ShangriLa Frontier ~ Shitty Games Hunter Challenges Godly Game ~ Chapter 199

Published at 30th of December 2021 09:03:53 AM

Translator: Kurehashi Aiko

Editor: ryunakama

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 199: Reaching the Heavens Part 5 Part 1

「With this type of bosses, it is not all that uncommon that there are some key items that serve the purpose of revealing its true appearances.」

What we were doing right about now was holding a special emergency meeting. Our Kutanid Extermination Squad was analyzing what we just learned and we were pondering our heads as to how to approach this problem. When Mold said the above words, I nodded my head in agreement.

「Yeah, I have played through a lot of games and in vast majority of them a thing like that was often present. Although it does not necessarily has to be an item. It can be a weapon, or some sort of specific magic, or literally anything.」

「So, does that mean we need to find that item? Roger that! On it!」

「Akitsu Akane, STAY!」

Over time we would surely figure out how to deal with this situation. However, I could very well understand Akitsu Akane’s eagerness to act. Since his base profession was that of a Thief, he could explore the majority of this dungeon with fairly low probability of getting detected. He has the biggest chances of discovering the key item in question.

Therefore, in order to utilize his talents to maximum, we need to send him to the place where it would be the most probable to find the item in question.

「Even though we have no proof to back that up, there is a high chance that we cannot defeat Kutanid as it is now. That is why we are holding this emergency strategy meeting right now. We must review what we know and agree on what to do next.

Let us start with the basic information. What do we know about Unique Monster ‘Kutanid of the Abyss’.

「Well, one thing that we know for sure, without any trick to it…… It’s an octopus. A huge octopus that made its nest here in the underwater city of Lulilas.」

「And most probably…… Its special ability is the power to be able to reverse the nature of seemingly everything around it.」

It even manages to hold the principles of life and death in the palm of its hands…… I mean tentacles. It completely depends on its mood, but it can rebuilt the destroyed city seemingly on a whim, as well as cook all of the living fish around the town into rotten sushi. And that is without mentioning its ability to turn people into fish zombies. Let us not forget about that.

Just like Rei mentioned, its ability is ‘Inversion’. It is a powerful ability that managed to even sink an entire island and city to the very bottom of the ocean.

Since it is a Unique Monster, it would only be natural for it to possess some sort of magical abilities, but at the same time it is quite impossible for its physical abilities to be low. I mean, with body this big, it could easily steamroll us all into pancakes just by walking all over us.

「…… At the very least, with our current information we do not know anything about Kutanid’s possible weaknesses, or any means of inflicting huge damage to it.」

「I would not say that, Rust. We do know SOMETHING. Did you look at its tentacles? Four of them were being chained to the ground. I think that by defeating the bosses of the four towers we managed to at least weaken Kutanid’s battle potential, or maybe even seal away some of its abilities…… Or at least it would be nice if it was something like that.」

Surprisingly enough it was Akitsu Akane who pointed that fact out to Rust, who still seemed to not get it. I mean, it should have been obvious from the start that those bosses would serve that kind of purpose, right?

「It almost feels like Kutanid-san wanted to tie itself down. Like it was waiting for it to happen.」

「Yeah, that’s exactly right.」

Four towers each located at the edge of the underwater city. Four boss monsters waiting inside of the towers. Their powers: magic nullification, physical attacks nullification, long distance attacks nullification, short distance nullification. Each boss monster held a different nasty ability that could severely impair the playstyle of the players. Up until now we had no idea what would happen if we were to defeat them. But now at least that mystery seemed to have been resolved.

Of that I can be sure: I have seen with my own eyes that four out of eight of that creature’s tentacles has been chained down, their powers most probably sealed away. But the question still remained: why? I feel like we’re missing something really important in here.

And that’s right. It can certainly be said that as for right now, all of the underwater city of Lulilas stays under Kutanid’s direct control. Now then, this gives raise to another question: why would the boss monster of this whole place set up a gimmick that would lower its own power and impair its battle potential?

「It seems that normal logic cannot be quite applied to Kutanid. It’s almost as if it was the irrational incarnate.」

「The good news here is that even though our dear Kutanid has a trap set up in place, there should be something in this dungeon that serves as a key to that trap. Talk about a design flaw.」

Or was that supposed to be some sort of pity system? A way for the strong to let the weak at least have a sliver of a chance at fighting back? If that’s the case, we definitely cannot lower our guard around this place. We need to be cautious if we want to emerge victorious from this battle.

It seems that our logic was partially flawed here as well. Apparently destroying the four bosses of the towers around town was not a trigger for being able to fight Kutanid, but rather a gimmick used to weaken it battle potential. Apart from that, everything else seemed to be just like we managed to deduce it.

「It’s both good and bad thing that this game likes to keep things clean and proper. Even in challenging quests like that, we have to figure our ‘why’ and ‘how’ ourselves. No one is going to guide us by the hand.」

For now, we have way too few information about Kutanid, so we need to change our approach quite a bit here.

We also have to consider the fact that was we saw there might not be Kutanid’s real body…… Or maybe that its real body was the underwater city Lulilas itself.

「Underwater city Lulilas can be roughly divided into four sectors: shipwreck graveyard, towers, main city and the castle.」

Lulilas is ‘inverted’ city, which means that there was a time when everything around here was normal. I’d say that both the castle and the town were made before the inversion took place, and the towers and the shipwreck graveyard were added after the inversion took place…… At least that’s what I think.

Translator: Kurehashi Aiko

Editor: ryunakama

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 199: Reaching the Heavens Part 5 Part 2

「I looked around the shipwrecks earlier, but I did not manage to find anything quest related in there. And believe me, I was really thorough with my investigation.」

Sure, there was a whole lot of treasure and valuables in there, but none of them look appealing enough to be considered quest-related.

「What about the towers? Were there any clues there?」

「Nope. …… They were just like ice cream cones: empty on the inside. …… Mold, that was a serious metaphor, so no laughing, if you please.」

「Ice cream cones…… Fufufu…… No, no, no! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!」

「If we start thinking about it like that, that would mean we would have to search the whole castle and town inch by inch!」

Let’s not go back to the city. We would be searching all day for clues, and we have no guarantee whatsoever that we would be able to find anything at all.

「So in the end, our only option is to search throughout this castle until we find something……?」

「Well, we have to check every nook and cranny out, so might as well stay on the lookout for anything suspicious.」

What came after that was a few seconds of a very awkward silence.

I don’t know about anyone else, but for me that much was kind of an obvious ever since we first arrived here in this place.

「Now, let’s take one more look around and start exploring! Be careful not to enter the basement, and let’s search every single nook and cranny of this place!」

「I know that I said that, but……」

This whole castle is crazy big. It is so big that you can easily get lost in here. It that sense, it is more of a labyrinth than a dungeon.

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What’s more, since the general color scheme of this place is blue, aside from the occasional furniture all of the rooms in here look more or less the same. With that being said, the room we were currently in had a giant fireplace with blue flames burning inside of it. I turn towards Rei while looking around.

「Hey, Rei? Found anything?」

「Not really…… If not counting a decorative sword, I have nothing on my end.」

Rei shows me the decorative sword that was hanging on the wall. The sword looked truly decorative, and in real fight of swords and magics it would truly not be of much use. Plus, since Rei’s current armor set was more Japanese-oriented, it did not really go too well with a Western-looking sword.

「When we talk about clues for quests in castles, throne room comes to mind as the place that should have some……」

「Does that me we rush to the throne room!?」

「Stay! STAY, god damn it! Kutanid is not going anywhere! We don’t have to be in THAT much of a hurry!」

「Yes, sir!」

If you want to say something like that, you might as well start to call me Colonel Sanraku.  That, or Brigadier General. Those titles sound really cool. Marshal? Not so much, it sounds lame in my opinion.

「I think that if we are on the lookout for something, it might as well be a diary. At least that would be the case in every other game that I have played thus far.」

At the current moment, our team ‘Mortals’ divided into two separate teams that are on the lookout for any clues. It was only natural for Rust and Mold to be together in one team, so ‘Team A’ consisted of me, Rei, Akitsu Akane and Emul. It was more convenient that way.

Sickle, Alva, Nereis and Straude were all part of the other team, if that was not obvious at that point in time.

We were yet to find any clues in here, but my brain has been working full throttle all this time.

What is the relationship between Kutanid and Lulilas? I feel like this is the key to the mystery of this place, a key that shall open the door to Kutanid’s gimmick and bring us victory.

In the first place, this whole city may have been a normal island with a city in the middle of it. Not underwater, but on the surface. And it was probably just that: a city, not a city-state. To be something like that, it should have been way larger than it is now.

And something must have happened to this city, there is no doubt about it. The desolated landscape is more than enough of a proof.

Siege, collapse…… There are many things such as that, and even plagues and pandemics that come to mind, but none of that matters for the moment. Something happened here, then came Kutanid and did something else.

「…… As far as I can see it, if the city was attacked by a huge monster, shouldn’t the damages be far greater?」

A devastated and completely abandoned city. But if it was truly the working of Kutanid’s invasion…… Wouldn’t the damages be way more severe?

But even if he did end up leveling the whole city to the ground, shouldn’t it be a piece of cake for Kutanid to bring it all back to normal and make it feel like brand new? So why would Kutanid choose to leave the city in this half-desolated state……? If it’s a hobby, then surely it is a pretty twisted one.

「There were certainly signs of life around this town when we were looking around earlier. But what could that possibly mean……?」

「They all perished, slowly……」

「Yes, that is exactly it, Rei.」

Ara, is my role being snatched away from me right now? Oh well, doesn’t matter all that much. I mean, it is always way more fun if more people manage to figure something out rather than arriving at the conclusion alone.

Has the arrival of Kutanid caused a mass panic throughout the city? It certainly feel like the current residents of this city are not exactly the ones who were living here before.

「More like this city getting destroyed in an instant by a huge cataclysm, doesn’t it feel to you that it was more like a gradual disaster?」

「I can’t help but to worry now. Alright, let us look into other room.」

「I understand! Just leave it to me to unlock it!」

At times like this, it was really convenient to have a Thief in our party. If it wasn’t for Akitsu Akane here, we would have to open the lock the old fashioned, master key way (which means forcing the lock open with lots of violence).

It was at that time that I have become aware of a particular detail on Akitsu Akane’s fox mask. While he was already on his way to the next room, I realized that he had markings that looked like patterns carved directly on his skin…… It was only later that I would learn that those were curse marks put on him by Siegwurm the Skylord.

「…… That.」

They say that the Devil will never use violence in order to obtain what he wants. But if indeed so, then what is the exchange that underwent between Kutanid and Lulilas?

「It’s a contract.」

Could it be that just like people making offering to the gods, the people of this town were making some sort of offerings to Kutanid?

The answer to that question surely would await us somewhere around this castle.

Chapter end