WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
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◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 70: Boksun (5)
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1.
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「Burning Life」 activates.
Checking remaining lifespan.
▶ Remaining lifespan: 41 years
▶ Soul Ash: 17 years
[Select the amount of lifespan to burn.]
【 Burn 7 years 】
- Surpass your limits for a fleeting moment.
【 Burn 17 years 】
- Gain the power to bridge the gap in rank.
【 Burn 40 years 】
- Burn everything you have left and achieve a miracle.
※ Warning ※
- Lifespan spent will be permanently deducted from your base lifespan in future iterations.
- The spent lifespan will receive the status condition: Soul Ash.
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That place.
A colorless hill lined with charred ash and candleholders burned down to their wick ends.
At the center of that graveyard of candleholders.
Fwoosh.
A single pitiable flame burned.
There was a candle burning away my life.
“Hmm.”
I had come here with my resolve firmly set, but...
Seeing how noticeably shorter the candle had become left me strangely unsettled.
Li Cheng was a Gold Carp Family executive responsible for combat, a third-tier mage.
I could not stand against him with a half-hearted Equivalent Exchange.
I needed to burn at least seventeen years.
“I can win it back and repay it, but...”
I did not know what the world wanted from me.
I did not know why I had been given such a bizarre power as Death Game.
But one truth remained unchanged.
This iteration had failed.
So this was pointless.
Truly worthless.
No matter how much I filled Boksun's memory album with shining memories.
The Boksun of the next iteration would forget everything in the end.
Her sacrifice. My resolve. Our memories.
Even the fireworks that had embroidered the night sky above our cramped one-room apartment.
All of it.
It would simply crumble away into the cracks of time.
A voice within me whispered belatedly.
Stop being reckless.
Take the wiser, more efficient path.
Do not throw your life away somewhere so useless. Plan for what comes next.
Do not stake too much on a fleeting world that would be forgotten anyway.
“No.”
I shook my head.
“I'll remember.”
2.
The candle flame surged violently, and mana filled me.
“Phew...”
Mixed with my breath, mixed with the mana scattering around me.
Ash drifted about like the first snow.
A candle burning in exchange for seventeen years.
The realm of the first tier.
It would only last three minutes.
Still, it felt incredible.
An omnipotence that made me feel like I could do anything.
The superiority of transcending the limits of the human species and standing at the summit, looking down on everything below, boiled within me.
“Ah, I didn't want to use this in a place like this!”
I'm so jealous of first-tier mages!
They get to feel this fucking amazing every day?!
“Y-You...! What on earth did you do?!”
Li Cheng's eyes went wide at my suddenly overwhelming presence.
“Master! Wh-What did you do? This much mana, all of a sudden...?”
Boksun, who had been trying to extort Li Cheng by threatening self-harm, also stared in astonishment.
Both Boksun and that queen had such satisfying reactions.
They had to react this much for spending my lifespan after making up my mind to feel worthwhile.
Still, I could not get drunk on this feeling of omnipotence and make a mistake.
“First tier? Did you get carried away believing in such paltry power?”
My opponent was Li Cheng, a third-tier mage.
As I said before, a Red Pole was an executive position assigned to combat.
Even if penny-ante Cedric made an all-in leverage bet with his life, Li Cheng was a whale in an entirely different weight class.
In a straight fight, escaping would be difficult, let alone winning.
“How laughable.”
Despite his words, Li Cheng was on high alert.
Well, someone he had thought was a complete pushover suddenly displaying first-tier mana would be far more alarming than an ordinary first-tier mage.
Of course he would be wary.
And besides...
I could see it.
Li Cheng's eyes moving unsteadily.
His gaze kept moving between me, ash swirling around me, and Boksun, who held a shard of glass to her throat.
In other words, he was anxious.
Right.
He had realized Boksun was missing this morning and cried his eyes out.
He was desperate.
I could tell just by watching him play along with Boksun's ridiculous hostage act.
That was exactly the point I needed to target.
“Hey, shit gay. When did I ever say first tier was the end?”
I casually slipped a hand inside my clothes.
Then I leisurely lit a cigarette.
Twenty seconds had probably already passed, fuck.
But this was important work.
I formed magic while calmly putting the cigarette between my lips.
“I'm Cedric Yagyu. With the Paradise Administration Bureau. An Executor sent under the Director's orders to retrieve the Doll of the True Progenitor.”
I spoke one word at a time, in the calmest and boldest voice I could manage.
“An Executor...?!”
Li Cheng's eyes went so wide they looked ready to pop out.
“D-Don't lie! I have heard nothing of this...!”
Normally, such posturing would have been laughable.
But when someone's emotions were in turmoil and something impossible was happening, it could sound serious.
I exhaled a long stream of smoke and smiled.
“Since when did we move with your permission?”
Hummm!
First-tier mana born from seventeen years of burning lifespan pressed down on the space around us with a creak, creak.
“Well, anyway, that's how it is. Now die.”
When I raised a finger, Li Cheng screamed as if frightened out of his wits.
“Eeeek!!! Myriad Gold Cascade!!!”
It was the technique I had seen before.
Thousands of golden threads scattered through the air instantly gathered into a massive cocoon.
The full defensive power of a third-tier mage.
There was no way I could pierce that, no matter how I looked at it.
I had never intended to.
My fingertip was not aimed at Li Cheng.
It was aimed above his head.
At an old support beam in an illegally expanded building.
I drove Death Sentence: Severance into that pillar.
An absolute sentence that bestowed death not only upon living beings, but even upon objects.
Swish.
A black half-moon of Death Sentence silently sank into the pillar.
The cut was so smooth that even I, who had made it, almost went, Did I cut that?
Then.
Creeeak!
The building, having lost its support, came crashing down under the pull of gravity.
Tens of tons of debris and water tanks poured onto Li Cheng's golden cocoon.
“W-What is this?!”
In the brief instant when a cloud of dust and a deluge of water blocked his view, I grabbed Boksun by the nape as she stood there blinking with her mouth wide open.
“Boksun, why are you spacing out?! We have to run!”
“M-Master?! Are you truly with the Paradise Administration Bureau? Are you from the Yagyu Family?!”
“Hey! Of course that was a lie!!!”
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Once the building began collapsing, it fell over Li Cheng's head like dominoes with a thunderous roar.
I slung Boksun over my shoulder and ran at full speed.
Once Boksun understood the situation, she began to whine.
“Master! What are you thinking?! You could have simply abandoned this concubine!”
“Hey! Don't yell into my ear!”
“And that power... Master... your life force...! Y-You fool! Fool, fool!”
Draped over my shoulder like a blanket, Boksun gave my back little pat, pat strikes.
Even if she was only a fake Progenitor, could Boksun see my shortened lifespan?
“This isn't the time for that! That won't hold him for thirty seconds!”
I bickered with Boksun as I ran for the exit of Aquarium Street.
We had not even taken more than a few steps when...
Boooom!
A massive explosion erupted behind us.
“Fuck...”
Rumble...
I was horrified by what I saw behind me.
The collapsed building was being ground apart like it had been thrown into a blender by tens of thousands of golden threads.
Thirty seconds, my ass.
Not even ten seconds had passed before the piled wreckage was reduced to a tornado of dust.
“You bastard!!!”
Li Cheng's furious roar rang out from within the dust cloud.
“You dare impersonate the Administration Bureau and humiliate me!”
Li Cheng strode out of the dust cloud without so much as a scratch.
He did not even have a tiny cut.
And he was seriously pissed off.
Wow, his base stats really were different.
That was a third-tier mage?
“Ha... This isn't right.”
I had taken out a loan on my life while posturing like a total badass, and all I got was running thirty meters?
This seriously seemed like grounds for a refund.
Then.
“Master, I shall borrow it for a moment.”
“Huh? Borrow what?”
Boksun flexibly bent at the waist, then bit the back of my neck without permission.
Sluurp, sluurp...
“What are you doing?”
Was this the last supper?
“Dun make me talk.... Sluurp...”
I calmed my bitter feelings.
Fine, Boksun.
At least enjoy that.
“I'll somehow handle this...”
“Die!!!”
With Li Cheng's shout, golden threads that swayed like sea-anemone tentacles shot toward Boksun.
When Brother Yiming fought against them, I had merely thought the technique looked flashy.
But now that it was rushing right at me, I understood.
Wow.
There was no dodging this.
It was like a golden tidal wave.
Even each thin individual thread held the force of heavy machinery.
Third-tier mages were fucking insanely strong.
At the moment death reached right before us.
“Master. Hold on tight.”
Boksun's dignified voice sounded as though she had never been cowering at all.
Then.
Boooom!
With an explosion loud enough to tear my eardrums, my vision melted away.
“Ugh... Bbb... B...”
My face rippled in the wind as though I were skydiving.
A wall of air howled past my ears.
And when I regained my senses a moment later...
Flap.
We were flying.
Crimson wings had sprouted from Boksun's back as she held me in her arms.
Li Cheng and his golden tendrils, which had been right in front of us, were now far below, a bird's-eye view.
“Hey, Boksun... You...”
Her crimson eyes glowed brilliantly.
Streams of scarlet vapor leaked from Boksun's body.
But how?
When had Boksun, who could only use fake Progenitor Fear and shoot little drops of blood pop, pop, learned a new trick?
“I have always felt that Master's blood is quite the delicacy. Today, it tastes especially good.”
“Ah.”
Right.
My blood was now the blood of a first-tier mage.
Our clever Boksun had put that to use faster than I had.
“Boksun, you're especially pretty today, aren't you?”
“Hmph. This concubine has always been a beauty capable of toppling kingdoms.”
Boksun grinned, baring her fangs arrogantly.
“Hold on tighter. We are escaping, Master!!!”
I twisted in midair and clung tightly to Boksun.
“Jin Boksun! Launch!!!”
“Why is Master so excited?”
Of course I was excited!
I had thought I was going to die for sure!
Then.
Swoooosh!
The old buildings crammed close together, the people who had made their homes within them.
All of it lost its shape and stretched into long, multicolored lines, sucked behind us.
“Urgh...!”
I could not breathe.
With every flap of her wings, we covered dozens of meters.
The gravitational acceleration that felt like it would twist my guts crushed my entire body.
“Kyahahaha!!!!”
Scattering streams of crimson light from her eyes as she tore through the sky, Boksun looked just like...!
The Red Flash of Necro Village!
“Master! We are flying!!! We are flying!!!”
Boksun burst into delighted laughter.
Her laughter seemed incredibly radiant.
Like a fleeting but intense candle flame that burned everything to make a single moment shine.
“Hey!!! Boksun!!! But where are we going!!!”
“To the end of this world!!!”
“Sure, sure!!! Our Boksun can do whatever she wants!!!”
Whoooosh!
The green smog line split under the pressure of the wind.
Then.
The stage that would become the final destination of both the previous iteration and this one came into view.
Far away, at the edge of the gray city.
The only stairway leading to the sky.
Atlas, F Sector's elevator, towered there.
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