Chapter 19 — Fatter People Live Longer, Right?
As Ayaka Shinozaki wandered the nighttime streets of the capital, she was beginning to regret her declaration of war against the class. They were quite famous, so she had managed to find some of them just by asking around. But while that had been enough at first, after finding and killing Ushio, the rest of the group had stopped going out so much. The city was absurdly large. At this rate, she wouldn’t be able to find them again.
We are now aware of their true strength. We know where their base is, so why don’t we attack them directly?
The Sage candidates were, as part of their trials, making headway into the Underworld below the city. As such, they were currently staying as honored guests at the palace. She had figured out that much from listening to rumors around town.
“If I did that, my plan of making them fear me coming to get them would all be for nothing.”
No, we don’t have the full picture yet. It would be best for us to act cautiously.
Sneaking in and killing them one at a time like a mysterious serial killer would be better, don’t you think? Now that they know they’re being targeted, they aren’t just going to walk around town.
I recommend we refrain from such activities.
“That’s probably a good idea.”
Wait, you’re actually going to accept my suggestion?!
“I should just go to their home base. Then I’ll kill one of them and leave. How about that?”
That will only work once, won’t it? Once they realize their base has been compromised, surely they’ll flee to somewhere else.
Taking revenge is all well and good, but why not just hurry up and kill them? Is it really something you need to spend so much time on?
It would be best if we could easily track their movements somehow.
Can’t we track them by scent or something?
We could release the limiter on our sense of smell, but we still only have so many scent receptors. It won’t change all that much.
How about through magic?
Perhaps. Identifying and locating them based on individual mana should be possible, but we would need to meet each of them once to learn their patterns in the first place.
So, we’d have to go to their base, after all. For now, we just need to find one of them. Then we can attack them at our leisure.
Ayaka was beginning to think that maybe she was going crazy. It was getting harder and harder to differentiate between herself and the other units, to the point where she could no longer identify which unit was speaking at any given time. It made her wonder if the units weren’t all merely figments of her imagination.
As those thoughts swam idly through her head, a sudden jolt to her skull knocked them out of her mind.
What was that?!
An impact to the head. The Dragon Scale was able to block the blow, but it didn’t absorb the impact completely.
Detecting a minor concussion.
Her eyes were drawn to something on the ground, a stone about the size of her fist. That must have been what had struck her.
What are you waiting for?! Stop the human simulation already!
“I guess I’m not human after all,” Ayaka murmured to herself as the dizziness was swept away in an instant. There was no way this was all a wild delusion if she could cut off all physical sensations on a whim like that.
A sniping attack!
Where is it coming from?!
North-east, thirty degrees up! Another attack incoming!
Ayaka looked towards where the unit was indicating. Three more rocks were flying her way. She dodged the first, and it struck someone unlucky enough to be standing behind her, sending them flying in a spray of blood. The other two appeared to have been thrown slightly off target as they smashed the skulls of two other passersby in front of her.
I’ve determined the sniper’s vantage point.
“I see. Then let’s go. Dragon Wing.” Using the dragon’s language, Ayaka manifested the phenomenon of flight, rising into the air as if she had wings of her own. Gliding smoothly, she reached her destination in no time.
On the roof of a tall building, she found a girl in a white martial arts uniform. Riona Shirayama: one of her classmates, and one of the targets for her revenge.
Riona was caught completely off guard by how quickly Ayaka had made it to her. She had evidently planned on spending more time sniping, as evidenced by the large number of similarly-sized rocks scattered around her feet.
“Maybe I shouldn’t be the one to say this,” Ayaka said, “but are you sure you want to get strangers involved here?”
“If we leave you alone, none of us will be able to sleep at night. If killing you means taking out a few locals too, it’s well worth it.”
“Well. It seems you’ve grown quite self-centered. No wonder you were able to leave your own classmates behind as bait without a second thought.” Ayaka had never really been willing to forgive them, but at this point, there was no room whatsoever for sympathy.
“Finishing someone off from a distance doesn’t match my style much, anyway,” Riona answered, taking a fighting stance. “This really is the best way to handle things!”
Ayaka recalled that her opponent used to practice Karate, so her white uniform and black belt must have been related to that.
She seems like the type to use karate for actual combat. Though it’s really more like imitating kickboxing at that point... mused one of the voices in her head.
“That’s awfully judgmental of you, Battle Unit.”
With a shout, Riona jumped forward and attacked, but Ayaka made no effort to dodge. Punches, kicks, and elbows rained down on her in rapid succession from all angles, but Ayaka took every blow without so much as flinching. She had been taken by surprise before, but now that she was ready for it, the attacks were nothing to her.
“Dammit!” Riona cursed, backing off as she realized she wasn’t making any progress.
“How strong are you compared to the rest of the class?”
“When it comes to hand-to-hand fighting, I’m the strongest!” As she shouted her reply, a burning light began to envelop her body.
“What’s that?”
It seems like an ability granted to her by the Gift. Perhaps some sort of power-up?
“That’s not very useful information, is it? Dragon Claw.”
Not bothering to wait for her opponent to finish, Ayaka swung her hand as if swatting a fly. An invisible strike launched from her fingers, cutting through the air like a dragon’s claw tearing through flesh. Riona blinked dumbly as she felt the attack rush past her, followed a moment later by the roof beside her collapsing.
As a chunk of the building fell away, her right arm also fell to the ground. Riona cried out in pain as she collapsed.
“Of course, I could have just hit you head-on,” Ayaka said, stepping closer, “but I don’t want to kill you right away. I need you to be properly terrified first.”
She kicked her classmate in the stomach. Although her feet were reinforced by the Dragon Scale, she didn’t put that much strength behind it.
“Goddammit!” Still curled up on the ground, Riona struck with her remaining hand. Perhaps her power-up was complete, as a burning aura now wreathed her fist, but it had no effect on Ayaka. There was no way the fire could penetrate Dragon Scale.
“If you’re the strongest hand-to-hand fighter, the rest of the class must be pretty weak, huh?” Ayaka said as she stepped on Riona’s left arm, holding the dismembered right arm in front of her. “Now then. Why don’t you try begging for your life? Who knows, I might even change my mind about killing you.”
Of course, she had no intention of sparing her. All she wanted was to see how ugly Riona would look as she desperately struggled to survive.
“I-If only there was no skill reduction...if I could use my abilities at Rank Four, I’d never lose to you!”
Ayaka paused. Although she was likely just making excuses, it sounded like Riona truly believed that.
Skills granted by the Gift have ranks attributed to them, but within this region, those ranks have been forcibly reduced. Of course, since our abilities rely on the dragon’s language instead, it has no effect on us.
“What is your ability, anyway?” Ayaka asked. “What changes when your rank goes up?”
Riona stared back in defiant silence.
“Dragon Fang,” Ayaka said, activating it from her foot. An invisible jaw clamped down on the other girl’s arm. Slowly, Ayaka added more and more force, but not enough to tear the arm off completely — this was only a threat, after all. “If you’re so proud of your Rank Four or whatever, surely you can tell me all about it?”
“It increases all my stats...at Rank One, it multiplies them by ten times. At Rank Two, a hundred times. Rank Four is ten thousand times...but right now I’m stuck at Rank Two...”
“I see. A hundred times or ten thousand times your current power would certainly be another story. Is there any way to remove that block?”
According to the information gained from the people of the dragon, the reduced abilities are the result of the royal family’s power. Killing the wielder of that skill should be sufficient.
Ayaka dropped the arm she was holding, stepping away from Riona.
“Looks like your excuses helped. Once I’ve released the block on your skills, we’ll fight again.”
“What are you talking about...?” Riona asked, not quite understanding that she was being spared for the moment.
Are you sure?
“Yes. Now that we’ve seen her, we can track her through her mana, right?”
She could kill her at any time. Using Dragon Wing, Ayaka again lifted herself into the air. Looking around, it didn’t take her long to find the palace, the largest building at the center of the city.
She began flying towards it.
Hanakawa and Lute found a tavern to purchase tickets from, then immediately made their way to the closest entrance to the Underworld. Each tavern sold tickets for the entrance nearest them, so it wasn’t particularly hard to find it.
The entrance itself was a small stone structure. Despite its size, it was decorated well enough to look rather high class.
Handing over their tickets at the reception desk, they made their way inside. Within was a spiral staircase heading farther underground.
“Is it true the Underworld spans a hundred and forty kilometers?” Hanakawa asked as they made their way down. “That would make it much larger than the city itself, but I was under the impression the city was built specifically to guard against it.”
The capital was an enormous metropolis in its own right, but it couldn’t have been much more than ten kilometers across. There was no way it matched the size of the Underworld.
“Just because we’re going underground to get there doesn’t mean the Underworld itself is only ‘underground.’ It’s called the Underworld, after all. If it was just sitting there beneath the city, it would be called an underground labyrinth or something instead.”
“Indeed, I suppose that’s true.”
In short, the Underworld was an entirely different world whose entrances merely existed within the capital.
After heading down the stairs for a while, they came upon a cave. Despite the depth, it was remarkably bright thanks to the lights lining the ceiling.
“So, this is the first level,” Lute said. “This is the first time I’ve been here. My master’s sister should be on the lowest level, I suppose.”
“Hmm, if the first level is ten kilometers wide, that would mean the center is seventy kilometers away, no? And each level is one kilometer vertically. Even if we write off the first level as a measuring error, that means the seventh level would be six kilometers down...I’m not sure how we’re supposed to make it there!”
The interior of the Underworld was indeed a labyrinth. It wasn’t as easy as walking in a straight line to get where you were going.
“I wondered what it would be like when we got here. But whatever, I guess there’s nothing for it but to get started.”
“Um, excuse me! You don’t plan on just walking straight in, do you?!”
“How else are we going to get there?” Lute asked as he began doing just that. “If you don’t like it, I’ll leave you behind.”
“I was under the impression I was being forced to accompany you...” If it was possible for him to escape now, Hanakawa doubted Lute would be willing to chase him all the way back to the surface. But even so, he was hesitant to try. Who knew what kind of trouble he’d get into? In the end, he decided to follow Lute after all.
“There are monsters here, right? What if we get attacked?”
“The ticket was cheap, so there probably aren’t all that many.”
The distribution of monsters across the Underworld wasn’t uniform. Areas with larger concentrations of them were considerably more popular, so prices for entry were increased or decreased to encourage the even use of all entrances across the city.
“These monsters are the spawn of the Dark God who’s sealed inside, right? Does she not mind that they’re being used like a resource on the upper levels?”
“I doubt it. Even spawn that are strong enough to kill humans are like strands of hair that fell out on their own. Who cares what happens to them?”
“I feel like such hair is plenty valuable...”
“What are you talking about?!”
“Well, this Dark God is a woman, right?!”
“Are you really that gross?”
“Heheheh! Fetishes for physical excretions are pretty common. Do you not even know that much?”
“You really are disgusting.” Lute was as astonished as ever.
“By the way, do you know where we’re going?”
“I’m just picking paths at random, actually.”
“What?! But we’ll never reach the center that way! And I am not at all prepared for this!”
At the rate they were going, even if they were never attacked by monsters, it would still take days for them to reach the center. As he had only been expecting them to take a quick look inside, Hanakawa hadn’t made any preparations for a journey or enemy encounters.
“Well, fatter people can survive for longer, right?”
“Wait, are you assuming we’re not going to have any food, either?!”
As they spoke, they noticed a figure approaching them from the darkness. It looked human, or at the very least, not like a monster.
“Is that an Explorer?”
“It looks human, so probably —” Lute’s reply cut off as he suddenly went stiff.
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
The figure approached. It was a woman. She didn’t have wings, or horns, or anything strange. She looked perfectly normal. The only thing of note was her long, black hair, reaching down to her feet. Though her voluptuous figure, wrapped in thin cloth, seemed somehow sensual, seeing it made one think a word like “divine” was more appropriate.
“Lady Mana...what are you doing here?” Lute managed to squeeze out.
“I smelled my brother above, but I just couldn’t bear to wait, so I decided to come up myself!”
“She looks more like a cool-type, but she seems pretty friendly!” Hanakawa remarked.
“What are you, stupid?! Watch your mouth!” Lute finally came to his senses enough to reprimand him.
“Lute, was it? Well, I figured it was something like that.” The woman he had called Mana looked around.
“Master Lute, umm, are you perhaps implying that this woman is...”
“That’s right. The one we came here to find.”
“What? No, she’s supposed to be sealed at the bottom, isn’t she?!”
“I thought the same thing, but...” His companion was completely baffled.
“‘Sealed’ or not, I can go anywhere I want within this place. I can even leave any time I choose,” the Dark God Mana replied, casually flipping everything they believed on its head.
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