Chapter 19 — Say a Creepy Chant, or Strike a Pose, Anything!
As round four began, Yogiri and Tomochika found themselves in the city surrounding the castle. They moved to an open square with a fountain, thinking it would be easier than fighting in the alleyways.
“Yogiri Takatou is right here!” Tomochika shouted as always, as Yogiri was already standing off to the side with his ears covered. After quite a wait, worrying that no one was going to show up, something fell from the sky. The buildings around them shook as the scenery flickered, moving them into the battle channel.
A party of five had appeared in front of them. A boy in a T-shirt and jeans, a huge man with skin like stone, a thin man with three pairs of eyes and three pairs of glasses to match, a woman with hair long enough to cover her face and reach the ground, and a young man in glasses and a lab coat.
The entire party seemed rather mismatched, but Yogiri did recognize one of them. The man in the lab coat was Shirou, a Sage. He was involved with running Cavern Quest and had appeared once to explain a change in the rules to them.
“Yo. I’m Demon Lord Gorbagion. These are my Four Heavenly Kings.” The boy in the front appeared to be their leader.
“Gorbagion? I feel like I’ve heard that name before,” Yogiri said.
“That one guy mentioned him, right?” Tomochika replied. “That ‘weakest’ guy.”
Her reminder sparked the memory again. Back in Base Town, they had been attacked by a horned boy calling himself Naltine, one of Gorbagion’s Four Heavenly Kings.
“But he’s not here,” Yogiri observed.
“I guess not. He said he was the weakest, so maybe he died?”
“It’s pretty common for the Demon Lord to switch out his Four Heavenly Kings, right?” Gorbagion said. Yogiri supposed if the Demon Lord himself said so, that had to be true, although he didn’t care all that much about his enemy’s situation.
“Anyway, why would the Demon Lord’s army join a game like this?”
“Because someone more evil than the Demon Lord showed up. No matter what we do, we’re being overshadowed by you.”
“Not much I can do about that,” Yogiri said.
“We’ve had people attack us for all sorts of reasons before, but this is a new one, huh?” Tomochika commented.
“Anyway, please die.”
Yogiri Takatou vs. Demon Lord Gorbagion: FIGHT!!!
It seemed there’d be no room for negotiation, as one word from Gorbagion triggered the start of the fight.
“Breia, go give him a hit for me,” Gorbagion instructed.
“Got it!” The man with stonelike skin, Breia, stepped forward. He looked like the kind of person to be overly reliant on brute force, and sure enough he charged at Yogiri without a second thought. Winding up his huge fist for a punch, he immediately collapsed to the ground.
“I see,” Gorbagion said. “Go ahead and give it a try, Haruka.”
“Hey...” Haruka murmured, her face still hidden behind her hair. “What happened to the dog?”
“The dog? Oh, Dai? We split up.” Even remembering it caused a twinge of pain in Yogiri’s heart.
“Why?! I said I wanted him!” The sudden angry shout caught Yogiri off guard. He hadn’t expected a reaction like that.
Haruka vanished. Tomochika turned around, and Yogiri shortly after, to see her lying on the ground behind them. Apparently she was the speed type.
“It would be a lot faster if you all just attacked me at once,” Yogiri said. Even in this situation, he didn’t plan on using his power proactively. Restricting his power to be used for self-defense ended up with the same result over and over, so even if it drew the fight out longer, he wanted to keep to that principle.
“All right. Graze, Shirou, take him together.”
The six-eyed man and the Sage stepped forward, both collapsing immediately.
“Jeez, this is so boring!” Gorbagion snapped. “Can’t you at least do something?! Say a creepy chant, or strike a pose, anything!”
“I don’t really have the chance to do anything like that, though.”
The Four Heavenly Kings had been slain, but Yogiri hadn’t done much of anything. They had all been killed by his power automatically activating in response to danger.
“But you understand my power by now, right? Why don’t you surrender?” Yogiri tried.
“You think any Demon Lord would do that?”
“Yeah, I guess that would be pretty lame,” Yogiri said, thinking of this in terms of a video game. He would want to throw a game that ended that way across the room. “But still, you have no chance of winning.”
“Don’t I? Hey, girl over there. You’re the next member of the Four Heavenly Kings!”
“Huh?” Tomochika blinked. “Uh, I’d rather not.”
A moment of shocked silence passed, Gorbagion being entirely unprepared for rejection.
Unfortunately, that kind of attack will not work while I am here, Mokomoko smirked, lounging in the air beside Tomochika.
“That was an attack?”
Perhaps not. It was more like a curse forcing one to enter into his army.
No doubt he had intended to make Yogiri and Tomochika fight each other. It was true that Yogiri would have had a difficult time fighting back if it was against Tomochika, but he figured he could find a way to deal with her.
“So, now what?” Yogiri asked.
“I understand your power, now. But I’m still not at full strength myself.”
“That’s easy enough to say, but you haven’t done anything yet,” Yogiri sighed. The Demon Lord’s declaration felt like it had come out of nowhere.
“Don’t be in such a rush. I get stronger as the fight goes on.” Gorbagion lifted his right hand towards the two of them, clearly intending to fire something. But naturally, he then collapsed to the ground. Whatever he had intended to do must have been dangerous enough to kill Yogiri, so Yogiri’s power had activated to stop it.
Yogiri Takatou Wins!
“So, uhh...I guess we never got to see his full power,” Tomochika said.
Yes, it would have been nice to draw things out a bit longer.
Both Tomochika and Mokomoko seemed a bit disappointed.
◇ ◇ ◇
Sage Van sat in the audience chamber of the castle. The fourth round had placed him there, so he had decided to stay and wait. It was the final area of Cavern Quest’s final field, a castle in the middle of a floating kingdom. The castle itself was surrounded by a city that was uninhabited. The fields of Cavern Quest hadn’t been designed with that much detail, only put together roughly to make an interesting environment.
It gave a really strong impact for the last quest. The idea of a castle floating in the sky was interesting. Those vague ideas had led Van to create the huge bank of clouds, a stone disc floating inside of them, and then place forests, rivers, and other natural scenery around a castle and its town.
Originally the last quest was supposed to be a fight to the death among seven parties, so there wasn’t supposed to be any boss waiting in the audience chamber here, but for now Van took a seat on the throne. Each season of Cavern Quest had a different last boss, but across all seasons, once could consider Van himself to be the ultimate final boss, so him ending up here felt a little ironic.
“The last boss being the developer of the game is a bit too meta for my liking, though.”
But this was what the Great Sage had ordered, so there was nothing he could do about it. At the very least, he wanted to put on a performance that Mitsuki would enjoy watching.
“Looks like someone’s here.”
Someone had entered the castle. It wouldn’t be hard for him to look up who it was, but he was content to wait. After a short time, a single person stepped into the audience chamber. He was a man with red hair in something resembling a casual kimono.
“Yo. You supposed to be the king?” As the man approached, the two of them shifted into the battle channel.
“Nah, I just showed up here by chance and decided to have a seat while I could. Are you from the same Japan as Yogiri Takatou?”
“Ah, you mean my clothes? I picked these up from a world I visited a few trips ago. I really liked them, so I’ve been wearing this style ever since.”
Maybe the guy was not actually connected to Japan at all. It wasn’t unlikely that some world somewhere would have the same style of clothing.
“Anyway, my name is Kyuuzaburou Suzuki.”
“So are you from Japan or not?” Van sighed.
“Does it matter? There are plenty of worlds that look the same, even if they don’t use the same language.”
Though they could speak freely, in a different world the language barrier between them would become an evident problem. For a Sage, automatic translation was simple enough, so much so that it happened unconsciously. Because of that, Van didn’t really hear the words the man was speaking.
“Okay then, Kyuuzaburou. I’m the administrator of this game. You don’t have any chance of actually beating me, so are you sure you want to fight? Giving up is probably the fastest way out of this for you.”
“Hmm. What does that really mean, though? Just saying ‘I have no chance’ doesn’t tell me anything. Really, it makes me want to give it a shot.”
As expected, such a short explanation wouldn’t convince anyone, so Van decided to continue. He knew that someone who had made it this far wouldn’t give up that quickly.
“Well, let’s see. In simple terms, I can freely manipulate the world around us. I can open up a hole beneath your feet, or remove the oxygen from the air around you, or change gravity to crush you. I can also send you somewhere completely different...though since we’re in a battle channel, I wouldn’t send you outside of it.” While he couldn’t directly affect the players in the game, he could change the environment around them as much as he wished.
“That doesn’t sound any more convincing to me. Anything else?”
“I see. I guess there’s still value in trying if you’re desperate. So how about this, then? As the maker of this game, I’m invincible inside it. No attacks can work on me at all.”
“Ah, I’ve heard of things like that before. But I’ve also heard of Game Masters forgetting to set the invulnerable flag on themselves and dying anyway.”
“Unfortunately, in this case, it’s not a flag to be set. As long as the game world exists, I’m invincible.”
“I guess I can follow that logic. You and the game are basically inseparable.”
“So, do you understand?”
“I think so. Let’s give it a shot.”
“Yeah, I figured,” Van sighed. He had assumed this was how it would go the moment he had laid eyes on his opponent. No matter how much they talked, there was no chance of the other guy surrendering.
“Death match rules are fine for me,” Kyuuzaburou said.
“Sure. Of course, feel free to surrender at any time.”
Sage Van vs. Kyuuzaburou Suzuki: FIGHT!!!
The announcement indicating the start of the fight played in the air between them.
Van didn’t move from his throne, watching to see what Kyuuzaburou would do. He had no intention of trying to set up an instant death trap for him. He wanted to see what Kyuuzaburou would try. Though the stranger seemed rather aloof, he couldn’t have just ignored everything Van had told him. Being the Game Master lent an air of credibility to everything he said, so it would take more than wishful thinking to throw doubt on his claims.
Basically, even knowing Van’s abilities, Kyuuzaburou still thought he had a way to win. Van found that interesting in and of itself. He couldn’t imagine losing, so he wanted to see what kind of strategy someone else would come up with. Of course, if Kyuuzaburou’s plan actually worked, Van would probably end up dead, but he wasn’t especially worried about that. Van losing would be a pretty interesting development, and that would be sure to satisfy Mitsuki.
Besides, even if he died, Mitsuki planned to reset the world anyway, so Van would come right back to life. No matter how this particular fight ended, everything would end up the same.
“Oh, looks like you’re really excited to see what I got. Sorry, I don’t have anything that interesting.” The ground in front of Kyuuzaburou started to glow. The hilt of a sword emerged from the light, lifting up to reveal a long blade. As the hilt reached Kyuuzaburou’s waist, he grabbed it and pulled it out, revealing the sword to be as long as Kyuuzaburou’s own height. “It’s just a weapon that I thought matched this look. I don’t have a scabbard or anything for it, so I have to carry it around like that, but it’s nothing special.” The weapon wasn’t an object from the game. He must have brought it into Cavern Quest from the outside.
Now that his opponent had drawn his weapon, Van felt like testing how strong he was, so started his attack. He spawned a large boulder above Kyuuzaburou. The game’s gravity dropped the boulder down. Kyuuzaburou noticed the sudden appearance of the object and hurriedly dodged out of the way.
“Whoa! What was that for?!”
“That’s made from one of the basic materials used to make Cavern Quest. It’s not indestructible, but it’s tough enough that I wouldn’t expect someone to be able to break it. I thought it would be a good way to test your edge.”
“Come on, if something drops down from above, I’m obviously going to dodge out of the way. No one would think to stop it with a sword.”
“I guess so. How about this, then?”
Glass walls appeared around Kyuuzaburou, closing him in. This was another one of the building blocks used to make Cavern Quest. The glass walls appeared at his sides and above him, making it impossible for him to leave without breaking through them. There were no openings in the glass either, so if he wasted time, he’d eventually suffocate.
“You really want to see how good this sword is, huh? I guess I don’t have any other way of fighting, so you’d see it sooner or later.”
Kyuuzaburou lifted his sword into a high guard stance, then brought it down. Van presumed it was a rather powerful weapon. It was almost certainly capable of slicing through the materials he used to build Cavern Quest, and he might even be able to cut Van in two with the same stroke. But that would be all. Van’s invincibility was linked to the existence of this world. As long as Cavern Quest existed, Van couldn’t die. No amount of damage done to his physical body would matter. The only way to beat him was to destroy all of Cavern Quest simultaneously. And not just the channel they were in now either. He would have to destroy every channel all at once. So Van casually watched to see what Kyuuzaburou would do.
The sword moved slowly, breaking the glass ceiling above him. On top of that, a crack also ran through the ceiling of the audience chamber above them. As the sword continued down, it split the glass chamber apart, slicing a line clean through the entire castle across the sword’s point. The tip passed over Van, splitting his body in two from the head down. When Kyuuzaburou’s slash was finished, Van had been split in two from his head down to between his legs, but that was all.
The insides of Van’s split body were solid black. Neither blood nor organs spilled out of him. Van was currently no more than an object in the game. He couldn’t be killed just by being cut apart.
“So I guess you cut me in half. Is that all?” Van asked, still in two pieces.
“Yup, that’s the end.”
“You can surrender if you don’t have anything else.”
“Why would I surrender? I told you it’s over.”
Van lifted his hands to push the split halves of his body back together...or he tried to. His hands wouldn’t move. He could feel the life draining out of him. He felt nauseous, dizzy, his consciousness starting to fade. It took him a moment to realize what was happening.
The world was sliding apart. It had been split in two. At first he thought it was because he couldn’t focus his eyes, but it soon became clear that he was seeing properly.
“You said you’re invincible as long as Cavern Quest exists, right? So I tried cutting the whole thing in half.” He was telling the truth. Every single channel of Cavern Quest had been sliced in two. “But you’re still alive. Did you lie to me?”
“Not a lie... I just didn’t say the whole story. I’m the Game Master... I’m invincible...as long as a game world exists.”
“Ah, I get it. So there are more games than just Cavern Quest.”
While the battle in the sky, Four Kingdoms, had been progressing, Van had been hard at work developing Cavern Quest. When Four Kingdoms had come to an end, he had turned his attention mainly to Cavern Quest, but naturally also began developing another game.
However, at present, ninety percent of the resources available to him were tied up in Cavern Quest. As such, the destruction of the game as a whole still did significant damage to him. With only a tenth of his strength remaining, Van was very much on death’s door.
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