Chapter 144: Limit Match Part 1

If I was to choose between bunnies and information, I’d choose information a hundred times over. Best way to conquer an enemy or a quest is to have as much information as you possibly can on them in order to have an easier time for yourself, but sadly that option was out of the question this time around. One citadel, four towers, a circular underwater city, mermaids flying through the sky, fishmen zombies with a seemingly infinite amount of stamina, and an intelligent sharkman…… That’s the information I have for the moment, the key elements that will provide me with an answer.

「And that is why. Do you have any idea where we can find such a thing?」

「Th-that’s actually easy…… Monsters around those parts rely more on sound rather than their vision when it comes to enemy perception. So if we were to be separated by a wall of some sorts, they wouldn’t be able to detect us, unless we make a lot of loud noises or something like that.」

「I see, so in other words……」

Was that this whole inversion at work again? Rather than having a safe zone somewhere around the city, the buildings themselves were serving as safe zones? It was much like a game of hide-and-seek, where in theory every hiding place was a good place unless someone deliberately tries to look for you in that particular place…… Realizing that almost every single place in this city could be turned into a safe zone would make my life significantly easier.

「When I heard them coming I decided to hide in one of the buildings, but they saw me when I tried to take a peek through one of the holes in the door……」

「So it really is much like hide-and-seek……」

If you get found, an angry mob of fishmen will chase you around (and their numbers will only increase in time), and if you make too much of a fuss climbing the roofs the mermaids will stop you and put debuffs on you. So in other words if you manage to do something about the mermaids, you’re pretty much in the clear.

「For now, let’s find a good spot to hide. In the meantime, you can tell me all that you know about this place, while I’ll keep watch for any more of the fish people or those pesky little mermaids.」

Several minutes later, after being chased around by the mad fish people we managed to find a half-collapsed building that we could enter and take cover from our pursuers. It was a brief moment of rest for us. I could also organize the info I got from Alva, to get a better understanding of what this scenario was all about.

First of all, apparently Alva’s race was completely different from the rotten fishmen and mermaids. When I asked him about it he almost bit my arm off, saying things like: “I like to eat monkeys, and you look awfully tasty for a monkey”. I was sure that just a single bite like that would be the death of me, so I dropped that subject when I had the chance.

Alva’s tribe was a tribe of fish people called “Maman”. The other fish people and mermaids seemed to be their allies at some point, but then Kutanid came and altered them somehow, twisting their minds in the process. It was supposed to be the fault of the inversion process as well, turning “normal fish” into “fish people”, and “half-fish half-human” into “half-human half-fish”. The change seemed pretty much non-existent to me, but apparently it was a pretty big deal for the tribes themselves.

「If you can turn fish into monsters, you aquire an unstoppable killing force…… But there are also other ways in which you can approach this subject.」

There was a way of getting rid of them, but it was killing them all until they stopped spawning. It sounded good, but it was impossible to do in practice. All because of the boundary around this city. Everything that got within its reach was undergoing the inversion process, which means that all fish that pass the barrier instantly become fish people, which made their number technically infinite. We would not gain anything from trying to fight them aside from worn-out equipment and broken bones. Also, apparently mermaids could drop pieces of their meat as a rare drop, but wouldn’t that actually amount to cannibalism? I’m sure that there was some logical explanation, but I didn’t really want to think about it for now.

Then there was the matter of that citadel and four towers. As expected from a quest like that, Kutanid was waiting in the Abyss at the very bottom of the citadel, and each tower housed a monster that was called a “seal” that was guarding the citadel.

「The Lord of the Abyss does not care for the tribes of this city at all. For him, we are all but pieces on the board that can be thrown aside when we no longer stay useful……」

「Ahh, something like that it’s pretty much a given when it comes to guys like that.」

You should be grateful that it was not a Battle Royal. Those kinds of modes could make party members turn on one another all because of the promise of great awards, making it even more stressful because you’d always expect someone to stab you in the back. Good thing it wasn’t like that.

Also, each of the “seals” are a mini-boss that possesses some kind of special abilities and block other abilities as well. As far as Alva knows, one of the “seals”, Clionea, possesses the ability to seal away all magic. Clionea…… Clione? Is that supposed to be a reference of some sort?

And finally, the monster called Kutanid of the Abyss. An almost transcendent being laying in wait at the very bottom of the city, in the Abyss that cannot be reached via any normal means. And Kutanid’s power is the ability to “invert” anything he wishes to affect, and it was the power that could affect even the basic principles governing this world.