kscans

Chapter 39 - A Castle on Sand, a Throne in Flux, Part Three

"Dammit all!"

By the time Sora shattered the fifth scale, I'd long since lost the luxury of censoring my reflexive curses. The great serpent had entered its berserk state at the same time, and while it still couldn't quite match my speed, just having it clinging to my tail meant I was fighting a losing battle.

Every time its massive body brushed past, I'd dodge the attack itself, but the cloud of dust surrounding it would mercilessly chip away at my avatar.

There was no pain, but the sickeningly real sensation of being tormented by endless sand, and worst of all, the countless grains trying to blind me, was absolute hell.

My virtual body wouldn't suffer any real harm even if I got sand, or even mud, in my eyes, but a person will still instinctively shut their eyelids when something comes at their face.

My opponent was so absurdly huge that losing sight of it was impossible, but if I was forced to blink at a critical moment, I’d be crushed in an instant. Game over.

I was feeling pretty full of myself for holding out this long solo, but would a proper party really make a difference here? Could a tank with the right stats actually withstand this... this incarnation of a natural disaster?

If I somehow manage to get through this boss fight, I should look for a clear video or something. As I indulged in this bit of escapism, I planted my foot on a deployed dagger, executed a mid-air triple twist, and batted away the incoming tail blade with my great axe.

Using the momentum of the swing, I tossed the axe aside. With my now-free hand, I pulled a healing item from the belt pouch at my waist. It was a red liquid filling a test tube about the size of my index finger—a potion, Arcadia's basic means of recovery.

I flicked off the wax-sealed cork with my thumb and downed the medicine with enough force to nearly swallow the bottle. A refreshing mint aroma spread through my mouth, followed by an unnaturally tasteless liquid.

If that meant I was all healed up and ready to dance again, there'd be no problem. But the potions in this game weren't that reliable... actually, to be blunt, they were so useless it hardly mattered if you had them or not.

It wasn't an instant heal but a gradual one, making it useless as an emergency escape. On top of that, its healing power dropped significantly if you weren't resting—a soul-crushing design that made you want to ask, "Why is this even a feature?" To top it off, it took a full hundred seconds for the effect to complete, an action game's eternity. To put its combat effectiveness simply, it healed only ten percent of my total HP over a hundred seconds.

Even considering I was using a beginner's potion for rookies, it was, frankly, garbage. And of course, you couldn't stack them, and there was another hundred-second recast time after the effect ended. It wasn't just trash; it was dust.

They say even dust can form a mountain if it piles up, but with an actual mountain trying to kill me before it has a chance, it was a drop in the ocean. It was, quite literally, just for peace of mind.

To be desperately chugging one in the sliver of time between defensive maneuvers meant one thing—yes, I was truly on my last legs, seconds away from death.

A quick glance at the HP bar in the corner of my vision showed it was already in the red zone, below thirty percent. A small heal icon at the bottom of my status bar was diligently doing its job, but the relentless dust was doing more than enough to cancel it out, dragging me ever closer to death's door.

I longed for Sora's healing magic, but she was in a predicament just as bad as mine, if not worse. Unlike my HP, which was constantly ticking down, Sora's status bar was plummeting and shooting back up in violent swings.

The Serpent Suckers, which started appearing after she broke the second scale, had swarmed in even greater numbers after the fourth.

She was forced to fight them off while constantly on the move, searching for the next scale. Dealing with a pack that was always in the double digits was no easy task. What's more, Sora wasn't an agility specialist like me; she was a balanced build. She couldn't outrun them and was forced to engage—all without the benefit of a single skill, armed with only her sword.

The frantic dance of her status bar painted a vivid picture of a girl being swarmed. I knew I'd given her a tough role, but I couldn't very well have Sora go one-on-one with this monster boss. It was a necessary evil.

This was my first time not just running but actively fighting it, and I didn't even have the leeway to look away and check on my partner. This role was inevitable, no matter how you sliced it—and then,

"Hngh... The sixth one!"

The great serpent, which had been playing tag with me, twitched its head and let out a roar of fury. There was no forced stun like the first time, but its intense, visible rage was a familiar sight—the sixth sign that Sora had destroyed another scale.

I batted away the persistent tail blade, dodged, and glanced at my remaining HP.

Is this... just barely enough?

"Bring it on!"

I leaped into the air to evade the building-sized behemoth as it coiled and then lunged at me in one breath. It tried to swat my airborne body with its tail on the way past, but I dodged with a practiced aerial jump. I could almost see the irritation on the inorganic reptile's face... actually, no, I couldn't tell. This thing didn't even have eyes.

In any case, I had finally made it here.

The sixth scale. With only one of the seven remaining, this was the turning point in the battle against the [Dusty Worm], and also the limit of what I'd been able to reach solo.

After all, if it were simply a matter of destroying all the scales, I could have just run a marathon around the serpent, leaving it in the dust. With the twenty-percent stat boost from Spectate Ale, it wouldn't have been impossible even while carrying Sora.

So why did I choose a strategy where I pinned this thing down and had Sora do the running? The answer was—

"Tch, I knew you'd do that!"

The great serpent, which had been diligently chasing me even as it watched its own scales diminish one by one, suddenly turned its massive body.

Its behavior pattern was the same as when I'd faced it in a pair, and it was the single most infuriating element that had made my solo attempt impossible.

The serpent turned its head in the direction of the final scale and dove into the sand to burrow—like hell I'd let you!

"HRAAAGH!"

I sent its massive head flying with a sideways swing of my [Distorted Iron Lump Hammer] just as it was about to dive into the sand. The damage was still negligible, but as long as I could interrupt it, that was all that mattered.

Upon the destruction of the sixth scale, it would attempt to perform a specific forced action. That action was burrowing into the sand, an instant teleport to the final scale.

Interrupting it was relatively simple—I just had to keep hitting it. It wouldn't counterattack, defend, or evade; it would single-mindedly try to rush to the final scale. But the moment it completed that action, our defeat was all but guaranteed.

The damn beast would teleport ahead, moving at a speed we could never hope to match, then coil up to protect the scale. To top it off, it would unleash its dust damage field at full power, and not only would the tick damage skyrocket, but its effective range would cover the entire battlefield. It was a death sentence.

This all-consuming sandstorm was likely a last-ditch effort for the serpent, as its own HP would also start to dwindle as if it were burning its own life force. But it was painfully obvious whose HP would run out first: the boss's massive pool or a player's already depleted health.

No matter what, we would be the first to fall. And trying to interfere was suicide, as getting close would accelerate the damage and lead to an almost instant death. In other words, letting it reach that last scale meant we'd failed the gimmick for sure.

This was where I had gotten stuck. No matter how fast I ran, I couldn't beat instant teleportation, and while I could interrupt its burrowing, I couldn't do that and head for the scale at the same time.

So, I'd tried to get clever. I'd mapped out all the scale locations in a marathon run, planning to snipe the last one with a thrown weapon. But after running around the battlefield for over two hours, I'd only found six. The moment the suspicion that the seventh one only appeared after breaking the other six crossed my mind, my spirit broke.

"Well, I guess I could've just carried her part of the way... but still!"

I wasn't against using any means necessary to win, but this was finally Sora's time to shine. If we failed, we could just try again. I wanted to let her do it herself, from start to finish.

I kept swinging home runs into the serpent's head as it ignored me and tried to burrow towards the seventh scale. With no need to worry about counterattacks, I had a little more breathing room to scan the area.

I couldn't see the seventh scale, nor could I see Sora running around looking for it. But the frantic rising and falling of her status bar told me everything I needed to know about her struggle.

"Hah... huff...!!"

Sora drove the tip of her straight sword into one of the creatures latched onto her leg, then narrowly dodged the next one that lunged from the side. Not yet, not yet, her racing heart urged as she glanced at the ring on her right hand. The moment it lit up, Sora, who had been holding her ground and fighting defensively, broke into a run.

"[Heal Light]...!"

She deployed the location-based healing magic in her path, then burst through the veil of green light that appeared. Unlike the potions Haru had called useless, Sora's magic was an instant heal. But it was still a low-level spell available to rookies; while its healing power was serviceable, it came with various restrictions.

The biggest problem was its long cast time. The eight-second charge felt short on paper, but in the heat of battle, where split-second decisions were everything, it was an eternity.

She'd never realized it when she was just watching from the back, but now that she was on the front lines, Sora was shocked by the overwhelming difference in her perception of time.

Eight seconds, which should have flown by, felt agonizingly long. What's more, if the caster's concentration was broken during the charge, the spell would naturally fumble.

She wasn't particularly bad at it, but she couldn't move too erratically while maintaining the mental focus for the spell. Holding her ground and fighting off attackers was the most she could manage.

"If only I'd...!"

...put more status points into AGI. A pang of what-if regret filled her as her slight lack of speed failed to shake the pursuing Suckers.

Run while taking hits, stop to activate healing magic while enduring, then run again. It was an endless cycle, and though her body and spirit were battered and bruised, Sora ran through the desert.

To put it mildly, she was a wreck... but a sense of exhilaration and fulfillment she'd never known while staying in a support role washed over her. A smile bloomed on the sand-caked girl's face.

"At this rate, I can't say anything about Haru-san... can I!"

She plunged her sword into the ground at her bubbling feet, a wry smile on her face as she became aware of her own expression.

He'd calmed down a lot recently, but an image of her partner's frenzied state from when they'd first met flashed through her mind. While she wasn't going that far, she couldn't help but be amused at herself for smiling in the middle of such a disastrous situation.

Now that she kind of understood the feeling, maybe she should be a bit more forgiving of his triumphant laughter. As she mentally revised her "that's going too far" line for Haru, Sora's eyes, clouded by sand and piranha-fish, finally caught sight of it.

"Ngh—the seventh one!!"

A great scale, shining brightly and surrounded by a dust cloud thicker than any of the others. Haru had been fuming that he couldn't find it... but looking at the crater-like depression around it, it might have been buried in the sand until the other six were destroyed.

"Ah, this is..."

Seeing the area around the scale, Sora stopped in her tracks.

The depression centered around the scale was like an antlion pit, with sand constantly sliding down its sides. It was a natural jaw, poised to trap any intruder.

Sora's budding gamer's intuition was screaming at her.

Yeah, I probably can't get out of this.

The assault from the Suckers hadn't stopped, and there was no guarantee it would once she jumped into the pit. If the attacks continued, she'd fall to the center and be completely surrounded by sand.

Then she wouldn't just be attacked from her feet, but from all directions—

"—————————"

"Ah..."

She thought she heard a voice from far away. Was it the roar of the great serpent, or the cry of the small one facing it? It was lost in the dust, fainter than the wind, its owner impossible to identify, but that tiny sound…

—It's just a game, so let's have fun.

Those were the words Haru always said to encourage her whenever she was overwhelmed by this incredible world.

For some reason, she remembered them now.

"Hah...!"

Kicking aside the hesitation that had held her at the edge of the pit, Sora threw herself into the antlion's maw.

Just as she'd thought, the flowing sand carried her body downward like a slide. For Haru, who'd mastered otherworldly techniques like aerial jumping, it might be a different story, but Sora probably couldn't climb back up now.

She was leaping into what was effectively a deathtrap—and yet, a smile played on her lips.

"It's a game, so—"

She somehow managed to control her body as it slid down the sand and raised her straight sword high. The familiar sight of bubbling sand surrounded her as she fell, but she didn't care anymore.

Her status bar at the edge of her vision was already telling her she was out of time. So, she had no choice but to dive in.

Yes, if she was going to do this, she would have an adventure she could never have in the real world.

"You have to have fun—right!!"

An overhead swing, carrying all the momentum of her slide, slammed into the final scale.

The straight sword that had shattered six scales before it shattered the great scale just as it always had—and then, with an unprecedentedly explosive flash of light and a deafening roar, it swallowed Sora, sand and all.