Fangaku:Volume1 Act1 Chapter1
Chapter 1[edit]
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Tama Tech was a large amusement facility located on the southwest end of the Depths Region. The road leading to it was currently packed full of armored trucks.
The armored trucks were playing a bit-tune Shinto prayer using three FM tones and three PSG tones.
The trucks’ spell armor reacted to the electronic drum tone, scattering as chips of ether light voxels.
The song was played with a speed-adjustment divine protection in place to ensure the Doppler effect didn’t distort the prayer, but the lead truck could not enter the facility grounds. Because…
“Huh!? But they declared a lesser dragon warning, didn’t they!? And the advance team we sent in already confirmed its presence at the unstable 8bit 3-tone level! So what do you mean it isn’t here!?”
The tentacle on the truck’s roof spoke to a girl standing in front of the amusement park.
She had black hair.
She was short.
She wore a long black sailor uniform and she spoke quietly.
“Is that a threat?”
“Eh?”
“I asked if that is a threat.”
●
“Now, hold on! I didn’t mean it like that!”
“Captain! Daida-chan isn’t very sociable, so you’ll have to be nicer to her if you want her to talk!”
“You could stand to be nicer too! What if she takes offense at that!?”
The girl clicked her tongue.
“Who are you calling unsociable, you damn tentacle.”
“Ehhh!? Are my subordinate’s comments my responsibility now!? How is that fair!?”
“Shokuo-san, you just don’t understand girls. Ah ha ha!”
“Don’t you start!”
The tentacle used a sub-tentacle to smash the laughing sign frame that had popped up.
Then his subordinate raised her hand.
“Captain! We have a report from the Asama Shrine! We know the lesser dragon’s escape route! Some of the city’s water supply lines have burst north of here, suggesting it is using a water-vein ley line to escape!”
“You mean it didn’t take physical form here!? And it took a different ley line instead of continuing downstream!?”
“Yup. It probably ran away scared after seeing Daida-chan there.”
“Heh heh.”
Seeing the girl snort with laughter, the tentacle took a breath to calm himself. A deep breath.
Eventually, he managed to speak to his subordinate.
“Who am I supposed to be mad at here?”
“How about pursuing the dragon instead?”
“There’s really only one place in the water distribution pipes a lesser dragon data entity can get through.”
“The Tama River, you mean? That’s under our jurisdiction, isn’t it?”
“It sure is. But we stayed up all night reapplying that barrier, so the dragon won’t be able to emerge. Unable to breathes, it will continue on to force itself along to the next place the water surfaces.”
He knew where that would be.
“Tokyo Depths School. It coexists with the 1st Showa Memorial Park, which has a canal. The dragon will emerge in the forest there.”
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…A dragon!?”
Everyone else reacted before I could.
“A lesser dragon!? And an aquatic one!?”
The students still on the walking path hurriedly evacuated.
Into the forest.
But I was too slow.
It was right in front of us.
No, from our perspective, it was right behind us.
“…!!”
A dragon.
Its head height was about the same as a second story room.
It seemed somehow fish-like. Not in appearance but in…
…How it moves.
It crawled along as if swimming. And it was moving straight toward me.
“…!!”
It didn’t roar or anything like that.
It simply charged this way.
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It instantly closed in on me.
I didn’t even sense any hostility in its charge.
Like I just so happened to be in its way.
Quite possible given the size difference.
From its perspective, I was about as much of an obstacle as a tree branch.
It was going to trample me.
Its front legs were already right up to me and it swung its toothy jaws down.
…Is it going to fling me away!?
My thoughts scattered before I could figure out what to do.
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What should I do?
Run away. Crouch. Lie down. Jump away. Or maybe…
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“Use a dark elf skill!”
<You are still Level 1, so you don’t have any of those.>
“This screen is mocking me!!”
I screamed as those fangs seemed to approach in slow motion.
I was going to die.
I was sure of it.
Wait, how does that work in the Depths Region? What happens when you die?
Um…
“Watch out!”
I heard that just as sparks flew in from the right side of my vision.
They traveled from right to left.
And…
“––––––!?”
The dragon was thrown forcefully to the left.
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The dragon had taken a solid blow.
From a palm strike.
And the dragon’s jaw had been knocked rightward by…
“Hungahh!!”
Oh, you’re allowed to yell like that? I wondered just as the dragon rolled twice while bouncing.
But as the ground shook, it used its third roll to get back on its feet.
And as Ushiko pulled back her right hand…
“I can only use my Super Sumo Slap once a day! We need to run!”
“I couldn’t agree more!”
I had to get running.
But then I realized…
…Oh, no! My hips have given out!
I hadn’t fallen to the ground, but my hips had “lowered”.
I couldn’t start running like this.
That was just how bad my posture had become.
And to help me out…
“Acceleration spell!”
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“Eh!? Um, uh!”
<She gave you an acceleration spell, so get going. Get a move on, slowpoke.>
“Hey! Quit making fun of her!”
Thank you so much for getting mad on my behalf.
That said, I was familiar with acceleration spells.
I had gotten in my fair share of trouble back in Kawasaki, so I had used them then and whenever I needed a speed boost in everyday life.
But this wasn’t Kawasaki.
There was an etiquette to using spells in the Depths Region and I had spent the past two weeks being trained in it, but…
“–––––”
All that knowledge was gone.
I was so overwhelmed by it all I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do.
But I did remember what I was supposed to say when something like this happened.
“Help!!”
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“Well done!”
The tall girl turned around.
She was fast.
Her height gave her long strides, but covering the distance in two steps was definitely thanks to the acceleration spell.
The spell had activated without any kind of preparation or action on her part because she was using…
…A conditional launcher!
During my two weeks of training, I had decided I wanted to set one of those up eventually.
Having one or not created a real difference in what you could do.
She snatched me up in no time.
“Excuse me.”
Once she placed me over her shoulder, I could sense her breathing.
She shrank down when she exhaled and stretched up when she inhaled.
“––––!”
Right as my view seemed to bounce, I saw the dragon’s short charge reach the space I had just been in.
But it missed.
It failed to hit me.
“Missed me by a mile!”
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“U-umm.”
“Now that was praiseworthy!”
“Congratulations!”
“…What?”
Apparently that wasn’t what she meant.
But the lesser dragon’s size had whipped up the wind.
It braked with its massive claws, tearing up the stone pavement.
It was too big for the road, so it easily felled a few of the surrounding trees.
I heard a siren coming from somewhere.
The police or someone must have been coming to help.
And a few of the evacuated students were waving at us from in the forest.
They were telling us to hurry up and escape. But…
“I say we shouldn’t go in the forest. What do you think?”
“I want to avoid leading it toward the others!”
“That’s the spirit!”
Yes.
The dragon was focused on us.
If we entered the forest, we would be putting the others in danger. But…
…What else are we supposed to do!?
The rescue siren was getting closer.
But the dragon was between us and it.
And Ushiko had her back to the siren as she carried me.
Because we had to escape.
And we were escaping…
“Toward the library!”
Not the school? I wondered just before my view changed.
I saw the sky.
●
“Eh?”
What had happened?
I had no clue.
I only knew what the end result was.
…Something launched us upwards!?
Before I had seen the road through the forest, but all of a sudden I saw the sky instead.
It was the morning after a rainy night.
We were currently floating high in the sky where the clouds were lined up flatly.
“Kyah!”
Ushiko’s cry of surprise made me look behind us, which meant down.
Toward the ground.
Past Ushiko, who was now more holding me in her arms than carrying me over her shoulder.
The road we had been on was now far below.
Around 10m below.
It wasn’t an attack that had launched us up here.
We had simply started to hover.
But what had caused it? I could see the cause below us.
…Pixel art!?
Crude voxels formed a dragon tail growing out of the ground.
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The dragon tail was blurry and low-resolution because it was formed by a collection of 1m cubes.
It was not a physical object.
<Such a low physical resolution.>
From my position up in the sky, I could just barely make out the shape and color of a dragon tail.
The tail growing from the ground was a light green.
And the dragon itself stood a distance away with its hips on down sinking into the ground.
Only the tail had such a low physical resolution.
The dragon and the tail were likely linked through the ground. So…
…It attacked us through the ground!?
I only now realized how the dragon had appeared here.
It hadn’t arrived while moving along the surface.
“It arrived here traveling through the ley lines, didn’t it!?”
■Ley Lines
<Allow me to explain. Ley Lines are pathways of ether, the building blocks of our world. The ley lines extend to every part of the world like blood vessels, supplying ether to the world. Stagnation and congestion in the ether current leads to the creation of mysterious phenomena.>
“Um, then what are we dealing with there?”
<Some higher beings and beings with a high digitization rate can move through the ley lines. This dragon must have traveled here using the “water element” within the ley lines.>
Meaning…
<The TPD’s Central Depths Unit is hurrying here in armored trucks, but they will not arrive for three more minutes.>
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…Then what do we do!?
The sirens still hadn’t arrived.
Meanwhile, the tail below them sank back into the ground.
“––––!!”
The dragon extracted itself from the road and began another short charge.
The two of us were still in the air.
The dragon intended to spring up with its tail and attack its floating prey.
That series of motions had to be something it used while hunting.
“…!”
Ushiko was still carrying me in midair, but she shifted her position.
To protect me.
She held me close and turned the right side of her back toward the dragon.
That meant she intended to take the dragon’s attack and…
“You can’t!”
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I saw two things happen.
The first happened below us as we fell.
A 3D shape resembling a wall flew from far behind and soared through the air to reach the dragon.
The second was the dragon lurching backwards from a direct hit to its face.
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“Eh!? What!? Did a wall just fly in and hit it!?”
Yes.
But this “wall” was made of light.
It was about the size of a tatami mat.
And it hit.
“…!?”
The dragon took the blow to the face.
The wall shattered into sparkles and the dragon stopped the force of the blow with its full body.
Meanwhile…
“…!”
Ushiko landed with me in her arms.
We had fallen from the sky.
She did at least roll along the stone pavement to soften the blow.
And as she again held me tight to defend me, I saw something over her shoulder.
A few of the dragon’s fangs had broken, but its lengthy body had contracted to absorb the shock.
And it immediately started toward us.
“…!”
It refused to give up.
“–––––!!”
First, a massive step.
It used the forward motion to adjust its stance.
With the second step, it leaned forward…
…To charge!”
But then a force flew in.
Another attack arrived from behind us.
But this was not a “wall” like the first time.
“A sniper shot!?”
It detonated.
I could only tell it had been a cannon blast because of the trail of steam it left behind.
It hit.
The destructive power struck the dragon’s jaw on the right.
A white explosion and some spray tore a large chunk out of that right jaw.
An explosive boom rang out.
The blood spraying from the dragon’s wound was all made of ether light.
■Ether
<Allow me to explain. Ether is the most fundamental building block of all things in our world. Objects, actions, physical laws – even we exist because ether was given shape by a “mold”. We ordinarily cannot perceive ether because we are made of it ourselves, but we can detect the light and heat produced by ether’s kinetic and static changes.>
“Then what was that?”
<Because the dragon had only just appeared in our world, it was still highly unstable on the ether level. The attack that hit it had a divine protection applied, allowing it to damage ether, so the injury affected the dragon on the physical and ether level. That caused ether light to emerge from the site of the destruction.>
Or more simply…
<That was an effective attack.>
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The attack had hit.
And it was effective.
But it didn’t look that way to me.
“…!!”
If anything, the dragon’s roar seemed to be louder than before.
As if to prove me right, the dragon was not slowing. It was headed toward us again.
“It’s mad now.”
“Did that attack only make things worse?”
“No,” said Ushiko, just before…
“Get down!”
Hearing a sharp cry from behind, I finally took a look back.
I looked over Ushiko’s shoulder as she worked to protect me. And…
I saw someone there.
A girl was keeping her distance from us while aiming something like a cannon.
“––––––”
She was down on one knee and the cannon was supported by a bipod as it released its power.
She fired.
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…Yikes!
She didn’t stop at one shot.
She fired again and again and again.
The gunner’s long blue hair whipped behind her as she repeatedly sniped the dragon with a complete lack of hesitation.
Ushiko’s arms held me tighter as the shells flew right past us.
Of course, they moved much too fast to see.
I detected them by the stench of the scorched air.
But…
…Is she helping us!?
A student was making a very aggressive rescue.
The term Chancellor’s Officers came to mind, but I guessed she probably wasn’t with them.
■Chancellor’s Officers
<Allow me to explain. In Japan and some other countries, students and alumni have formed autonomous organizations known as the Chancellor’s Officers. In Japan, they have become an important piece of society. The Tokyo Depths Chancellor’s Officers are in charge of the Tokyo Depths Region and their Chancellor attends Tokyo Depths School.>
“Um, then is that gunner behind us with them?”
<She is an ordinary student. Although she is a top-level ranker.>
I focused on the part about her being a top-level ranker more than the ordinary student part.
I looked more closely.
The Chancellor’s Officers acted as a student-led autonomous organization for a region or city and they were required to wear an armband identifying them as such.
This girl was not wearing one.
But then who was she?
Before I could ponder that question, I sensed a powerful presence from out ahead.
It sounded a lot like breathing, but also had a whistling to it.
“–––––”
“It’s preparing a dragon cannon!”
●
Sure enough, the dragon was opening its jaws wide.
This wasn’t a breath attack.
This explosive blast style of dragon cannon was known as a blast roar.
And just before it released the roar…
“––––––!”
“Don’t move!”
I felt Ushiko’s nod of acknowledgment.
At the same time, all sound vanished and the air came to a halt.
A moment later, the dragon turned its wide-open mouth toward us.
“…!!”
It roared.
The explosive blast flew toward us along with it.
It was going to hit us.
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