Krusty, Tycoon Lord

by Mamare Touno

  He’d sliced off the tentacles with herculean strength, and turning iridescent, they were absorbed into his ax, where they became a red pulse. It was the HP absorption ability he was supposed to have lost.

  “—?! But every way you could have recovered was sealed…”

  “Your curse is full of holes.”

  Krusty’s eyes skimmed across a translucent window. Shining red letters were being added to the Soul Darkening Curse display: HOWEVER, MEMORIES MAY BE RECOVERED. HOWEVER, IT IS POSSIBLE TO STEAL HP FROM GENIUSES.

  The calculator known as “a lifetime” ran on life force.

  The iridescent, crystalline bay that operated on that principle was an external calculator Krusty could connect to easily. He was reusing that rainbow energy to make additions to the curse.

  He remembered Shiroe giving him an explanation, in bits and pieces, in a military tent.

  He’d been explaining the possibilities and concept of the skill he’d called the Contract Technique.

  The key lay in balancing the risk-cost and rewards with the weight of the act of establishing the contract. The immense cost, which included phantasmal materials, was expended to guarantee the effect gained from the contract, and the mutual agreement of each party acted as the ignition key.

  “What are you saying…?”

  “You may not be able to understand it. In simple terms, your master went overboard.”

  That was right.

  What Shiroe had excavated from the foundations of the world was the idea of balance.

  Desires that could be granted with the Contract Technique probably extended to everything you could think of. It was terribly powerful and specialized toward granting wishes, and it thought of nothing else; a Mystery that could be considered Shiroe himself. However, it did have clear limits and restrictions. One of these was the cost required to draw up the contract.

  The physical contract for the Contract Technique had to be created by a specialist, and it called for expensive materials that corresponded to the scale of the wish—fantasy-class things. In addition, both to draft it and to conclude the contract, the majority of Shiroe’s MP had been lost, and he’d had the greatest capacity among those on his level. To grant a wish, a price had to be paid. That price also had to be commensurate to the wish. On top of that, for the Contract Technique to take effect, the involved parties had to agree and sign it. Shiroe certainly had the sword that cut the Gordian knot, but in order to swing it, he needed the other party’s consent.

  The Contract Technique wasn’t an all-powerful spell; it was a clumsy, roundabout method with terrible cost performance. That was the impression Krusty had gotten from listening to Shiroe, and it was also probably what Shiroe himself really thought.

  On the other hand, the Soul Darkening Curse truly was powerful. In this world, where resurrection from death was possible, its penalties were even more aggressively vicious than death itself.

  Its effect had been big. Too big.

  It was too convenient for the aggressor, and too much of a disadvantage for Krusty.

  Compared was the Contract Technique, its cost performance was too good, it didn’t require the consent of its subject, and it was far too unilateral. For being magic techniques in the same world, they were impossibly distant from each other.

  That was the weakness of the Soul Darkness Curse. In the balanced world of the Spirit Theory that Shiroe had spoken of, its overpowering effect was extremely unstable.

  It would have been one thing if Krusty had given his consent, but they’d had to force it on him arbitrarily; it had been effective after a fashion up until now only because it had been harshly branded onto him with the MP of Bucaphi, the Genius of Witches, a level-150 figure who vastly outranked him. However, to Krusty as he was now, in terms of sheer MP, he had the means to oppose it, even if it had come from someone whose level was twice his own.

  If trust had been part of the picture…

  If they’d been equals…

  If he’d at least consented…

  In any of those cases, the curse would doubtless never have been broken, but Krusty tore it apart easily. He didn’t have a scrap of the sweet temperament that would have obeyed something unfair.

  Enchantress Youren, half panicking, thrust out sharp talons. However, he grabbed her arm with a gauntlet like solid iron, crushing it under his fingers, and when he swung it around with all his might, it tore free and flew off.

  Showing no mercy whatsoever, Krusty immediately unleashed Armor Crush, making the very material that formed the Enchantress’s arm disappear. Now Enchantress Youren had one arm, just like Takayama. Everything about Krusty’s attack had been magically strengthened by overflowing MP, by Empathiom.

  “Wha—? Do you think an outrage like this will be permitted—?”

  “I don’t want to hear that from someone who steals others’ memories and degrades them into puppets.”

  She didn’t understand the dangers of winning too much. That made her less than second-rate.

  Krusty felt pain, as if all the nerves in his body were being torn, and it made him smile. That torment was the price he had to pay for victory. He didn’t need an overpowering victory, or an overwhelmingly advantageous contract, or unilateral exploitation. Even if those led to a temporary victory, they wouldn’t give him a sustainable win.

  The thin-ice victory Krusty wanted was a reality he needed in order to continue winning, and to keep from winning too much.

  As relentlessly as an icy wind, Krusty carved wounds into the Enchantress. First one, then another.

  Their HP grew closer, competed, and drew even.

  “Having been soiled with defeat once, I learned about the Adventurers and the Ancients. I degraded Elias and entrapped you, and certain victory was in my hands, and yet—I wasn’t careless; I knew very well how violent you were. How, why…?”

  That was probably carelessness right there, Krusty thought.

  How slipshod would you have to be to include nothing but your opponents’ violent natures in your assessment?

  Had she been planning to buy Manhattan Island with glass beads?

  Krusty didn’t know that it had been Kanami’s party that had defeated Enchantress Youren in the form of the Genius Papus. Knowing wouldn’t have changed how he dealt with her. Even now, he had no intention of explaining the reasons behind the Enchantress’s defeat to her.

  Even though he was in the middle of a battle, he just shrugged.

  Before they knew it, they were surrounded with piles of dead Moon Rabbits and Eternal Moths that were beginning to turn iridescent. The echoes of the pair’s fight had turned the animals into corpses before they could even get a shot in.

  Apparently, the backup the Enchantress had been counting on had run out.

  “You seem to have misunderstood.”

  Speaking to her ironically, Krusty raised his weapon for the killing blow.

  This wasn’t worth drawing out.

  Just now, countless possibilities had disappeared into the darkness.

  The routes of everything had converged, and the results were being integrated and consolidated.

  The time for the answer—the end—had come.

  “I wasn’t ‘entrapped.’ I was just resting, and I expect Elias only lost his way.”

  “You lie—!”

  “My condolences on your loss.”

  With a heavy sound, the Fresh Blood Demon Ax fell, splitting Enchantress Youren in two from the top of her head all the way down to her groin, then sank deep into the hard limestone.

  Dust hung in the air around him, and the reverberations echoed into the enormous cavern.

  The area was wrapped in silence, as if the sounds of combat had been an illusion.

  In the midst of that hushed gloom, Krusty pulled his ax free with a ponderous scraping noise, then looked at the thing that had been Enchantress Youren with eyes that no longer held any interest.

  A few moments later, it turned into a cloud of rainbow bubbles
.

  As with all questions, there was meaning only in the path that led to the answer, and once it was over, it was no more than the faded past.

  The Enchantress had died.

  The cause of her defeat had been excessive disdain for her targets and the fact that she’d given herself too great an advantage.

  If you had no respect for something, you probably didn’t even consider trying to understand it.

  If you didn’t understand the opponent you were competing against, you couldn’t win.

  It sounded like a paradox, but to win, you had to respect your opponent.

  She’d overlooked that trivial yet important truth.

  “Results. That’s all there is.”

  Muttering, Krusty began to walk back into the cave, which had regained its stillness. When he’d walked a few steps, he turned back again, and there was no longer any crazed heat in his expression. When Hua Diao ran up and clung to him, he scooped her up in his arms.

  4

  “Yeah, yeah. Your knees are quaking over there, hero! Are you even trying? An old grandma carrying her Chihuahua in Central Park puts a little more effort into this stuff, y’know?”

  “Hold your tongue!”

  Elias raised his sword, which seemed so massive one got the illusion it was the mountain itself, and put more strength into his left leg, which had been on the verge of shaking. It was frustrating, but Leonardo’s comment had been right on the mark: Even a newborn fawn would probably have walked a bit better.

  He swung his great fairy sword, Crystal Stream, less as if he were bringing it down than as if its weight was pulling his center of gravity.

  Elias felt resistance, as though he were surrounded by water, and grimaced. With every moment, that resistance bound him more firmly, and even though all he was doing was swinging his sword down, it felt as if he were moving through lead. As a result, Elias’s attack turned into something as childish as a little kid’s make-believe swing, and it shaved away half of half of 1 percent of Leonardo’s HP.

  Leonardo’s expression was fierce and bright, but he was covered with mud and dust, and he looked as if he’d reached the acme of exhaustion. Elias’s attacks seemed to shove him, rather than cut him. Leonardo put on a fearless smile and tried to shrug it off, but his feet tangled up, and he stumbled.

  “I’m seeing zero damage, Blademancer.”

  “Look at your own HP, Frog-Man!”

  Gasping and panting as he yelled back, Elias stabbed his two-handed sword into the rock. He couldn’t stand properly, either, and he leaned on the sword, catching his breath.

  Leonardo’s HP was down to nearly nothing.

  Even though they were both muddy, if you only looked at the numbers, Elias’s overwhelming victory seemed assured. However, that fact was superficial. To shave his HP down to this level from 25 percent, Elias had spent over an hour attacking. Ordinarily, this sort of damage wouldn’t even have taken thirty seconds to inflict, but he’d mustered up all his strength and pared it away with soul-searing determination.

  Up until the point his HP was down to 10 percent, he’d been able to fight with passion.

  After that, each single percentage point was as hard as digging his way through a massive steel rock with his bare hands, and by now, the only thing that kept him moving was sheer pride.

  Elias was losing track of why he was here, and he stood there on just one thought, as if desperately clinging to a rock in the middle of a raging torrent: the idea that he had to overcome the curse.

  His movements were clearly going downhill, and the decline in his own motor abilities made him want to cover his eyes. The fairy curse that kept him from lowering his combat opponent’s HP below 25 percent of its maximum ruthlessly restricted his actions.

  He didn’t know why, but he seemed to have overcome that restriction. At present, he’d cornered Leonardo to the point where he was right on the edge. However, the curse hadn’t been lifted. That was clear from the handicap constricting around him.

  Leonardo was single-mindedly taking Elias’s attacks.

  It probably wasn’t an easy trial. Adventurers who had acquired sophisticated fighting techniques had instincts that made them avoid attacks half-unconsciously. Leonardo was negating that, using only his will.

  Elias’s magic sword and its swirling streams of water could cleave a boulder in two. That was what he was leaving himself open to. He was probably shot through with the sort of ferocious pain that would make him have to clamp down on his terror.

  Even Elias knew these things.

  They’d fought several hundred exchanges in this extreme environment, where damage was attenuated. That was enough times for them to have communicated what was in their hearts.

  “Hey, hero. Elias. How long have you had your mind back?”

  “…”

  Elias was at a loss for words.

  As Leonardo had said, at this point, he could barely feel that mental cloudiness.

  From time to time, pain ran through his head, but his memories of having been taken in by a female monster named Enchantress Youren, and of having turned his blade on his companions, were vivid.

  Even if he had been manipulated, the very fact of that manipulation was guilt and humiliation enough to sear him to the core. On top of that, the manipulation hadn’t been all; the words that had spilled out of Elias had been the sense of inferiority that smoldered inside him, which made it even more painful.

  In extreme terms, the fact that he hadn’t been able to stop fighting was simply due to his pride.

  You could even say he’d been fascinated by the damage he was continuing to inflict beyond 25 percent.

  However, now that Leonardo had seen through him, Elias let go of the battle he’d continued to fight and hung his head.

  “Leonardo…”

  “It’s fine; I don’t care. Quit looking like that.”

  Leonardo threw out his chest as he spoke, even though he was covered in damage, then walked unsteadily up to Elias and stuck a fist into his cheek.

  It was a parody of a punch.

  He hadn’t put his back into it; he’d folded his thumb into the clenched fist he’d raised, and frankly speaking, it marked him as an obvious amateur. However, Elias didn’t even have the strength to evade that whack, and he took it clumsily, staggered two or three steps, and fell. His physical responses were too dulled to even let him fall safely, and he landed on his face on the rocks. He was ridiculous, and it made him smile thinly.

  “How d’ya like that?”

  “How…am I sup…posed to…?”

  Elias lay on the rocks like a wooden doll. Realizing he didn’t even have the strength to get to his feet, he gave up and managed, with great difficulty, to roll onto his back.

  His whole body felt as hot as if it had been burned, and in that sense, the cool floor of the limestone cave was comfortable. It seemed as though this heat was his foolish self, and the land was gently reproaching him for it.

  “It was a terrible punch… You looked like an amateur.”

  “Huhn.”

  Even he thought the words were terribly spiteful.

  Even though he’d caused him so much trouble, even though he’d actually targeted his life, even though he himself was the only one to blame, Elias couldn’t even apologize meekly. In the end, even now, the fairy curse still bound him. Not only had he attacked Leonardo without so much as letting him argue, he hadn’t managed to complete that attack. His guilt at having done him harm and a feeling of inferiority over not having been able to fully accomplish that harm were fighting inside him.

  A feeling of inferiority about the curse and regret that scorched him like heavy oil still bound Elias in the depths of the darkness.

  It was true he’d been deceived by Enchantress Youren, but Elias knew that wasn’t the whole reason. As proof, even when the mania had died down, the bad feelings that prickled like a festering wound wouldn’t go away.

  Moving very cautiously, as if he was being ca
reful of his joints, Leonardo sat down cross-legged on the rock near Elias, then heaved a big sigh. In terms of HP, he was far closer to “death” than Elias.

  Elias had about 10 percent remaining, but Leonardo was below 2 percent. His condition could have been described as “at death’s door.”

  Naturally, HP was an indicator of the strength to endure injuries and damage, and it had nothing to do with stamina or accumulated fatigue. For that reason, the pair’s exhaustion wasn’t directly due to HP, but even if that was the case, at this point, when they were both at their limits, there was hardly any difference between them.

  “Why did you go along with something this foolish?” Elias asked.

  If Leonardo had felt like it, he could have ended Elias’s life a hundred times. That last 10 percent of his HP had been a distance of thousands of miles to Elias, but Elias’s HP couldn’t have been that way for Leonardo.

  He probably wouldn’t have been able to manage it in one attack, but he should have been able to tear him up by the roots in the space of two breaths. Leonardo had held his weapons at the ready at first, but ultimately, he’d sheathed them in order to keep Elias company in his desperation.

  It had been an incomprehensible act, the meaning of which was unclear.

  In response to that question, Leonardo’s eyes widened a bit, and he shrugged his shoulders with a sigh. His attitude was teasing, as if to say, What kind of dim-witted lines are you spouting?

  Elias was struck with shame. He hadn’t thought himself wise, but it was likely that he was deeply foolish.

  This affair had left Elias thoroughly disgusted with himself. Up until now, people had flattered him, calling him the Ancients’ hero and the strongest knight, and he’d gotten full of himself. Now he was filled with the desire to burn that self to the ground. He couldn’t rescue his comrades, and he couldn’t save the People of the Earth. He felt he had no value, and his existence seemed like an irredeemable crime.

  However, what Leonardo said to him was something he hadn’t anticipated at all.