Fangaku:Volume1 Act2 Chapter2

Chapter 2

●

I was in the sky.

…Eh!?

I was so far up I could only imagine myself plummeting to my death.

I was in the blue sky with nothing to do but fall.

I had jumped.

After passing through the hatch, I found only the blue sky.

But…

…I was expecting some kind of platform!

There was nothing of the sort.

The wind filled my uniform in no time and sign frames opened across the sleeves and collar.

The automatic processing confirmed my altitude and applied shock absorption, reducing the wind I felt to a light breeze.

<But this can’t stop your fall, so that’s on you.>

“It’s on me!? But how!? How am I supposed to stop!?”

The screen did not appear.

But the screen was right about my fall not stopping.

I saw only a blue expanse below me. Well, that and some kind of shape.

If that was the ground, I was going to slam into it eventually.

●

“Ahh!”

Only after screaming did I realize I could hear my voice over the wind.

Just as I realized that was thanks to the protection shield, Hanako dropped down ahead of me in a cross-legged position and slowly rotating. She raised a hand my way.

“Yo.”

“This isn’t a ‘yo’ situation! What do I do!?”

“Ah ha ha. This is the maddest I’ve seen you. Oh, and you can remove your protection shield. The air is included in the buffering.”

I looked back to see Shiroma-senpai and Kuroma-senpai following after me.

Most likely, that position let them assist me as a noob.

Kuroma-senpai opened a few sign frames and checked their contents.

“To answer your earlier question, our objective is to reach the goal in a little over 9 minutes. That’s about 5km southeast of here. Think of it as the distance from our school to Fuchu.”

“Um, 5km in 10 minutes would mean…”

“It’s a good distance, so it means we need to hurry.”

I chose not to calculate it out any more than that.

But…

“Should we really just be falling like this?”

“No, we shouldn’t.”

Hanako then lifted me up from below.

I wasn’t sure how it worked, but she was definitely supporting me from below even as she fell.

“We’re about to land, so don’t get scared.”

“Eh?”

Just as I questioned that, I saw a stone path below. It hung in the air like a bridge and we were approaching it faster than I could breathe.

<Shall I explain?>

“Too laaaaate!”

We crashed into it.

▼002: How About You Try Dying Just Once?

“Dying right out of the gate is hardly fair, is it!?”

Previously

“I finally got a name last time. It’s Deko, coming from Dark Elf. And now I’m about to die!”

“But that aside, your first Depths Speedrun has finally begun. We need to slay the Boss Wyvern to fully complete Level 1.”

“We need to hurry, but unfortunately Level 1 is a bottomless sky. We’re currently on a collision course with an aerial pathway.”

●

“Aaaaand the gate has closed! Angel Stare’s run has begun! Now, how will they descend from the sky to Level 1’s famous aerial stone pathway!? Like this, they’re just going to crash into it!”

The commentator’s voice was directed toward a large sign frame opened in the sky above the arena.

All exploration teams were required to provide a visual of their official activities.

A camera spell was set to follow after them and that footage was being shown here.

And the answer to the commentator’s question was displayed on the giant screen.

Hanako was the first to drop straight toward the descending stone pathway cutting across the sky.

“She didn’t crash into it!?”

●

The screen showed a stone pathway suspended in the blue sky.

Hanako reached it while holding her underclassman.

But…

“–––––!!”

Two girls’ worth of weight and momentum definitely hit the pathway from above.

But they were not deflected by the stone.

They didn’t bounce up into the air.

Nor was the pathway broken.

However, they didn’t lose any of their falling speed either.

“They didn’t stop!? Hanako is traveling along the stone pathway with her falling speed intact and Deko still in her arms!”

●

Hanako continued to “fall” with the pathway in front of her.

A stir ran through the spectators at her speed and momentum.

A voice answered the many questions of “how”.

Kisaragi’s voice.

“What do you think just happened there, everyone? Ordinarily, landing means planting your feet on the ground and coming to a stop. But that idiot didn’t do that. Does anyone know why not?”

“No, I don’t!? What just happened, Kisaragi-san!?”

“Well,” said Kisaragi. “She is now ‘skating’ along the stone pathway with her falling speed intact.”

●

“It’s the same as the free fall ride at an amusement park. Just as you can still enter free fall with rails guiding you, she must have somehow negated the impact of landing so she could ‘continue falling’ along the stone pathway.”

That was exactly what had happened.

While falling rapidly, Hanako had landed on the diagonally-descending stone pathway.

At her speed, she should have crashed into the pathway even with its angle, but…

“An excellent move by Hanako! And the dark elf…Deko!? Oh, yes! The dark elf’s officially registered name is Deko! Anyway, Hanako did a great job landing on that diagonal slope from her rapid fall. And she was holding Deko when she did so, but she landed without bending her knees at all and shifted into a 720! Now she’s skating along without losing any speed! If this was a point-based game, that trick would have earned a ton of points!”

The screen showed Hanako skating rapidly along the stone pathway without losing any speed.

With the momentum of a competitive skier, she gained speed with ether light sparking from between the soles of her boots and the stone.

“Yeahhhhhhhh!”

“That idiot is enjoying herself. And those spins weren’t even necessary. See, Shiroma-kun just landed and began skating without them. And I like the way she used her gunbroom for support.”

●

“But, Kisaragi-san! How are they doing that? Normally, when you fall onto a surface, you have to ‘land’ on it. And they were using a buffering spell to reduce their speed as they fell, so how did they manage to immediately start skating with their fall speed intact?”

“You see how Kuroma-kun is staying back and flying on her gunbroom? I wonder if she’s planning to break off from the rest. But anyway, she’s the one who adjusted their protections after noticing the change in the level restriction, so this is all thanks to her smarts.”

Kisaragi reached her hand up toward a random point in space.

“Each level has an entrance field. That provides an official protection bonus that makes you invincible for about 5 seconds. Ordinarily, you use that time to apply any protections you’re missing or adjust the ones you have, but a level’s environment will have changed a fair bit after an update. Has anyone here made the first run in a level post update?”

A few hands went up among the arena spectators while the majority looked to the sides and waited for what Kisaragi would say next.

And she obliged them.

“The thing is, a first run is a dangerous thing.”

●

“You have to immediately detect what’s different from before and then apply, adjust, or remove protections accordingly. And you have to make all those decisions then and there. Screw up with your protections or buffs and they could be repelled or weakened, if not negated or reversed. A first run means accepting all that risk. So to avoid wasting a run and the associated costs, most exploration teams will gather information and make these decisions ahead of time the first time they attempt a level.”

“That’s a good point! ‘Investigate any changes to the environment’ is a standard official mission type, so reports on those changes are directly rewarded.”

“Yes. This all comes from the fact that you can only bring so many protections, buffs, and adjustment spells with you.”

Kisaragi held her right hand overhead.

She viewed the Angel Stare members displayed on the screen sign frame.

“The camera spell providing us with this footage is supplied by the exploration team. The environment often causes interference or prevents the spell from functioning altogether, but if that continues for three full minutes, the run is disqualified. Preventing that introduces some risks and costs to a first run:

“*You must analyze an unknown environment.

“*You must deal with the environment using only the protections and buff spells you chose to bring with you.

“*You must do this all immediately after the mission begins.”

A breath.

“The primary level restriction applied to this version of Level 1 is the standard 5th-Gear concept of ‘objects fall downward’, but as common as it is, it could have undergone a dangerous change after an update. Do you understand what that is?”

“Hmm!? It’s common but dangerous!? What are you talking about, Kisaragi-san!?”

“Well,” replied Kisaragi. “Each level of the Tokyo Depths is a different world from our own. So even if ‘objects fall downward’, the gravitational acceleration is often different from in our world. Furthermore, you don’t know if the law of gravitational acceleration is even still in effect.”

●

“Hey! Rewriting the our rules with a bookcase spell is our job! Do MUES’s librarians not do their job!?”

“Didn’t you say the update change rate was 13%? Can’t you lower that to the level of the Showa era’s consumption tax rate?”

“But anyway,” said Kisaragi. “Even with Head Librarian Tetsuko-kun and her team’s work, Level 1 has a 13% fluctuation compared to the real world. But we don’t know what parts of the world that fluctuation will influence. Kuroma-kun had to instantly run a scan and then adjust her team’s protections. On top of that, Hanako-kun had to do he free fall while holding onto Deko-kun who is too low-level to use a high-speed fall control spell.”

“So what they just did was to ensure their safety?”

“Yes. Because ‘objects fall downward’, by shifting their ‘perception’ of down in that diagonal direction just as they land, they can cancel the impact of landing and ‘continue to fall’ in what looks like skating.”

In other words…

“Hanako and Shiroma-kun are not actually skating. They are ‘falling down’ in that diagonal direction.”

“They can do that!?”

“They very much can. Because the ‘down’ of ‘falling downward’ was not defined by the level restriction. Things in the Depths work differently from the real world.”

But…

“I’m sure some of you understand how it works and have tried it for yourselves. But it didn’t work, did it? Do you know why that is?”

A breath.

“Because doing it means you’re the kind of person who can believe you could ‘fall forward’ along a flat road in the real world.”

●

Everyone was speechless.

“Of course, you don’t need to do that to clear Level 1. And using other methods is a lot smarter. You just have to an idiot like Hanako-kun to pull off this method.”

“But,” she said. “You will notice that Shiroma-kun is skating right along behind Hanako-kun, albeit with some assistance from her gunbroom. I’d say that’s partially because Hanako-kun set an example for her, but most likely someone else provided more solid assistance.”

“Really!? And who is this person allowing her skating to happen!?”

“Kuroma-kun. She completed all their protection adjustments in record time. She deserves legitimate praise for that.”

●

“But,” continued Kisaragi. “Hanako-kun is as superb an idiot as ever. While falling, she grasped the level restriction fluctuation Kuroma-kun had scanned and shifted into a power dive to increase her skating speed. Then she canceled her landing, began skating, and did a 720. Doing that required convincing herself that ‘down the slope is down’. And she did it while holding that complete newbie of a dark elf. Handling all that on her first try shows top-level experience and decisiveness.”

Oh.

“Just so we’re clear, I can do all that too. …It’s easy really.”

●

“So fast!”

We were skating along.

We hadn’t lost any of our falling speed.

If anything, we had sped up.

The aerial pathway looked like stone pavement.

It was clearly artificial, but up ahead it faded into the blue sky.

And we continued to pick up speed.

“Whoa!”

“Hey! Deko! I’m putting you down, so start skating on your own!”

“Eh!? But how!?”

“How!? Well, y’know, just kind of…do it.”

She’s too stupid, I realized.

“Um, wait a second! Let’s go into limited mode!”

As soon as Shiroma-senpai said that, my view changed.

“Eh?”

●

<Shiroma-sama is hosting a limited mode session.>

<Eh? What is limited mode?>

<Huh? I can’t see anything outside. Or hear anything. Or feel any heat. All I can see is text and icons.>

<Hooray. Welcome to limited mode. It’s a common feature of data worlds.>

<It might not seem that different from our usual chatting, but our senses are actually cut off from the outside world. Our minds were converted to data so we can directly converse. Think of it as a high-speed conversation system where only icons and language exist.>

<Huh? Um, when you say high-speed, how high-speed are we talking?>

<It depends on the state of the data world forming the foundation, but this particular system was developed by the Depths Asama Shrine and they advertise it as 300s/1s.>

<That means we can talk for 5 minutes with only a second passing in the outside world. It’s a service available to us as data entities.>

<It is possible to acquire data from the outside world. If you ask for it, I can provide it based on my own understanding and ability to express it.>

<Outside Situation: You are currently being held by Hanako-sama, but she is about to release you. The wind is strong and the weather is sunny. Please keep your skin moisturized.>

<Most of that wasn’t really necessary…>

<Anyway, we generally use this to give some quick advice or hold a strategy meeting. You can use it on your own, so hop on in if you ever need more time to make a decision. I set it up so you just have to say ‘limited mode’ to enter our unit space.>

<Wow… That sure is convenient.>

<Oh? You have actually used it a few times already.>

<Wait? Really?>

<Yes. If I determine there isn’t enough time for one of my explanations, I will use a one-sided version. For you, it should have felt like a momentary distraction. I will add that the others will similarly use it to instantly gather information.>

<One second of real time has passed. An extra fee will be charged to your account.>

●

<Hmm? And whose fault is it a second has passed, Screen-san!?>

<But whatever! Um, Deko-san? The trick to skating – or falling, really – is to look a bit above the direction you’re traveling and think of that as forward.>

<When you face forward like that, the pathway will look like down, which makes thinking of the direction at your feet as “down”.>

<Oh… So because we’re moving so fast, if I look at the sky instead of my feet, it’s easier to think I’m falling in that direction?>

<Yes, that’s right. The most important part is tricking yourself. Hanako-san is a natural at that. But don’t worry. I’ll collect you with my gunbroom if I have to.>

■Gunbroom

Gunbroom: One type of cowling broom. The broom combines a cannon and thruster in a single cowling. The image is of Kuroma’s Black Wave and Shiroma’s White Wave.

<Allow me to explain. A gunbroom is a witch weapon/flight device. They began as a broom contained inside a cowling. Nowadays, an emblem card that recreates the traits of a broom is used instead to reduce weight and increase power. Also, the gunbroom is a product joint developed by IZUMO and the witch company Edel Brocken, but it has become a generic term for cowling brooms.>

<Oh, you explain things in here too.>

<As text data. I can do it in one-way or two-way mode.>

<Okay, that should be enough! There’s a brief moment of lag, so watch out.>

<Um, okay! Thanks!>

<You are now exiting limited mode.>

●

For a moment, I heard something like white noise.

And then reality returned.

I remembered what I had been told.

I looked at the faintly blue space out ahead and a bit above instead of at the stone pathway.

“Think of that as ‘down’. Well? You can feel yourself already ‘falling’ that way, can’t you?”

●

“Yeah, you need to trick her into believing that.”

“I’d prefer you called it ‘teaching her the trick to it’!”

●

Oh, I’m being tricked, thought Deko.

She was currently being carried along a slanted pathway just like so many found in video games.

But when she raised her head a bit higher up from the pathway and looked to the blue sky…

“––––––”

She was reminded of a time when she looked up into the sky while lying up on a hill.

She had only been able to see the sky, so even with the earth below her back, she had felt like she was being dragged up into that blue expanse.

“Do you get it now!?”

All of a sudden, Hanako released her.

●

…Oh, no!

I was going to fall right onto my rear. But…

“Oh.”

I fell.

I had convinced myself that “down” was a bit up from the slant of the pathway.

That meant “down” was based on my own belief, not on some external concept of gravity.

“Get your feet on the pathway!”

I did as I was told.

The stone floor felt more solid below my feet than I had expected.

“Whoa!!”

I bounced.

I skidded from the pathway.

And as I flew up into the air…

“Not bad. Start with your heels.”

Kuroma-senpai supported my back while riding what could have been a broom or a cannon. I used her support as a cushion to get back on the slope.

I landed on my heel and kept my gaze a bit higher than directly ahead.

“…!”

I skated “straight down” on just my right heel.

Toward the sky.

The very center of the sky.

●

…Yikes!

I felt that yikes with all my being.

I honestly couldn’t pull back the right leg I had brought down to skate.

I glanced back to see Shiroma-senpai was calmly skating on both feet, but I couldn’t manage it.

Since I was doing well enough with just the right heel, I was weirdly afraid to change anything, which kept me from doing anything at all.

And from my left…

“Oh, what’s this, Miss Noob? You scared?”

She’s taunting me!? I thought just before the pathway jumped up below my heel.

Something like a tree root cut across the stone-paved path.

My leg bounced up and I spun backwards until the back of my head slammed into the ground.

“Ow!”

●

Now, I’ve done it! I thought just before hearing Hanako’s voice.

“Do it your way.”

Immediately afterwards, I flipped around the rest of the way.

All I could tell was that Hanako had her hand on my shoulder.

“And you’re back.”

I was upright again.

I was skating on a single foot as before.

Hanako had fixed my mistake.

●

“Th-thank you!”

Hanako smiled from a half step ahead of me.

“Don’t worry about it. You’ve gotta try things out for yourself to learn them.”

And…

“But be careful from now on. We’ll be traveling like this a fair bit and whether or not you can avoid any obstacles is what separates the noobs from the pros. Thinking you’re hot shit, getting distracted, and crashing right into an obstacle is a classic noob move.”

Distracted by talking to me, Hanako crashed right into a tree growing from the pathway.

●

With a loud crash, tree splinters and leaves took flight and Hanako disappeared.

“Eh? Hanako-san?”

“Ah! That idiot!”

<Is she dead?>

I had no idea what had happ- actually, I had a pretty good idea what had happened, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

I had ended up in the lead, so…

“Umm…?”

“Ow ow ow ow! Dammit! The damn place gave itself more obstacles!”

She was back.

●

<Shiroma-sama is hosting a limited mode session.>

<What!? Hanako-san, how are you still alive!? Shouldn’t you have crystallized?>

<Who do you think I am!? I survived it by having half a year’s worth of valuable artifacts automatically consumed in an instant! And now we’ll be 2 months in the red even if this mission is a success!>

<Why don’t you just die?>

<I pretty much just had a near-death experience!>

<I didn’t know you could really die like a character in a side-scrolling platformer…>

<You sure are casual about death… That’s because of the crystallization thing, right?>

■Crystallization

<Allow me to explain. Crystallization is a divine protection that will activate upon death due to external factors while in the Depths Region. Your body will become a data crystal about 20cm in size and you can be resurrected from backup data.>

<Now, I’d prefer not to be crystallized, but it does make you basically unkillable, right?>

<Yes, but it’s extremely hard to recover if the crystal is destroyed and the cheaper services will only bring back your memories up until the last save point. That’s why I would recommend an automatic crystal recovery service even if they are pricey.>

<The Depths Asama Shrine offers a great one! This has been a paid advertisement!>

<Hanako-sama is an official advertisement affiliate for the Asama Shrine.>

<Why are you like this?>

<Shut up! This helps bump up my QOL a bit! Anyway, it’s about time for your next move! Let’s go!>

<You are now exiting limited mode.>

●

“Why do they waste their limited mode time on cannibalism like that?”

“Oh, so that weird pause really was from going into limited mode!?”

●

“Oh…”

I more or less “understood” what to do. I watched Hanako move out ahead and wave forward.

And…

“Got it. Time for me to leave. I’ll rejoin you later.”

“Okay. Kuro-san, we’re counting on you to pull us up.”

After that exchange, Kuroma-senpai flew straight up into the sky. And then…

“This is where it gets interesting. Watch.”

I saw a color come into view below. I thought it was a dark cloud at first, but…

“A forest!?”

“That’s currently Level 1’s main area: the Sky Woods. We’ll pass through it quick, so stay behind me and keep your head down.”

“Um, okay,” I replied while realizing that I had started skating on both feet at some point.

Only now did I figure out that the trick was using the soles of my boots.

Ether light scattered from them, but…

“Miniature defense barriers?”

●

“Right. I gave you some so you really can skate. The soles on their own would have too much friction, so they’d catch on the surface and you’d fall.”

She must have done that way back at the beginning.

And I had only now calmed down enough to notice.

I bowed my thanks and she smiled and waved her hand dismissively.

“It’s called teamwork.”

“Yeah! But I’m a genius, so I don’t need anything special like that!”

“It’s called teamwork!!”

“Oh, shut up! Fine, fine. Yay teamwork and all that!”

“I don’t feel like I’m contributing much to the team…”

“Don’t worry about it. This mission requires a group of four, so we need you with us until we defeat the boss. Do you get it? Taking you with us isn’t an imposition or anything. So just make sure you don’t screw up and get yourself killed.”

Listen.

“Just watch me. I’m, like, the perfect role model.”

“I’ll say this with a smile to be nice, but didn’t you just waste a crazy-rare ‘Instant Full Recovery Ring’?”

<Those are found in Greater Depths Level 5 and deeper at a rate of 0.0003%.>

“It’s called being prepared! Ever heard of it!?”

“Anyway,” said Hanako, holding a collapsible long hammer.

The dark forest was rapidly approaching below us.

There was a gap in the aerial pathway with the other end at the entrance to the forest.

And I saw something flying out of the forest there. A swarm of somethings.

“Are those dragons!?”

“That’s Level 1’s famous wyvern dancers.”

There were so many of them.

While the swarm of blue dragons flew toward us in a spiral, Hanako gave me a smile.

“Try to keep up.”

●

“What’s this!? Angel Stare is entering Level 1’s famous Dragon’s Nest! The 7m mid-sized wyverns are already soaring up to meet them like a group of dancers! With their numbers and intensity, you could easily call this the dragon version of Tachikawa Station’s bus terminal! Kisaragi-san! It’s been 4 minutes! How do you rate their progress!?”

“The route choice is exactly what I would expect from Angel Stare.”

Kisaragi opened a sign frame and linked it with the arena screen.

She used that to display…

“This is a diagram of Level 1 viewed from the side.”

The starting point was on the upper right and the goal was on the upper left.

The Dragon’s Nest was at the bottom center.

“There are several pathways leading to the Dragon’s Nest, but the one Angel Stare is using runs right down the middle. Those are only mid-sized wyverns, but you’ll still want fighters at around Level 8 to deal with them. And a whole swarm of them makes this a special case. Even though it’s on Level 1, the Dragon’s Nest is basically guaranteed death for beginners, but it makes for a good hunting ground once you’re no longer a beginner. However…”

Kisaragi then drew a white line left from the starting point and toward the goal.

“There is a flying rock area up above and crossing through there is another viable route to reach the goal. Kuroma-kun and Shiroma-kun’s gunbrooms can carry two people each as long as they don’t fly too fast and the wyverns down below prefer to stay away from the flying rock area.”

“Interesting! But why didn’t they choose that route!?”

“Probably for greater horizontal velocity and for safety. Even if it means dropping diagonally, using their falling speed to skate is faster than gunbrooms carrying two. And if the wyverns did attack while navigating the flying stone area with two on each broom, Dark Elf-kun probably wouldn’t survive. When skating down like they are, Hanako-kun can assist Dark Elf-kun and Dark Elf-kun can skate on her own.”

“Of course,” she said. “I say this decision was too cowardly on Hanako-kun’s part. The odds of the wyverns attacking there is extremely low and she should really trust Shiroma-kun and Kuroma-kun more. Regardless, the most interesting part is still coming up. The current regulations prevent them from using the usual strategy when reaching the goal in the very back. I’m curious to see how they’ll manage that with this lower route.”

●

We jumped.

Just as the pathway ended. And while in the air, flying toward where the path continued…

“Here, I’ll hold your hand to make sure you make it.”

“Oh, thank you!”

Holding hands in midair did a great job of distracting me.

I could feel through her hand that the upperclassmen were better at “falling forwards” than I was.

I told myself I just had to follow her lead.

My fear vanished.

Now I just had to face forward and ignore the urge to look down at my feet.

…The pathway starts back up there!

I “fell forward” as Shiroma-senpai’s hand guided me.

And just the pathway arrived underfoot, I landed on it.

Instead of planting my feet on the stone pathway, I simply placed the soles of my boots against it.

That was all it took for…

“Oh, ohhhh! It worked!”

“Great job. That’s honestly impressive for your first time!”

Apparently I was doing pretty well.

But the problem was what came next.

There was a surprisingly large space between the pathway and the forest. And…

“…!”

The swarm was coming.

It was flying down at us. And out ahead of us…

“Yeahhhhh!”

Hanako attacked.

Back to Act 2: Chapter 1

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