1.
Lantern-lit streets.
Silver Wolf and I stood out on the road.
Far ahead of us was the troupe’s circus tent, glowing with a wash of yellow light.
Haa....
This is seriously messing with my head.
Is this really the right move?
"You said it was the final performance, but there aren’t many people here."
"...Yeah."
There were about half as many people as there had been on the day we first came.
Among them, I couldn’t spot any top-tier fixers or elite hackers.
"Why does this feel so off?"
"Because there’s no real justification for it. It’s forced."
"You trying to beat me to death with facts again?"
I was trembling.
It felt like walking down a road I knew nothing about.
And yet that sticky, heavy sensation kept rising in my head.
It wasn’t that I could do it.
I had to do it.
Because if I couldn’t, I’d die.
A very simple reason.
I didn’t want to go down in history as some idiot who had a regression cheat and still died.
"Let’s go. We bought tickets fair and square, after all...."
"Adrian, above!"
The moment we stepped onto the street—
Swoosh!!
Sharp knives came flying in.
From above, below, left, and right, knives hurled in acrobatic arcs came hurtling toward us.
Their targets were the vital points of the body.
If this had been before, I would’ve rolled around like an idiot to dodge them...
Do I still look like a pushover to you?
Minimal movement.
I twisted my body, using acrobatics to slip past them.
"That welcome was way too aggressive. You guys got me excited, damn it."
The merchants stared wide-eyed at the knives embedded in the ground.
They instantly realized the atmosphere was bad.
The street people started preparing to grab whatever valuables they could and run.
And seeing one of them already trying to loot a shop, the word slum popped into my head again.
"Adrian, get ready."
"Straight through?"
"Yeah. What other choice do we have?"
Aaaagh! Fuck!
What the hell!?
People shouting and screaming.
Enemies drawing their weapons with sharp, practiced motions.
Clownish outfits and costumes that fit a circus troupe perfectly.
"Aren’t you going to prepare for the show? We’ve got VIP guests coming in person."
"..."
"So you have no intention of talking, huh...."
They stared at us silently, each wearing a mask.
They looked less like people and more like dolls.
There were dozens of them at minimum, wearing costumes of all kinds and plain worker-like clothes.
There might be even more inside the troupe’s tent, where the lights were on.
We still hadn’t properly gathered information, so it was awkward to spend too many resources here.
But these idiots were going to charge us just because they outnumbered us?
Unfortunately for them, I’d been through too much already....
I wasn’t scared.
I took my stance.
Left foot forward, right foot back. Feet a little wider than shoulder-width apart.
Bending my legs loosely, ready to spring at any moment.
[Acrobatics] — Sky Leap.
My spring-coiled legs snapped straight.
My body shot upward with elastic force, and the sword drawn from its sheath came surging out with it.
Thwack!
The sound of flesh splitting.
Blood burst like fireworks and ran down the blade.
White matter mixed with the red spray.
"Let’s do the mob fight before the boss battle."
"I’ll back you up."
All kinds of weapons came flying in.
As expected of circus workers, their aim was excellent.
This wasn’t an open field. It was urban combat.
Using the terrain, I leaped from one point to the next and casually swung my sword to cut them down.
The sound of flesh splitting, and bodies falling.
The difference in power was overwhelming.
I wasn’t the same weakling I used to be!
"Silver Wolf, the other side!"
"Got it."
One more good thing was the cooperation between Silver Wolf and me.
In a normal setup, it would’ve been a simple one-plus-one kind of teamwork.
But we weren’t one plus one.
We were one squared.
Not merely cooperating, but moving together, as if we were one body.
We knew each other so well—from tiny habits to our behavior and personalities.
Now that I had enough ability to back it up, I could finally make full use of it.
Clatter-rattle!
One of them whipped a chain like a lash.
The snake-like chain wrapped around my sword in an instant and pulled hard, but—
Asat-style Martial Arts — Light Straight
My fist was faster than his strength could bend the blade.
I let go of my sword and sent a punch flying, crushing his face, then kicked him in the gut and shattered his solar plexus.
"...Not even screaming. That’s creepy."
At the very least, he should’ve groaned.
But there was no scream, no sound at all—only the wet, squelching noise of flesh being crushed.
It was a bizarre sight.
Even an idiot could feel something was wrong.
Silver Wolf came toward me too, firing her shooter from her right hand.
"Adrian, these people..."
"Their numbers aren’t going down."
Kill them, fling them, break them.
We’d done it several times already.
But all that changed was the mess of the street; the bodies never seemed to disappear.
What was left were the troupe members charging us with the same masks and the same faces.
"...This game is fucking bullshit."
If this turned into a war of attrition, we’d be at a disadvantage.
The troupe leader might even swallow the final blow and steal the kill from us.
"Adrian, go."
"What?"
"Go. Leave this to me."
Just as I was about to tell her to stop spouting nonsense, Silver Wolf’s slender fingers blocked my mouth.
"I trust you. So trust me too. I’ll take care of all of them and catch up soon."
"..."
"If we can’t clear even this easy mode, it wouldn’t be fun, right?"
The troupe members rushed in.
People ran away.
None of that mattered—
"Yeah. I trust you."
A man’s got to have some pride.
When my girl says that much, what else am I supposed to do?
[Acrobatics] — Sky Slash.
A wave spread in a straight line and cut through people.
No, not people. Dolls.
Those things were no longer something I could call human.
I ran.
Using my strengthened leg power, I kicked off a stall and leaped forward.
Between the troupe members swarming me like a pack of zombies, Silver Wolf’s eyes flashed as she brought both hands together.
[Ether Editing] — Pac-Man
A strange circle wearing sunglasses.
Multicolored light gathered together.
Then the light became a sphere and shot out.
BOOM!!!
"Nice shot, ma’am!"
"Who are you calling ma’am!?"
The Pac-Man shot out like a bowling ball and knocked people over.
The troupe members collapsed in a chain like bowling pins.
"Your opponent is me."
Their focus shifted.
From me to Silver Wolf.
Countless hostile gazes stabbed into her.
I trusted Silver Wolf and ran on ahead.
That’s what comrades are for.
If I couldn’t trust her, there was nothing I could do.
Fwoosh!
Using Sky Leap, I reached the front of the huge tent stretched out before me.
There wasn’t even anyone there to check tickets.
When I lifted the flap and went inside, what I saw was—
- Ah... when are we starting?
- They said it’s delayed for a bit because of some problem.
- Mom! Look at that!
- Hmm....
- I’m busy, so did we really have to come all the way here for this....
Voices of all different kinds.
On the central stage stood the troupe leader.
He was alone, with no one else beside him.
I stood on the steps and looked up at him.
If I fought here with ordinary people mixed in, it could cause problems, but I needed to finish this quickly while Silver Wolf held the line.
And so, just as I drew in a deep breath and was about to call out to the troupe leader—
Snap!
A bright, crisp finger snap.
It was the kind of sound that gave me trauma because of Asat.
The moment I heard it, the floor beneath me caved in.
"No, fuck—!"
The floor didn’t cave in.
An extra-dimensional space had opened in the ground I was standing on!
"Now then! At last, the star of the show has arrived!"
"What the hell are you talking about."
"Let us begin a proper story!!!"
"You fucking idiot, are you even listening to me!?"
The troupe leader was inside the extra-dimensional space too.
I fell through the air.
What I could see was the ground and various structures inside that space.
Crack, rumble—BOOM!!!
The earth shook, and the ground shot up like tentacles.
Countless chunks of earth rose in a grid-like pattern.
Damn it!
If that hit me, I’d be skewered Adrian fillet on a nutrient snack stick!!!
That was my mistake—I’d only thought of it as a simple item I could take out and use.
I’d imagined an inventory or something, but what actually appeared was a mini Infinite Castle, just a little smaller than the one in the comics.
But if there was one thing the troupe leader had miscalculated...
I’m not weak anymore.
New-neo Adrian is coming through!
Amber light flashed. I looked at the earth surging up beneath me, at the sky I couldn’t step on, and the sword in my sheath began to slide free, glowing with a razor-edged light.
[Acrobatics] — Sky Step
Chain, [Causal Manipulation]—
—Result fixed.
Dice Roll — [Hunt] [7]
"Now then, show me! Your potential! The light of the one chosen by the God of Laughter!!"
The troupe leader’s voice rang out noisily.
I prepared to leap downward, stepping on the air itself.
I called it to mind.
The feel of that day, and the memory of fighting in the abandoned factory.
The sharp glint of someone’s arrowhead.
Even if that time had been erased by time, the fleeting memory still remained with me.
The words spoken by an old man.
The man who listened to them.
- Hatred, grudges, and pursuit have no end.
My legs swelled.
Blue flashes of electricity began to spill out.
- How could one ever measure the worries of a hunter like you?
Let me become your arrowhead.
Let me strike down the abomination of Abundance.
- The star arrow is drawn, and the golden eyes burn.
I had lost too much to ever look back. The bow of the world was drawn, and lightning flashed in a single burst of light.
In that instant, as fast as light itself,
though no one could see it, everyone could feel the strangeness.
- O Heaven’s bow, do not turn back.
No one could see it.
But it was a sight only I could see.
A fleeting glance.
A blue greatbow with the lower body of a horse, shining like a star.
An arrow blazing like a flash of light.
- ■■——!!!
The sound of the arrow being fired rang out.
Light tore through the air, and the world split open.
The god and my eyes met.
The half-human, half-horse god who appeared while cleaving the sky looked at me, then vanished in an instant.
Crack, BOOOOM!!!
Lightning and flashes of light wrapped around my body and shattered the entire mass of earth I had been leaping from.
Not only did it break the rising ground, but the earth I landed on at impossible speed rippled like a wave.
Creak, crack, rattle!
"Ghh...!"
The backlash of [Causal Manipulation].
An unfamiliar power I was handling for the second time.
At least [Dice Roll] [7] was offsetting the recoil little by little.
As the thick cloud of dust settled, I looked at the troupe leader.
"Why is it the Heavenly Bow’s mission and not the God of Laughter’s..."
The troupe leader stared at me blankly as he spoke.
You bastard, this is your first time seeing something like this, isn’t it?
Honestly, it’s my first time using it too.
"You said you borrowed money to start this troupe, right?"
"..."
"As your senior in liquidation, I’ll slap a seizure notice on everything today."
I still didn’t know why he’d tried so hard to come after me.
But now that he’d struck first, there was no reason to hesitate anymore.
Let’s bet our lives on it and fight to survive.
========
▶ Achievement unlocked (!)
- You have received the gaze of Lan, the Aeon of the Hunt.
========
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