Chapter 1384 Wounds From Myths Part 1

It would seem that Rei-san managed to reach the same conclusion that I did: if we want to push that quest of hers forward, we need to descend down this crevasse to the very bottom of it. And there is no way around it. However, there is one major problem with that objective: the tight bottleneck of the crevasse from which a mixture of both white and light is erupting at irregular time intervals, also producing enough heat to melt and evaporate anything that comes into contact with it, no matter how sturdy it is. And we can only assume that this bottleneck is at least several hundred meters long, at the very least. There is always the option of throwing yourself down the crevasse, but I assume that we would simply not survive the fall. And sacrificing any good pieces of armor just to test things out is out of the question, as well. If it would evaporate in let’s say, two seconds, then a human being without any protection would be disintegrated in under a second for sure.

And what’s making this whole situation even worse is the fact that this “Wound Beam” has irregular activation timing. So we have no actual way of predicting when exactly the instant death beam is going to fly out from the very bottom of the crevasse. The only kind of saving grace that we have here is the slight lag between the moment when the vaporizing light begins its travel at the very bottom and the moment when it reaches the open space outside of the crevasse itself. So if we knew how long exactly that takes, then maybe we could make some sort of an attack plan here. But as to what we would need to do the further down we descend this hole? No matter how hard I was trying to rock my brain here, I was drawing a blank after blank. And I was at the end of my wit.

「…… How about we try to intercept the light coming from the bottom of the hole with “Zend Avesta”?」

「…… Are you serious?」

「Umm, this is…… It’s a little bit embarrassing to admit, but the moment when the Scarlet Mane bit you, Sanraku—kun…… Umm, it would seem that the Demonic Sword gauge managed to get just in the right kind of balance to enable me to use it.」

「Vallurun!!!」

Aaahh, now I get it. Because this monster is now tamed, it would mean that every single bad deed that the mount commits is also being assigned to Rei-san as a sort of “collateral damage”. Nicely done, you dumb horse. Really nicely done. But you do know that you shouldn’t really be too proud of it? Or rather, I’ll beat the shit out of you if I see you boasting about it!

Indeed, if it was a multi-stage hit attack with Maximum Firepower possible (without buffs or enhancements from other players) then there would be no chance of winning with a thing like that. But if you think of it as “The Greatest Special Move of the Demonic Sword”, it is not strange to expect that it should have some effect here. Rather, it seems that the flavor text had something like that, so it would be perfectly logical to want to try this.

「But, the problem here is…… Umm, where exactly we would need to fire that attack from……」

「Ahh, yeah…… Because it is going to come right at us from below, huh?」

「Yes, that’s right. As a matter of fact, I do not have any sort of means to stand on a wall or in mid—air.」

So in other words, it’s entirely up to me to make sure that Rei-san would be somehow able to stand on the wall or in mid-air.

The easiest way to do this here would be to simply put Rei-san on my shoulders or give her a piggyback ride and just stand on the wall, especially now since she has lost weight due to her gender change. I mean, most of the wall-standing skills change the direction of gravity towards the wall, so all that would matter then would be whether or not she could be lifted freely.

However, when you give someone a piggyback ride, it should not be possible for that someone to be able to swing their weapon freely. So that means that while this option is out, the only real option still available to us is……

「We might actually have no other choice here but to hang you down, Rei-san.」

「Huh?」

It’s a simple but effective and ideal way to stand on a wall with both your hands and feet free for you to do as you see fit. We can even tie one end of the rope to Rei-san’s horse while we tie the other end around her waist, and start to get her down that way.

Speaking of luxury here, if we were to theoretically tie that rope onto Non-Standard Tactical Warbeast such as Genbu, the descend should be even more stable, wouldn’t you agree? But then again, if you go around and ask your schoolmates if they would like to be hung from a statue of a giant mechanical turtle as if it was the most natural thing in the world to ask, then that would spell the end of your high school days. You could crawl under a rock right here and right now and just don’t emerge from under there ever again.

「Hey, Sigma? What about the “Keep Out”?」

「Answer: Currently owned by Rust.」

Yeah, I can vaguely remember such a thing happening. Well, dang it.

And as if things already weren’t bad enough, Rust is not currently logged in. And I did not synchronized her INVENTORY with my own, which means that we won’t have access to the thing I wanted to get my hands on anytime soon. Which is a shame, because the Non-Standard Tactical Warbests had a certain “Rope-Type” item at their disposal, a tape that would be most useful in this particular scenario.

Its appearance might be deceiving at first, but it is actually quite durable against not only slashing attacks, but also all other kinds of attacks as well. So it is very convenient tool to have outside of battle, and if you equip it to a Conquest Doll that is not treated as a player character, you can use it with virtually no risk involved. The “Firepower” aspect of this thing would obviously be higher if someone like Rust was using it…… Mainly because she’s really superior to me in terms of any Mecha system out there.

That’s why instead of the usual Non-Standard Armament: “Keep Out” that was basically a reinforced steel wire, I had to use a substitute. And in order to let Rei-san down the crevasse I turned towards the normal fiber rope that was stuck in the corner of my inventory and I have already managed to forget that it was there in the first place. Also, as a sort of a lifeline we even tied the other end of the rope onto the Scarlet Mane, just to be on the safe side.