chapter03 · 083-ep83
Episode 80: The Humanoid
【Huh? Huh?】
【The materials... for her item box...?】
【Wait, hold on】
【I have so many questions, but... she really HAS been going into not just the deep layers but the abyssal layers for ages!?!?!?】
【(Picture me fainting after absorbing ten years of information at once)】
【Halloween Halloween Halloween!】
【Sky pretty】
【Erasers taste good】
【I've turned into a baby who only feels joy, desu wa~! Heehee!】
The viewers of Natural-Born Ojou-sama Karin Yamada's solo deep-layer conquest were finally starting to break. She'd presented her solo foray into floor 1 of the abyssal layers and entry into its boss room as a bonus—and then said the boss supplied the materials for her item box.
(...Wait. Ah, that's right...)
Karin glanced at chat and remembered something.
(Mafuyu told me not to talk about the abyssal layers on stream...! She said keeping some things to myself is more Elegant, like Setsuna-sama, and that leaving things mysterious, like my level, would make me a more intriguing ojou-sama whose limits nobody can guess! Besides, revealing information a little at a time will let viewers enjoy my streams for longer!)
Unexpectedly encountering the boss she'd sought for so long had made her so excited she'd let it slip. She broke into a sweat. Of course, it was far too late to keep such things secret now that she was advancing through the abyss as a matter of course. Still, having realized her mistake, Karin covered her mouth with her hand.
"Um... Forget I said that, desu wa."
She committed fully to the cover-up.
"Now! What an eerie monster this floor 1 boss of the abyssal layers is! I've never seen anything like it before, desu wa! I doubt even I can keep things Elegant against an abyssal-layer boss, so I'd best be cautious!"
【Why's she trying to cover it up NOW!?】
【Way too late lmao】
【That's so unconvincing lol】
【How many thousands of people do you think have already saved that footage?】
【Give it up, ojou-sama! You've secretly visited the abyss before, haven't you!?】
【Black Tiger seriously accused this airheaded ojou-sama of staging anything?】
【Eh? What are you all talking about? This is the first time our ojou-sama's fought this mysterious boss】
【Of course there's no crazy sixteen-year-old creature who regularly dives into the abyss, ohoho】
【Japan is a dungeon developing nation, desu wa~】
【All these ojou-samas clinging to her terrible lie to escape reality lmao】
【Pretend all you want, she's diving into the abyss IN A DRESS right now】
【Karin ojou-sama's little slip-up is adorable (dead-eyed)】
【Little slip-up (worldwide live broadcast of materials for a magic item that could reshape the global economy)】
【She's so bad at lying she's making this unbelievable revelation MORE credible lol】
【Even if it's true, how are we supposed to deal with a seemingly random-spawn abyssal boss...?】
【Hold on, that revelation distracted me, but what IS that bizarre boss!?】
【Here it comes!?】
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The creature Karin faced was eerier than any monster before it. Imagine a giant five-meter human made of translucent, viscous matter. No fingers or shoulders, no eyes or nose: just a smooth humanoid shape. The air around it wavered as if space-time itself were distorted, unlike the air warped by the concentrated mana of deep-layer monsters. Space itself seemed unstable there. Its 'hazy' body, so indistinct it was hard to say if it existed in this place at all, floated naturally in midair. A hole gaped where its mouth ought to be, and passing wind produced something like a cry.
"OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The abyssal boss—the Humanoid—floated at the back of the boss room and let out an especially loud cry. Then, pop, it vanished.
Pop.
It appeared silently just behind Karin, ignoring the dozens of meters that had separated them. Its arm stretched and struck with blinding speed in an ambush.
"!"
Karin reacted immediately to the attack from her blind spot. With <Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style> boosting her mobility, she turned in her dress and dodged for certain. The translucent arm swept through empty air—but shff! Without impact or sound, it removed a section of dungeon wall wider than the arm itself. The cut surface was smoother even than one left by Mongolian Desu-Worm. It hadn't so much scraped the wall away as erased it from existence.
And the attacks didn't stop.
Pop, pop-pop, pop.
The half-transparent giant vanished and reappeared in unlikely places, repeatedly attacking Karin from behind. Nor were its attacks limited to that extending arm. It materialized above her to crush her, charged with its bulk and swung both stretching arms over a wide area. Each time Karin dodged completely—shff! shrrp! shff!—a section of dungeon wall silently vanished as if the creature had removed a piece of space itself.
【!?!?!?】
【Huh!?】
【What IS that thing!?】
【Isn't it moving like the frame rate's broken!?】
【My brain refuses to process its movements!?】
【Teleportation!?】
【That's bad enough, but isn't its physical strength nuts too!?】
【Is it swallowing the dungeon wall!?】
【The wall vanishes wherever its arms or body touch!?】
【The walls in the abyss should be hard as hell too, right!?】
【The ojou-sama's casually dodging, but anyone else would've died without even seeing it move!?】
【Isn't it erasing a wider area than its arm touches!?】
【You'd think you barely dodged and then you'd be dead!?】
【It leaves a smoother surface than Mongolian Desu-Worm. What IS it!?】
"It seems approaching would be dangerous, desu wa. (Playing innocent.)"
Karin brought out her weapons as though working out from scratch how to deal with this translucent creature that erased everything it touched. A Gatling gun in one hand, Mongolian Desu-Worm in the other.
"Fire away, desu waaaaa!"
DADADADADA!
She put distance between herself and the Humanoid using Storm Style's mobility, firing homing magic bullets. At the same time she cut pieces from the dungeon wall and Elegantly kicked them at it.
But—shff!—nothing worked. Bullets approaching from every direction and the wall blocks hurtling toward it vanished without a trace just before contact. It was as though another dimension had swallowed them.
"I see. Just like those sections of wall, my attacks seem to be sent to another dimension through the spatial distortion around its whole body."
【WHAAAAAAT!?】
【What the hell IS it!?】
【Is that spatial magic!?】
【So it really IS an item-box material source!?】
【It's surrounding itself with something like an item-box opening!?】
【Sending every attack against it to another dimension means it has no weakness to exploit!?】
【How do you even attack it!?】
【So when it erased the dungeon walls, it really removed the SPACE too!?】
【You can't defend against that!?】
【That's straight out of Dungeon Alive!?】
【I wondered why it floats—are its feet covered in that erasing effect too!?】
【Impossible game!?】
【Teleportation AND spatial erasure? This is beyond any normal magical creature!?】
【The abyss is scaryyyyy!】
【I, the baby who only feels joy, am sobbing at this boss's incomprehensible appearance and abilities】
【How do you kill it!?】
【Ojou-sama, have you seriously killed one before!?】
【I have no idea how, but apparently she's done it once! Beat it down again, desu waaaa!】
(All right. By pretending it's my first encounter and putting on a cautious fight, I've explained the Humanoid's strength and traits to the viewers. Now I just need to defeat it like last time...)
"OOOOOOOOOOAAAAAH!"
Karin stowed her Gatling and Mongolian Desu-Worm and watched the Humanoid teleport close again. She had already beaten this rare boss, but her gaze was wary, not complacent.
(Something feels different, like fighting an entirely new monster. How do I put it...? Its spatial magic is sharper than the one's I fought before.)
Its mana wasn't abnormal, and it wasn't an enhanced variant with a changed appearance. It was undoubtedly the same kind of monster. Yet Karin sensed a subtle difference.
(The last one gave me a hard time too... I've grown stronger since then, of course, but I mustn't let my guard down.)
While she held back from an easy offensive in light of that faint but important discrepancy, the Humanoid lost patience first. Pop. It teleported away this time, putting considerable distance between them.
"OOOOOOAAAAAH!"
SHRRRRRRRP!
It made a motion like exhaling a breath attack. A distortion of space itself rushed at Karin, an enormous space-boring blast that sent all matter to another dimension regardless of its hardness, devouring the dungeon wall as it approached.
(I know that attack!)
The blast traded its terrible speed, power and range for an obvious windup. Karin recognized it and dodged immediately. But in the next instant—
SHIMMER!
Space around her wavered while she moved at high speed with Storm Style. It was the sign of an attack she'd never seen before. From all of those distortions surrounding her, fragments of the space-boring blast erupted at once!
"!"
It was an application of teleportation: the creature created multiple holes connecting points in space along the path of its evaded blast. Their exits appeared around Karin. It had divided the blast into countless parts via wormholes and repurposed it as a close-range, all-direction bombardment.
"—!"
Karin had detected the distortions just before they fired. She pushed Storm Style's mobility to its limit and slipped through the gaps by a hair's breadth.
【!?】
【Huh!? What!?】
【It shot some weird breath attack and suddenly Karin ojou-sama was surrounded by ripples!?】
【What's happening!?】
【It's too fast to understand!?】
【Wait, did it split and teleport that huge breath attack and fire it from all around her!?】
【If you can see that, are you a deep-layer explorer!? Explain more! That's your job!】
【Karin ojou-sama's okay, right!?】
The viewers cried out in fear for her after an attack from another dimension in every sense. Karin quickly appeared before the camera and declared, "I'm alive, desu wa!" But then—
Flutter.
Something fell at her feet on camera.
"It got me...!"
A few strands of hair. The end of one lock of her long, Elegant golden hair. The blast, erasing even her wind armor along with space itself, had grazed and removed a tiny part of it.
【!?】
【Eh】
【Wait】
【Don't tell me】
【Karin ojou-sama... got HIT!?】
To viewers, it was in a sense the greatest shock of the stream.
【No way!?】
【Seriously, seriously!?】
【We're freaking out because an abyssal boss barely grazed her hair... But still, this is bad!?】
【The absurd thing is that nothing had hit that huge mane before, but even so!?】
【Normally hair doesn't count as getting hit... So why does this feel so shocking...?】
【And she's wearing that cheating equipment!?】
【Come to think of it, Karin ojou-sama herself called this thing 'strong'...】
【Even so!?】
【What WAS that blast!? It suddenly fired from every side of her!?】
【Could this be some kind of irregular monster!?】
【Karin ojou-sama, that really was an attack you'd never seen before, wasn't it? Not an act!?】
Karin looked down at her severed hair and spoke reproachfully to herself.
"I knew a perfectly Elegant stream in the abyssal layers might be beyond me for now, but... this was careless. This boss isn't an enhanced variant; it's an individual with unusual behavior."
An individual with unusual behavior was different from an enhanced variant. Just as humans of the same physical ability could move entirely differently depending on their martial-arts training, such monsters had developed their innate powers in unusual directions. This Humanoid was a seasoned specimen that had refined spatial magic into an even more vicious technique. Its wormholes appeared fast enough to track Karin even with Storm Style's speed, letting it fire unblockable blasts at close range from every direction.
Karin's eyes widened as she analyzed its magical technique on first sight. As if to say that recognizing it wouldn't help her, it attacked again.
"OOOOOOAAAAAH!"
SHRRRRRP!
The space-boring breath erased dungeon wall as it advanced, then vanished into wormholes along its path. Immediately, its separated parts emerged all around Karin.
"!"
She dodged the second assault completely, but only just. And this time it didn't end with a single blast. A second and third enormous breath passed through wormholes to surround her.
Shimmer!
"!"
A spatial distortion appeared exactly where Karin intended to dodge. If she plunged into it, she'd be cast into another dimension—or sliced in half if the wormhole shut mid-transit. Sensing a fatal blow either way, she twisted her body violently aside. Yet no matter how many times she evaded, the relentless attacks kept coming.
【!?!?!?】
【WHAAAAAT!?】
【The whole screen's rippling. Is EVERY ripple a one-hit-kill spatial attack!?】
【What's happening...】
【Even that cheating armor only lets her dodge by a hair...】
【This fight's so quiet, but she's in more danger than against the fortress. That's terrifying...】
【She needs to attack its body, fast!】
【She beat one before, so SOME attack must work, right!?】
Chat begged her to strike back instead of only dodging. But pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! The Humanoid changed position at every blink. It repeatedly teleported as it fired from its mouth, keeping out of reach if Karin should attempt a desperate charge. Its own teleportation, the breath attack and wormholes around Karin and along her escape routes—it employed all three simultaneously in an endless, one-sided barrage of killing blows. Hit-and-run tactics from another dimension.
【WHAAAAAAAAAT!?】
【WHAT IS WRONG WITH IT!?】
【The word 'coward' was made for this monster】
【It's too fast for me to understand, but I can tell this thing is BULLSHIT!?】
【It's a middle-layer fly caterpillar at level 99,999!?】
【And it looks like an eggplant spirit horse!】
【Seriously, is this Dungeon Alive!?】
【If things like this lurk deep in dungeons, no wonder Karin ojou-sama can't tell anime from reality!?】
【Pretty sure she couldn't tell them apart BEFORE she started exploring...】
【What can she possibly do!?】
【You've done enough, Karin ojou-sama! Run!】
【Won't it just teleport after her, though!?】
She was plainly at a disadvantage, without a path to victory even compared to the <Gigant Fortress> fight, despite Storm Style. Karin could only focus on dodging. Even the knowledge that she'd killed one before couldn't reassure chat.
And then, as if bringing their fears to life, the Humanoid unleashed a hidden trick brimming with malice.
"OOOOOOAAAAAH!"
Wormholes formed around Karin. Space-boring breath blasted out again—but this time something else came with it.
"!"
DODODODODODO!
The many magic bullets and dungeon-wall blocks Karin had fired at it at the start of the fight had been stored in another dimension like the contents of an item box. Now it released them into the gaps between the streams of space-boring breath.
【—】
【—】
【——】
She'd barely evaded the earlier attacks with Storm Style at full power. Now an even denser all-direction assault came without warning. The viewers screamed before they could type a single comment.
But in that instant—CRAAAAAAAAACK!
The quiet, fierce battle changed utterly as something thundered through the boss room like lightning. No, it wasn't lightning.
"Phew! That really was close, desu wa! That cheating attack meant I could only equip <Lightning Style> a little at a time, so my counterattack was delayed. I'm sorry the stream's pacing was so terrible!"
Karin shouted an apology after racing through gaps in an apparently undodgeable attack at a freakish speed.
"I expected as much, but my training still isn't sufficient for an Elegant stream in the abyssal layers. Especially when something almost like an irregularity occurs. Even in pursuit of clearing my name completely, I've shown you something inelegant... But please don't worry! I won't call it an apology for embarrassing myself, exactly, but from here on I'll give my all to perform Elegantly!"
As the audience stared in disbelief, she declared, "Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style, Lightning Style—simultaneous deployment."
Black storm winds and golden lightning. Karin donned both extraordinary <Divine Artisan> armors over her dress at once. Her uncanny mana filled the boss room.
"Demonic Dragon Armor: Swift Wind and Thunder."
The monster's perfected skills against the artisan's honed craft. As if challenging it to see which was more Elegant, Karin knocked her fists together.
―――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
This grew long, so the rest will come next time, desu wa!