High School Hack and Slash Chapter 105 Part 1
Samsara
「Hmm.」
*Plop* As I pass through the door, as if sinking into it, a desolate ruin spreads out in front of me.
A smoky, dim sky.
It’s similar to the dungeon 10th stratum and beyond we’ve conquered thus far, a domain of ceaselessness (open field).
However, I can’t sense any sort of presence there.
Houses destroyed by carpet bombing.
Ground pitted by tanks and mortar shells.
There are holes in the walls here and there where gun bullets have dug into them.
It’s just that, in this landscape where traces of massacre are vivid, dead bodies alone are not left behind.
I open the door, which is desolately set up in such an out-of-place place.
◇
The place is a sea of fire.
Giving rise to a swaying, blazing heat haze, it’s burning everything around it.
Black, charred dolls are burning, piled up like firewood.
They are not dead bodies, but carbonized fuel.
They may have once been dead bodies, but they have already lost any vestige of humanity.
I wonder if there are people riding the formation flying in the sky.
Probably not.
Somehow or other, I get the feeling that to be the case.
I open the door, which is desolately set up as if blending into the flames.
◇
The place is a dark night.
It’s a townscape where there are human activities, but the light is still few in number.
The oil flame of garden lanterns, the faint light of andons (paper-enclosed lamp) shining through the window bars, and paper lanterns hung at the eaves of the houses.
There are no dead bodies in the trampled-down inns, only pools of blood and splatters of blood are left behind.
Oil from toppled andons trickles and burns the pillars, and the sound of ringing fire alarm echoes from the distance.
The top of the lining up tiled roofs is beginning to slowly be dyed red, as if searing the starry night.
How many people are burnt to death?
It’s just that, I guess no one exists in this town right now.
Somehow or other, I get the feeling that to be the case.
I open the door, which is desolately set up in the middle of the street.
◇
The place is a withered land.
Everything is withering, even the blade of grass has been dug upside down.
What is being dug up are tree roots, and the remains of animals that have been reduced to mostly bones.
The white towers piled up on the riverside are the remains of something.
*Creak creak* A main street where the eaves of the houses are swaying in the dry wind and the ruts of carriages are left behind, the vestige of the capital is already gone.
Broken katana.
Bamboo spear.
Bow with the string broken, the wreckage is scattered over the dead city.
There is no human figure there.
I open the door, which is desolately set up in the corner of a field where nothing but dry clod is left behind.
◇
The place is a battlefield.
Short weeds and silver grass-like arrows grow as far as the eye can see.
Katana stuck on the ground, rotting armor, nothing of value is left behind in the wreckage looted by the peasants.
I feel that I can hear the sound of horns and warhorses galloping.
However, under the reddish-brown sky.
There is no one in the surroundings.
I get the feeling that to be the case.
I open the door, which is desolately set up on top of a hill where silver grass is swaying.
◇
The place is a town with stirring blackness.
Something deformed that sports red eyes and a black haze.
*Crunch crunch* Inside the dilapidated houses, behind the pillars, or inside the thicket, it’s greedily devouring something.
There are no longer any humans there.
Even the deformed thing doesn’t pay attention to me.
A bird with a human head is dancing in the sky, and a dog with a twisted neck is roaming around.
The reminiscences should be over soon.
I get the feeling that to be the case.
I open the door, which is desolately set up on the bridge that crosses the creek.
◇
After passing through a number of dark places, I arrive at what seems to be the end of the road.
The place is inside a cave.
Even though there’s no light shining in, the moss is releasing faint light.
It’s probably a type of light moss (neon moss) that also grows wild in the dungeon.
Inside the cave where water drops are dripping drop by drop, the chilly humidity is high.
Whether it’s a natural cave or a man-made grotto.
Unlike the other scenes I’ve passed thus far, there’s no recollection here.
As I walk straight down the straight path, I soon reach the end of it.
Although I have tried walking there for the time being, doesn’t something feel a little strange here?
Like, it’s different from what I heard, or rather, I thought it would be something along the lines of when you pass through the door, you would be faced with a confrontation against the boss.
By any chance, I wonder if it starts with a quest like find the『Mirror Image Devil (Doppelganger)』! or something.
I let out a sigh and cross my arms.
At the end of the cave, there is an armored warrior sitting with his back facing the wall.
It’s a cave with high humidity, so the armor is tattered, corroded, and rotting away.
The contents must have rotted away as well.
What appears to be a skeleton is barely visible.
Even though it’s a corpse, it’s the first time I have seen a human figure here.
「By some chance, are you Doppel-san?」
*Creak creak* The bones creak as he shakes his head.
As expected, looks like I’m mistaken.
But still, boy am I in a bind.
I wonder if I have ended up getting stuck in a strange bug mode again, like in the raid quest.
I guess I should try to break out of the door for once and enter it again.
The bottleneck is that I don’t know where the crucial exit is, though.
――― Hades twin seal… Ra… Constellation…. ―――
I’m a little freaked out.
The startled feeling of stepping off the stairs in a dream.
When I turn around, I see that the skeletal warrior is chattering his jaw.
There are also bone-shaped monsters called skeletons in the dungeon, but he exudes no such presence, even now.
It’s just his remains.
――― return of the underworld calamity… destruction…. ―――
There are no hanging threads, either.
There’s no sign of something getting into the armor, either.
There’s also no sign of it moving with the power of telekinetic-ish magic.
Yup, I’m not a fan of occult-ish supernatural phenomenon.
I wonder if I should try to destroy it with a preemptive strike.
――― entrusted option…, salvation… or… the soul of the beloved one…. ―――
My clenched and held aloft right hand stops.
There’s no hostility.
I feel no harm, either.
I wonder if this really has nothing to do with the boss.
「… end?」
Perhaps it’s because the remains are weathered, but the display of the Interface glitches and is difficult to read.
The skull, which has turned into bones, grins widely.
――― You are, to do it ―――
Even though the gauntlet has rotted away, he holds out the katana clutched in his fist, which has turned into a skeleton.
It’s too short to be a tachi and too long to be a tantō.
It’s a single『Wakizashi』 that, like the armor, has rotted, weathered, and rusted away.
The only thing that barely retains its shape is the bird ornament tooled on the handle.
I grip the wakizashi that’s imposed on me.
The skeleton warrior, slowly crumbling away from his fingertips, smiles with satisfaction.
*Rustle* The armor, the rock wall, the cave, everything crumbles down and turns to sand.
As if a veil has been lifted, as if a movie scene has shifted to another one, the place transforms into the stage of the『New World (Genesis World)』.
I don’t get it at all.
As expected, I wonder if that thing was the boss.
I wish they would make the arrangements to be easier to understand and more user-friendly.
Even when I look around at my surroundings, there is no figure of my comrades, and the base camp that the Senpais has built is also nowhere to be seen.
Instead, a clownish marionette, whose strings are cut off, is twitching in the center of the stage.
Welcome to the world of Western-style horror from the world of Japanese-style horror.
Maybe that guy’s the original boss.
However, as it bounces around, twitching and jerking, it’s already on the verge of dying on its own.
Its limbs swell up like balloons, stretch out and split apart.
The state is akin to a rubber doll that a child is playing around with recklessly.
As a test, when I try pulling out the Wakizashi given (dropped) to me by the opening boss, sure enough, it’s a rusty and blunt sword that looks like it’s about to wear out and rot away.
「Hmm.」
Well, I guess that’s just how it is.
I feel like I would be cursed by the skeleton warrior if I were to throw it away, so I try to put it in the Item Box, but it won’t open.
Okay, apparently it is a battlefield with item restrictions.
It can’t be helped.
In that case, I just have to use my whole body as weapons and knock down the enemy.
The marionette, which has inflated like a balloon, shrinks at once and condenses into a doll.
*Gahaa* Opening its mouth wide, it spits smoke out it.
The figure of it tilting its head, sticking out its tongue, and laughing boisterously like a madman, is akin to someone intoxicated by their overflowing power.
RELEASE RATE
High School Hack and Slash
Speed up schedule by 10 hours
Current schedule: Every 70 hours
Tftc