Lonely Attack on the Different World (WN)

Day 81 – Afternoon, Dungeon 94F

I can’t exactly say I have it under control, but I’m somehow managing? Instant 『Teleportation』 is still difficult, but by calculating the timing and location ahead of time, a chain of continuous, consecutive of 『Teleportation』starts resembling 『Vanish』.

A relentless downpour of bugs, bugs, bugs, damn bugs!

Even if it’s just momentary teleportation, if I can chain it together freely, it becomes a crazy technique. While teleporting, there is no body physically present, so their attacks pass right through me, and mine go unblocked.

Bugs leaping at me, bugs biting at my legs, bugs writhing, trying to coil around me—I ignore them all and push forward.

But since I can only teleport according to a pattern set beforehand, I can’t react to unexpected attacks. If that pattern is broken even once, I miss the timing for 『Teleportation』entirely. It’s that flimsy.

I slice through the bugs lunging in to bite while impatiently clicking their fangs, cleaving them horizontally, and then sweeping them away with a spin.

I cut upward in a rising arc, then graze past an enemy and slice through its neck, dashing through like in a dance, soaring up the air with 『Air Walk』spinning midair as I swing my blade. Well, it’s a stick though?

With sword-dance-like flourishes, I slice through the countless legs of centipedes numbering in the hundreds, dancing my way through and scattering them as I go. Stop for even a second, and I’ll get bitten.

During sparring (beatings), I get wrecked even if I don’t get lax. Because nothing ever lands cleanly. It doesn’t matter if I『Teleport』 or 『Vanish』, I get wrecked anyway. If I manage to slip past one beating, the next one’s already waiting for me. Like a very thorough and kindly prepared multi-layer packed beating box. Nah, even the strongest lunchbox won’t survive such a dish!

3D maneuvering to fly over the swarm feels kinda like cheating, but honestly, there’s no way I can handle all of that. With that many enemies, my processing speed, physical speed, and technique just can’t keep up. In the end, slow motion is just a manufactured time lag created through high-speed calculations. Sure, their movements feel slower, but my own body also moves slower in return. If I can read everything, I can rush in all at once. But with this many enemies, the number of possible outcomes gets too complex. Once that exceeds my accelerated thinking speed, the whole slow-motion illusion collapses.

I can’t take such risks with a body that will die in one hit. I have to keep it in one piece, at least until tonight! And tonight, obviously, I’m going to use it until it breaks, and then some more, and more, and then regenerate and keep going! Yes, I have to keep this body of mine safe until nighttime!

With every step I take, I pick up speed, pushing my body into motion. I slip through gaps, tear through them, and carve out new openings to move through. I’d die if I hit a dead end. The moment my movement stops my life would also stop.

The more effects I stack onto myself, the more my body creaks and my head pounds, but the world slows to a halt as my understanding deepens, and the perfect stage for my swordplay reveals itself. Yeah, it’s a staff, but you know?

「Puhhaaah… I can’t help but think that there is something wrong with it being more tough fighting without breaking my body, but yeah, less pain is definitely better, it’s not like I’ve got some masochist kink or something, you know, still, this is seriously mentally exhausting?」

If I just went full-throttle using 『Magic Wrap』 and sliced straight through on the shortest, fastest path using 『Kyojitsu』, I wouldn’t need all this high-speed thinking and complex calculations. Everything I hit would just be killed on impact and blasted away, so it’s very simple. I’d just have to keep striking first. All I’d have to do is to move faster. That’s why my body also gets obliterated in the process, but it’s definitely, fast, strong, and certain.

When I master the movement and footwork of this dance, learn to predict through experience, perfect high-speed calculation, and refine 『Kyojitsu』 into seamless, I’ll see the path leading to Armored Pres-san’s Sword Flash. But I really, truly don’t see myself reaching that point while still alive. Even so, I have to keep going, even if by crawling.

The 94th floor’s『Armored Centipede Lv94』were armored, but that armor is full of gaps. I mean, doesn’t armoring up an arthropod feel kind of pointless? Like, their entire bodies are made of moving parts?

I wiped them all out, and it did feel like a solid fight. But wait, did you yield them to me? Was it just that no one wanted to get involved with bugs, so you left them to me? Really? I mean, it was good practice, so I don’t mind, yeah, it was just training, probably? Totally. …You didn’t just dump it on me because bugs are gross, right?

(Currently being consoled)

Being able to use swordplay facing that many Lv94s while keeping self-inflicted damage to the minimum, that’s definitely progress. A fine example of harmony and progress for a high school boy. However, this also doesn’t bode well for prolonged combat. If it goes on too long, my head starts feeling like it’s going to split open, and in such a state, I’m bound to lose focus somewhere.

And from here on out, it’s uncharted territory. The 95th floor.

We advance in the formation. With me currently weakened and Dancing Girl-san still leveling up taking into account, our overall battle power should be lower than during that time when Armored Pres-san and Slime-san went full-on rampage mode. If the enemies are small fry, having one more person means we can exert way more pressure, but in terms of defense, more people also means more weaknesses to cover. We’ve got to stay vigilant, even mid-fight.

Surrounded by heavy and cold atmosphere, characteristic to dungeons, we move silently, probing surroundings for enemies.

I’ve won.

The monster of the 95th floor is the『Swarm Blob Lv95』. A sphere of flesh, squirming like slime, sprouting tentacles from all over its bloated body.

There are 318 of them, and about 200 more still haven’t appeared. With a wet squelch, they begin to creep in, all at once stretching out their bumpy, gooey tentacles until the entire area is flooded with them.

How naive.

Do you really think a bunch of squishy dungeon meatballs, just sliming around down here, could possibly compete with me, someone who’s been honing the art of tentacle combat every single day, or rather, night?

Countless tentacles surge toward me, writhing, swarming, and they’re all sliced to ribbons, severed mid-air and scattered across the ground.

They’re just stretchy flesh tentacles, even if they have some bumps! But even so! Cutting down and shredding to bits flesh tentacles with a fury of high-speed wire-cutter slashes of『Wisdom』-controlled Magic Hands I proceed onward.

Armored Pres-san and Dancing Girl-san are hiding behind me. Seems they’re completely freaked out by the grotesque meat-blobs and their bumpy, slimy tentacles. Bumps, huh~.

When it comes to pure defense, sufficiently controlled Wire Cutter is more than enough to keep the tentacles at bay while also slicing through the Swarm Blobs themselves. If I tried moving at high speed and while also using 『Teleportation』, the calculations would probably get too complicated to manage, but when going slowly, there seems to be no problem at all. I’ve got enough breathing room that I can even casually fire off improved single-shot Fire Bullets at the blobs crawling out of the corridors, cleaning them up as I go.

Good grief, how foolish of them, trying to take me on in a tentacle battle? While my swordsmanship is still nowhere near Dungeon Emperor class, and I can’t compare in raw combat power, but challenging my Magic Hands, that’ve been crushing and dominating Dungeon Emperors night after night, to a tentacle battle is utterly foolish! An absolute folly!

Even if I’m Jobless with no class, I’ll never lose when it comes to tentacles.

「Slime-san, they are gross, so don’t eat too many of those, okay? You’ll go from cute, squishy slime to horrifying meat-pile slime? You know?」

(Jiggle-Jiggle)

In the end, these guys are no match for a tentacle-wielding highschool boy who fights Dungeon Emperors every night.

Even if I probe the entire floor with Detect Presence, it doesn’t pick up anything. 『Swarm Blobs』 were completely wiped out. Oh? A hidden room. Wonder if someone’s changing clothes there? I’m not interested if it’s more blobs. Or even blob girls. I mean, that’s still just a lump of meat.

The massive number of magic stones are large and they all look like they’re high in purity too. I could sell them, or just let them sit in the item pouch and act as a magic battery. The magnate is back in town.

Still, the bumps, huh~? The path of the tentacle is deeper than I imagined. To truly master it, I’ll have to dive deep again tonight, squirm, writhe, and slither all the way in!

「……」 「……」

Armored Pres-san and Dancing Girl-san are looking at me with a flat gaze without sating a word? There aren’t any bad tentacles left, so it’s alright now? I’m just practicing my bumpy tentacle technique. The knobs and folds feel kinda indecent, but the destructive power seems pretty high.

「……!」 「……!?」

Now they look straight-up terrified? Seriously, there are no more bad tentacles, okay? These are my good tentacles, and they are very nice, you know? Oh, a mushroom-shaped tip seems fine as well.

(Bounce-Bounce)

Alright, looks like dinner’s all wrapped up. Let’s head down to the next floor. Oh, but before that, the hidden room. For some reason, Armored Pres-san and Dancing Girl-san are keep a distance? Well, guess I’ll go ahead without them?