Chapter Ten: [roblox OOF as I hit the ground]
I collapsed as I put the final box filled with heavy weapons down on the shop counter.
Ding!
Skill has leveled up.
[Physical Endurance] (Passive) LV 32, EXP [8%]. This is your body's durability, so if you're into masochism it's great for you! If you're not, then power leveling this ability will not be a good experience. As skill EXP increases you will be able to better endure the entire Michael Bay Transformers Series...At once. Literally, like on different screens all playing at the same time. Damage taken decreases by 31.7%.
Ding!
Your [Strength], due to hard and quite frankly, painful labor, has gone up by 8.
Ding!
Your [Vitality], due to hard and quite frankly, painful labor, has gone up by 10.
Oh, God, fucking kill me!
Message from Dante: Nah, I don't think you actually want that, so as your benevolent God, I will do what is best for you and refuse. You're welcome.
"Now, that wasn't so hard, was it?"
The sickly sweet, mocking voice came from the bane of my existence.
It came from a four foot, red-eyed, whited haired, wearing some kind of armored sundress because fucking Fantasy Australia.
"Yes...it was 100% fucking was, all of those weapons had gravity seals on-"
She grabbed me by the back of my shirt collar with one hand.
Message from Cthulhu: Yeet when ready, gentlemen!
"Cool! I don't care!" My loli nemesis spoke so sweetly now that my teeth hurt. Or maybe that was just the task from the day before. "Get out now!"
Message from Everyone Else: YEET!
"Waitwaitwaitwaitwaitwait!" I frantically tried to stop the launch procedure. "I've worked for you for two weeks! Two brutal, bloody, hellish weeks. What. Is. Your. Name!?"
The evil loli paused for a brief instant.
Message from Everyone Else: ...aw.
Message from Cthulhu: Hang on, that's a misfire. Well, I'm sure the yeet will get back up and running as soon as a snappy answer is delivered.
"You do not deserve the honor of knowing the name of your eternal captor," the loli responded blandly.
"...can I call you...Lily?"
Another pause.
"Your eternal captor allows this," the loli consented. "And this bitch empty."
Message from Everyone: Yeet! Yeet! Yeet!
NO! STOP CHANTING! SHE CAN PROBABLY SENSE ENCOURAGEMENT, YOU BASTARDS! I flailed my arms uselessly as she tensed her grip.
Message from Everyone: YEET! YEET! YEET! YEET!
With a big heave, I was thrown, through the swinging Western saloon-style doors that I had installed last week myself.
Then it suddenly all made sense.
She never cared at all if I broke my back through the door, she just didn't want to deal with the repair costs. This was her end goal from the very beginning of my slavery.
That ice cold bitch.
Meanwhile, at the Guild Hall...
Luna, cursed with an understaffed workplace, had been moved to a waitress shift. Busily working her way around the establishment, handing out Toad Legs, she was running herself into the ground.
And not to mention the mysterious note about setting up a net against the back wall along with a mysteriously large incentive sum for a commission price. Well, she supposed it went well with the giant snake skeleton coiled up top the ceiling.
However, high commission or not, she was about three seconds away from tearing down the giant sideways circular net, because it was taking up much-needed reservation space.
Lost in thought, she came back to reality just as she reached the table with a platter of Toad Legs.
"Here's your..." Luna trailed off at the sound of the nearing panic. It was evident by the screaming in the distance.
She turned to the wall she assumed the scream was coming from no sooner than it blew down completely, sending rubble and debris all over the room. There was a colossal impact against the wall parallel to that one, and a resounding "OOF!"
Whatever it was had crashed through her serving tray and sent it onto the floor in a million pieces.
Astonished, she glanced over at the net she had just been about to take off the wall, and found Jack, who had been missing for two weeks, hanging dazed from his shirt collar in the center point of the sideways circular net, suspended by a loose nail on the wall.
Luna stared along with everyone else in the bar for at least seven seconds.
So that was what the sender meant by 'record the point value.'
She took out a spare receipt, all she had on her at the moment, and a pen.
Three points.
"Additional customer notes" was the next section.
Luna thought for a minute, then pounded her fist into her other hand in a 'Eureka!' moment.
-Nothin' but net.
-Nailed it.
Satisfied, she smiled and handed it to a postman who had also been told to stand by at the location by the mysterious letter. He bowed, then left the bar for an unknown location.
"VALENCE ANDREVICH!" Luna cursed his full name to the sky as if reprimanding a toddler, shaking her fists. "You were doing so well! WHY!?"
"Wasn't...Valence..." Came the pained voice of Jack, still hung up on the wall. "He usually...comes in...with them."
"I'm going to call Aqua. You look like you need some help," Luna worried.
"'Aqua' and 'help?' How are these two things related in the slightest!?" I groaned loudly.
"Good point," Luna added. "I guess it's up to Wiz, then."
"...Thank you."
One full restore later...
My friction burns from the air were cured, but I was still steaming mad. So mother fucking, horrendously, horrifically angry that I had to take the fattest nap anyone had ever seen.
Unfortunately, after Wiz healed me and I went to take a nap, Aqua and the gang ripped me from my cozy bed to interrogate me as to why I was missing for the past two weeks.
I don't know why I had to be tied to a chair with rope in the middle of the guild hall, but it was kinky.
Message from Nyarlathotep: Just how I like you. Tied up, exhausted, and begging.
Now is not the time!
Message from Nyarlathotep: It's never not the time!
It took only a moment of conscious thought for me to realize the potentially world-ending error that I had overlooked - I had left these incredibly incompetent misfits alone for two weeks.
Aqua gave me a hard stare as she spoke.
"Allllllrighty then, Saucy Jack, your goddess has decided to be merciful, we can do this the easy way or the har-"
"TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU'VE DONE FOR THE PAST TWO WEEKS, DON'T LEAVE ANYTHING OUT, I DEMAND TO KNOW ANY AND ALL DETAILS!"
Darkness, Megumin, and Yunyun gave me confused looks. Aqua on the other hand…
"GOD BLOW!"
*SMACK*
Ding!
Skill has leveled up.
[Physical Endurance](Passive) LV 33, EXP [87%]. This is your body's durability, so if you're into masochism it's great for you! If you're not, then power leveling this ability will not be a good experience. As skill EXP increases you will be able to better endure the entire Michael Bay Transformers Series...At once. Literally, like on different screens all playing at the same time. Damage taken decreases by 31.7%.
"Ow! Aqua, the fuck!?"
"WE WILL BE ASKING THE QUESTIONS!"
I considered my options for a moment. I needed to know their activities immediately.
"Darkness, if you stop Aqua, I'll insult you."
As expected, the masochist's face turned the lewdest shade of red in a long while, I may regret this. A calculated risk...and I had to try twice to pass Algebra.
"Y-You mean it..!?"
I sighed. "...Yes."
She then immediately held Aqua up in a bear hug.
"Darkness, what are you doing!?"
She hoisted Aqua up and slammed her back down in a brutal suplex with infinite conviction behind it -but- she missed and Aqua hit the ceiling instead in a process that humans can't physically comprehend.
I chuckled evilly. "When I came to this world, I was but the learner. Now, I am the master."
I turned to Yunyun.
"Please untie me."
Yunyun quickly untied me, I thanked her as I rubbed my wrists.
"Thank you, Darkness," I said to our paladin, then quickly narrowed my eyes in contempt and disgust. "...You filthy, lewd sow."
"MMMMMMmmmmmmmmm…!"
Her face came close to going full ahegao as she shivered in bliss, freaking Aqua right the fuck out.
"Now if you'll excuse me, I need ask Luna what the fuck you four did unsupervised."
Megumin got all up in my face...or at least tried to since I'm six feet tall.
She pouted. "Do you have such little faith in a powerful Crimson Demon such as I?"
I looked the explosion-obsessed Arch Wizard right in the eye.
"The fact that you, Aqua, and Darkness are even alive right now probably means that countless others are not."
"Hey!" Megumin screeched. "Why isn't Yunyun included too!?"
"Because she's lonely, not incompetent," I said without a hint of tact.
Invisible arrows pierced their hearts. They each winced.
...except Darkness, who looked like she just nutted again.
Ding
New skill acquired.
[Sick Burn / Make Darkness Bust a Nut] (Active) LV 1, EXP [0%]. This is your ability to burn people's emotional states to ashes. As the skill EXP increases, you will be able to earn the right to challenge the current writer of these descriptions, the Wendy's Twitter, to a fair burn off for the right to write. Yes, we are aware of how shitty that was. Some targets require different burns than others. The effectiveness of burns increases by 10%.
"Now, what in the Nine Hells did you guys do while I was gone?"
Yunyun stepped up.
"We...may have taken on a few quests on our own while you were gone." She looked pretty nervous. "...Aqua said it was okay."
I gave her a look. "And you believed her?"
"M-Megumin pressured me into it too, and when Darkness found out what they wanted to fight, she begged me to go with them. We went to Ginger Town nearby to fight some monsters."
"Yunyun, what exactly did you guys try and fight?"
"The quest we took involved fighting a group of RedCap Goblins harassing a local town."
"How did it go? Most optimistically, I'm assuming something happened."
Yunyun looked off to the side. "Uhhhhh..."
Yunyun POV
Everything was going fine...at first.
Yunyun, Darkness, Megumin, and Aqua had corned the group of Goblins in the center of Ginger Town. With Darkness's help, it was quite easy to get them right where they wanted them.
Unfortunately, that's where things went wrong.
"What do you mean you want to try and recruit the goblins into the Axis Order!?" Yunyun yelled at Aqua.
"What's the problem?" Aqua questioned cluelessly, forgetting that this was a kill quest. "They seem reasonable enough, they're not killing people, right?"
Well, true, they haven't hurt anyone just...yet.
RedCap Goblins had unnaturally high intelligence for most species of goblins, usually playing a few pranks on people and killing local monsters to keep their red caps...red. The thing was that people kept their distance from these types of Goblins because they were downright bonkers. They weren't usually violent towards people unless provoked, but these guys were stealing from merchants in town and killing livestock.
The longer they stayed here, the more the town's economy plunges. They couldn't let these little bastards do as they pleased.
That and they sexually harassed the townsfolk like a bunch of horny teenagers.
"Aqua, no."
Yunyun laid down the law then and there. Usually, she was a very meek person when it came to dealing with the desires of other people. Hell, she had the patience of a saint, she had dealt with Megumin for most of her life after all. But after a week and a half of dealing the Aqua, Darkness, and Megumin.
She was just about done with their shenanigans.
Yunyun waved her hand.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
The goblins screamed as the were electrocuted to death by Yunyun's Cursed Lighting spell.
"There, done, now can back to the Guild and get our payment - AQUA WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"
Aqua was casting a golden ray of light over the goblins with a panicked look her face, she was using her Resurrection spell on them.
"I need more followers!"
Yunyun's eye twitched and waved her hand once again.
Crash!
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
Cursed Lighting was cast once again, killing the goblins.
"I don't care if you're delusional with this whole 'I'm a goddess' thing, no god in their right mind would have monsters as their followers!"
Aqua cast Resurrection again.
"You don't know that!"
Crash!
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!"
"I know enough!"
Resurrection spell. The goblins stood up.
Cursed Lightning.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" They crumbled again.
"Would you stop, Aqua!?"
"Stop stopping me!" Aqua raised her hands again.
Resurrection spell. The goblins stood up.
Cursed Lightning.
"Ahhhhhhhhhh!" They crumbled again.
"Yunyun, watch out!" Cried Darkness.
"Huh!?"
Thunk!
Her vision faded to black.
Aqua POV
Aqua blinked as she noticed that one of the goblins had knocked Yunyun out with a frying pan.
Such quick thinking! As expected of one of her new followers!
"Huh, why are you all looking at me like I caused you all unspeakable suffering, and now want righteous retribution?"
The goblins picked Aqua up and started carrying her around.
Yay! Her new followers had already accepted her into their hearts and souls!
"Yes! Worship me!"
Wait, why were they bringing her to a wooden structure who makes appeared to be of two perpendicular wooden rods?
Why does one of them have a hammer?
Why does another one have a bunch of large nails?
Inside Aqua's Head
Aqua stood behind a small podium with numbers on the front of it.
The numbers read as such: 80,085.
In front of the giant screen.
The host that looked like an old man that appeared to be in his fifties, he had gray, gel-spiked hair, he wore a formal Victorian suit and white gloves with a cane in his hands.
"I'll take...uh...Torture and Execution Methods of the Ancient Romans for $500," Aqua pointed at the category.
"Hot dog, Aqua! It's a Daily Double!" the host encouraged dramatically into the microphone. "Well, this seems to be a current event question! What, dear contestant, is about to happen to you?"
BGM: Jeopardy Think Music
Perpendicular rods...
Nails...
Hammer...
Outside of Aqua's Head
Non-mental Aqua's eyes widened. Her heart stopped cold.
"Nononononononononononono! Please, stop! Let me go!" Aqua wailed, struggling against the goblins, sobbing hysterically. "I'm too young of a goddess for crucifixion!"
The goblins giggled with glee, hoisting their flailing victim up to the wooden structure awaiting the sacrifice.
Darkness POV
Darkness, the Crusader, could not help but feel oddly inspired looking at a blatant reference to a crucifix, but also horrified at the fate that was about to befall the wayward goddess, and even more worrying, oddly aroused from speculating about what the goblins might do to her.
She'd heard...that this was the path for a female knight. The way was to save her comrades, but it couldn't always be through brute strength. No...she would have to weather the blows, the abuse, the punishment...with her own aching, throbbing body.
It was almost too much to bear. She shivered, a thrill running through her. But this wasn't fear...it was...
Excitement. Her heart beat faster, and she felt the arousal heighten as her face flushed with color and her breathing grew heavier, anticipating such an...indecent fate.
Haa...ha...
"Wait, why am I in a catapult?"
The goblins deadpanned at the Crusader and began grumbling. Surprisingly, she could make out what they said.
"This isn't a catapult, we're not savages after all. This is a Trebuchet! We are goblins of culture, after all. Now, BEGONE, THOT!"
Fling!
"No! Wait, please! CONSOLE ME!" Darkness screamed as she flew through the air on a swift arc trajectory for some nearby houses.
Megumin POV
Oh, dear Eris, everything is completely FUBAR.
Aqua is about to become the crucified and risen savior, as foretold in goblin scripture, Darkness is on the fast track to cratering three houses and probably drenching the impact site...and Yunyun was a glorified sandbag.
There was only one thing to do.
"EXPLOSION!" Megumin cackled with barely-subdued glee.
Back in the Present
"I got knocked out, Darkness got smacked through three houses, Aqua almost got crucified, and Megumin...let's just say that there's no longer a Ginger Town on the map anymore."
"I expected nothing. Truly, nothing. Yet, I am still disappointed." I said. "If it weren't contradictory to expecting nothing, this disappointment would be somehow impressive in its own right."
Yunyun walked up to me. "N-Now that you're here, we can go on a quest and not blow up a town."
"What is this 'we' you speak of?" I questioned. "I need someone to watch these foolish fools while I go and actually get a job done without any fuck ups."
"...Please don't leave me with them." Yunyun whimpered.
I hugged the poor, traumatized girl.
"I'm sorry, little one, I promise I'll be back before six." I patted her on the shoulder. "Now, be careful with them, Yun one."
Ding!
Skill has leveled up.
[Terrible Puns] (Passive) LV 11, EXP [24%]. This is your ability to make terrible puns. As the skill EXP increases, you will be able to make people groan extremely loud, but grudgingly admit your prowess at terrible puns. Horrific nature of your puns increases by 18%.
Yunyun froze, as if in realization.
"Did you just-" Yunyun's rage mounted, and Cursed Lightning crackled in her palms, but I was already out the door.
Oh boy, she fucking hates puns.
"Or should I said...Yuns."
Ding!
Skill has leveled up.
[Terrible Puns] (Passive) LV 12, EXP [87%]. This is your ability to make terrible puns. As the skill EXP increases, you will be able to make people groan extremely loud, but grudgingly admit your prowess at terrible puns. Horrific nature of your puns increases by 19.3%.
I could feel her aneurysm from where I stood.
"Ahhhn...!"
And I could hear the loud moan of Darkness getting shocked.
Message from Lenka: Wow, that blonde chick is freaky.
Shush! She can sense disparaging remarks. If she hears you, she might flood the guild hall.
Message from Lenka: Flood the guild hall? How?
Oh, Lenka, you sweet summer child.
Message from Nyarlathotep: Well, you see, Lenka, when a woman craves punishment very, very much...
No! Bad Nyarlathotep! Protect the innocent!
Message from Alucard: Heh...innocence can only last so long.
I swear to God, if y'all give him sexually-explorative talks while I'm gone…
Message from Geralt: Yare yare daze.
It's a good thing I got Luna to give me a quest before I left. Details were spotty. Some ambiguous package in brown paper required delivery to some hermitage on the road to another town over. The package was rather light, and felt like possibly some dried fruit or something else. Seemed easy enough. The only warning was in regards to highwaymen and bandits, which I felt more than sure I could handle.
Soon enough, a figure came into view, leaning on a signpost, which was inconveniently placed in the middle of the dirt path. Against the sunlight, it was hard to tell initially what features marked this mysterious individual on the road. But as I got closer and closer, and the sun mattered a bit less, I started to notice familiar traits in his appearance.
I approached Valence, and cleared my throat.
"I don't mean to disturb you, but that signpost is in the middle of the road," I pointed out. Valence turned his head slightly to the signpost, shrugged, and continued to smile into the distance.
"Ye," he confirmed.
An awkward silence fell over the road. So awkward that the out-of-setting two-letter confirmation barely registered. I tried a different approach.
"What...what's up, man?" I asked painfully, trying to break the ice. "What's going on here?"
"Oh, I'm just blocking this road," he explained. "I also thought it might help me to move the signpost into the middle of the road, too, so there's that."
I noted the upturned dirt and grass to the right of the path.
"Oh, I see." I nodded. "Well...funny coincidence that we've both got business on this road, huh? I'm walking on it, you're guarding it...really, things just worked out that way."
"Indeed," Valence agreed.
An awkward silence fell over the road, accompanied this time by a tumbleweed.
I shifted. This situation was really cramping my style, so I decided to excuse myself.
"Well, Valence! Nice catching up." I grinned in a strained manner and fidgeted. "But, uh, if you'll excuse me, I've got to deliver this package, so...see ya."
I began to move around the signpost on the left side, where Valence wasn't leaning, but mysteriously found that he had shifted to the very same side.
Huh?
You know, maybe it was a coincidence. I figured I'd try again. I cleared my throat purposefully.
"Well, Valence," I decreed a bit less patiently, and a bit more loudly. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to be delivering this package! You know...past this inconveniently-placed signpost."
He seemed to have gone back to the right as I tried to step past. I was about to open my mouth to demand an explanation, but he was already speaking.
"Cool," he encouraged. "You do that."
I squinted my eyes at him.
"Is this how you wanna play it, huh?" I scowled.
"Ye," he affirmed again.
Now that is not a fucking coincidence.
"What are you doing...?" I began to raise my voice, unsettled. "What's going on here!?"
"Whacking you with my leg now," Valence informed me. I blinked.
Message from Dante: Wait, is he about to-
BEEP BEEP.
Barely able to utilize my reflexes enough (being startled by a horn sound didn't help), I brought up the flat of my blade to block a powerful kick from Valence's left leg.
CLANG!
I'd steeled myself, but if my sword was steel...that kick was stronger.
I tumbled backwards, and stood up after kicking up some dust on the path. My arm was shaking with the remnant of the concussive force, and the steel of my blade was keening loudly. I gripped the handle tighter to stop the trembling in my sword hand.
There was a scorch mark on the flat where his boot had slammed into the metal.
I sized up the mercenary who had just become one of my most dangerous opponents in the blink of an eye. He'd left the signpost, and was now facing me directly. His dark eyes glinted. The wind whistled. Above his head read a name, a level, and a title.
LV 32 Valence Andrevich
Mercenary
He was formidable, to be sure. Mysterious. Definitely weird. But there was one thing that I needed to address as soon as possible.
"WAS THAT A FUCKING TRUCK HORN!?" I yelled, almost rhetorically. Valence thought for a second.
"No...actually, this thing's set to car right now," he corrected me nonchalantly, swinging his left leg in a dual kick pattern before resting it on the ground again.
I nodded in understanding, then realized what he'd just said.
Wait. I now have even more fucking questions.
"Do...do you even know what a car is!?" I asked. Valence seemed to consider this.
"Actually...huh, no. But it sounds like a cool idea," he admitted. "Do you mind if I invent that? I'll credit you for the concept."
My eye twitched.
Message from Cthulhu: ...what the Hell is this guy? Why is he so...that?
Message from Geralt: What in this world in this leveling system!? This guy would break swords in two!
Message from Gaia: OK, now, granted, I did have to rush the analysis portion of the code for this copy of the Gamer, seeing as the universe was retroactively torn apart, and Cthulhu didn't bridge compatibility with his portion.
Massage from Ragna: Geralt's level is literally only one above that, and this guy's normal kick is capable of leaving burn marks on tempered steel. You need to fix that bug. Because Valence has to be related to Litchi or something!
Message from Gaia: Who said it was a bug? Maybe it's a feature! You can't just rely on your power to read a situation for you! Maybe I'm testing Jack!
Message from Ragna: Then why did you code [Observation] into [The Gamer]? Jack doesn't even use it, but that aside, its intended purpose is to literally gauge situations, and it's steering him very wrong right now.
Message from Gaia: Because SHUT UP. Hold on, I'll open the script editor. Cthulhu, come over here and tell me what the hell your coding hygiene even is. What are these moronic indents? And do you even know you have 666 syntax errors in the [Eldritch Mind] skill?
Message from Cthulhu: We were rushed, and I figured as long as I didn't have time to fix 643 syntax errors, I might as well make them equal a better number.
...can you not purposely create more exploitable glitches in your me-code just for your aesthetic?
Message from Eddie: I don't know much about coding, but having peeked over Gaia's shoulder at her Apple computer, that's a very large number of bugs to have in something as small as 137 lines of script.
...Cthulhu, maybe it's time to consider taking Comp Sci at a community college. In the meantime, though...
"Son of a bitch," I bluffed confidence, using a tough guy voice. "You're a tough one."
"A bitch? No, actually, I'm the son of an Australian," Valence admitted.
"Aust-hold the ffffffffffffornt door here, what!?" I shouted in alarm.
"Yeah, I don't really know where that is either," he admitted. "Apparently Dad crossed some kind of ocean to get here in reincarnation? It was either a literal ocean, or some kind of metaphor for the space between worlds? I don't know. Hell if I've heard where Mom's from, either. What's a Germany, anyway? And they always told me they suffered from something called...'Isekaitis?'"
I blinked. Another tumbleweed blew by.
"...are you real?" I asked in a tiny voice.
"Ye," Valence confirmed, flashing me finger guns.
I could only stare in mounting frustration and confusion. My eye twitch had become about the wingspeed of a hummingbird, flapping hundreds of times a minute.
"WHERE DO YOU END!?" I bellowed at him.
Message from Zelretch: I have seen some crazy shit, I have done some crazy shit. But this...this is just...I don't even know what this is!
"Well, since you were such a trooper about the car setting, let's try the next ones," Valence enthusiastically suggested. "Maybe I can turn off Eco mode and go into first gear."
"What!? Your legs and an eco-friendly mode?"
"Well, of course. Gotta save the planet, you know?" Valence lectured. "Turns out, releasing tons of ash and rock into the atmosphere is bad for the planet, be it a volcanic eruption or a stray kick to the face."
Message from Gaia: He's right, you know. Volcanic ash is some wickedly bad shit for living beings.
I HOPE YOU REALIZE THIS IS SOMEWHAT YOUR FAULT.
Message from Gaia: Shush shush, let me fix Cthulhu Faulty Indent #543, and then we can get to the bugs.
...I'm going to die.
Valence stomped his left leg on the ground, opening a small fissure in the earth between his legs. A crack that steamed with friction heat, and I started to hear the sound of a purring motor.
Okay, okay this looks bad, but I'm pretty sure I have enough Vitality and Strength.
Name: Jack Gehrman Toad Slayer
Occupation: The Eldritch Gamer
LV: 19
EXP: 67%
HP: 840/840
MP: 255/255
Strength: 67
Vitality: 74
Dexterity: 27
Intelligence: 25
Wisdom: 26
Luck: 10
Valence stomped his right leg, and after the sound of an engine turning over, thunderous motorcycle engine revving echoed over the plains. His legs started to emanate smoke. I saw a flicker of fire behind his right boot.
I did not intend to find out if the phrase "hit like a dump truck" would be literal in Valence's kicks.
Uh...oh...this ain't it, chief!
I then proceeded to smash Stat Up on Vitality like I was in the middle of a button mashing quick time event.
Name: Jack Gehrman Toad Slayer
Occupation: The Eldritch Gamer
LV: 19
EXP: 67%
HP: 890/890
MP: 255/255
Strength: 67
Vitality: 89
Dexterity: 27
Intelligence: 25
Wisdom: 26
Luck: 10
And now to put Royalguard into effect.
I snapped my fingers.
Style change: Royalguard
Alright, I need to time this right.
Valence watched the little flashy graphics for the style change. He proceeded to moonwalk backwards.
What are these Michael Jackson dance moves right here?
He crossed one leg over the other, and I knew this move from watching actual Michael Jackson. It was that flashy spin move to end a dance progression. But why-
WHAM.
He'd spun around, the engine sound had revved once, and I found that I couldn't feel my solar plexus.
Through my eyes, which were in all likelihood going every which way, I saw that he'd lashed out with his foot and hit me from the two-meter distance he'd moonwalked to.
Message from Dante: The FUCK!?
For once, I actually agree with Dante. This is a terrible sign.
Message from Lenka: He wasn't even near you. Meters away! Just...how!?
Message from Gaia: The debugger isn't returning a hitbox value exceeding expectations, so whatever just happened can't be blamed on a glitch, lag, or whatever you online gamers claim it is. Now hush, I'm on Indent #521.
I caught my breath, recovering slightly faster from this critical blow with [Eldritch Body]. It hurt like the fucking dickens, but at least I could still breathe.
"You..." I gasped. "What...are you...?"
Valence smirked. "What am I...?"
...is he...
"I'm just a mercenary for hire," Valence understated.
"I don't know what's worse. The fact that you used that trope, or that I walked into it."
"To be fair, Jack, as far as things you've walked into today go, that was far from the worst one you've picked," Valence chided, gesturing to his left leg.
I inhaled deeply. "...Are you sure you're real?"
Valence thought for a moment, then flashed me a jolly protagonist grin and a thumbs up.
"Believe it!" Valence beamed with an innocent wink. For a moment, his grin shone brighter than the sun behind his head.
My eye twitch came back. Now it was measurable in units of atomic motion and looked more like a high-frequency vibration.
"...I will end you." I growled threateningly.
"You will try," Valence quipped.
He just prequel-memed me. Me. That's it. THAT'S the fucking line.
I gave a battle cry as I charged him with my sword.
BGM: Valence (The Symphony)
Valence, in an odd show of zen, swept his right leg in a circular motion to his back. It was as if time had slowed. He breathed in, and out. The wind seemed to ebb and flow.
Then the siren started, sounding suspiciously like a national alert siren, as the wind funneled in, and blew out continuously. I started to notice a white light shining from Valence's shin and leg bone...brilliant white. Hard to look at.
What...that's not a car. That's not even a truck. What's this sound? I pondered, as I charged in. I swear I've heard this before.
Message from Cthulhu: Uh...you remember how we got you into KonoSuba? Wasn't Truck-kun.
Yeah, it was a nuclear missi-
My train of thought stopped dead in its tracks as my eyes widened to the size of dinner plates.
THIS WAS THAT SIREN.
Message from Gaia: Indent Four Hundred and Thir-
GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE! YOU SAID VOLCANIC ASH IS BAD, BUT I HAVE A FEELING VALENCE IS ABOUT TO INVENT A RADIOLOGICAL DISASTER WORTHY OF LEVEL EIGHT ON A SEVEN-LEVEL SCALE UNLESS I LEAVE!
Message from Cthulhu: We can't displace your location using the application we're coding [Eldritch Gamer] in while we have the code open. Bad juju. Might crash your existence's hard drive.
AND THE GOOD NEWS JUST KEEPS PILING UP!
"SECRET ART!" Valence roared like a screaming solar wind. Now it was impossible to look through the corona around his body aura, leaving him a powerful silhouette against blinding radiance. "BEHOLD, THE TECHNIQUE FORBIDDEN BY THE UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS..."
Oh, that's just those guys who run the Doomsday Clock. Nothing major, right? I thought sarcastically in an attempt to cope with my imminent vaporization.
"TRANSCENDENT FISSION LANCE!" Valence's voice rang through the valley. The light sucked itself into his body. For a brief instant, all was calm. The siren had died down.
Then, as my foot shifted even the merest trace in anticipation, it felt like a whole-ass wall of solar energy roaring towards me all at once. It felt like my face was about to evaporate and a deafening rumbling preceded the instant of my destruction.
It was a mere instant, but it felt like an eternity.
His leg, merely a shadow coated in a brilliant flash, lashed out to strike me.
On nothing but instinct, I bent my knees to distribute my weight easily, my left arm crossed my chest to guard it, and I raised up my right in a defensive stance.
The first thing I saw was a red shockwave that signaled that I had pulled off a Royal Block/Just Gaurd. Then everything went blindingly white, and my eardrums seemed to give out.
I blinked. I was rushing through what felt like a wind tunnel. I felt like I'd been thrown into a blast furnace and hit with a blacksmith's hammer all over.
M es_s age f _o m N yarlath o t _ e p _: _ej-#_f_93j...
I shook my head, wincing at the sharp pain. It didn't appear that I was slowing down, either.
What's going on?
##M _# e s #sage from N yarlath#otep _: Jack! Are you listening? Wake up!
Message from Gaia: We lost sight of you in the...whatever that blast was. But when the light faded, and my computer stopped sparking, I found that the code was indented correctly.
Are you telling me...that I got hit so hard...that Valence indented the me-code?
Message from Gaia: Must be.
Your level-gauging system is hot trash. I hope you and Cthulhu realize what you've done here today.
Message from Gaia: Hey! I-you know, actually, that's fair. OK.
Message from Cthulhu: Yeah...that's our B. Sorry, sport.
So, uh, did I win?
Message from Nyarlathotep: Sweetie, you...well, to put this most optimistically...won of a lot of fall damage.
W-Wait, fall damage? Where am I right now!?
Message from Zelretch: Well...by my estimates, I'll leave it at the matter of your current height enabling you to fall for at least a minute and a half at terminal velocity and maybe then hit the ground. The signal's a bit fuzzy, so that's the variance.
A-Am I in the fucking atmosphere right now!?
Message from Ragna: I am so sorry for your loss.
I guess one of you has to be, I begrudgingly acknowledged.
Message from Ragna: Oh, good news! You're not going any higher! ...of course, that leads us to the bad news...that's because you're starting to fall.
I'm going to die, aren't I?
Message from Ragna: Again...I am so sorry for your loss.
Thanks, buddy. It's been an honor and a pleasure to know the Grim Reaper himself.
Message from Gaia: Hang on, I'm uploading the patch. Turns out most of those bugs were Cthulhu copy-pasting the same idiotic mistake. Find and replace is the best thing ever right now.
Did you...catch his appropriately gauged character level?
Message from Gaia: Oh, haha, sorry! Uh, can't talk, have to monitor this progress bar!
Message from Nyarlathotep: It was eighty-two. Gaia's algorithm is a whole-ass dumb bitch.
Message from Gaia: You-! I...Y-You're a dumb bitch!
Message from Nyarlathotep: The term is "Blind Idiot," but that's also someone else.
Welp, them's the breaks. If I'm going to go out, I'm going to go out like a man. Dante are you ready!?
Message from Dante: I've been waiting for this moment my entire life.
AND I SAID, HEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEYEEEEEEEEEEEYEEEEE-
Message from Dante: AND I SAID, HEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEYEEEEEEEEEEEYEEEEE-
CRASH!
The Axel adventurer's guild was lively as ever at the Earthly equivalent of 5:58 PM. People drinking, eating, joking, talking, laughing, and jeering about Yunyun shocking Darkness earlier because of Jack's worst pun yet.
On an unrelated note, it was rumored that the guild hall may have been slightly flooded for a moment. With what, no one knew...but all the guild members knew was that the hall reeked of rank masochism.
And that was when Luna began to hear a whistling sound, and an approaching scream-song. She glanced up at the roof as she handed a platter of Toad Legs to the nearest table.
The sound seemed to be getting closer, and closer...
And then, with a catastrophic splintering of the ceiling, the entire frame supporting the roof gave out and scattered all over the room, and within a split second, Luna was blasted back from the table she'd been serving by a sickening thud.
And then the final breath.
Like a vast releasing of mortal energy, a high-pitched, long-echoing grunt of pain resounded across the town of Axel.
OOF!
Everyone's heads turned to the newly-formed crater, a scorched body lying squarely in the center. They began to approach in awe, and horror.
Aqua, Megumin, Darkness, and Yunyun could only stare at the impact site. Luna approached fearfully, and gasped as she laid eyes on the body.
Jack.
Message from Dante: WASTED!
Message from Everyone Else: TOO SOON!
Message from Dante: Oh, come on, we were all thinking it. Besides, he can't see these anyway yet. He's dead. Short-lived. King of like the song we just sang.
Message from Cthulhu: Yes, except that means our little walking nuke-human meme machine just doomed the entire Multiverse.
Message from Dante: Then we might as well laugh about it instead of being a bunch of downers! WASTED! Come on, say it with me! WASTED!
Message from Cthulhu: I take cold comfort in knowing that if I will indeed be erased by the Angra Mainyu, you're coming with me.
Message from Dante: ...OK.
Chapter End
Review Responses
The reaper of death445: I didn't get a title from Megumin.
Artyom-Dreizehn: Thanks, but I'm too dead for luck.
RoyalTwinFangs: K.
Ultimate Luck Aizen: I know right!
Existential ERROR: Hey! That arm is fucking awesome!
Nick terakidan: I see you're a man of culture as well.
all about party and crazy: ...A seventeen-some?
TheFelRoseOfTerror: No u.
Wolfsbane93: Thanks.
Blazing heart frigid soul: That tentacle scene sounds like my kind of party.
Ruberforumfree: Sorry, but this isn't a smut story.
Deadpoolisagang: I did.
MysticSpider: It's fixed.
Saberfang Orcalodon: My joke-cracking is degraded? So is my decomposing body.
DatXeno91: Have my corpse.
theawesomest5: What can I say, my jokes are killers. Kind of like Valence. Who killed me. Ayylmao.
Scoolio: [insert another original "i'm dead" joke here]
ponyheart07: Cool. Would Darkness have taken the kick so I wouldn't be deaded?
SnapDragon21(Review1 and 2): [guess what? it's another original "i'm dead" joke right between these brackets]
FinalKingdomHearts: I look forward to finding out what the next life is like. You know. Because I'm dead.
PasiveNox: A dead body great
arthurguerraliborio: VERY DEAD
Guest: Imagine wagons? Well, you're in luck! I just carted really fucking hard this chapter! Glad it worked out, buddy.
ThatOneGuyUpstairs(Review 1): Sorry, ask someone who's alive to put more characters in here.
T-B-R: Ah this is wonderful! Now we have a great death chapter!
ThatOneGuyUpstairs(Review 2): TD;DR. In case you're wondering, that's "Too Dead; Didn't Read."
T51b Moridin(Review1-10): You sure have written a lot of reviews. Speaking as a dead person with regrets, you're probably going to wish you'd spent that time differently later. Food for thought. Like I'm food for crows.
Darkness is complete: Following? Me? To the grave? Well, maybe then I'll have company in my circle of Hell.
Guest: XD LMLO (Laughing My Life Off. Because it was a joke. Short, sweet, and people laughed at how it went.)
Little Lair: Agreed. I'm fucking dead. Things have gone pretty horribly when you think about it.