chapter05 · 147-ep147
Episode 140: Ojou-sama Puts It All Away!
"Wha...!?"
The battle between Karin and the abyssal boss—one that holed up underwater with its powerful water control while launching one-sided attacks. As that scene was being broadcast, Ernest Kirby, America's country-toppling explorer, who had been about to teach the seemingly struggling Karin the counter-strategy via superchat, let out a stunned voice.
【Eh】
【Hah!?】
【W-wait, WHAT THE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLL!?】
【Hah!? What is this!? What's she DOING!?】
【Is the water level dropping at an insane rate or what!?】
【Eh, Ojou-sama, what are you doing!? Why is the boss room's water level suddenly dropping!?】
【What is HAPPENING!?】
【This is WAY faster than pulling the plug on a bathtub!?】
【Eh, don't tell me—】
【She's drinking up the boss room's water with her item box!?】
【HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?】
【EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!?】
"Hah???? What IS this!? Is this the item box's power!?"
At the boss room's water vanishing at a ferocious rate, Kirby's eyes flew wide with as much astonishment as the comments—no, more.
The item box... Kirby possessed one of those magical pouches himself, whose very existence had been doubted.
That was exactly why the scene before him was all the more unbelievable.
Admittedly, Kirby's item box wasn't top-grade. It was made from a rare monster encountered in the 'deep layers,' and even after commissioning the nation's finest crafting artisan, he couldn't say its materials' potential had been fully drawn out. He'd assumed Karin's—apparently made from abyssal materials—had far greater capacity...
Even so... EVEN SO, a black hole like THAT was impossible!? Surely it'd hit its limit immediately!?
"All this troublesome water shall be put away now~"
But even while Kirby stood gaping, the boss room's water level kept dropping without pause at a ferocious rate.
Apparently even it couldn't easily swallow water under active control; the currents that escaped absorption danced through the air to attack Karin—but whenever the ojou-sama punched one with a "Sei!", breaking the control for a moment, it too got slurped straight into the item box—and eventually,
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!?!?!?!?!?"
Flip, flip, flip.
The water god dragon Poseidon, possessor of a mountain-like body, lay with a "what just happened" face in the middle of the nearly waterless boss room, unable to move an inch—like a beached whale.
【HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?】
【Hah? Hah?】
【What IS this, desu no!? WHAT IS THIS, desu no!?】
【Abyssal boss: "What IS this, desu no!?"】
【I figured there's no way it could keep going, but the water's seriously ALL GONEEEEEEEEEE!?】
【Um... where exactly did all that water that was filling the boss room just now go...?】
【If it's not there, then it's gone, I suppose (trembling voice)】
【She drank it all!? She seriously put EVERY last drop of the boss room's water into her item box, desu no!?】
【How many tens of millions of cubic meters do you think that IS!?】
【What's the CAPACITY on that item box!?】
【The abyssal boss-sama is making the exact same face as me though!?】
【'Dumbfounded' — title it that and hang it in a museum】
【I got hit by a Simplified Unlimited Void and am now safely the cosmic cat】
【lmao the abyssal boss-sama just flopping around (trembling voice)】
【What IS this sudden reversal!?】
【I mean, if Ojou-sama wins safely then whatever, but STILL—is this even ALLOWED!?】
【A moment of silence for the abyssal boss-sama, which lost its means of movement, defense, AND attack—everything this world had to offer—all at once】
【A reverse Pirate King????】
【What is even happening, desu no...!?】
"Phew! It was a close thing, but I'm glad it all fit, just as I estimated! Making an item box others can use continues to seem beyond me, so I tried using one of the materials I got from that rare boss-sama to increase the capacity of my existing one... and it turned out quite nicely, desu wa! Now the abyssal boss-sama, so hard to see while it was underwater, will show up properly on camera as well!"
While the viewers drowned in chaos, unable to process the scene before them, Karin airily expounded on her item box's capacity increase.
"Still, seeing it up close like this, it IS big, and it looks quite sturdy. Continuing to pummel it one-sidedly from here would be rather inelegant... perhaps this is the perfect chance to test-fire THAT!"
And Karin's outrageous conquest did not end there.
She plunged her hand into the item box that had swallowed every drop of water on the floor, and what she eventually drew out was—a gigantic fixed gun emplacement.
Resting a hand on it and pouring in mana—BACHICHICHICHII! Fierce electric arcs raced across the cannon's surface.
【Eh】
【Wait】
【Now what, desu no!?!?!?!?】
"GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!!!"
At that enormous condensation of mana, the water god dragon's eyes flew wide and it attempted to resist.
But however exceptional an abyssal boss's physical abilities, a frame and body structure premised on underwater activity could barely support its own weight.
It sent what little water remained at the cannon, but DOPAAN! Karin's fist pressure blew it away—futile struggling to the end. And then—
"I did try various things with materials from the lightning lion-sama and the fortress hermit crab-sama in hopes of reproducing Sharie-sama's charged particle cannon, but they came out a bit different from what I imagined, and the charging takes too long for practical use, so it is still at the prototype stage... The power, however, is sufficient. It is convenient at times like this, when the opponent cannot move. And so—THUNDER, desu waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
BACHICHICHICHI!! KYUIIIII—————DOGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!
What the emplacement fired was no charged particle bolt, but a shell super-accelerated by electromagnetic force.
In other words: a railgun.
"GO———GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!?!?!?"
Its power was tremendous, piercing the water god dragon's body in a single shot and opening a gaping hole. Without losing momentum it blew a great cavity through the dungeon wall behind, and with truly disaster-condensed impact shook the entire dungeon.
As everyone stood dumbfounded at the abnormal events arriving one after another, and the comments stopped before the giant dragon's colossal frame collapsing like a life expired—
"Phew! The hunt is safely complete, desu wa! Ah, by the way—the abyss's space is apparently warped so badly that attacks like that will not affect anything outside the dungeon, so long as I mind the angle, so please rest easy on that count. Though that same property also makes floor-to-floor shortcuts difficult in a pinch, so it is a trade-off... Ah!?"
Karin's eyes flew open.
"I-I am sorry, desu no! I was so absorbed in the conquest that it seems I callously ignored the person who so kindly posted some sort of strategy for the abyssal boss-sama along with an outrageous sum of money...!? Wh-when I next encounter one, I shall be sure to try it, desu wa!?"
She panicked like a perfectly ordinary streamer her age, as if the outrageous conquest of moments ago had been a lie.
As for Kirby, who had watched that entire sequence in silence—
"Oh... my god..."
He had surmised that Karin's strength ranked quite high even among those called country-topplers... but this was simply too...
At recklessness that forced even a country-toppler—already a being beyond common sense—to call it senseless, his jaw hung open for quite some time.
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Incidentally, Captain pizza-sama is a first-class explorer with a finely toned body, I'll have you know!