WETRIED TRANSLATIONS
Is It Bad That the Main Character’s a Roleplayer?
[Translator – Aren]
◈ Chapter 362 Even though The Right Eye Cannot See (3)
Would she make it there in time? Was reaching that place even possible in the first place?
With every step she took, despair rose higher and higher. It was a sticky, clinging feeling, as if she was trudging through a swamp.
Crack.
But even clouds holding a blizzard within them were said to shine brightly along their edges. Just like that saying, a new choice appeared before her when it had seemed there was no way forward.
Whooooosh.
“...Hope bought by wagering a death no different from failure.”
Truly, there was no need to hesitate.
“Alsvithr, it’s more than enough as a ticket to reach your side.”
Ah. For my sister, who was far too fast, who reached even death before me.
Berserk threw herself beyond the night sky. She had only one target. The brightest star in the world.
* * *
Tap, tatap!
I used the tentacles as footholds again and launched myself into the air. The instant the beast’s eyes entered the edge of my vision, I forcibly dragged up my Arcane Power. Bang! Arcane Power surged along with my gesture, turning into sparks, growing into flames, and spreading directly across the beast’s eyes.
Kraaaaaah!
Oh, that actually seemed to have hurt it. Taking the beast’s scream as evidence, I prepared to fall.
Thump, thump, thump!
"......!!"
But before I’d even fallen 2 meters, hundreds of mouths shot toward me through the flames like vines. They were too thin to use as footholds, and with hundreds of them coming at me in swarms, I couldn’t immediately think of any way to deal with them.
"What are you? Some kind of disaster god……?!”
If those touched me , it felt like those bruise-like curses would spread all over my body. So I had to dodge. But how? Aerotelk was still on the ground, and I was suspended in midair with absolutely nothing I could use as a foothold. How the hell was I supposed to handle this?
「Gretchen, Flash Strike……!」
'......!'
Ah, right, I could do that.
—!
A flame that devoured even sound flashed into existence. By the time its light seemed to reach my eyes, the fire itself had already vanished without leaving so much as a trace. A flame that disappeared the instant it carved away part of the world.
"...Haah."
This technique is great and all, but the Arcane Power cost is really damn high.
Even though I’d used it over a much smaller area than last time, my remaining Arcane Power had visibly dropped. I checked it, then let myself fall without much worry.
Sssssshk!
“……?!”
I’d relaxed a bit too soon. As though rushing to fill the space where the deleted tentacles had been, another cluster of tentacles shot toward me. It was a sight that made using Flash Strike feel completely meaningless.
“What the…hell……?!”
Should I have accepted losing half my Arcane Power and included the main body in the range as well? More importantly, how the hell do I dodge those? Use Flash Strike again? But if I do that after seeing what just happened, I’d be a goddamn idiot, right?
“...Wizard!”
After wracking my brain, I screamed out the answer. The longsword in my hand instantly transformed into white slime. What mattered was what it would become next.
Swoosh! A white rope with a loop at the end flew toward Aerotelk, propelled by the strength of my arm.
Whoosh!
By a hair’s breadth, my body was yanked toward the ground and away from the swarm of tentacles. If the rope had reached Aerotelk just a bit later, or if Aerotelk had hesitated for even a beat before pulling it, I definitely would’ve been swallowed by those tentacles.
“Were you actually an idiot incapable of doing anything alone?”
“And you say that as though you could deal with that thing by yourself.”
I took Aerotelk’s outstretched hand and landed lightly on the ground. Maybe to lessen the impact, Aerotelk smoothly turned as they brought me around to the other side, but that actually worked better for me.
My sliding legs bent at the knees to regain balance, while my outstretched hand gathered Arcane Power and fired it forward.
The Arcane Power flew past Aerotelk’s head, since helping me had forced them to turn their back on the monster, then ignited into flames behind them. The fire stopped the incoming swarm of tentacles.
“Inefficient. Irrational.”
“If you’re so unhappy with the way I use it, perhaps you’d care to teach me.”
Of course, those flames alone couldn’t stop them completely. The instant the sound of an explosion hit our ears, we both ran in the same direction. We hadn’t coordinated it at all. It was pure coincidence.
Thunk, thunk, thunk!
Behind us, the tentacles began stabbing into the ground one after another like spears.
Swiiish!
While considering how to deal with this mess, I reeled Ratel back in from its long rope form. The rope zipped back like a tape measure and took the shape of a sword again.
Clang, claaang!
At the same time, tentacles came crashing in from the front as well. While my blade knocked aside the first tentacle, Aerotelk handled the ones slipping in from my blind spots. Our cloaks fluttered as we naturally covered the directions that each of us just ended up in.
‘...It really does feel strangely familiar.’
「But…didn’t that person die……?」
‘We don’t know that.’
I knocked aside several tentacles while stealing glances at the incredibly fluid path of their sword. Yeah. It was familiar.
Swish.
“......!”
Then, just as we reached the beast’s left side, an enormous shadow suddenly fell over our heads. It was so large that no amount of running would let us escape in time.
“I apologize in advance.”
“What—?”
We couldn’t dodge it. The instant instinct told me that, I stopped Aerotelk and shoved them into my arms as though embracing them. Thank god that, tall as they were compared to the average person, they were still a full head shorter than me.
Aerotelk briefly showed their bewilderment and tried to resist, but soon went along with it. Apparently they realized this wasn’t the time to refuse. They were incredibly quick on the uptake after all.
Craaaaaash!
In any case, the waterfall of tentacles came crashing down on us. More precisely, onto Ratel, which had spread over us in the form of spiraling blades.
“This is... driving me insane!”
The instant the mass of tentacles struck Ratel, I poured Arcane Power into it. The blades began spinning a full 360°, shredding the tentacles apart.
That was the moment we found ourselves in a game of chicken. Which would run out first, the mass of tentacles or my Arcane Power?
Crrrrrrrrk!
But don’t skills like this usually stop after a few seconds? Why is this thing putting more and more pressure on us instead?
Even as I stared in disbelief, I focused as hard as I could on keeping Ratel spinning. If the rotation stopped, or Ratel failed to withstand the weight and broke, we’d have a real catastrophe on our hands, so I didn’t really have a choice.
My body, having forgotten the cold, sent a drop of cold sweat running down my neck.
“It’s getting narrower.”
Ah, about that. Whenever it feels like Ratel’s about to break, I make another layer farther inside and give up the outer layer. That’s how I was maintaining this.
“If you’ve noticed, I’d appreciate it if you came up with a solution.”
“If we can’t get out above ground, then we just have to go underground.”
Thud!
Aerotelk casually said this while stabbing and bursting a tentacle that had slipped through the gap between the ground and Ratel. Their calmness was a bit exasperating, but the idea itself sounded pretty good.
“That could work.”
Some of the tension that had pushed down my shoulders to their very limit drained away.
"Can that thing not pass through the earth?”
"The mass would overlap.”
"What about burrowing through it like we would?”
"Unless that thing is seeing what we do with its own eyes, those mindless mouths won’t even try.”
If that was the case, then it really was worth trying.
I pushed the white slime down into the earth. It looked as though it were being absorbed, but in reality, it was simply seeping through the tiny gaps inside.
Rumble, rumble.
As Ratel gradually pushed aside the soil and ice, part of it soon lifted a section of the ground. Since the dirt displaced to create the empty space had to fill the space we had occupied, while one of us moved into the vacated space, neither of us simply dropped underground all at once.
We were just moving step by step, like pieces in a sliding-block puzzle.
"Go.”
"I will."
At my invitation, Aerotelk slipped straight into the hole without even trying to refuse. New earth was already being pushed up into the space where they had been standing.
Krrrrrk!
But by this point, the blade section that had been shredding the tentacles was reaching its limit.
I hurriedly squeezed myself into the hole, then guided the dirt to cover it as I recalled Ratel. Thud! At the final moment before Ratel sealed the opening to the hole we had disappeared into, I saw the tentacles flood into the spot we had just been in.
Thump!
“...That puts out the urgent fire.”
Feeling the Ratel-sealed ceiling above me and the mass of tentacles pounding against the earth beyond it, I repeatedly clenched and unclenched my fist. I was worried that the tentacles might turn into a fluid-like substance like Ratel and seep through the gaps.
“So what exactly is this efficient method of yours?”
Should we move a little farther in? Or would it be better to make a path going in another direction? Maybe the attack would stop soon.
I organized the options available to me in the back of my mind. Even as I did, my gaze remained fixed on Aerotelk.
“...Are you seriously asking me that now?”
“I am. Or was what you said earlier not criticism, but just an insult?”
Ah, what the hell. That wasn’t constructive feedback, you were just being a jerk?
Feeling strangely drained, I unconsciously twisted the end of my sentence into a sarcastic tone. It was only after I said it that I realized. Wait, didn’t that sound way too snide?
“...Flame is merely a byproduct of the combustion reaction. Complete combustion may look dramatic and overwhelming, but it’s not efficient. You don’t have to burn something so completely that not even ash remains in order to kill it.”
But this time, that actually worked in my favor. No matter how I thought about it, they seemed to have taken what I said something along the lines of, ‘What, you scared?’ or ‘You don’t even know that?’... Anyway.
“And combustion reactions grow progressively. If you account for that as well, even your trash efficiency should improve somewhat.”
“Hmm.”
Still, I think I’ve got the general idea now. The explanation was a bit too scientific for me to fully grasp, but I could just try it first and poke them for more advice if it didn’t work.
“Let’s get out first.”
Once I noticed that the vibrations coming from above had completely disappeared, I changed Ratel’s shape. Ratel pushed the ceiling upward into a cone, overturning the earth and opening a path for us.
A clear sky with no tentacle swarms in sight greeted us as we stepped out.
Clang!
Correction. The bastard had apparently pulled its tentacles back because it thought we were dead, and now hurriedly attacked us again. The rising Ratel knocked the attack aside and cut through it, buying us time to move.
“Hmm.”
Good. Then should I test it now?
I sprinted across the snowfield again, gauging the distance between the beast’s snout and myself. It had pushed even farther out of the hole than before, and all eighteen of its disgusting pupils were following only me.
“So.”
It was a little unnerving, but having all the aggro on me did make it easier to attack. Feeling Aerotelk move farther away from me, I focused on my Arcane Power.
“Like this…maybe like this?”
Instead of blindly increasing the scale, set several ignition points…Trying to burn everything is just wasting energy, so make it feel more like I’m only pushing it toward death, or just cause pain…Hmm, is this right?
“Ah, this is it.”
“......!”
[...Truly, what remarkable talent.]
After correcting even the tiny part that had still felt off, I released my Arcane Power as it was. It began a little differently from an explosion. If I had to describe it, it felt more like dozens of flints striking together from every direction.
“...That’s absurd.”
Sparks burst from dozens of points and immediately began burning the tentacles. These weren’t flames consuming the tentacles themselves, but fire that cooked them from within while flowing along their surface.
And it wasn't as though the firepower was weak. The flames may have started small, but as they gradually spread and met other flames, they merged together and grew larger. In the end, they became a much bigger blaze all at once.
“You—”
Wow, this really did use a lot less Arcane Power. And it was way more effective.
Acknowledging that Aerotelk had the makings of a top-tier instructor, I attempted a second attack. The tentacles were ultimately only limbs, so this time I intended to attack the true body.
Kyaaaaaah!
“……!”
But before I could land an effective hit on the true body, the wolf-like snout opened wide and let out a roar. The sheer force of the sound overturned the snowfield and sent snow flying in every direction.
Ssssrgh!
At the same time, black mist began spreading through the air. Those definitely were cosmic specks. Crack, crack! Huge claws emerged through the gap between the snout and the crack, widening it even further.
“You vermin…….”
Ah, please, anything but an add-summoning phase. Pulling out enemies that are already a pain in the ass to kill during a boss fight was just too shameless, okay?
“Survive on your own, Wizard.”
“That hardly needed saying.”
But looking back at all the fights I’d been through, enemies with a conscience were actually pretty rare to come by. I gave up complaining. Instead of wasting time on that, it was better to squeeze in even one more second of damage as quickly as possible.
[However, you……]
But there was exactly one thing I had failed to consider.
[It’d be faster to run away to another world than burn all of that with my flames, don’t you think?]
The fact that its mass was comparable to an entire planet meant, put in another way, that its HP pool was just as stupidly massive.
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