Chapter 63
A playable character is, quite literally, an existence that could be called the ultimate embodiment of absurdity.
Not only can they cross between different world lines using save loads, but even if they die just like that, they can start over anew whenever they want simply by inserting the allotted life coins.
Haven’t I already heard that bizarre notification sound announcing the completion of several ‘achievements’?
But.
The most overpowered aspect of a playable character, in my opinion, lies elsewhere.
The fact that they’re the only ones who level up.
It’s so overpowered that its strength has become a kind of meme, even allowing them to freely toy with the governing powers of all sorts of settings.
This aside has gone on a little long, but what I ultimately want to say is simple.
“Found you.”
No one is allowed to lay a finger on the grocery store.
Even if he’s the boss of a yakuza organization.
“You goddamn bastard.”
If you mess with my grocery store, you’re really fucking screwed.
I stared at him blankly.
The head of Hakuga-gumi─, Bansho Takemaru, better known by his nickname Black Tiger, looked at me with an intrigued expression.
“…To think you found my location this quickly. Truly astonishing. Seriously.”
As he walked out into the hallway, the floor gave a small creak.
“It hasn’t even been a few hours yet. Considering how that terrorist bitch is still struggling because she hasn’t been able to pinpoint my location properly, ‘astonishing’ may not be enough.”
His attitude was less belligerent than expected.
Bansho Takemaru asked me out of genuine curiosity.
“Do you happen to know a web-spider technician affiliated with either Redback or Black Hornet?”
“What are you going to do with that information?”
Of course, I had no reason to answer.
But even at my sharp tone, he didn’t wipe the smile from his lips.
“A capable subordinate is always welcome.”
Without even sparing a glance at his subordinate embedded in the wall, he continued staring intently at me.
It was quite uncomfortable.
Even more so as someone who knew his hidden sexual identity.
“Then let’s end the games here. I don’t know how you sneaked in this far, but….”
When Bansho Takemaru clenched his fist, the large gold chain visible over his white suit swung roughly.
“Just say you’ll come under me, and I’ll overlook everything. You must have felt it already. That I can’t be beaten by force.”
My answer wasn’t much different from the first time.
I raised my middle finger straight up.
“Fuck off.”
I left him with one blunt curse.
At last, an unpleasant look appeared on Bansho Takemaru’s face.
“…You really do seem to want to die. Or are you laboring under the bizarre delusion that I won’t kill you?”
The air around us grew heavier by the moment.
A beast’s cry mixed into his voice, making it rumble like a growl.
“I’m done going easy on you. If you say anything from here on out that differs from the answer I want…. I’ll rip open every hole in your body.”
Coming from a man so devoted to LGBT culture, it didn’t sound like a joke at all.
He acted like a human, but in the end, his nature was no different from that of a worthless beast.
“I’m actually glad you came out like this.”
“…??”
“It would’ve been a little awkward if you’d apologized.”
When I holstered the pistol I was holding on my tactical belt, he nodded with a satisfied expression.
“Tsk, you were going to listen so obediently after all. Good. I’ll take especially good care of you─.”
And then.
I clenched both fists tightly.
Thump.
The flow through my veins roiled as if the RPM of a sixteen-cylinder engine were climbing all the way to its limit.
Yet the pounding sound was utterly quiet.
If anything, it grew slower and slower.
One second halved, then halved again.
Only after it had been cut down several times did I finally notice that my heart had beaten once.
In an instant.
The world briefly stopped.
─Kwaaaang!!!
The ground beneath my foot caved in deeply, as though solid propellant had exploded.
Within the frozen world.
I hurled my fist forward, still airborne from that burst of momentum.
Judging simply by our size, the gap between us might have been greater than that between a flyweight and a heavyweight fighter.
But the fist that reached his immediate vicinity ‘in the blink of an eye’
carried enough impact to make his thickly muscled upper body bend backward in one blow.
Crack!!
His pupils contracted for an instant.
Vertically elongated pupils like a beast’s.
An uppercut aimed at my head came flying.
Since he was still constantly falling backward, I didn’t seem to need to lower my stance.
But even that movement was still slow.
I stepped on the upper part of the fist Bansho Takemaru had thrown,
Whoosh!
and used the recoil to spin forward.
In the world spinning round and round, I used the ceiling as a support and came to a stop.
I fixed my gaze on his face as he barely held himself from falling backward by using his core muscles.
At the same time that the durability of the only sneakers I owned finally ran out and the soles fell off, several days after I had picked them up from a garbage can.
Crack─!!
This time, I stomped down on the bridge of his nose.
With the situation turning out that way, Bansho Takemaru could no longer hold on and eventually collapsed.
It still wasn’t over.
Next, my fist wrapped in magical power mercilessly battered the culprit who had smashed the grocery store.
Bang!! Crunch! Bang!!!
A violent din so brutal it was hard to believe it came from bone and flesh colliding.
Dark red blood sprayed around us as if from a spray bottle.
‘My, gro, cer, y, sto, re, you, bas, tard─.’
I put genuine feeling into every swing of my fist.
The moment my fist drove into his jaw.
I released the mount position I had worked so hard to secure.
“…!!”
A sense of foreboding crawled up my spine.
Since falling into the game, I had never regretted trusting my instincts.
They were already at a level that could be called a sixth sense.
Reflexively, I kicked off his chest and swiftly retreated backward.
Throb….
And I discovered that the flesh on my fingers was dangling loosely in tatters.
For a brief moment, I made eye contact with my bones, which were sticking out and enjoying the outside air.
Red blood flowed nonstop through the messily torn flesh.
‘…When did he attack me?’
Even while throwing punches, I had been steadily watching my opponent’s movements.
I knew all too well how badly my body could be wrecked if I were caught by an opponent against whom a contest of strength was utterly impossible, so I had been watching his hands especially closely, but.
It wasn’t as if I’d broken a bone while punching.
It was as if a wild beast had bitten and torn at me.
The flesh on my fingers was simply gone.
Then, from the direction where Bansho Takemaru lay, I heard the sound of something chewing wetly.
“As expected….”
His injuries were not as severe as I’d thought.
Despite the continuous barrage of blows.
Bansho Takemaru calmly rose to his feet.
“…The taste is decent.”
I was left speechless by the shocking sight.
I couldn’t even come up with a snide remark.
“You lunatic….”
Nothing more than a single curse.
I endured the pain and clenched my fist.
Bones seemed to knit together in roughly a few minutes, but how long would it take for flesh that had been completely torn away to grow back?
But Bansho Takemaru, wearing a slightly dazed expression, wiggled his fingers in the air.
A transparent cluster of light flickered above his eyes.
[Boss…?]
He seemed to be contacting someone.
[What on earth is happening there……. ]
“I’m going to have ‘a meal’ here. Keep everyone out. And lower the breaker, too.”
[…What? No, you can’t! We’re sending the tactical members there right now, so please just hold on a little─.]
The call ended quickly.
‘A meal….’
Knowing what he was chewing on right now, I couldn’t help but furrow my brow.
“Does he really think he’s a tiger or something….”
Perhaps he heard my muttered soliloquy, because Bansho Takemaru suddenly raised his head.
“…Do you know why my nickname is Black Tiger?”
“Then, conversely, do you know why my nickname is Hot Dog Man?”
““……””
Let’s not ask questions about things neither of us knows.
Perhaps he saw no value in answering my question, because he resumed spouting only what he wanted to say.
“You see, it’s because.”
His shadow began to writhe.
Thick black fur rose from his pores.
His swelling upper body had already torn the buttons from his white suit, and a pitch-black mane emerged in every direction.
I had no intention of obeying the world’s rule that one mustn’t attack during a transformation, but when I met those vertically split beast’s eyes again,
my feet stopped of their own accord.
“Because I am the real tiger.”
After all, that bastard was casually ignoring the law of conservation of mass right in front of me.
When he shook himself, the clotted blood that had hardened fell naturally to the floor.
“You suddenly stopped talking. Are you afraid of me?”
Sharp teeth.
Claws longer than most blades.
A build so massive it looked like the avatar of Kellogg’s had appeared.
“Well, of course you’re afraid. Now that I’ve shown you this form, your future is decided. Regretting your impudence─.”
“Fuck, what kind of tiger is this? You’re a cat.”
“……”
Provoking him wasn’t particularly my intention.
It was simply a factual observation: his appearance was closer to a cat than a tiger.
“And this bastard’s seriously twisted. Not just a gay guy, but a furry gay guy…. Ugh, shit.”
I was someone who respected other people’s tastes, but I had no intention of respecting someone who forced their secret preferences on others.
I waggled the finger whose flesh was still dangling toward him, now suddenly clamping his mouth shut.
“So what? If you don’t like it, come at me.”
“…Breaking your arms and legs won’t be enough. I’ll chew you up whole.”
“After getting the shit beaten out of you this whole time, what the….”
“Making you crawl around for twenty-four hours with drugs might be pretty good, too.”
…….
Immediately afterward.
Our fists and claws crossed.
* * *
“No, I’m telling you, it’s true! Some lunatic inside is firing a gun in every direction…!”
“C-chrome junkie!!”
“Damn it, how are you going to take responsibility for all the time I’m losing? Get whoever’s in charge out here, now!!”
The entrance to Club 「Moebius」, noisy with the people who had evacuated.
A Hakuga-gumi member who had checked the guard collapsed at the entrance looked down the stairs.
“…Has there been any further word from upstairs?”
“Well….”
“Damn it, what the hell is this mess? The boss is inside right now, isn’t he? Did those fucking mafia bastards pull something?”
“I don’t know either….”
As if he had made some decision, the member gripped the handle of his assault rifle.
“This won’t do. I have to go in right now.”
“That would be unwise.”
But his movements halted at a voice that suddenly came from behind him.
A man in a black mask.
“…Are you with the tactical unit? Good timing. What on earth is happening inside─.”
“And step away from the entrance.”
The cat’s gaze turned toward the other ninjas who had appeared behind the member.
“…Shadow. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
They were Hakuga-gumi’s tactical unit members.
The place Cat had belonged to in the past.
“We’ve already received word that you injured Squirrel, Sparrow, and Spiny Lobster before fleeing the organization.”
“That’s incorrect.”
“…What part is incorrect? You coward, repaying the organization’s kindness with betrayal.”
The cat boldly blocking their way lightly pressed his palms together, just as Abel Anderson had done a little while ago.
“Do─mo. Owl= san. Cat desu.”
“…Have you gone insane?”
But the tactical unit members, unaware of this series of greetings, naturally surrounded Cat and merely prepared to execute the runaway traitor.
“…In any case, that’s fortunate for you. The order has changed from bring him back dead or alive to bring him back alive, no matter what. If you have any honor, kneel and surrender.”
“Honor….”
The image of his former self appeared in Cat’s eyes.
Accordingly, a small smile appeared behind his mask.
“A dog searching for honor. What a comedy show this is.”
“…There’s no point in talking any further. You’ve fallen.”
Having grown much more relaxed in his manner of speech after spending several days with the homeless, Cat seemed like a deranged weirdo to Owl.
‘What the hell is he so confident about…?’
The ‘Shadow’ he knew wasn’t skilled enough to show confidence in a situation like this.
In truth, there was a certain similarity in the abilities of most tactical unit members.
He could acknowledge that Shadow had shaken off and escaped all those pursuers, but Owl couldn’t understand what confidence had brought him back to the front of a club run by Hakuga-gumi.
Owl did not know.
“…Enough. Everyone, our objective is to capture him alive, so avoid his vital points when attacking,”
““……””
But even at that critical moment.
Cat was calmly recalling the conversation he had shared with Abel Anderson at the grocery store.
- You’re offering to guide me all the way there?
- That is correct. I once served in an organization called Hakuga-gumi myself, so I wish to settle the debts I bear, even if it must be done in this manner.
Fortunately, his request wasn’t rejected.
Rather.
- Really? Then take this.
- This is….
Abel Anderson handed Cat a new weapon.
Cat naturally drew the ‘katana’ strapped around his waist.
“…A katana? Ha, I guess he thinks he’s actually part of a ninja squad.”
Hakuga-gumi was an organization formed by absorbing the former Japanese faction, but it naturally differed from the ‘real’ ninja units operated separately by Japanese megacorps.
However.
That smile didn’t last to the end.
Because the blade Cat had drawn was gradually dyed bright red.
“…A specially tempered katana?”
An item that rarely even appeared on the black market….
Ignoring their questions,
Cat quietly muttered to himself.
To sever the remaining ties to his past.
“Then, I shall go.”