chapter05 · 141-ep141
Episode 134: Shinobu Nekoyashiki's Aim
"Heh heh. This is working even better than I expected."
On the day of the threatened collapse, Shinobu Nekoyashiki watched Karin begin conquering Arakawa Dungeon in her Elegant dress. Hidden in the invasion sabotage force's secret base in a regional city, Nekoyashiki was in an exceptionally good mood. Her scheme to trap Karin had worked even more neatly than she'd anticipated.
She hadn't posted that blatant provocation video simply to lure Karin to the bottom of the abyss.
Insulting Setsuna Kiryuuin would likely make Karin, already obsessed with 'Elegant conquest,' lose her temper and impose her usual dress and other self-restrictions upon herself—far beyond anything the government, which wanted to dispel the public's fear of terrorism, had envisioned.
Nekoyashiki didn't imagine for a moment that ordinary monsters would defeat Karin Yamada. She was relying on Arakawa Dungeon to WEAR HER DOWN.
Nekoyashiki had absolute confidence in the hidden measure she'd prepared at the dungeon's deepest point to crush Karin. But this monster had already shattered such expectations again and again, so complacency was forbidden. To increase the trap's chances as much as possible, she'd selected Arakawa Dungeon from several possible collapse sites because it seemed likeliest to exhaust Karin Yamada.
And the more Karin insisted on the handicap she called 'Elegance,' the more effective that exhaustion would be. That was why Nekoyashiki had uploaded the video in the first place.
"Hmm... I could skip the challenge through the lower layers, but ignoring one in the deep layers feels like running away. Not very Elegant. I'd rather complete it."
The scheme had worked even better than expected. Karin had chosen to wear a dress and had stopped at a deep-layer challenge door. A windfall for Nekoyashiki.
"The real opportunity to wear her down begins in the abyss, where shortcuts are difficult. I thought she'd ignore the deep-layer challenge doors... This is a pleasant surprise."
How fortunate for Karin, to know nothing. She could expend her strength bringing viewers false hope in the form of 'Elegance' without knowing what awaited her at the dungeon's bottom.
Nekoyashiki's smile widened—until the very next instant.
"Fire, desu waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
"................................Hah?"
An outrageous torrent of flame filled the stream.
And then—GAGON!
After the flamethrower filled deep-layer floor 2 with undiminished force for several minutes—
"Good! An Elegant extermination, desu wa!"
With that refreshed-sounding declaration, Karin completed the challenge to kill every monster on the floor, spent almost no time or stamina, and opened the door as if it were only natural.
Nekoyashiki wasn't the only one dumbfounded.
【........................Eh?】
【Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey hey!?】
【The door's opeeeeeeeeeeeeen!?】
【It can't just go GAGON! (trembling)】
【Huh!? Did she REALLY kill them all!?】
【Or did she slice the door open too fast for us to see and only make it LOOK like it opened!?】
【No... way...】
【All of them? Every deep-layer monster? In two or three minutes? Seriously...?】
【Did her flamethrower fill the ENTIRE floor!?】
【What the hell was that inhumane magic weapon!?】
【The dungeon made a bad call! Please tell me it got the call wrong!】
【Weren't there monsters on floor 2 that give off those heatwaves too? She burned THEM up...?】
【Karin ojou-sama's flamethrower burns hotter than any fire monster's magma (trembling)】
【Why didn't she use that against the mist? (trembling)】
【↑Then she'd kill every monster on the floor and have nothing left to film (trembling)】
【Have you got Karin ojou-sama's brain...?】
【Everyone's trembling. Not even funny】
【This is Calamity Karin!】
【Like Calamity Ganon...?】
【Pretty much the same in name AND meaning...】
【Purely out of curiosity... How much experience did Ojou-sama gain just now?】
【Stop, stop!】
【No more scary stories!】
¥5,000
【Breaking News】 Mitsuki-sama finally hit her limit, shrieked, collapsed, and was carried out of the studio. A stuffed bear now sits in her place
【What are you DOING, Mitsuki-sama!?】
【She gave it her best...】
【Suppressing her Dark Mitsuki-sama side was too much to ask... But we appreciate the spirit】
【Why is weird shit happening on Mitsuki-sama's broadcast too!?】
【A s a l w a y s】
【B r o a d c a s t d i s a s t e r g u a r a n t e e d】
【Honoka-sama was apparently there as Mitsuki-sama's minder, came out from backstage like it was routine, and carried her off after she exploded. I forgot how serious this is and laughed????】
【I thought it was a staff member, then looked twice when I realized it was Honoka-sama...】
【Don't make us laugh in the middle of an emergency】
【Enough with the serious comedy】
【(Is this really serious...?)】
【Things get so weird around Karin ojou-sama that I forget this IS a serious situation】
【Mitsuki-sama and Honoka-sama are kind of helping Karin ojou-sama dispel everyone's fear through her Elegant conquest】
【They're doing it with a comedy routine...】
【T-to be fair, Mitsuki-sama was taking her job seriously this time... until she hit her limit】
【When she told the worried announcer, 'As if Karin ojou-sama would run out of strength halfway,' with those utterly intense eyes, even my little sister relaxed. Genuinely grateful】
【Words from someone who believes it to her core are persuasive...】
【The other broadcast has way too much going on...】
【Of course it does with Mitsuki-sama, Karin ojou-sama's number one fan, appearing...】
【The fanatics fit the streamer】
【Slander against the Karin Party!】
As viewers reeled at Karin's direct, utterly impossible solution to the challenge, their anxiety about the attack had been shaken up along with everything else.
"W-well, I'd allowed for unknown magic equipment. Even if it didn't cost her concentration or stamina, surely she expended quite a bit of mana," Nekoyashiki said, recovering from her shock.
Her sabotage had kept Dungeon Queen Sharifa Nefertiti away, so Karin couldn't recover vast quantities of mana using <Munch-Munch Nom-Nom>. It MUST have worn her down at least a little.
"Besides, that's not the only challenge door in Arakawa Dungeon's deep layers."
And as she predicted...
The shark-shaped boss of deep-layer floor 2 flitted through the air at tremendous speed, foresaw its opponent's movements, and perfectly evaded attacks. Karin crushed it with the comment, "Detection-based enemies aren't terribly interesting; one need only punch faster than they can react." She advanced through floor 3 until another challenge door appeared at its end.
"Hm. This challenge door seems to have more than just an inscription."
Karin stopped and showed the entrance to floor 3's boss room. It had many buttons, each marked with a number, as though demanding a passcode. The challenge carved on it read:
'If you wish to advance, gather the inscriptions on this floor, solve the equations they contain, and enter the answer.'
【Equations!?】
【You need to know MATH to clear some dungeons!?】
【What...】
【What ARE dungeons, seriously...】
【Wait, this is Karin ojou-sama's strongest foe ever】
【Ojou-sama, this one's impossible!】
【Finding the questions first is a pain, and she probably couldn't solve them anyway!】
【You have to take a shortcut this time!】
【But couldn't the viewers solve it for her?】
【Not ONE of you thinks Ojou-sama could do it herself!】
【Hey! We haven't actually heard anything about her grades!】
【She passed high school entrance exams, at least!】
【I'm not trying to insult her, but I can't picture Ojou-sama solving equations...】
"What a splendid challenge," Nekoyashiki murmured with a renewed smile as the comments grew rather rude.
This time it was a puzzle. It even required finding the steles with the equations first. Since they were made of the same material as dungeon walls, detection skills would have trouble finding them. Karin couldn't blast this one away with a cheat weapon.
Of course, if it came down to it, she could bypass such a troublesome challenge entirely, but—
"Hmm. Skipping this feels even less Elegant than skipping the last challenge... And I have seen some rather rude comments... I shall clear it Elegantly!"
Karin was well ahead of schedule and eagerly squared up to the challenge. Nekoyashiki could count on it draining her more surely than the previous one.
She smirked—just as enormous mana gathered on-screen.
"Eh?"
【Hm?】
【Ojou-sama, what are you doing!?】
【You're standing still instead of searching for the inscriptions...】
【Wait, are you activating a skill...?】
【No way, could she be...!?】
Though she'd promised to complete the challenge, Karin didn't move from the door. The viewers tilted their heads—CLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK! GAGON!
Karin entered a twenty-digit number without hesitation, and the door opened normally.
【Huh!?】
【Eh】
【The door is open!?】
【Ojou-sama, what did you just do!?】
【That was obviously a ridiculous number of digits! How did she solve it on the FIRST try without gathering the inscriptions!?】
【A lucky guess... is impossible with that many digits!?】
【Ojou-sama, how!?】
"It is simple!" Karin told the barrage of comments, looking proud. "Challenge-door mechanisms run on mana, since they are inside a dungeon. If you apply detection a little more strongly, you can read the answers to puzzles like this! Picture the machines you sometimes see in movies that read passcodes! Heh heh. With twenty digits, I was actually worried I might press the wrong number. But I cleared this challenge rather Elegantly, if I do say so myself!"
【What...】
【I knew it. She really did READ the answer!?】
【Puzzle designer: 'I hope the explorers try hard to solve it!' (excited)】
【↑I honestly feel bad for them】
【Y-yes, that's Elegant too...】
【Come on, she solved equations with a twenty-digit answer and cleared the door! Take back the comments calling her stupid!】
【I'm sorry, desu wa (unconvinced)】
【A strategist ojou-sama】
【◆But what about her almost entering the numbers wrong...?】
【I said this before, but she's the kind of 'strategist' who pulls a metal puzzle apart with brute force...】
【This is meathead intellectual play】
【What the hell does 'meathead intellectual play' mean!?】
【So Ojou-sama is smart too... Intelligence and strength combined make her look unbeatable!】
【Where was the intelligence...?】
【Brute force × brute force = intellect, desu wa!】
【Like multiplying two negatives to get a positive...?】
【Reverse Cursed Technique?】
"That's... cheating..."
Amid viewers unsure how to respond to Karin's perfectly typical brute-force approach, Nekoyashiki forgot her usual manner of speaking and muttered blankly. She'd been pleased at the prospect of Karin exhausting herself for Elegance, but this unbelievable instant solution had wiped the smile off her face.
More to the point—
"...Is this even wearing her down...?"
A flamethrower that turned an entire deep-layer floor into a wasteland, and detection precise enough to read a challenge door's answer. Yet Karin looked exactly the same afterward. Sweat appeared on Nekoyashiki's cheek before she noticed.
"Ahahaha! Are you stupid? What are you so surprised about?"
A mocking voice suddenly rang out from the same room.
"Did you really expect a monster so deranged that it's doubtful she even belongs to this world to do what you predicted?"
Yoko Inukai grinned gleefully from inside a cage, deprived of the use of her body.
Nekoyashiki had deliberately made her watch the stream in the same room so Yoko would have to see Karin defeated by her superior technology and strategies. Yet Yoko's expression was the exact opposite of what she'd expected: she was openly, blissfully mocking Nekoyashiki.
"You called me unfit to be a boss, but you're still surprised by Karin Yamada's madness after all this time? Haven't you been rather naive in your predictions, Branch Chief Shinobu Nekoyashiki?"
Now that she had neither hope of staging a comeback nor responsibility for eliminating Karin, Yoko taunted her freely. But her mockery was drowned out by the CLANG of Nekoyashiki kicking the cage.
"Whose side are you on?"
The former boss's taunt seemed to restore Nekoyashiki's composure.
"Yes, her absurdity startled me again. So what? We prepared a monster capable of crushing Karin Yamada even without wearing her down... even if she formed a party with other country-toppling explorers."
"..."
Yoko, who had been so lively seconds earlier, fell silent. More than anyone, she knew how ridiculous Karin was, but Nekoyashiki really HAD prepared something that even she couldn't dismiss.
"Besides, those challenge doors are only deep-layer obstacles. I always knew she might bypass them. Beyond the random bosses, there are many more threats: the cause of that tragedy, born by chance, and the 'environment' on the abyss's first floor, to name a few. Wearing Karin Yamada down begins in earnest from here...!"
Nekoyashiki glared at Karin strolling ahead on-screen, unaware of the many threats awaiting her, as if to say, 'Enjoy looking carefree while you still can.'
〇
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The monster that greeted Karin when she Elegantly opened floor 3's challenge door was a crab-shaped creature the size of a hill, covered in countless firearms. It belonged to the series of heavily armed monsters known as 'cannon crabs,' and its exceptional size and sheer number of weapons made it worthy of being a deep-layer boss.
Its firepower was truly fierce: a rain of gunfire that might have broken through the defenses of bosses like Storm Dragons and lightning lions swept toward Karin.
But it was only deep-layer class—in other words, an inferior version of the presumably abyssal-class <Gigant Fortress>.
"The deep-layer bosses here aren't terribly impressive, desu wa ne!"
"GOGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIH!?"
DOGOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
She didn't need to use the full Storm Style. Reducing air resistance alone let Karin move at high speed without stressing her dress. She evaded the barrage of missiles perfectly, closed the distance in an instant, and shattered the boss with fa jin.
"Arakawa Dungeon's third floor is conquered, desu wa!"
【As always, she cleared unscathed, desu waaaaa!】
【It was obvious when this boss turned out to be an inferior Okutama fortress hermit crab, but she really IS guaranteed a clean win against deep-layer bosses now!?】
【And there are twenty million concurrents, desu waaaaa!】
【Holy shit...】
【Those clips of her brute-forcing the challenge doors have spread like wildfire on top of the already massive attention!】
【I know this isn't the time to care about viewer counts, but THAT number is insane!?】
【Already past Okutama... How high will it go if she stops the collapse...?】
【And that's WITH the TV broadcasts!】
Viewers cheered her customary unscathed victory and her Elegant solutions to the challenge doors. But their excitement soon faded. The end of the abyss was still far off, and the next floor was the last of the deep layers: rumored site of the Arakawa Dungeon tragedy.
【The real trouble starts next...】
【I think Ojou-sama will be fine if she beat Okutama's fortress hermit crab, but...】
【If the tragedy happened on floor 4, the eighteen explorers passed the earlier random bosses and challenge doors, right? Even if the challenges differed, they were probably about this difficult】
【Sounds like they were incredibly skilled even by today's standards】
【How did ALL of them disappear without leaving proper information...?】
【Be careful, Ojou-sama!】
As Karin approached floor 4, the viewers—who'd briefly forgotten their fear of the attack amid her outrageous solutions—grew tense again. Karin kept her dress on but properly deployed her detection skills as she entered.
Yet...
"...? How strange."
Deep-layer floor 4 of Arakawa Dungeon. After walking through broad caverns that stretched on seemingly without end for several minutes, Karin tilted her head. No matter how far she went, no monsters appeared. She could barely even sense them. At most, there were two or three small presences moving around far away.
【? What's with this floor? No monsters at all?】
【I was braced for something terrible, but this is anticlimactic????】
【Maybe they're fleeing from Ojou-sama because she's scarier?】
【That sounds plausible lmao】
【The tragedy was over fifteen years ago. If there was a cause, maybe it's gone now?】
【Still, could there really be NOTHING here?】
【Well, no danger to Ojou-sama is good news】
Viewers responded to the uncanny stillness with a mix of confusion and relief.
"This IS strange. But while putting on an Elegant show is important, reliably conquering the dungeon takes priority. If there is nothing here, I shall simply pick up the pace."
Karin shared their puzzled look and walked faster through the oddly quiet floor—until, just as she'd reached its midpoint, an alien presence suddenly registered on her detection. Almost as though it had waited for its prey to reach the point from which escaping floor 4 was most difficult.
ZGOGOGOGOGOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
"Eh?"
Karin turned with her floating camera toward the roar behind her. The path she'd taken was completely closed by writhing dungeon walls.
【Eh!?】
【What!?】
【Did the dungeon wall just MOVE!?】
The silence had broken so suddenly that the comments turned to screams. And it didn't end there.
ZGOGOGOGOOOOOOOON!
A second roar sounded, and rippling dungeon walls sealed the passage ahead. Naturally, the dungeon's malice wasn't content merely to block the exits.
ZGOGOGOGOGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!
Dungeon walls above, below, left, and right writhed and surged toward the trapped Karin at tremendous speed!
【Hey hey hey hey!?】
【Huh!?】
【What is this!?】
【Ojou-sama's going to be crushed!?】
"Hah!"
Karin struck a rippling wall with her fist. But it emerged unscathed. Despite moving like a fluid, the dungeon wall seemed to retain its hardness. An ordinary blow left no mark.
"Then—this, desu wa!"
SHING!
Having assessed its nature, Karin immediately switched tactics and drew Famous Sword <Mongolian Desu-Worm> from her item box. She sliced through the wall and escaped into an adjacent passage. The viewers sighed in relief as her cheat equipment saved her.
But—GOGOGOGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
The walls of the passage she'd escaped to surged at her in exactly the same way. She repeatedly sliced through to new passages, yet however many times she evaded, the walls pursued her without end.
【Hey hey hey, what IS this!?】
【You've got to be kidding! What's happening!?】
【It deflected Karin ojou-sama's jab, so these aren't camouflaged monsters. The actual dungeon walls are moving!?】
【That's insane! What are you even supposed to DO!?】
【Ojou-sama, this is dangerous! If you can, retreat now!】
Viewers who'd just felt relief cried out at the otherworldly sight, as though the floor itself—or the entire dungeon—had become an enemy. But their Elegant ojou-sama did not flinch.
"I see. This must be the cause of the tragedy!"
She fixed her gaze on the writhing walls and struck her fists together, ready to crush the dangerous monster.
――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――――
Whenever I write Yoko and Nekoyashiki quarreling, the inspector in my head starts spouting that invincible line, 'But if they don't get along... doesn't that mean... they actually like each other?' (Super Psychic Policeman Chojo in Jump is fun, desu wa.)
Incidentally, those two genuinely hate each other, desu no.