arc1 · 018-ep18
Episode 18: The Frame-by-Frame Lecture★
At the center of the stream screen, the giant stone doors of the deepest part boomed shut.
In the archive footage, Iori first set the big rucksack down gently against the entrance wall before turning toward the center—and there, under the pale glow of the crystal stones, the screen showed a four-legged monster easily topping five meters in body length rising to its feet: the Iron Behemoth, draped in thick steel armor and steam.
『HERE it is, the boss fight!!』
『Gently parking the rucksack against the wall first thing on entry—dutiful every single replay, I love it』
『This boss fight—live, the screen spun and the steam whited everything out, and I never did figure out how it got killed at the end』
『Ojou-sama, the wipe's a little in the way—can't see the ground at bottom right』
『The best part starts right NOW, so hush up and watch!』
Saya nudged the wipe frame a little up and to the right, and fixed a devouring gaze on the boss on screen.
In the footage, the Iron Behemoth sprang with a roar, and Iori's opening ice spear and wind blade were swatted away—GKANG!—scattering sparks of pale blue.
Next came the right foreleg's sweeping arc, vaulted over; the thick tail whipping in on the spin, caught on the flat of the one-handed sword midair and deflected; a ten-odd-meter slide across the flagstones, and the landing.
Then, against the fan of mana breath the boss spat next, Iori ran sideways while raising a slanted wall of wind just off the left, nudging its arc upward, ducking beneath the smoke and circling around to the flank. A mana-wreathed blade slashed into the root of a hind leg and carved a shallow wound—but the instant after, the boss's back armor burst open and high-pressure, high-heat mana vapor exploded in every direction, and out came a great backward leap with a small barrier wedged in between.
『See? Chantless or not, the Iron Behemoth's outer shell batted it all away in the end』
『Live, this part too was getting "like I said—solo means lacking firepower, bleeding out at this rate," right?』
『The screen's buried in blue light and pure-white steam, and all I can see is someone getting blown away』
"No—it was not merely being blown away!"
Saya shook her head at once, pointing at the boss on screen as the steam thinned.
"Look closely, if you please. From the moment that first blow was swatted aside, the Onee-sama had already noticed the dense 『mana film』 stretched across the surface of that steel armor. So against the second breath, rather than blocking it head-on and burning through mana, the Onee-sama merely set a slanted wall of wind at the immediate left and bent its arc a hair upward! And when the back steam erupted after the hind-leg slash, a small barrier was slipped in front like a cushion, riding the vapor's pressure to slide backward and open the distance. This is not the movement of someone panicking because damage won't go through—the Onee-sama is verifying how the boss's guard is built and when the steam vents!"
And the footage reached the scene where the Iron Behemoth—armor faintly red-hot from the steam coursing its whole body—braced for another charge, and Iori, done with circling to the flank, deliberately walked out onto its dead-ahead front.
The five-meter steel bulk came charging, stamping the floor to powder.
The instant Iori drove in head-on and slid beneath the hauled-down right foreleg—DOOM! PAKIIIN!!—a violent burst and a freezing crackle rang out as one, and the camera's screen was painted white by blue flash and ice shards.
Seconds later, the refocused screen held only the boss's remains, already dissolving into black mist.
『THIS, this is the moment!!』
『No matter how many replays, the timing of that slide under the foreleg is not human work』
『But the opening ice and wind got deflected—so why did only the very end crack it head-on? In the end wasn't it just muscling through with some super-oversized ice spell or other?』
『The screen white-outs at the single best moment and shows nothing—how is that acceptable for a streamer lol』
"......No—those are not the sounds of a grand spell slammed in from outside. One moment, if you please!"
Leaning in, Saya paused the video and replayed the few seconds around the white-out over and over in slow motion, devouring the blurred frames—the way the mana light fell, the layering of the sounds.
A few repetitions in, Saya's eyes flew wide open, and the sharp intake of her breath went straight into the mic.
"......You're kidding—now I see it! This was no ice spell fired from outside! The instant the boss kicked off the floor with its hind legs to charge, its whole body's mana gathered into the back and hind-leg steam to make thrust, and the mana film across the front of its chest went thin for a single blink! The Onee-sama saw straight through it—sliding in under the hauled-down right foreleg while detonating compressed wind off the one-handed sword's spine to kick the foreleg up from below, then plunging the sword directly into the dead center of the bared chest! And those sounds just now—the shrill crackle of freezing and the deep-bass burst of something smashed apart from inside, layered perfectly atop each other! The moment the blade bit into steel armor heated red-hot, it wasn't merely chilling it—pouring sub-zero frost and shattering-impact mana down the blade as a conduit, into the innards all at once, and blowing it to powder from within on the violent temperature gap and shock!!"
Re-gripping the pen tablet at hand, Saya blew up the frame from just before the white-out to fill the screen and scrawled circles and arrows in red pen over the blue light's trajectory with full force.
The comments streaming past the monitor's edge might as well not have existed—pointing at the frozen screen, Saya's voice leapt hotter still.
"Yes, the sequence picking apart the boss's weak point is magnificent—but that is not where my hands shake hardest!! Listen well—we magicians, ordinarily, have our vanguard shield for us and buy us time, plant our feet firmly behind, chant, and only then give shape to a single spell! The moment we try moving two magics at once, the mana in our heads collides and falls apart—and precise mana control while swinging a sword and closing distance? No human mind should ever manage both at once! And yet the Onee-sama, sliding into a five-meter monster's guard, detonates wind off the blade's spine to kick the foreleg skyward—and one-tenth of a second later, with zero chant lag, weaves 『sub-zero frost』 and 『shattering mana』—two utterly different magics—at the same time!?"
Forgetting even to breathe, Saya machine-gunned on, repeating that same single second of footage again and again.
Why does the wielder's own sword never freeze and shatter, with two magics coursing its blade? To what abnormal precision is the boundary of mana controlled, such that the magic bursts a single millimeter past the point and nowhere else? And—if chantless casting and multi-deployment could be fused this freely into swordwork, then the very way explorers have always fought, vanguard and rear guard, would be overturned from its foundations—she hammered the appeal at the far side of the screen with everything she had.
"I read my family's old records and yearned and yearned for magic like this someday, tried it hundreds of times, thousands of times at the training grounds, and every time the two layered, they collapsed on me......! Never mind planting my feet—slashing in with the blade while weaving multiple magics at once, leaving not so much as a crack in the very sword carrying them while cracking only the enemy's armor from within—this is a god-tier feat on the level of flipping the history of magic on its head!? Why is this person, behind that beat-up camera, demonstrating the ultimate form of magic nobody has ever seen as if it were the most natural thing in the world—!!!"
With a BANG of both hands on the desk, Saya's shout finally ran out of air, and she stood there hauling in big, shoulder-heaving breaths, ha, ha.
Under that near-ten-minute, nonstop torrent of passionate analysis, the comment feed on the monitor had been buried alive in voices of astonishment and overwhelm.
『......It got so technical halfway through that half of it was alien language, but I got it beaten into me anyway—Onee-sama is a monster breaking the very common sense of magic』
『Kicking the foreleg up with wind, then running two magics down the blade with zero chanting right after—put that way, that's vanguard and rear guard in one person, at the same time, isn't it......』
『Reading THAT much out of a split-second white-out—half of that is ojou-sama wishful thinking, no? lol』
『But listen to the steam's red heat just before and the ice-sound at the break, and honestly that's the only reading that fits』
『Also ojou-sama, past the halfway mark the accent came out at full throttle and the ojou-sama character got blown somewhere far away lol』
『First time I've ever seen nouveau-riche-chan trembling in this serious a tone』
The moment those scrolling comments entered her view, Saya went stone-still with a "――――!?", and over the next several seconds the red flooded her all the way to the roots of her ears.
She coughed in a fluster and patched it up—"M-My apologies, in my eagerness to convey the Onee-sama's technique properly, I grew a touch heated!"—but on the archive's final stretch, now playing on, a further blow was lying in wait for her.
The mystery 『little white box』 that appeared beside the boss's magic stone.
Out of it came a palm-filling dagger of a size that radiated staggering power at a glance, shedding gold and silver-white mana light—and yet the Iori on screen let out a small sigh, murmured "...A dud, huh," and, straight out of the box and into the rucksack it went, without so much as a wrapping, tossed carelessly atop the magic stones.
『There it is lmaooo "...A dud, huh" straight into the daikon-stuffing lmao』
『Don't follow up a god-tier feat with supermarket bagging treatment lol』
『But what even ARE this box and dagger? Do lower-layer bosses drop this now?』
『Ojou-sama, and how will you be analyzing the matter of your beloved Onee-sama stuffing that divine dagger raw into a rucksack and going home? lol』
Saya's eyes had first gone round with bafflement, but as she gazed at the archive screen—cut off clean the moment its subject returned to the surface lobby—a deep sigh eventually escaped her, and she laced her fingers before her chest, eyes narrowing in a dreamy haze.
"......No—I see now. The mana dwelling in that dagger's gem reached even through the screen; an extraordinary blade beyond compare. And yet even a masterpiece of that caliber is, in the Onee-sama's eyes, no more than a 『dud』—falling short of the heights the Onee-sama pursues...... Unmoved by a three-star restaurant's invitation, unmoved by a treasure blade dizzying to behold, diving on with eyes only for somewhere deeper still...... That person truly is the genuine Onee-sama I must pursue with my whole life...!"
＊
This was around the time clips of Tsukishiro Saya's rapid-fire analysis were spreading across the night's internet, and the talk of "the mysterious Onee-sama who solo full-cleared a lower-layer dungeon" was swelling larger still.
The Fukazumi Iori in question, with no way of knowing that the footage from his old camera was being frame-by-frame dissected so fervently before tens of thousands, was at the table in his own home, wrapping up the sorting of the day's magic stones and taking a breather.
That glowing dagger from the box, for the time being, had been stood on the shelf in the corner of his room, out of the way.
"...Now then, which dungeon shall I go to tomorrow?"
One sip of freshly brewed barley tea, a stretch of the shoulders—and he noticed the notification lamp blinking on the terminal left sitting at the table's edge.
Peering at the screen: one message had arrived from the Explorer's Association's official system sometime in the afternoon.
Subject line: 『Notice of Newcomer Training Instructor Assignment』.
Come to think of it, Sagimori-san had mentioned it—once you entered your second year after registration, turns of 『newcomer training』 came around in order: taking newly joined explorers along on several dives together and teaching them the field basics.
――――――――――――
Thank you for reading all the way to here!
With this chapter, the opening stretch of Part 1 reaches a milestone. I never imagined this many people would read it—I'm truly happy.
To everyone who has given ★s and follows and support, thank you so very much! It's a great encouragement.
From the next chapter on, new encounters await, and the story will slowly begin to move. I hope you'll keep looking forward to it.
[Announcement]
I've posted a new work.
『The Bottom-Rung Exorcist Who Raised a Guardian Deity Alone and Hit the Spirit-Power Cap, Turned into a Beautiful Girl by the God's Produce Debut and Running Riot on Exorcism Streams Is It True That "Superchats Count as Offerings, So They're Tax-Free!"?』
https://kakuyomu.jp/works/11054822666041704478
The new work is fully written through to its final chapter, with scheduled posts already set up. As such, it will not affect this work's writing or its daily 20:12 updates, so rest assured.
If you're interested, please take a look there as well.
This work will continue as always—thank you for your continued support!