by Sakon Kaidou
It was a battle that would be over in one hit from either side, but due to her range, April had the upper hand.
However, before such a battle could begin, April tilted her head at Gakido’s words. “Did you just say that you defeated my owner?”
“Heh! Hell yeah! My Banten’in made short work of your master, the King of Crime, Sechs Würfel!” Gakido claimed proudly.
“But he is right there.” April pointed behind Gakido.
“Huh?!” He turned around so fast you could hear it, but all he saw was three of his clan members. “You little...!”
For a moment, he seemed to think that April was just toying with him, but the robot just continued pointing in the same direction.
Gakido turned around again and saw only two of his clan members.
“...Huh?”
Oh, so he’d realized that one had just gotten the death penalty.
“Hey! You two! What happened to Fapel? He was there just a second ago!”
The other two didn’t say a word in response — they just eerily stood in place with faces full of suffering and fear.
They didn’t even make a sound, as if their throats... bodies... were full of something.
Their bodies then began to change.
Their eyes popped out, blood poured out of their mouths, and their bodies throbbed like hoses about to release large amounts of water.
But before anything like that could happen, their bodies suddenly vanished and became bits of light.
They must’ve used the suicide function to save themselves from the extended suffering of suffocation.
When they vanished, they left only their drops... and a red liquid.
“...Ah?” Gakido said dumbly.
It was the same liquid as the one that was scattered all over the surroundings.
The same liquid that had gotten on all of Gakido’s clan members, all of whom were now dead.
It was the blood and flesh of Sechs Würfel.
Gakido could’ve noticed this earlier, but I was guessing that he’d achieved his goal so easily that he couldn’t even think properly.
And so, he hadn’t realized that our leader’s flesh and blood hadn’t become bits of light.
“This is as grotesque as it always is...” I sighed.
The flesh and blood scattered all over began to crawl and gather where the two had used the suicide function.
Once a giant pool of blood and bits was formed, larger than the volume of one person, it began to rise up.
The fluid extended, was compressed to the size of a single person, and began to receive form like heated glass being expertly shaped into a human.
Eventually, even the clothes were given shape, and finally came the color.
The result? Sechs Würfel was now standing there as if he’d never exploded.
“Hello, Mr. Gakido,” he said. “I haven’t seen you in six minutes and twenty-seven seconds.”
“Huh? A-Aaahh...?!” Gakido was naturally surprised.
Blood and flesh had suddenly become human again right before his very eyes.
That wasn’t strange in our leader’s case, though. Being blown up into bits and fluids, only to return to human, meant absolutely nothing to him.
You could cut his head off, pierce his heart, crush him with a giant leg, and he would simply shrug it off.
To him... all of those states were just one of his shapes.
That was the kind of body he had... the kind of monster he was.
Sechs Würfel was the only Master who’d replaced every last part of his body with slime.
◆
Body replacement type, otherwise known as Type Body.
It was an ultra rare Embryo category separate from the usual Arms, Guardian, Chariot, Castle, Territory, and even the rarer ones like Maiden and Apostle.
I didn’t know the details of it, but I was told that it was completely different from the Type Arms that replaced only certain parts of the body, like hands or eyes.
Type Body Embryos were actually the rarest of all, and examples of them were few.
Even our leader only knew a single one besides himself — Caldina’s King of Termination, who’d replaced his whole body with machinery.
There was a reason for their rarity, of course.
Embryos hatched and evolved based on their Master’s personalities.
Embryos were always influenced by who or what their Masters were, though it happened to different extents.
That left us with a question: what kind of personality would a person who would replace his entire body with slime have?
Personally, I couldn’t begin to understand it.
I couldn’t even comprehend why he had this kind of Embryo or how he saw the world.
He could become a slimy monster, be split into little pieces, mimic another person’s body, yet accept it all as if it were him.
I didn’t want to imagine the mentality of a person like that. I felt like it was off-limits for someone like me.
Today, I’d found out and understood that he was the type to fulfill the role he was given, but even so, I knew that I didn’t even come close to truly understanding him.
After all... Type Body could only be given to people who could turn themselves into something entirely different and see absolutely nothing wrong with it.
◆
“K-King of Crime?! Shit!” Gakido looked shocked by the sight of the person he’d just blown up standing before him completely unscathed.
Of course he was shocked.
If Banten’in couldn’t kill the man, it meant that Gakido had no means to do it.
“The King of Grind doesn’t have the Right of Destruction skill, after all,” said our leader. “You can only turn me into little pieces, nothing more.”
See what I mean? He was completely blown up and says that, I thought.
Then again, that mentality of his was surely part of the reason why he was the way he was. To him, there was probably no difference between taking the shape of a human and taking the shape of a slime.
He acted differently whenever he switched from the King of Crime to The Saint, so maybe becoming a slime and acting the part came naturally to him, too?
Also, he was extremely good at changing shape, even by slime standards. Whenever he was in his default form or the form of The Saint he used very often, all the cells in his body were exactly like those of a normal human. But he went back to being slime whenever his shape was broken.
Also, according to him, the DNA of his The Saint form was exactly the same as that of the original person.
I’d asked him how he knew that when there was, as far as I knew, no way to check DNA in Dendro, and he’d said, “I became The Saint by fooling the The Saint’s crystal, which judges viability of job inheritance by checking DNA.”
I was still curious about how he’d ended up replacing the woman who had been meant to become The Saint.
Also, his Superior Embryo’s name was “Primordial Shifting, Nu.”
I didn’t know what that was based on, so it was probably really minor. Was it an urban legend or something? It’d be pretty embarrassing if it was actually famous, but I was just thinking this, so I was safe.
Anyway, in conclusion...
“Our leader is... unbeatable,” I said.
He was a full slime, so even if you cut his head off, pulled his heart out, or reduced him to bits, he’d just come back to normal like it was no big deal.
Blunt, slashing, explosive — all physical attacks were useless against him.
As for magic... I wasn’t so sure, either.
He had a bunch of special rewards inside him at all times.
There were skills to consider, too, so I felt that he could even handle fire, even though it was supposed to be a slime’s weakness.
He also had the KoC’s passive skill, which made him have really high stats.
And finally, he had the ultimate skill which was probably the worst thing you could ever encounter
.
Seriously, how did the KoD send this guy to the gaol...?
“You seem to be the only one left, Mr. Gakido,” the leader said. “Would you like to fight me now?”
“Ngh... ghh...” He said nothing in response.
Gakido understood that he had no chance against him. He probably wanted to just run away.
Feeling like a mere onlooker, I watched the scene until our leader called out to me.
“Miss Gerbera!”
“What?” I asked, jumping.
“You were worried that you might be among the weaker people here in the gaol, weren’t you? Care to test just how much you’ve changed?”
“...What do you mean?” Unable to understand what he was getting at, I tilted my head and imagined a question mark popping up above my head.
He looked away from me and talked to Gakido. “Mr. Gakido, you may choose to fight Gerbera instead of me.”
“What?”
“Win against either of us, and I will let you off the hook and give you this café.”
“...Ehhhh?!” His words shocked me so much that I let out a weird sound.
Huh?! We’ll lose this café if I lose?! But it’s my home here!
“Hah! You’re damn right I’m choosin’ this woman here,” Gakido said as he looked at me, all smiles.
Oh man, that relieved look really pisses me off.
“Very well,” said the leader. “Are you okay with this, as well, miss?”
I wasn’t!
I really wasn’t, but... ah, no dice.
His eyes looked exactly the same as whenever he made me go through his hellish training. He wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
I had to prepare myself.
And so, I reluctantly agreed to do what he wanted me to. “Fine... I’ll do it.”
I’d be up against a Superior Job in the same vein as the KoD. What if I lost?
Well... I’ll just move in with the leader again and continue living as a freeloader.
◆
We left the street we were in and arrived at a wasteland outside of the gaol’s town.
This was Gakido’s idea. He couldn’t go all-out with the constant risk of damaging the prize: the café.
The leader told me, “Though the King of Grind doesn’t have Right of Destruction, his ultimate job skill is Grinding Shockfist, which is a wide-scale area attack. He wouldn’t be able to fight as he wished if we were near the prize café.”
“Tch! Well, you sure know a lot,” Gakido clicked his tongue.
“Yes... In a certain place, I found a list of jobs,” the leader said as he looked in the café’s direction.
“Oh?” I asked.
Was it in the café’s safe or something? I’d constantly worry about something that important getting stolen. Though, with April there, we probably didn’t have anything to worry about.
“So, are you two ready?” the leader said as he stood right between us like a referee.
We’d already signed a Contract, so if I lost this, Gakido would really get the café. There was also an extra rule preventing the use of Brooches.
Oh, dear, I sighed. I’ll be a little tricky...
“You’re damn right I’m ready!” Gakido roared.
“I guess you can start,” I said.
Just a little bit more...
“Ah, Miss Gerbera, please don’t back away any more,” said the leader.
Tch. He’d noticed.
I would’ve liked for there to be more distance between us when the battle began.
“It seems like you both are ready, so... begin.”
“Ooaagh!” Gakido charged at me like a boxer, just like when he’d faced April.
His body swayed as he rushed at me, quickly closing the distance between us.
I couldn’t read the movements of his upper body.
He was preparing a decent feint — one that I probably couldn’t deal with.
However, feints I saw coming were pointless against me.
“Agh?!” Gakido suddenly fell to the ground.
Why? Because I’d made Alhazred, whom he couldn’t see, trip him up.
Still, due to the shin guards on his legs, it wasn’t enough to cut off his leg.
Those are pretty tough, I thought. Is this the rumored Tenchi craftsmanship?
I didn’t really mind that I couldn’t sever his leg. It wasn’t damage I needed right now.
I just needed enough time to activate my ultimate skill.
“I am Unknown... Total Eclipse of the Flesh — Alhazred.”
It was best to activate it before a battle even began, but if that wasn’t an option, it was important to buy enough time to do it.
“She... disappeared?!” Gakido yelled.
Following the activation, I merged with Alhazred and became imperceivable to everyone in the world.
“What’s going on here?!” Gakido exclaimed.
“Well, considering that Miss Gerbera already knows about your Embryo, I think it would only be fair if I told you about hers,” the leader said calmly. “She has an Embryo that’s imperceptible to everyone but her.”
Our leader had just gone and told him about Alhazred.
You’re not helping, damn it!
“So she’s still around, huh?” Gakido asked.
“Yes. Not even I know where, though.”
“Then I’ll end it with this one.” Gakido cracked a grin, raised both his fists to the air, and threw them to the ground, shouting, “Mark of Cataclysm — Banten’in!”
That created a seal that seemed as large as one hundred meters, which then went on to cause an explosion several times larger.
◆◆◆
Gaol, outskirts of the residential area
“Mark of Cataclysm — Banten’in” was the ultimate skill of Gigamaru Gakido’s Embryo: Marked Murderfists, Banten’in.
Banten’in’s special characteristic was marking things and making them explode, and this ultimate skill represented it perfectly by creating a mark far bigger than the usual ones and making it cause incomparable destruction.
It allowed him to pulverize people without even marking them directly — the giant mark on the ground did the job most of the time.
It was the pre-Superior Gakido’s trump card.
“Kheheheh. Thanks for choosin’ this as the battleground, losers!”
Gakido himself came out of the destruction relatively unscathed. He did this by canceling out the explosion near him using a Grinding Shockfist.
Of course Sechs survived, too, but the destruction had sent him flying all over the place.
“That woman’s gotta be gone for real now, heh heh. Just look at all this shit!” Gakido said as he looked around with pride.
It seemed as though everything within a diameter of one kilometel had been turned upside-down.
Gakido was confident that only a slime could survive this unscathed.
He also thought that the robot that had killed his clan, April, would’ve easily made it through this, but she wasn’t on the scene.
“Well, with that done, I’ll just wait for the KoC to fix his body and make him give me my café,” Gakido smirked.
He’d already lost sight of his initial goal of beating the King of Crimes and becoming the top of the gaol.
Or more like, that was just what he was choosing to believe.
A large part of him just really didn’t want to face the undefinable, immortal King of Crime.
In a way, he was much like his ex-opponent, Gerbera.
No... she wasn’t an “ex-opponent.”
The fight was still going on.
“Hey! KoC! Where the hell are ya?!” he called out to the broken wasteland, started walking and then just... tripped. “...Huh? Now that’s weird. There’re no rocks here or anything.”
He tried to get up, but his legs didn’t seem to listen.
“Is it a debuff?”
He looked at his status summary, but didn’t see any detrimental effects or HP loss.
“Huhhh? Then why am I...?” He lay there, confused, for about ten-odd seconds. And then suddenly...
“...Huh?”
He had no idea when it had happened, but there were ten-odd bowgun arrows in the back of his knees.
It seemed as though the shooter was avoiding the shin guards and going for the unprotected area.
It was barely even a knee at this point — it was just a tendon linking the thigh and the shin.
“Ah. Eh? Aaahh?”
His stats now showed that yes, he’d suffered damage.
In addition, there was the Bleeding debuff, as well as a Knee Joint Destruction injury-based status effect for both of his knees.
“H-Healing! Gotta heal...!”
He tried to take out his inventory and heal himself using the medicine inside.
But for whatever reason, his fingers didn’t seem to even touch his inventory.
Ten-odd seconds passed.
“AAAHHH?!”
All he had in his hands was a destroyed inventory. The contents were scattered all around him.
“What the hell... WHAT THE HEEELL?!” Gakido was shaken up by the incomprehensible situation.
There was someone looking down at him.
But he couldn’t feel it — couldn’t perceive it.
It was none other than Gerbera. Merged with Alhazred, she observed him.
Though merged with her Embryo, she wasn’t limited to using Alhazred’s scythe-arms. She could use her own, too, and she was holding bowguns with an Auto-Loading Function in each.
She was the one who’d destroyed Gakido’s knees and inventory.
Gerbera had survived the cataclysm he’d caused.
The reason for that was simple: she’d been trained to distance herself the moment she saw that the enemy was about to use their ultimate skill.
Anyone would be wary if their opponent vanished before their very eyes, and many who were capable of it would launch a wide-scale attack.
No amount of hiding could help against that, so Gerbera needed to distance herself until the enemy calmed down.
During its ultimate skill, Alhazred’s attacks were completely imperceptible, and they had the greatest effect when the enemy was calm.
No matter how wary they were... they just couldn’t see them coming.
“Poison... Paralysis... and Intoxication?!” Gakido shrieked.