“B-Boksun...”
No, right?
You know that would be a stupid thing to do, right?
I tried to look as healthy as possible so Boksun wouldn’t get any strange ideas, but my consciousness was fading.
I no longer had the strength to hold on.
Just as I was about to collapse face-first onto the floor,
Squeeze.
Warm, soft heat caught me.
A slender body tightly embraced me as I thrashed reflexively.
Then my consciousness cut out.
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