chapter05 · 148-ep148
Episode 141: Adaptability
Having swallowed every drop of water filling the vast boss room with an upgraded item box, and one-shot the immobilized giant water dragon with her homemade railgun.
That lawless conquest left everyone speechless, and for a while the comments all but stopped.
But as people grasped, a few seconds late, that Karin had cleared that unreasonable boss room without a scratch—the comments exploded as if in backlash.
【UWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH!? Abyssal boss one-shot pulverized AND a damage-free clear, desu waaaaaaaaaaa!?】
【Ojou-sama's just doing things so chaotic neither the comments nor my brain can keep uuuup!?】
【A boss room that's entirely underwater with water-control on top—cleared by something even MORE chaotic—what IS thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!?】
【You fight absurdity WITH absurdity!】
【It's too much... or so I thought, but both the electromagnetic cannon(?) and the item box capacity boost WERE foreshadowed. Isn't that scary?】
【↑ Even if you COULD predict it, anyone but Ojou-sama-brain would go 'Haha, surely not THAT...' Especially the item box】
【When watching Karin ojou-sama's streams, you can't watch in 'she'll probably' mode—you need 'she just might' mode or your heart won't survive, desu wa!?】
【'Ugh, these underwater monsters are annoying... Wait, I've got it! I'll just suck up all the water and haul 'em onto dry land!'】
【↑ The thought process I understand. But the fact she can actually DO it... what even is that...】
【The abyssal boss was literally a carp on the cutting board. My terror deepens】
【An ojou-sama brain whose thoughts fly off in completely wrong directions + a <Divine Artisan> that can actually execute them... isn't that combo just plain illegal???】
【↑ That's a combo as dangerous as a klutzy nurse】
【And hold on, she seriously built some insane weapon imitating Sharie-sama's charged particle cannon!】
【Um... judging by Ojou-sama's phrasing, she used only ONE of the materials from that rare boss for the item box capacity boost, which means...】
【There's already ANOTHER insane piece of gear like that... you mean!?】
【Why does every bit of theorizing from this ojou-sama's remarks end at a terrifying hypothesis, desu no!?】
【Karin ojou-sama uses Dungeon Alive as her reference, yet her genre isn't 'battle'—it's 'horror suspense mystery'...】
【Wait, did she just casually mention that abyss shortcuts are hard!?】
【She's TRIED that...? She probably has, knowing this ojou-sama...】
【@Captain pizza: Haha, seems that advice was completely unneeded... That's unlike me—I misread things and butted in... Just take those red superchats as a celebration gift for clearing floor 1. I wish you the best of luck. Still... what a fantastic country Japan is...
【Oh, it's the guy whose red-superchat advice got smashed by Ojou-sama!】
【So was that advice superchat actually true or just made up...】
【Anyway, I get the feeling Japan is being misunderstood somehow, desu wa!?】
【Wait, we were so dumbfounded we forgot—abyssal floor 1 is CLEARED, desu waaaaa!】
【Apparently it's four floors total, so only a quarter done—but UNSCATHED! What a great start, desu wa!】
【Coming through from the breaking news!】
【Straight from Karin ojou-sama's fish-man suspicion videos, desu waaa~!】
【Is it true Ojou-sama used an internal storage skill to drink an entire lake this time!?】
【Is it true Ojou-sama swallowed the abyssal boss whole, desu no!?】
【Whoa, the crowd is exploding again!?】
【Everyone reassured by her damage-free run through the super-hard underwater abyss stage is flooding in, desu waaa~!】
【Along with the concurrent spike, weird rumors are flying around too—lmao】
【'Why can't anyone tell they're rumors!?' Well, when Ojou-sama's doing nonsense at a level where you CAN'T just dismiss them, can't be helped】
【Ojou-sama's conquest is so chaotic the info's getting scrambled on all the live-reaction boards too】
【By the way, the concurrent count is THIRTY MILLION, I say!】
【lmao】
【What IS this number!?】
【I have genuinely never seen anything like this!?】
【Hang in there, server ojou-sama!】
"Fweh!?"
A bizarre shriek slipped from Karin, who had until then been bowing her head over ignoring the red-superchat advice.
The concurrent count had finally climbed onto the great plateau of thirty million.
Judging by the comments, it seemed that—just as when she crushed the tragedy's source—viewers who had been too frightened to watch her solo abyss challenge were gathering in even greater numbers upon news of her Elegant breakthrough of the underwater stage.
(S-something REALLY incredible is happening, desu wa...!?)
Karin's heart pounded harder over that than over the solo abyssal conquest itself.
But this concurrent count apparently served as one indicator of the shifting public mood—anxiety about terrorism versus anxiety over whether Karin could safely stop the collapse—and as the number climbed, the comments' atmosphere seemed to soften.
With the conquest her priority this time, she hadn't paid much attention to the numbers... but if the concurrent count was itself an indicator of declining terror, then its growth was something to celebrate.
(Just as Prime Minister Kongouji said, an Elegant stream in the style Setsuna-sama taught me truly IS ideal for this conquest, desu wa! I do hope to keep things Elegant at this pace!)
That said, streaming through a first-seen abyss meant, as with that rare spatial-magic boss, she couldn't know when the limit of her all-evasion conquest might come... and just as Karin was worrying a little about that, it happened.
"Oh?"
Karin's eyes caught a part of the giant dragon Poseidon's dissolving remains that stayed intact.
It was a vital organ governing a dragon's power.
A colossal horn—large enough to hold several dozen humans.
"Ohh! Such a wonderfully fine material dropped at just the right timing, desu waaa!?"
Karin let out a delighted cry and raced over to the dropped material.
And then, onto the viewers still reeling from the outrageous conquest with outrageous equipment, she dropped yet another bombshell.
"Since the shark-samas and crab-samas yielded no nice materials, I thought I wouldn't be able to procure environment-specific gear on-site this time... but fortune has turned our way, desu wa! So that I can continue my all-evasion conquest should even harder underwater areas lie ahead, let me go ahead and make some underwater combat equipment right here, shall we, desu wa!"
【Eh】
【Eh】
【Eh?】
"That said, boss rooms do flood with regular monsters if you linger too long, making them no different from crafting in the corridors, so I cannot take much time—and since this will be improvised, it will be strictly something like a prototype... but I shall do it anyway, desu wa!"
【Eh, wait, eh】
【A sketchy-looking abyssal-boss material drops and now Ojou-sama's saying something weird again!?】
【Crafting in the boss room!? Not, like, going back to the deep layers first!?】
【Um, she's right that you CAN'T linger in boss rooms!】
【Isn't that why she only did the prep work on that spatial-magic boss's materials there and did the real processing in the deep layers!?】
【Eh, she's seriously going to craft this? An abyssal-boss material with immeasurable crafting difficulty???】
【Is she seriously saying this, desu no!?】
【Procuring environment-specific gear on-site???????????】
【Also, never mind the monsters flooding in—the water level is coming back!?】
【Eh, surely that's impossible?????】
The comment section wrapped in confusion at Karin's gleeful crafting declaration.
As Karin herself had said, boss rooms spawned regular monsters after a certain residence time, as if to drive explorers out. They allowed a brief rest, but could never become safety zones.
This boss room in particular was apparently special in various ways—before long, water welled up from somewhere, trying to restore the 'flooded state.'
There was no time for leisurely crafting, and least of all with an abyssal boss drop believed to be the hardest-to-process material confirmed to date. Even for Karin, crafting on the spot was unrealistic.
But—that was the Karin of before.
Having met the Dungeon Queen Sharie and processed her fill of that ultra-special material, monster meat—Karin's <Divine Artisan> had achieved explosive growth.
"...Phew...!"
【!?】
【Wait】
【@Captain pizza: Whoa whoa, now what!?】
【What IS this mana, desu no!?】
【Hold on, this is even more than when she streamed that <Divine Artisan> crafting scene before—!?】
Karin's eyes, having drawn a crafting-use magic item of <Divine Artisan> make from her item box, were dyed with abnormal concentration. What condensed simultaneously was an other-dimensional mana that warped space on a scale beyond compare with anything Karin had shown on stream.
And then, slamming that mana down in one burst—
"Desu wa! Desu wa!"
TAP TAP CLANG♪
"Desu wa! Desu wa!"
TAP TAP CLANG♪
She hammered the crafting hammer into the dragon horn—so refined it needed no prep work—in her usual strange rhythm.
And then—POOF!
【Eh】
【Hah?】
【Fwehh...?】
Skipping the crafting process entirely, equipment carved straight out of the horn as armor had appeared.
It was the viewers' turn to panic.
【HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!?】
【Hold on!? Hold on, so much, just hold on!?】
【Wait, Ojou-sama, there's too much going on, our brains can't keep u—】
【↑ S-she's dead...】
【Please give us an interval, desu wa!?】
【She condensed some insane mana, and did she just SKIP the crafting process on an abyssal material!?】
【How!?】
【Eh, surely you're joking, desu wa!?】
【This is on a totally different level from when she made a sofa out of middle-layer materials, no!?】
【Crafting an abyssal-boss material is insane enough, but skipping the crafting process too is crossing the line, isn't it!?】
【When did she even GET this good, desu no!?】
¥10,000
U-um, this... just maybe... She did say that processing the monster meat born of Sharie-sama's unique skill was good practice, so could she have been processing food materials like crazy behind the scenes, explosively leveling her crafting skills' precision across the board...?
【Ah... (realization)】
【No way!?】
【The most terrifying pairing of all...?】
And as for Karin, the very one who had triggered that great chaos—
"Ohh! It came out quite nicely, desu wa!"
"It really does work better crafting deeper in the dungeon, doesn't it!" she said, donning the crafted armor and immediately beginning a test run.
Driving the armor's granted water-control ability, she stood upon the water filling the boss room with an entirely natural expression—BISHUSHUSHUSHUSHU!
And then, just as the water god dragon Poseidon had done, she manipulated countless tentacles of water.
"Yes, yes, quite nice indeed, desu wa! Just as I imagined, desu no! It is strictly improvised, so there is plenty of room for improvement, but with a little more practice, I should be able to travel underwater Elegantly, just as I fly through the sky with Demonic Dragon Armor: Storm Style! However much harder underwater areas lie ahead, I am at ease now, desu wa! In the Elegant sense of the word!"
【Hey hey hey!?】
【She's controlling the water like crazzzzzzzzzzzy!?】
【Blowing away the prediction that 'gear from a skipped abyssal process is surely shoddy' with that buttery-smooth handling!】
【She seriously just procured environment-specific magic gear ON SITE, this ojou-sama!?】
【You're kidding me...!?】
【Ojou-sama, could it be that a big part of why she didn't prepare underwater combat gear in advance is that she can just procure it on-site if it comes down to it, desu no!?】
【There's even the possibility she deliberately DIDN'T make any, because crafting from abyssal materials beats making underwater gear from lower- or deep-layer materials elsewhere and saves double work, this girl!?】
【U-um... does this mean that whatever insane abyss stage appears, Ojou-sama can just make gear from the local monsters and adapt on the spot...?】
【An adapt-to-any-environment ojou-sama!?】
【Is she a tardigrade?】
【This ojou-sama has a tardigrade's adaptability AND a brown bear's combat power!!】
【Maintaining both that adaptability and that combat power WITHOUT going into cryptobiosis makes her an alien, plain and simple】
【Adapting to any environment after the fact... is she Furube Yura Yura, the Eight-Handled Sword Divergent Sila Divine General Mahoraga?】
【@Captain pizza: I've been thinking back over this whole incident just now... did those terrorists seriously pick a fight with this mutant ojou-sama?
"Now then. With some fine equipment added, let us press onward, desu wa!"
And so, leaving the uproarious comments behind her, Karin headed for the door opened by her kill of the boss. Even finding the composure to practice her gear's abilities—forming a multitude of fists from the water floating around her—she advanced into the floor being broadcast to the world for the first time in history: abyssal floor 2.
――――――――――――――――――――――――
Now then, a small announcement: Ojou-sama Buzz's updates will be unstable for a while, desu wa.
My health has recovered as I mentioned before, but the long stretch of poor health has put my other series quite badly behind... To focus on that for now, Ojou-sama Buzz's update frequency will likely drop.
That said, I don't want long gaps until the abyss arc ends, so it'll be either maintaining at least weekly updates, or splitting episodes a bit to keep twice-weekly updates. (Come to think of it, a lot of the episodes so far were honestly around 8,000 characters each...)
So, my apologies that the abyss arc will slow down a little at the best possible time—but I hope you'll keep enjoying it, desu no. (Following the work will help you not miss updates, desu wa...!)