WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ A Gacha Addict's Life in Fusionpunk ◈
Chapter 71: Boksun (6)
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1.
Have you ever flown through the sky with nothing but your bare body?
I have.
I had 152 wingsuit BASE jumps under my belt.
“Kiyaa-hoo!”
“Yahoo!!!”
But the Boksun Suit offered an even more dizzying rush of speed and excitement.
The thrill of defying gravity.
The unreal sight of everything beneath my feet looking like miniatures.
In an instant, we left C Sector behind and entered the skies above F Sector, which glowed bluish with residual mana.
I could see Atlas, F Sector’s famous cargo elevator terminal.
Thoom. Thooom.
The elevator’s operating sounds echoed like a giant’s heartbeat.
“It looks even bigger from the air!!!”
That thing alone had a real sci-fi feel in this setting.
Like someone had stuck an orbital elevator onto a wall.
“Master! What should we do now?!”
Actually, I had no idea how to operate this elevator.
Brother Yiming had said last iteration that it seemed to move somehow if you had Universal Coins...
“Boksun!!! Let’s land first and think about it!”
“Understood!!”
Thoooom!
In that instant, my hair stood on end.
Killing intent that made my skin prickle? Or mana waves?
Boksun and I turned around.
“Aaaaah!!!”
“Aaaaah!!!”
We screamed at the same time.
Li Cheng, whom we had surely left far behind, was racing toward us at insane speed, golden filaments writhing around him.
He was not flying, but with nothing more than jump, leap, land, he was rapidly closing the distance.
“Get back here!!!”
Li Cheng was right on our asses.
We needed to recognize the seriousness of this situation. Li Cheng, of all people, was right on our asses.
Even flight that defied gravity had not been enough to shake him completely.
“Boksun, emergency!!! Take off again!!!”
“Understood!!!”
Where were we supposed to run?
This was Necropolis.
A cramped city wedged between moats.
Even if we fled with godlike aerial maneuvers, we were still rats in a trap.
At most, we had three more minutes.
Less if Boksun ran out of steam.
Our eyes turned toward the same place.
The black sky that always loomed over us, blotched with Black Dust and without a single star.
“Hey, Jin Boksun.”
“What is it, Master?”
“Want to try going up there?”
“I have always wanted to.”
We faced each other and smiled.
Flap.
With the feeling of my stomach dropping out from under me, we took flight.
Up there.
Toward that ugly sky.
Toward the ceiling of this shithole of a city.
“You fucking bastard!!!”
As we gained altitude, Li Cheng, who had stopped his pursuit, grew smaller and smaller.
“Hey, hey, that bastard’s pissed.”
“Kyahahaha!!! Serves him right!”
I flipped off Li Cheng as he shouted in rage.
Since he was a Mage, I hoped his eyesight was good.
“Master! We are entering!”
We threw ourselves into the mass of Black Dust, as though falling toward the sky.
Into a demonic realm that warped even the laws of humankind and nature.
Into the end of this world, where blackened dead pixels seemed to boil.
And immediately after that...
Bzzzt. Bzzzzzzt.
A screeching static tore through my ears.
My vision filled with noise.
Glitches flashed like I had tried to run a high-end game on a school computer.
I felt Boksun hug me.
I hugged her too.
Then...
.
.
.
I had no idea how much time had passed since we entered the Black Dust.
Nor did I know how we had arrived here.
The scenery had abruptly changed, like reaching new terrain after a game map finished loading.
We stood in the middle of it.
“Huh?”
Still holding Boksun tightly, I looked around in confusion.
It was a truly unreal landscape.
Like an unfinished map whose developers had stopped halfway through applying the textures.
Against a bruise-purple void, twenty-meter-square concrete slabs floated like stepping stones.
Thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps even more slabs were connected only by iron stairways.
The place where we stood was one such slab.
“Is this... the Void?” Boksun muttered blankly.
Ding!
======
::: New Area Entered (NEW!) :::
Rusty iron stairs that stretch endlessly into the high sky.
A world that goes on forever.
This is the Void, “Depth ?: Infinite Staircase.”
Watch your step.
If you fall here, you will never reach the ground.
TIP
- The rule here is, “Time flows slowly.”
- The rule here is, “Buildings exist in empty space.”
- The rule here is, “ ”
::: Challenges (NEW!) :::
- Enter the Void. +5pt
======
The Status Window made the situation a little clearer.
It looked like I had somehow clipped out of bounds while flying into skies corrupted by Black Dust.
I had explored plenty of rifts, but this was my first time in the Void.
Seeing the infamous Void with my own eyes...
“It really looks fucking awful.”
It looked like a somewhat dumb, half-baked rift.
Still, one thing was certain.
“Boksun, that ass-loving bastard can’t come this far, right?”
“He absolutely cannot.”
My seventeen years seemed more valuable than I had thought.
Anyway.
That was how we ended up adrift in the Void, the Infinite Staircase.
2.
Boksun’s flight had not been a miracle.
It had been a reckless miracle achieved with my blood, which had briefly reached Rank 1, and by spending her own life force, of which she had barely five days left.
In other words, we had borrowed against the future.
That left Boksun pretty wiped out after flying.
She had always been pale, but now she was nearly paper-white, and she could barely hold herself up.
So I carried Boksun on my back.
“Ooh, this is quite stable.”
I roughly tied the coat I was wearing into a makeshift Korean baby sling. Boksun squirmed around and settled in comfortably.
“Where are we going now?”
At her question, I looked up.
Concrete slabs and iron stairs stretching through the distant sky and beyond the clouds.
“I’m thinking of going up.”
“What is at the end?”
“I don’t know. We’ll just go.”
“That is not very reassuring.”
“Hey, bitch, did you have a plan when you burned through your life force?”
Boksun giggled for some reason, as though that were funny.
It was a pitiful excuse for making memories...
But at least we had time.
I began climbing the iron stairs without any real destination.
“It feels like riding in a sedan chair.”
“You like it?”
“Hee-hee.”
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Each time my heels pushed against the stairs, the sound echoed around us.
The stairs were more stable than they looked.
They seemed to hang thousands of meters in the air, but they did not even sway. There was not the slightest breeze.
Up the stairs to the next level.
Then from that level to the one a little higher.
We kept moving forward without purpose.
“So you were in a place like this the whole time?”
“Probably.”
“What do you mean, probably?”
“Did I not tell you? My memories from before the laboratory are hazy.”
As though we had agreed, neither of us spoke of what lay ahead.
“What kind of woman does Master like?”
“Me? Hmm. A bunny girl who would go to a casino with me on our honeymoon.”
“...You are trash.”
“What about you?”
“I... like warm people.”
“I’m a perfect fit, then. I’m pretty hot.”
“Master is excluded.”
“Why?”
“You are too loud.”
We just chatted about trivial things that did not matter.
“Hey! Fuck, I can’t go any farther!”
“Humans are weak indeed.”
We did not climb stairs all day.
No matter how light Boksun was, I had my limits.
We stopped to rest on the platforms from time to time.
“Master, what are you doing all of a sudden?”
“Wait. Please, please, please...”
Resting felt like a waste, so I spun the Old World Shopping Mall gacha for the first time in a while.
“Yes!!!!”
“W-What is it now?!”
The gacha gave me a pretty decent item.
- Anton Whisky Bonbon 64-Count Set (UC)
A snack made of dark chocolate shaped like tiny bottles, each containing a small amount of premium whisky.
“Ooh! This is revolutionary! How can such a snack exist in this world!”
“Is it good?”
“Why have you been hiding these until now? Were you hiding them so you could eat them alone?”
“Spit it out, bitch.”
“No!”
Boksun had been gradually losing strength, but at that moment, she was as lively as before.
Our journey continued after we got the whisky bonbons.
Maybe the Void was not as bad as expected.
Or perhaps this Infinite Staircase was relatively gentlemanly for a Void staircase.
Without any particular danger, we continued climbing.
Until we were swallowed by the thick clouds that had seemed so far away.
Visibility was one meter.
Dense water fog filled every direction, close enough to grasp if I stretched out my hand.
It felt as though we were walking along the boundary between reality and dreams.
“Fuck, it’s damp.”
“...”
“Boksun?”
“...I, I dozed off.”
“This bitch, while your master is working so hard.”
“The whisky bonbons made me feel a little drunk.”
That could not be it.
Boksun could really hold her liquor.
There was no way she would get drunk off so little.
The anxiety spreading through my chest and the urgency that made me want to throw up brought me to a realization.
I had acted as if I had accepted everything, but foolishly, I had still been clinging to a final hope.
A cruel world where miracles did not exist.
But this was the Void.
A place where perception and natural law twisted.
If we could pass through these thick clouds and reach the end of the stairs.
If we could do that.
Maybe.
Perhaps a slightly different ending was waiting for us.
That was the hope I had held onto.
“Boksun.”
“Why do you keep calling me? It is annoying.”
“Just because.”
I kept talking to Boksun.
I was afraid of the silence.
“Can I ask you something?”
“What is it?”
“Why did you save me back then, even though you used up your whole lifespan?”
Boksun did not answer right away.
Instead, after a long hesitation...
“...It was the first time.”
“The first time for what?”
“The first time someone had treated me warmly.”
She answered as though embarrassed.
3.
How many more levels had we climbed?
How many more hours had passed?
Boksun’s answers gradually grew quieter.
I could clearly feel the heartbeat that had thumped against my back growing weaker and weaker.
Please.
Just give me a little more time.
“Ah...”
The damp fog that had wet my cheeks cleared as if it had been a lie.
My vision opened up.
We had finally left the clouds behind.
Below us, a sea of clouds like a vast cotton field churned like a pale ocean.
And above us, a pitch-black sky, as though someone had poured out ink, greeted us.
I gave a bitter smile.
“Was it really an Infinite Staircase...?”
There were no miracles.
The rusty iron stairs still stretched onward, grimly and silently, toward the center of that black sky.
“...”
I no longer had the strength to climb.
Sweat was already dripping from my chin.
My thigh muscles felt like they were about to tear apart.
Maybe...
Instead of doing something so pointless, I should have just chatted with Boksun on one of the lower platforms.
Then she could have spent her last moments more comfortably, instead of clinging desperately to my back.
As I lowered my head and chewed over a shapeless mass of emotion...
“Master...”
“What?”
“Look over there.”
I slowly raised my head.
At the edge of the sky, which had held nothing but blackness, and along the round boundary of clouds stretching into the distance...
A pale violet glow stirred.
The violet soon turned warm orange, then a dazzling gold that hurt my eyes.
Dawn was breaking.
The sun that rose beyond the horizon of clouds set the sprawling sea of clouds ablaze with brilliant gold.
“Wow...”
An awed voice escaped beside my ear.
“Put me down at once, Master!”
“Hey! Hey! You’ll fall!”
Boksun came to her senses, squirmed around, and climbed down from my back.
The moment her feet touched the ground, she staggered, yet still ran to the edge of the concrete block.
“It is beautiful. Truly...”
We sat at the edge above the clouds and leisurely watched the dawn break.
I had a cigarette clamped between my lips.
Boksun unwrapped and ate the remaining whisky bonbons one by one.
We watched that small miracle for a long, long time.
Tap.
A whisky bonbon fell from Boksun’s hand.
Chocolate shattered, and whisky flowed out from within.
“Ugh...”
I carefully caught her swaying body.
“Master... I ate a lot of chocolate with alcohol in it, so I am very sleepy.”
“If you are sleepy, you should sleep.”
“Then... may I make one last request before I sleep?”
“What is it?”
Boksun grabbed my collar and pulled me toward her with all her strength.
Cold lips.
Vivid warmth.
A brief kiss.
“How was that? Did I get you?”
Boksun giggled as though she had successfully pulled off a prank.
“Your face is a mess, Master.”
“Shut up, bitch.”
Her red eyes, moist and glistening in the dawn light, stared straight at me.
“It is a shame. I should have just pounced on you then...”
“Yeah... even when you offered yourself to me, I could not have you.”
Boksun smiled faintly and buried her head in my arms.
“Master, when I wake up again, then... then...”
Her mumbling voice faded away.
“...”
A long silence fell.
“See you again, Boksun.”
It was a terribly long silence.
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