chapter05 · 146-ep146
Episode 139: How to Conquer the Aquatic Abyssal Boss
【UWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?】
【What IS thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!?】
【Even from the floating camera's overhead view I can't make out ANYTHING anymore, desu waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!?】
【I mean, obviously Ojou-sama's gonna fight instead of run... but is she seriously gonna be okay against this!?】
The deepest reaches of floor 1 in Arakawa Dungeon's abyss.
Countless comments were pouring into the stream of Karin challenging a boss battle in this never-before-trodden domain. Nearly all of them were screams verging on shrieks; even those who trusted Karin's strength couldn't hide their tension.
And understandably so.
DOPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
ZUGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA!!!
ZUPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
What the floating camera, evacuated high into the sky, captured was a violence of water currents that did not seem of this world.
Tracking tsunamis pursued Karin relentlessly; water currents writhed like tentacles and slammed in from every angle of all 360 degrees. Water lasers fired under tremendous pressure carved up the dungeon walls as if it were only natural, and the next moment, water cutters that had swallowed the wall fragments and sharpened themselves sliced through the air, severing even sound.
The fantastical scene of clear streams dancing every which way through the air was, in truth, a watery execution ground where a single instant of misjudgment led straight to death.
"In the sense that the entire floor is the enemy, this is the same as the dungeon walls. But unlike dungeon walls, water is a fluid to begin with. The speed it can be manipulated at is a difference of heaven and earth, desu wa!"
Karin voiced her analysis while completely evading that onrushing onslaught of water with Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style's ridiculous aerial mobility and her beyond-the-norm perception skills—or blowing it away with fist pressure.
It didn't seem able to control all the water filling the floor at once, and a violent shock to the water seemed to break its control for a moment... but even so, the speed and volume of the water the dragon commanded was overwhelming. Its threat easily surpassed the writhing dungeon walls.
What's more—
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!"
DOPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
When the abyssal floor-1 boss lurking in the water stirred its silver-white bulk—larger even than <Gigant Fortress>—that alone generated a gigantic 'wall of water' separate from its water-control ability.
It rose to fill the sky above the boss room, as if to seal off Karin's escape routes while she dealt with the water cutters and tracking tsunamis. A wall of water carrying such great mass was difficult to block even with Storm Style's wind armor, and in that it left her no choice but to evade within a confined space, it was an extremely vicious wave attack.
【Hey hey hey, this is a genuine mega-disaster!?】
【We already knew from the fight with that spatial-magic user, but the abyss bosses really ARE all freaks, desu wa!?】
【Whoa, this is way more insane than the dungeon-wall manipulation earlier!?】
【The land at the bottom of the stairs got swallowed in an instant—if you can't fly, this is instant death!?】
【At least give us a proper safe spot (LAND)!!】
【N-no, wait, Ojou-sama's DODGING all of it!?】
【Ojou-sama's gone skyfish on us again, exceeding the camera's frame and our dynamic vision!】
【OOOOOOOOH! Storm Style Ojou-sama's got thiiiiiiis, desu waaaaaaa!】
But having grown even further since the battle with the fortress, Karin continued evading that ferocious barrage entirely. Without letting a single attack so much as graze her dress, she flew through the sky at extreme speed, and the moment she finished observing the enemy's attacks, what she drew from her dress was the goddamn-huge hammer made from dungeon wall.
"Then, it is about time—I took my turn as well, desu wa!"
She spun through the air, threading between the fierce water attacks.
Layering centrifugal force, gravity, and her beyond-the-norm strength, she drove the superheavy weapon down toward the water's surface!
DOBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!
The dynamite-fishing-like blow that had swept up the aquatic deep-layer bosses of abyssal floor 1 in one net struck the water again, generating a tremendous shockwave that shook even the broadcast image.
【Whoa!? An enemy attack!?】
【No, that's Ojou-sama's Dynamite Fishing (move name), desu wa!?】
【She's dodging this ENTIRE barrage AND counterattackiiiiing!】
【Ojou-sama's just built different, desu wa!?】
【Did that do it!?】
Cheers rose for Karin, who had perfectly read the fierce attacks and turned to the counterattack.
But—the truly vexing thing about the aquatic abyssal boss's water-control ability was not its offense.
"As expected of the abyss. Nothing comes easy here, desu wa."
As if in answer to Karin's murmured words—
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!"
DOPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
The unharmed water dragon roared and, as if to return the favor, raised a great tsunami!
【Eh】
【Hah!? What IS this thing!? It's barely taking any damage!?】
【Wait, don't tell me it's UNHARMED!? It's not even a kraken!?
【How!?】
Its shell, thick as the strata befitting that colossal body, and the sturdy scales unique to dragon species had absorbed even the shockwaves that should have penetrated within—but that wasn't all.
"It seems it applied its water control to escape all at once to a depth where shockwaves cannot reach. It was swimming at tremendous speed just now, desu wa."
【Hah!?】
【Whoa, seriously...!?】
【That water control can be used like THAT!?】
【Sure, it's an abyssal magic beast, but I thought it looked like that huge body was swimming at a flat-out impossible speed, and THAT's what that was, desu no!?】
【If it's a boss its base defense is probably rock-hard too, so it didn't completely leave the effective range... but either way, reaching no-damage depth in a single instant—how fast can this thing even SWIM, desu no!?】
【That's just straight-up cheating!?】
"Then, next I shall do this, desu wa!"
KYUIIN———DOPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
Having analyzed the enemy's behavior, Karin immediately fired her next move.
She dive-bombed the water's surface at Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style's ultradynamic speed and struck once with a fist carrying that momentum. Enormous water sprayed up and the surface split, an airway extending deep into the water—and what was hurled down it at ferocious speed was a volley of shockwave bombs.
A brute-force answer: if it could flee deep underwater with its swim speed, then detonate even stronger shockwaves at even greater depth.
But—
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!"
DOPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!!
Wary of her throwing attacks since that goddamn-huge hammer, perhaps.
The water dragon took distance at high speed once more, and simultaneously sent countless water currents surging at the thrown shockwave bombs.
The result—DOPAPAPAPAPAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!
The shockwave bombs, pushed back en masse by the violent currents, released their shock in the air instead of the water.
Without propagating so much as a single shock underwater, it ended as a complete waste of ammunition.
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!"
And judging that surfacing near the waterline had finally become too dangerous given that ridiculous power—
The water dragon halted at the bottom, where shockwaves reached least of all.
It stopped crossing dangerous bridges like generating great tsunamis with its own body and shifted its attacks entirely to water control. Perhaps, like the aquatic creature it was, it grasped its surroundings through hearing and mana sensing as well as sight—it began unilaterally hounding Karin in midair.
【HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?
【What was that—did the shockwave bombs just get pushed BACK!?】
【That water control's defensive performance is WAY too busted!?】
【The synergy with the flooded stage is straight-up evil!?】
【Wait, the water dragon's completely invisible now—did it seriously hole up at the bottom!?】
【That ain't right, c'mon!】
【This is somehow WORSE than kiting!?】
【Quit the hikki-sniping!】
The underhanded strategy, so at odds with that colossal body—the worst stable behavior for crushing explorers safely and surely—had the viewers screaming.
【Hey hey, seriously!】
【If it keeps this up she'll just bleed out, I say!】
【Isn't there something—like slicing it with Desu-Worm-chan, desu no!?】
【With a body that huge AND in the water, is Desu-Worm-chan's slash range even enough for a fatal blow!?】
【Besides, if she stands at the surface in an iai stance she'd just get swallowed】
【Lightning Style... would be underpowered against that body and that depth, huh!?】
【That plasma punch from earlier underwater—that's impossible mode too!】
【Underwater combat against an aquatic creature that controls the currents isn't even 'bad odds for Karin ojou-sama' territory anymore...】
【Controlling water in THIS boss room is some genuine bullshit!?】
【I mean, she IS dodging every attack...】
【But with no way to finish it from our side, she'll only wear herself down!?】
【Shouldn't she just pull back once and work out a countermeasure!?】
【What do we even do here...】
"Mmm. This has become rather troublesome, desu wa."
Though not to the extent of the comment section, Karin too was racking her brain over "what to do" while dodging, confronted with the abyssal boss's utterly shameless stalling tactics.
If shockwaves from midair didn't work, the obvious best move was to strike the shock directly into the water—but as the comments said, that would be a poor choice. The opponent possessed considerable water control; the likely outcome was getting entangled before she even closed in, and how much an imperfect blow delivered amid raging water could accomplish against that sturdy colossal body was unknown.
If she abandoned elegance, she could probably force her way through... but in a battle of that scale her underwater mask wouldn't last, and against that water-control user her floating camera couldn't keep up no matter its underwater specs. She had braced herself beforehand that an abyss conquest might become not-quite-Elegant after all, so that much was fine—but a prolonged situation of being unable to commentate while submerged would worry the viewers too much, and given this stream's purpose, she wanted to avoid that if at all possible.
"Hmmm. If not for all this water filling the boss room, it wouldn't be such a difficult opponent... Ah."
At that moment.
Her eyes flew wide at her own utterly blunt words that had slipped out.
"That's it, desu wa! This is exactly the time to try out the thing I luckily powered up the other day! It should just barely have the capacity!"
【Eh】
【Ojou-sama, what on earth are you】
【Eh, what?】
Amid the viewers' confusion at that out-of-place cheerful cry—
Karin drew a certain something from her dress.
〇
"Phew."
Somewhere in America.
In a hideout of a room lined with visibly high-end furniture and liquor, a man's rather weary sigh echoed.
Ernest Kirby.
One of the country-toppling explorers belonging to dungeon superpower America, and the special-class force who had essentially single-handedly quelled the abyssal-class dungeon collapse that struck California.
His strength lived up to the country-toppling title: America, which boasted the world's strongest military and many powerful explorers, was known to say "don't ruffle that man's feathers." Still in his thirties, he had built power and assets enough to sway the nation, and normally spent his life doing exactly as he pleased. A free spirit.
But that seemingly stress-free man currently wore a somewhat tired face.
The reason being... after quelling the California collapse, he had been cooperating with the investigation into the goddamn terrorists who caused the incident.
Free-spirited and used to having most things his way he might be, but with an incident this large, not even he could escape the fallout. For instance: the pizzeria near the dungeon that he always visited before a run had temporarily closed. Or: the anticipated great panic threatened to spread pizzeria closures and quality declines far and wide.
So for once he was uncharacteristically cooperating with the government, running all over the place to identify the terrorists and trace their connections to Raviristan, one of the suspect nations... and to this day there had been almost nothing resembling results.
Well, even a head-and-shoulders-above country-toppler wasn't an investigation specialist, so some of that was unavoidable... but a flat zero results was eerie beyond words, and he'd let out a sigh at that long-unfelt sense of futility.
"Well, it'll work out somehow. Not like I'm the only one making moves."
With that, Kirby deliberately switched his Poison Resistance skill off and was settling in to unwind with some net-surfing on his phone over his favorite drink—when it happened.
"Wait, what...?"
His thumb froze mid-scroll.
"That mutant ojou-sama is streaming a solo abyssal conquest to stop Arakawa Dungeon's collapse...!?"
It was the stream currently the talk of the entire world, across borders and time zones.
The ojou-sama was challenging the core destruction of a great dungeon threatened with collapse—and broadcasting the whole thing live to the world at this very moment.
Kirby had caught the news before that Japan's government had requested the conquest from a teenager named Karin Yamada, and he vaguely remembered government higher-ups fussing about something.
But after running himself ragged on the goddamn terrorist investigation for so long, he had apparently missed the part about her streaming it. Or rather, he must have heard it somewhere, but with information this badly scrambled, his brain had practically filtered it out unconsciously.
"Clearing a first-seen abyss in one go... while STREAMING, to reassure people terrified of terrorism? Is she sane...?"
As one explorer he'd kept an eye on Karin Yamada—she who had charged into the abyss mid-stream in a dress, formed an alliance with that Dungeon Queen, and stirred up incident after incident. He'd thought he grasped her bottomless strength and sheer lunacy... but not to THIS extent.
If it were merely a request to stop an abyssal collapse in advance, he'd have taken it himself. But while it was necessary for the fight against terrorism (and he could understand why the government had had no choice but to request it), could he have accepted such a punishing job solo—while streaming, which was distracting enough and exposed nearly his entire hand, all while dispelling the public's anxiety and entertaining them?
That ojou-sama seemed to have a screw loose—there was even suspicion she couldn't tell reality from comics... but even setting that aside, this was far from normal.
He had honestly thought it a bit reckless... but as the stream went on, Kirby had revised that assessment. It seemed his worry had been misplaced.
"Doryaryaryaryaryaryaaa, desu waaaaaaaaaa!"
DOBBBOBOBOBOBOBOBOBOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!
She had in fact pushed straight for the abyss in her usual dress, and on the notorious underwater stage had trampled the monsters without a hitch in that same outfit. The internet, once brimming with anxiety and terror, she had thrown into a chaotic frenzy of enthusiasm with insane behavior and unhinged skill.
The conquest was nowhere near the halfway point—the abyss was still in its earliest of early stages. The worried voices asking whether she could really clear the deepest reaches remained the majority. Even so, the atmosphere was unmistakably changing from before the stream.
"Good grief... it's like the real Setsuna Kiryuuin... I see. No wonder that mellowed-out mad dog with an eye for talent fell for her..."
He'd watched the rule-breaking teen's streams many times, but the sight of her Elegant composure unshaken even under these circumstances drew the words unbidden from Kirby's mouth. However loose her screws, at this point it was simply worthy of praise.
Before he knew it, Kirby himself had forgotten his stalled counterterrorism investigation, watching the stream and cheering her on—"Mock those goddamn terrorists with that insane conquest of yours!"
But... the infernal realm called the abyss was not so forgiving an environment.
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!"
The ojou-sama was struggling against the extra-large boss waiting beyond the flooded area.
"Whoa. Out of character for her—the ojou-sama's in a pinch."
If Karin abandoned her so-called Elegant conquest, she certainly wouldn't lose.
But her opponent was an abyssal boss with a troublesome water-control ability. She could kill it, but brute-forcing it the way she had until now would surely cost her considerable attrition.
A first-seen abyss where anything might lurk ahead. And if the terrorists had very likely tampered with something, exhaustion this early in the abyss could not be overlooked.
In that case—
"Not very classy of me, but time to step in and help!"
Fortunately, Kirby had fought the abyssal boss Karin was struggling against—the water god dragon Poseidon—many times.
Admittedly, that water control combined with the boss room built to maximize it was quite nasty. Charge recklessly into the water, and the odds were good you'd be drowned by manipulations far too delicate and swift for that gigantic body; its water-based defensive performance was rule-breaking-class, exactly as the stream was showing. Hole up in the depths and it seemed nearly invincible. But there was a clear counter-strategy, and having luckily discovered it, Kirby had been farming Poseidon ever since.
Manipulating a translation magic item and the device in his hand, Kirby finished preparing a superchat in short order.
Normally, to avoid all manner of risks and hassles, explorers called country-topplers never did anything that could trace their identity.
But right at this moment, (however suspect her grip on the comics-versus-reality distinction) a teenager a good twenty years his junior was risking her life in front of millions to smash those goddamn terrorists' schemes and clear away the people's anxiety. A trifling risk like getting doxxed was a rounding error.
With various circumstances keeping him from rushing to her side as reinforcements this instant, he couldn't stand tall as a fellow country-toppler... no, as one grown adult, without at least doing this much.
¥50,000 @Captain pizza
Hey! Lovely mutant ojou-sama of Japan! Looks like you're having some trouble cooking that big fish of yours Elegantly! Here's a hot tip for you! That thing's weakness is electricity! It doesn't have to be all that powerful—land just one hit on that goddamn puddle filling the boss room and it can't control the water anymore!
¥50,000 @Captain pizza
Mana-based electricity gets through decently even against magic water, after all! Do that, and that big lug'll get pissed at the shocks and at losing its water control and surface to try to crush you directly. Smash it then and it's easy pickings! You'll have to get close to the surface, so stay sharp—but if you crank the output of that Lightning Style of yours, you should just barely reach the power you need!
【Hmm...?】
【H-hey, what's this superchat!?】
【A strategy for the abyssal boss!?】
【Eh, is this legit info!?】
【No way the real deal posts abyss info in chat, right?】
【Hey hey, who's pulling this prank NOW of all times!
【S-surely it's not some troll... right?】
【But this chat DOES occasionally get comments that seem to actually see Ojou-sama's fights... could this be for real...!?】
【If it were real we'd be talking billions in information fees—it's gotta be nonsense... right!?】
【But something about it is oddly convincing... either way, wouldn't it be fine to just give it a try, perhaps...!?】
"Well, granted, if you put a price on it, that information would go for no less than a few billion... but that's not what this is about."
Kirby murmured at the rippling comments.
Nothing could be allowed to happen to a cool-and-crazy talent like her; and again, that teenager was laying her life on the line. A mere few billion in information fees was a trifle.
"If anything, the question is whether the ojou-sama will trust the info... She doesn't seem to be checking comments much right now anyway—should I spend a little more? I've got Poseidon materials somewhere too; attach a picture and it'd add some credibility—"
Just as Kirby was about to send another superchat to get the information to Karin fast—her comment-checking grown lax, perhaps, from focusing on battle—that happened.
"That's it, desu wa! This is exactly the time to try out the thing I luckily powered up the other day! It should just barely have the capacity!"
"Eh?"
Karin suddenly let out that cheerful cry... and drew something from her dress.
It was the magic item Karin had used time and again throughout this conquest.
A palm-sized leather pouch—her item box.
"What...?"
The instant Kirby and the rest of the viewers tilted their heads at Karin abruptly raising it aloft at this critical juncture—ZUOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!
Having slipped through the water-current attacks, Karin pressed the pouch's mouth to the surface—and began sucking up the boss room's water at a ferocious rate.
―――――――――――――――――――――――
Things got a bit long, so this one's split in two, desu wa...!
And Ojou-sama Buzz has hit exactly one year since serialization began today, desu wa!
Thanks to all your support (no, seriously, you all supported us SO much), not only has the serialization made it this far, but this year the cumulative ranking reached 18th, and in ☆ we're sixth from the top (probably)—which is utterly absurd, and I'm deeply grateful, desu no.
If you're enjoying it, I'd be delighted if you'd support us with a ☆ or a follow so the ojou-sama's rampages can reach even more people, desu wa!