High School Hack and Slash Chapter 74 Part 3
「Newcomers have to make a contribution first.」
「That’s the basics.」
「Naturally.」
If I have to guess, they’re talking about Doll-kun, I wonder?
Maybe it has something to do with the Legendary Mimic Tree that ran away.
Come to think of it, I get the feeling that Doll-kun’s lost『Harvest』 has been activated, but, well, I guess it’s nothing to be bothered about.
「Danna-sama!」
As the door is opened with a bang, a jersey-clad Saki, who seems to have dashed her way through the hallway, is out of breath.
It’s the brimming with energy Saki-san.
Even after returning from the dungeon, she never misses her daily training.
I would also have preferred to be training with her rather than receiving unreasonable questioning from Seiichi and the others.
「Danna-sama, a mountain of lumber fell from the sky on the training ground! It was very surprising!」
That may indeed be a surprising major incident, but why come to me to report it, I wonder?
It seems that when a mysterious incident occurs, by default, they think it’s my fault.
「Also, Oto-senpai, who was training with me, got squashed by it.」
「Can’t you mention that one first?」
Everyone is strangely over-accustomed to things.
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From time immemorial, it had been reported that fairies were not good with cold iron.
Before the world was contaminated by Christianity, there was nature worship (animism) handed down in all lands.
Fairy tales that had been handed down since the age where the distance between the present realm and the everlasting realm was close and the boundary between reality and illusion was vague.
In these fairy tales, there lay a truth that was rarely known and did not need to be known.
Fairies were not good with iron.
If they touched it, they would get burned.
That was exactly, how it was.
Fairies that did not incarnate were discarnate entities of pure magical energy.
If they touched pure iron, which had a high conductivity of miasma, they would cease being able to retain their form and end up being sublimated and reduced to nothing.
It was the same with magic, sorcery, and abilities (skills).
Even if it was miasma, magical energy, or aura that had been given strong directionality, it couldn’t maintain its form through bulky iron.
Surrounded by layers of such a bulky iron, the room was dimly lit, with the floor and ceiling covered as well.
「— Is that all you have to report? Then you are dismissed.」
One of the『Elder』, who acted as the chairman, announced the end of the regular meeting.
Nothing could go wrong with the pre-arranged agenda.
Everything was harmonie preetablie.
They followed precedents, used references as the criterion for judgment, and accepted no exceptions.
It was no longer a decision-making body, but had turned into a Q&A artificial intelligence (DQN).
「Good graciousness, so ridiculous…. What is the point of such a meeting?」
One of the researchers, a non-Elder member of the reference attendees, spat out curses.
「You’re such a serious guy, aren’t you?」
His colleague, taking a hand-rolled cigarette from its case, flicked it on an ashtray in the smoking corner.
Lighting up a vintage oil lighter with a clank, he puffed out a large inhale of tobacco smoke.
From the tips of his limbs, he was immersed in a tingling sensation that awakened his brain cells.
Even if it was just a hallucination, as long as the person in question felt that way, it would ultimately relieve their stress.
「There’s no way you cannot tell, right? The frequency of the bubble dimension these days is too abnormal.」
「Well yeah. Our juniors are having it hard.」
They too were graduates of the academy.
Though, they were those whose admission to the supreme department were admitted as a researcher slot.
And now that they had gotten to know the inner work, they were unable to step out of the academy.
「In other words, that means the dungeon is entering an active period, right? It has never happened in the past, so what’s the point of you being so impatient?」
「Of course I’d be impatient. For argument’s sake, what if an『Calamity of Tartarus』 class 『Descent』 were to occur now? Do they think they’ll be able to hide it in this digital age, the top brass, I mean.」
「They will. Suppress it, I mean. By any means necessary, just like our neighbor.」
The puffed out smoke diffused on the ceiling.
「No matter how you put it, they can’t serve as a comparison, can they? Compared to here, the worth of human beings is lower on that side. They’re the kind of country that fires missiles and burns down contaminated domains along with the entire villages, you know?」
「That’s certainly right. The undead system of the『Kunlun』 dungeon is more incomplete than that of Rashomon, after all. The『Jiang shi』 that was sent to us as a sample was also terrible. It’s mostly a corpse.」
「… We can’t laugh at the other place, can we? Just how many styles do you think the Rashomon system comes with? As we had to do tons of trial and error in retrieving the students we sent to that SS class dimension.」
「Ah, the latest critical singularity (Nova Singularity), right. Based on the observational data, I thought it would be designated as a new extreme class, though. I wonder if it self-destructed like Zakurosan.」
「Geez, it’s not a laughable situation at all. Even if it self-destructed upon reaching a critical level, the energy that was there won’t necessarily dissipate you know? It’ll simply give birth to a new, higher-level singularity.」
Remaining putting his hands in the pockets of his worn out lab coat, he sat down on the bench of the smoking area.
He was a specialist in so-called dungeonology, an unknowable field that was studied and compiled at the academy.
Therefore, he knew, he wound up getting to know.
The omen of collapse, where the balance was about to end up tipping over, right now.
Certainly, in the past, large-scale world contamination (world rule pollution) as a result of dungeon activation had also occurred in Japan.
This was evident from the residual concentration of the miasma, based on the dating of the geological strata.
There had been daily famines as well as natural disasters that were also known as the Ice Age Lite.
It was a hellish period in which people killed and robbed each other.
It was known as the Warring States Period.
Hell.
It was not a fantasy in a code of law or a bedtime story, but another world right beside their own, a world whose boundary they once crossed themselves.
Now, once again, the lid of hell was creaking, slackening, and about to come off its hoop.
Even if they wished to repair it, the knowledge to do so was unavailable to them.
Even with advanced developed technology, the direction of evolution had wound up differing too much since then.
Some of their work involved reading through piles of moldy old documents, a department akin to archaeology.
「So, what to do now? Are we going to summon and interview the related party?」
「My face isn’t thick enough to do such a thing… They are us of the past. They’re not like the Elder bunch who, until they become immortals, live a uselessly long life and have worn out their humanity.」
「Haha. Well, you’re right. I bet those guys believe they’ll be safe as long as they enter that iron coffin.」
They, who belonged to the academy in a different standing than that of the students, were by no means working under the same ideology either.
「Come to think of it, have you seen the data on Ame-san’s 『Abyss』 dungeon that has finally came up? The MOB is another thing altogether, cyberpunk-ish. And for there to be 『Musketeer (Gunner)』 amongst its archetype class, so laughable.」
「It can’t be helped. It’s a young country with a short history, no myths or legends. So it inevitably has to assume a format based on modern times, right? Rather, I think it’s a surprise that a dungeon has been formed there.」
「It’s a colonial country built upon committing genocide on the prehistoric civilization, after all. It seems that they’re requesting for technical cooperation from us, too, you know—」
It wasn’t that there was someone who was overlooking and unifying organization known as the academy.
If it had to be said, the system itself had become extremely customary and reeked of rotten smell, and such an ideology might have been the one running the organization.
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High School Hack and Slash
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