chapter03 · 087-ep87

Episode 84: The Trampling

"Hah? Save... us?"

At the deranged girl spouting nonsense in a situation where they were out for her life, Ouko seriously doubted his ears.

"Yes! I will save every last one of you eighteen, without exception! So please rest assured! ...Though I suspect even these answers are only surface. My words surely cannot reach you in your hypnotic state..."

But Karin repeated the same words back at Ouko's question, going so far as to turn eyes on him that were almost pitying. It had been no mishearing.

(What is this brat on about...? Does she mean she'll "save" us by stopping us before we bloody our hands? Or is she deranged, faced with an extreme situation?)

No—judging by the streamed videos, Karin Yamada was practically deranged at all times. You couldn't gauge her sanity from anything she said. Or was she running some manner of psychological warfare now that her rule-breaking magic equipment was unusable? Or trying to buy time to use her internal-storage skill?

(No—either way, there's no point in a serious back-and-forth here. Per Dodomeki, the Anti-Dungeon Division is closing in fast, too. No humoring nonsense—we pile it on, all at once!)

He could never have known that Karin had taken Black Tiger's people for "rescue targets attacking her under a powerful hypnosis spell," and Ouko flooded his whole body with mana.

(I've shown this brat my swordwork this entire fight! The reach of the space-carving wrapped around my blade is completely read... but that's the trap!)

FWOOM!

The next moment, the black greatsword in Ouko's grip ever so quietly widened its killing range.

He had stretched the span of space carved away, pseudo-extending the sword's reach.

And naturally, that expanded space-carving range was nothing one could spot by eye.

(This is the end!)

Shielded by the magic bombardment his comrades poured out—hellfire beyond Karin's reach—Ouko drove in a full-power, fastest-possible strike.

In that instant—

"SUUUUUUUUU—BUFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!"

The hellfire Ouko had lurked within had been blown clean away.

Karin, having flawlessly evaded the invisible space-severing sword, had literally blown the flames off with a blast from that little mouth of hers. Material cannon fire and lightning were one thing—but the moment she read that instant when the shells and bolts had passed and only plain flame remained around Ouko, it was as if to say there was no need to so much as call on <Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style>.

"...Hah?"

The perfect evasion of an invisible blade.

A blast at a level no human should be able to produce from their mouth.

The eyesight to pinpoint the one instant when lightning and shells were gone and only flame remained.

Triple shock froze Ouko's thoughts.

But there was not a shred of time to stand dumbfounded.

SHA!

Karin had closed the distance on Ouko at explosive speed, his bombardment shield stripped away.

"—!?"

Sweat burst from every pore at a pressure like hundreds of deep-layer bosses bundled and pressed into the shape of a little girl, and he very nearly bolted, all but by reflex.

(N-no—calm down! So the flames are stripped away, so what! I'm clad head to toe in impact-absorbing armor! Without her item box, this brat has no finishing blow!)

Rather—this was the chance!

Have her counterstroke suddenly blunted, and even this brat is bound to show an opening!

Drive the certain-kill blow into that instant!

A first-rate explorer, if only barely, Ouko swapped gears in a heartbeat and poured mana into the greatsword once more. As if to deliberately take Karin's blow, he cast off defense and bet everything on attack.

But—SUPAPAPAPAPAPAPAPAN! KIN!

"Hah.....................?"

This time, even in mid-battle, Ouko stood frozen in blank astonishment.

The armor that had covered his whole body had been diced to ribbons in a single instant.

By the katana Karin Yamada had drawn from her item box in a flash.

"Huff~. Thank goodness that impact-absorbing armor is such a cheap knockoff~. No need to bring out Mongolian-chan, whose edge is far too sharp to point at a person—I can mince right through it with Chupacabra-chan."

"!?!?!?"

Hah!? Why does she have a weapon in hand...!? The item box was supposed to be sealed!?

And wait—that armor, certainly, is a step down from an actual Insect Warrior Impact, but it's a top-grade armament our trusted craftsman forged for Black Tiger—it is no cheap knockoff—!?

A beat late, the questions and retorts flickered through his mind—but that thought would never reach its end.

Karin's fist, with the obstructing armor disposed of, had been driven into Ouko's solar plexus.

DOGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!

"Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"

The level-2900 body sprayed blood as it was blasted away and slammed into the dungeon wall.

""""".....................Hah?"""""

Shaking dungeon. Stupefied Black Tiger members.

And among them, Ouko barely managed to raise himself,

"Wh-what...!? What happened to your intuition, Kuroi!? Why am I the one blown away!? Why can that brat use her item box...!?"

—that question, tangled in blood, never formed proper words.

But had Karin heard it, she would surely have answered thus:

Did you suppose I hadn't taken countermeasures after the Kagerou-sama affair put my not-so-Elegant self on display before the whole nation?

Until now, she'd left things be, reasoning that even if the item box were sealed she had her internal-storage skill. But what if, at that dungeon collapse, no suitable equipment had been inside her body—how she would have regretted it... So thinking, Karin had acted at once.

The item box, granted through <Modification> a function that cancels magic-equipment-sealing effects in exchange for a colossal outpouring of mana.

Stowing the katana away inside it, Karin tilted her head and kicked off the ground once more.

"My, the hypnosis is not wearing off at all, is it? Was my punching spot poorly chosen, desu no?"

!? GOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?

DOGOOOOOOOOOON!!

The moment Ouko raised himself, Karin was on him again at blistering speed.

"Please come back to your senses, desu wa!"—pummeling Ouko's face over and over.

"Wh-what are you all standing frozen for!? Our fire doesn't hit Ouko! Fire without hesitation! FIRE! Save Ouko from that monsterrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! Stack on more of the magic-equipment seal items, double-layered!"

Kuroi's roar rang out, and the Black Tiger executives, snapping back to themselves, hurriedly resumed the bombardment.

Homing magic they let fly without restraint too, sniping the tyrannizing ojou-sama from every direction.

"Th-this biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch!"

Ouko, pummeled without mercy, resisted violently as well, matching Kuroi's covering fire, grabbing back at Karin where she'd seized his collar, trying to pin down her evasion. But—

"H-huh? Strange, desu wa. I thought my first punching spot was simply poor, so this time I am focusing properly on the head area, and yet there is no sign of the hypnosis breaking whatsoever...? In that case—"

"Eh, wai—GOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?"

Karin, swinging Ouko around by the collar as he grabbed at her, evaded every last attack flawlessly.

And beyond that—

"I shall strengthen the impacts, desu no! It will hurt a little, but please bear it, desu wa!"

GANGANGANGANGANGANGAN!!

While dodging the incoming fire, she seized Ouko by the back of the head and hammered his face into the dungeon wall, over and over and over. Almost as if reenacting the moment she had broken her own hypnosis with a headbutt.

"Oi, what IS that!? How is that brat dodging attacks while dragging Ouko-san around!?"

"What the hell IS that monster!?"

"The barrage—the barrage won't hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!?"

"Oi, Ouko-san's in a bad way!?"

"Why!? Why has it come to this!? If Kuroi-san's intuition gave no reaction, this should never have...!?"

The Black Tiger executives screamed, firing desperately to save their clan's strongest from the monster. Uselessly.

GOH! GOH! GOH! GOH!

Grown yet further by this assault on the abyss and the Humanoid hunt, Karin raced about the hall in every direction without so much as needing equipment beyond her katana, continuing her "rescue efforts" on Ouko. Until at last—

"S... stop... I give up... I surrender... I'll turn myself in... so just... no more..."

—a voice leaked out of the utterly broken Ouko, battered to rags against the dungeon wall. However,

"I will not fall for that! Someone whose hypnosis has just broken should be too confused to grasp what is happening, yet you speak as if you perfectly understand your present situation, desu no!"

That apology would never reach Karin, fully convinced that Black Tiger = pitiful victims of hypnosis.

"Still... ngh, the hypnosis truly will not break...!? Is it because you are mid-tier strong—level 2900 or so—or is the enhanced variant's hypnosis simply too powerful...? Because of my immaturity I cannot find just the right strength, and only cause needless suffering...! Truly, striking you any further would be..."

Karin let slip a conflicted voice even as she evaded the bombardment without a scratch.

"No—no, to hesitate here is not kindness, desu wa! They say even chest compressions must be continued with strong force, without fear of cracking ribs, for nothing is more precious than life! To save these people, I must steel my heart, however un-Elegant...!"

"H-hypnosis...!? Wh-what on earth have you been talking abou—"

"Hurry back to your senses, please! Attacking so suddenly and without warning—you are a bigger lunatic even than Kagerou-sama, who tried to detonate a blast stone! No one could possibly take you for sane, desu wa!"

"Hrk, sto—GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?"

DOGOOOOOOOOOON!

BAKIBOKI GOKI MESHAAA!!

The sound of Ouko's bones shattering and his death scream rang out.

At the greatest destructive force yet, all strength drained limp from the body of Ouko, who had taken the full brunt of Karin's "rescue efforts."

"Aah!? He has lost consciousness before the hypnosis could break after all! What a truly powerful hypnosis this is, desu no! ...No, but someone above level 2000 mends injuries like these fairly quickly, and it is better than remaining hypnotized in the lower layers... Once he is unconscious, I need only carry him somewhere safe and keep him so. It weighs terribly on my heart, but if he has been stopped for now, that will have to do, desu wa."

"Wha...!?"

"Ah... aah...!?"

"O-Ouko...!?"

At Karin's apologetic murmur and the utterly motionless Ouko, the Black Tiger members let out stunned voices.

After all, their assault in full gear—the clan's finances be damned—had not worked in the slightest, and their strongest combatant was being handled like a rag.

Despair lay thick across every face.

Kuroi above all, confused by the rift between his still-silent intuition and reality, stood rigid staring at the unmoving Ouko.

And then—

"Now then—your turn is next, desu wa!"

"""Eek!?"""

At the blood-smeared fist and the beaming smile turned upon them, what blood remained finally drained from the Black Tiger executives' faces.

"I shall lift that hypnotic state from you right now, desu wa!"

We're dead.

At Karin's smile and incomprehensible words, and Ouko's condition, they were certain. The "hypnosis removal" Karin Yamada kept repeating was surely "a pretext of that name." A casus belli for legally slaughtering them, the ones who had launched the ambush. It had to be a subspecies of those transparent thug moves—shaking people down for protection money under a bodyguard label, or power-harassing under the banner of "corrective guidance." They knew, because they did the same.

And besides, in a dungeon there are no records and no corpses—and above all, they themselves had entered this dungeon without leaving any record. Killed here, they would be nothing but missing persons. Even if the Anti-Dungeon Division arrived in time, they were Karin Yamada's sympathizers. More to the point, it was they who had fired off an assault they couldn't even complain about being killed in retaliation for... and judging by Ouko's fate, surrender and begging for their lives were guaranteed to be meaningless.

Hence, the instant Karin took a single step toward them—

"""U-UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!?"""

As if at the very limit of terror, the Black Tiger members scattered like baby spiders, each and every one bolting off in a different direction.

"I don't wanna die! I don't wanna die!"

"How can she move like that fresh off the abyss!? S-screw thiiiiiiiiis!"

"Knew it—we shoulda just fled overseas from the staaaaaart!"

"W-wait, all of you! My danger-sense intuition still isn't aching! Dire as things look, if we fight back, there's a chance to win—damn it! DAMN IT! What the hell is going ON!?"

Kuroi's frantic calls were useless.

The executives, in panic since their strongest Ouko was one-sidedly crushed, heeded no one, and Kuroi too, teeth grinding, began his flight.

"Ah!? No, everyone! It is dangerous to scatter through the lower layers while hallucinating! ...And such calls are meaningless to people in a hallucination, aren't they!"

Karin cried out in a fluster.

"To think they would not only attack but flee in derangement...! But rest assured, please! I will save every last one of you, without fail! —<Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style>!"

So saying, Karin donned the magic armor drawn from her item box.

With her finely honed detection skill she grasped completely the presences of the fleeing Black Tiger executives.

Lifting Ouko—tied by rope from her item box to her own body—aloft on the wind and carrying him along, she set off after the Black Tiger executives at full speed.

――――――――――――――――――

Now that you mention it, I never actually described Karin ojou-sama's dress and hair returning to normal last episode, desu wa! Thank you for pointing it out, desu no! I've also quietly fixed the typos, desu wa!

(Also, the magic-equipment-sealing item—even the higher-end model—is single-use and only affects the equipment present at the moment of activation. So just as the gear she drew from inside her body worked fine during the dungeon collapse, anything newly taken out of the item box after its functions were restored sits outside the shutdown's reach, desu no. That's all, desu wa)