A Simple Transaction I

Blue.

Endless, tireless blue. The pale ragged blue of the sky and the steep pounding blue of the waves and the raw, limitless blue of the Fish as it surged and heaved and raged against its purposeless squalor. And him, alone and unwashed at the heart of the beast - sweat and brine and monster's spittle covering him like a mucus coating, a deep sea cocoon - alone and untouched by the wrath of the Fish his residence, a meditant alone in the eye of the storm.

How long now had he been entombed in the blue? Even when he surfaced there was hardly any escape from it. But that was only fitting for the Blue Swordsman.

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There's some superficial similarity to the story of Jonas the prophet here, though it isn't much more than skin-deep. Hunger could have played the role of Leviathan I suppose, making Ber and the Armament-Fish come to an agreement due to a greater threat. He even has some dragon powers! And funnily enough, Jonas was the son of Amittai, which means 'Truth' in Hebrew. Probably just a coincidence, but Ber does wield the Blue magic...

You know, even after randomly guessing that Ber might make an appearance (because Apo-chan is nice like that), I was surprised by him being inside the Fish. I thought he would teleport from wherever he was training at a critical moment and mess things up, but thinking about the possibility again, that's too finicky and prone to failure due to Hunger's likely reaction. Being inside the Fish neatly solves those problems, though I'm still tempted to call hax on Apocrypha.

Feeling a bit blue after reading this passage too. On the one hand, I'm relieved we hadn't decided to wait and prepare, or god forbid, try Diplomacy, as it's all too easy to predict how badly this could have ended. On the other hand, the Fish's behavior and Ber's survival makes it clear that diplomacy wasn't completely out of the cards and we could have acquired the Fish as our Armament at a later point. It's unlikely that Ber could have become its pilot without our intervention even with apocrypha's support, though naturally I don't completely rule out the possibility, since this is Apocrypha we're talking about. It's more that I don't think she would have been interested in continuing to waste her time on trying to make him relevant again, he's been just too much of a disappointment so far.

So if we hadn't gone for the Fish as a target, the 'Blue Swordsman' would have attacked us at some point and been swatted like a fly. Afterwards we could have looked for the Fish and convinced it that we could give it greater purpose than its meaningless thrashing. Hmm, of course there might have been a choice to proactively look for Ber after defeating the Lord Protector, so I suppose there could have still been some danger of letting him and the Fish combine their powers. But it would have been much smaller, since we would have known he was here and would have been more cautious, not to mention that we wouldn't have been out to kill the Fish.

Heh, perhaps we could have even settled our conflict with Ber peacefully and let him become a side-pilot of the Fish? It sounds a bit ridiculous, and he is hardly the most pleasant person to work with, but our Charisma and Rank might just be strong enough to make him listen, especially if we tell him we could resurrect his companions in the future. And he seems to have acquired some sort of magic from the Fish, so the synergy could have been worth exploring, even if I don't think the chances of us choosing to spare him would have been great.

Alas, there's no medicine for regret in this world. The situation is what it is, and we'll have to deal without having an Armament made specially for us! Eh, Versch isn't bad either, so maybe we'll panoply him after all. I wouldn't want to deprive Letrizia of his august company though, so we'll probably have to find a way to take her along if we do that. Hmm, but we'll want to take Gisena with us too, and Adorie wears our Tears, so it looks like the amount of people we need to take along with us grows. I get the feeling the Geas will turn out to be no less of a pain than our other Curses, its price is just delayed as is usual with this Curse.

He'd desired power, once. Such a nebulous goal, ill-conceived. What was power? Was it the thrill of domination, the joy of foes crushed and bleeding before you, corpses like ripe tangerines splattered upon the fetid earth? Was it glistening fear in the eyes of one's counterparts when one brandished the sword and was followed by the Blue? Was it the secret, shameful joy held close to one's heart in walking amongst others and knowing with absolute certainty that you were their better, in ability if not in worth?

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It's a persistent meme in our culture, the most popularized being Conan's speech about what is best in life, which has much in common with quotes attributed to Genghis Khan. 'The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.'

Deep in our hearts, in the darker corners of our minds, stemming from instincts that we usually suppress, that is often what drives us to pursue power. Well, not this specifically, but the desire to dominate is inextricably linked to our other social motivations. It is a Ring's answer, as Hunger had once elaborated to Sten, which I don't think was precisely a lie, just a shading of the truth. But a Ring is a mortal creation in the end, an exemplification of their worst and best parts, naked ambition married to a contemptuous disregard for morals.

So I'm no position to castigate Ber for this, though it doesn't make me sympathetic either. The corruption of power isn't something Hunger has had many problems with so far, both because he had been too busy staging a rebellion in the previous world, and because his Curses keep him too busy to abuse his talents.
-though who knows what will happen in the future? hopefully hunger will retain that spark of heroism

Or was it merely safety?

It had been a long time since he'd felt safe. Not since the limits of his System had been exposed, its threadbane omniscience revealed for a farce. Did that mean he was bereft of power?

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Typo: threadbane -> threadbare

Hunger had taught Ber this lesson during their last encounter, even if it hadn't been his intention. The facade of safety crumbled like a house of cards and exposed the wild reality underneath, where he couldn't rely on the System to provide him with threat assessments and reliable paths forwards. Hmm, but then Apo-chan only gave him that Prestige Class after it became obvious that he couldn't keep up with Hunger any longer, so some time after the fight when his companions died. Till then he only had access to his System as a development path.

When had this realization come to him in truth then? Perhaps it needed time to percolate and a further impetus to crystallize into this result. Did something interesting happen to him beyond what we know? Other encounters that showcased the limits of the System and spurred him on to seek out greater powers? I thought he was just grinding somewhere and wound up being randomly swallowed by the Fish, but perhaps he had an adventure of his own in between.

If the System couldn't be trusted then neither could its inputs, and that left him in chaos. His only recourse had been to grow, to hope he could outpace this threat as he had every other. That was the promise of the System, that with effort came achievement, a corollary too-often broken by the twisting chaos without.

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It's kind of scummy that he needs to beat Hunger to feel safe, when he was the one who attacked first. Just go do something else, Ber, it's not like we would have bothered to chase him down if he decided to give up on killing us. No need to be so obsessed with us, we would have barely remembered him if Apo-chan hadn't come in with a reminder, knowing that we had outscaled him decisively.

Bearic's System is an interesting deconstruction on the usual Gamer stories. All too often they're presented as nigh all-powerful and limitless in their ability to propel their host to ever greater heights, the problems the Gamers face often solved by grinding some more or acquiring a suitable Skill. Sometimes it's a problem of scaling, since authors don't think through what is going to happen as the Gamer progresses through levels and acquires ever-greater amounts of power. The users are frequently blindly confident in their improvement speed and rely on it to surmount threats that they can't defeat immediately. In a sense it's like Progression writ small, except that without fitting challenges and character development the stories inevitably falter.

But what happens when the the System reaches those previously unknown limits? Huh, I can't offhand remember a story where something like that was explored. It doesn't even come up as a consideration, the System always showing a path forward. Even when it has an explicitly defined source like some kind of divine creator, they're presented as inscrutable and beyond ken, thus often irrelevant to the story except as quest givers and fodder for banter. If Ber hadn't been lucky enough to stumble upon the Blue, what would he have done? When his old methods fail and he doesn't have new ones, how does a Gamer react? Might be an interesting story to explore in another context.

He'd been fortunate. He'd stumbled into power beyond his furthest estimates, out here in the blue-on-blue-on-blue. Here was the nexus and the corollary to the magic of Color that he wielded, the solemn thrumming singularity of its emergence, and merely by residing in its shadow he cast net aloft and harvested towering swathes of power.

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It's sad that we won't learn the intricacies of the Blue magic, as the premise of a magic system based on Colors is quite curious. Would it be like power rings, colors associated with certain emotions or themes? Would it become stronger in the presence of the literal blue color, making the wielder a master of sky and sea? Though perhaps it's a reference to Final Fantasy Blue Magic, and concerns itself with stealing the abilities of monsters. Doubtful, since the Fish is said to be the source, and I don't think a mighty beast like needs to steal another's powers, nor had we seen this capability from either Ber or the Armament-Fish.

Speaking of the Fish, why does it possess the Blue magic? Is magic something all Armaments come preloaded with? Where is Verschlengorge's then?! Or does it mean that Versch has some Red magic that he had been hiding from us? I think we would have seen some hints of that if that was the case, but maybe it was gated behind the option that gave him SOUP. Alas, Letrizia's smile was too important to take such risks.

Anyway, it might be due to the unusual circumstances of the Fish's birth, or an effect of its Shroud. Wouldn't surprise me if the unique powers produced by them involved access to personalized magic systems. Man, I can't wait to reach Rank 9 and generate our own Shroud, it's just 0.525 Rank away! Though at our levels that might take a while to acquire unless we get SJUC or OaF II...

The System hadn't enjoyed that. He'd felt it strain against the pressure, interfaces glitched and jangling, all but capsizing beneath the load of the power he'd accumulated, dense as caged atomics in every finger and sinew, well beyond the remit of its Level Cap. There was no science to this, no dance of computation and leverage, none of the reasoning which he'd excelled at and which had drawn the System to him. There was only naked, ceaseless power, pulled towards his grip with the tiresome ease of water flowing downhill, and himself growing fat and rot in gorging upon it.

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Apo-chan pulled out all the stops with him, huh? Just pumping Ber full of the Blue magic where Hunger had to strain and take risks for every scrap, throwing himself headlong against the Temple and the Tower. At least Ber recognizes the inherent unfairness himself, so at least he gets kudos for being self-aware? Well, Apo-chan still kept to some rules and didn't directly make Ber the Armament-Fish's pilot, so I won't complain too much.

Feeling a bit sorry for the System too, to be honest. It had supported Ber to the limits of its ability, only to be thrown away like a used rag when that wasn't enough. I can't say he was wrong to do so, since between sentimentality for a tool and survival it is prudent to choose the latter. But where I would just call it a practical mindset if I was being feeling charitable, the way he keeps blaming it for some of his own foibles doesn't incline me to do so.

But what else could he do? Stop?

It was not in him to surrender so blatant an advantage, no matter how unsportsmanlike it felt. It wasn't as if he was above hacking, so long as there was no chance he got caught. Most people would, if the stakes were high enough, though few dared to admit it.

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I think I got over my phase of turning on cheat codes in games fairly quickly, though there were some relapses. That said, this is reality we're talking about, so as they say, you aren't trying if you aren't cheating. It feels like Ber has a habit of transferring his game experience to his life and trying to interpret it that way. 'Unsportsmanlike', as if it had been some competition or tournament, rather than him trying to kill our friends and having his own companions killed in return.

Well, Hunger is about to teach him what real cheating looks like. Where he exploits some minor bugs, we effectively got the source code of reality directly delivered and explained by the game's creator. Don't exploit the rules, be the rules~

Bearic understood patterns. They'd called him gifted at patterns, which was false, for people were comprised of patterns and he wasn't gifted at people. Too much recursion, too many feedback loops, uncertain information, hidden states, layers of counter-signaling and willful delusion, paradoxical reasoning: it wasn't possible to reason about people in the abstract with only the mind of a person, you could only rely on empirical experience and that was so time-consuming, there was no leverage in that-

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People have assumed that he is on the autism spectrum for a reason. If his previous behavior and speech patterns hadn't clued us in, this is pretty conclusive evidence too, though I'm naturally no expert. Maybe this is why Apocrypha had picked him out as a puppet and continued to invest in him when it became clear he wasn't up to snuff? Reconciling with him wouldn't have been trivial because of his mindset, too focused on victory and overcoming us to conceive of alternate solutions.

He wasn't gifted, but he was specialized. What he specialized in, were those patterns which could be formalized, abstracted into the theatre of consciousness. Those things which were reasonably straightforward to perceive, he perceived. He could see the world as it was, and act accordingly. That had sufficed.

Itt had sufficed to bring him into the highest echelons of competition, before the strictures of fate had deposited him here, before all his dreams had come true. The System unfurled, the Blue attained; Beth, Esterarc, Seralize.

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Typo: Itt -> It

Ber had been a pro-gamer previously, somewhat comfortable in his niche. The allure of games is that they have relatively simple rules that lead to victory, and all one needs to do is to discover those rules. Ber was good at that, one of the best even, seems like, but he dreamed of greater things... like getting isekai'd? Well, not an unusual sentiment, though perhaps for him it was a serious hope rather than an idle fancy. In the end he got his wish and even received the typical isekai package: acquire a System, get cool magic, gather a party, start a quest to save a nation, have its princess join, perhaps there would have been some romantic developments in the future, difficult as it is to imagine...

And then Hunger came, forcing Ber to wake up from his fond dream and telling him in no uncertain terms that shit just got real.

Speaking of patterns, his circumstances and party composition superficially mirror our own somewhat, which we concluded was Apocrypha's fault. But was the Curse also responsible for transporting Ber to the Voyaging Realm and giving him the System as well? It seems a bit excessive for her to reach beyond this world's boundaries for our first serious challenge, but it's not like Apocrypha really cares about rules when it comes to arranging an 'interesting' scene. Yet if it wasn't her and she simply took advantage of an opportunity, then who was responsible for Ber's situation?

Sadly we'll likely never know for sure due to Cutting off the last thread we could follow this chapter, but we had speculated once that someone is responsible for all the isekais happening. The Hidden Ones are probably not the ones who set Ber up, as we would be really fucked if they had direct access to this world, but whoever it is, they might belong to the same group.

And yet there were no happily ever afters, even after their first Mission was done. There was only life, stretching forth without limit, until it was brought to an end.

The Hungering One had ended Seralize, and with her all hope of Esterarc's true salvation.

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Hmm, I didn't pay this much attention on first read-through, but he isn't just calling us Hunger, but the Hungering One. Does the Title come from the System, perhaps the only thing it could tell him about us? Or had he found out our name from somewhere else and decided to add some pathos while dehumanizing us to make himself feel better?

Also, I like to think that we saved Esterarc from the rather dire fate of having Seralize become their queen. Just imagine someone like her in charge of a nation's government, engaging in politics and foreign diplomacy. Whatever doom Ber's party was supposed to save them from can't possibly be as bad, so we inadvertently did something really heroic there once again! Hunger just can't help himself, gotta be a hero full-time.

Who was the Hungering One, and why did he defend the Devouring Giant? Why was he - it - the only thing his System could not Assess? How had he slain a Companion designated by the System?

Her slot still lay fallow on the side of his interface. Seralize von Esterarc. HP -37/2569.

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Wait. It hadn't occurred to me previously for some reason, but could it be that killing Versch wasn't just about XP and loot for them, as Seralize's monologue had led me to believe? Bearic calling Versch the Devouring Giant and wondering why we were defending him made me realize that Verschlengorge's Decimator had been active at that time, draining the surroundings in a pretty large radius. So it's entirely possible they had attacked us because their nation had been in range of the life drain and they assumed it was both intentional and would continue if they didn't stop us. Perhaps that Astral Lord (or his boss) fed them misinformation?

Man, the Decimator makes it so easy for Apocrypha to cause problems, it's a good thing we've dealt with it in a timely manner. Also, not really a fan of Hunger intermittently being called an it. It's clear that Ber has all kinds of mental hangups, but Hunger seems to have a special position in his mind. Looks like his Companions were fairly important to him after all, though his conviction that being designated as such by his System made them invincible is somewhat bizarre.

Was it based on experience, or just his own assumptions? There are games where followers can't really die, but one needs to be really... divorced from reality to transfer that to life so directly. Then again, maybe the System had assured him that they wouldn't die during the tutorial. If so, his resentment for the System is a bit more understandable, first promising an eternal companion and then reneging on that promise.

She was dead and buried, without even a completed quest to show for it. No mechanism had appeared to return her. Was he crippled in her absence, lacking an external perspective he could trust? By the power of the System he'd mastered the world without, but the people within it were as ever an enigma to him. He'd tried searching for other Companions but had found none, as if the System itself were admonishing him for taking poor care of his first. Perhaps his Companions would have lead him to a less foul and tedious source of power than this, if he'd managed to protect them.

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More than anything else in this interlude this made me pity Ber a tad, though not nearly enough to regret our choices. He's simply incapable of connecting to other people and it doesn't even occur to him that he can get companions without using the System for it. Maybe if he hadn't been granted the System he could have developed ways to cope, but as is he would only become more monstrous as time goes on, so perhaps it's for the best we dealt with him.

I also hate him a little for calling his source of power tedious. He's just sitting on his ass and getting pumped full of magic, no effort required, and he has the gall to complain about it? Some people don't know how good they have it.

After escaping he'd raged at the unfairness for a time. The System had reneged on its promise. He abided by its rules, followed the quests it issued, and in return it segmented reality for him, organized it into orderly encounters from which concrete patterns could be extracted and employed. He'd held up his end of the bargain, so why had it faltered then?

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Simplicity can be comforting, but reality can rarely be categorized so easily. Ber had trouble interacting with the world, so he considered it a fair deal to listen to the System in exchange for trivializing the problems he had struggled with previously. The strongest chains are ones people put on willingly, and whoever gave Bearic the System and isekai'd him took advantage of his mindset, since a normal person would hesitate at least a little before blindly following random orders, even if they come from their 'own' power.

One more hint that his situation is due to intelligent design rather than any sort of coincidence. Makes one wonder what they wanted to achieve with this. Hard to tell, but if we eliminate Hunger's presence due to no one being able to predict the Accursed's actions, Ber had a fair chance of killing Verschlengorge. That would have probably made things worse for the Empire and might even have accelerated the onset of war, though I doubt this was Ber's only purpose, seems too elaborate for that.

Would he have gotten further missions in that vein? The System is too limited to have ever elevated him to the heights necessary to fight Armaments directly, which would be required to significantly influence the situation in the Human Sphere down the line, but perhaps he was supposed to become a pilot. Huh, and the source of his Blue magic was supposed to be the Armament-Fish. Were we perhaps mistaken about the reason why the Fish was born? That it wasn't Hunger's appearance that caused it but Bearic?

If so, his benefactors would need to have great authority over the Voyaging Realm in order to cause the birth of the Fish. The most likely candidates for that in my mind are the Foremost, as they would also be more interested in directing the flow of events in the Human Sphere like that than some completely unrelated outsiders. Though I don't know the precise reason why they would care about some petty nations, maybe they're preparing this world for their return? Cleaning up the place by eliminating the vermin first, so to speak.

Combining that with the fact that Ber got the mission from the Astral Lord and the System also gave him this mission... had some of the Foremost transitioned to becoming Astral beings? We know that the most powerful Astral denizens can only invade the physical realm temporarily, so perhaps this is part of some grand plan to get back. Maybe we can find out more after we start using our Summoning spell.

Perhaps it had simply lacked the strength. Entropy could be decreased in a finite space only at the cost of increasing its total sum. Any temporary order would hasten the final ascent of chaos. Perhaps they'd simply been unfortunate enough to encounter the embodiment of that reality. A greater power. How was he to know the limits of that power, if all of his methods offered nothing to perceive?

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In truth he had a fair chance of finishing Hunger if he hadn't run away like a bitch. Or if he had decided to get involved during our Temple misadventure, though this one is more iffy. He can naturally try to blame things on abstract concepts like order and chaos and pretend we're some kind of predestined nemesis, but often enough it's about our choices. The truth is that Hunger decided to take some risks where Ber only wanted to make 'safe' choices, and the results of that are all too clear.

The Hungering One. Chaos incarnate. The appearance of a nondescript add, but who twisted reality by its very presence, shattering the System's careful precision to leave Ber uncertain and reeling.

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The funny thing is that this is an incidental effect of our nature. It's not like we go out of our way to disturb his precious System's functions, it's just that being a Cursebearer comes prepackaged with immunity to most forms of divination. So he's on point with his 'greater power' suppositions, more than he would ever know. It doesn't get any greater than the Accursed himself, though once again, it's somewhat strange that he has assigned such importance to Hunger after just a single encounter.

Couldn't the System's inability to Assess Hunger and Seralize's death just been a glitch or the result of specialized powers? Immunity to Assessment doesn't necessarily imply superiority in other aspects, yet he speaks as if Hunger is some unfathomable monster. His dependence on the System for directions must have been truly great to have provoked such a reaction.

Thus, the degradation of his interface bothered him little. The slow disintegration of the System, was merely evidence that he was growing beyond its permissible bounds, growing to a level that might be capable of avenging his companions.

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Heh, that ship had sailed several EFBs ago, now he hardly gives any worthwhile XP. Should have ordered an interface from the Accursed, those ones are built to last. Maybe he could have even qualified as a Cursebearer, though I don't know how pure of body and mind he had been.

I wonder if we're seeing his true motivations here and he's really doing all this to avenge his friends, rather than for power and safety as he said in the beginning of the interlude. It would make him seem a bit more human and understandable. Even if he has trouble with social interaction, that doesn't mean he has no feelings, so maybe they were that important to him after all. With that his last threat to Hunger ('No one kills my... friends and lives to talk about it') appears in a somewhat different light, that he at last acknowledged to himself what they meant to him.

Still he had much further to grow. Not until he'd exhausted every facet and seam of the Blue would he be content to face the Hungering One, content in the knowledge that he'd done all that he could. Only then would he have the equanimity to face death - or the unknown - with grace.

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Hmm, did he have any reason to believe we could keep up with his growth? Seems like a massive overreaction otherwise, to believe that he needed to become the Grandmaster of the Blue to defeat Hunger, and still consider the possibility of death in that scenario. Would he have really shown as much grace as he believes when the time came and he saw his greatest fears come true, realizing that his efforts were for naught? Guess we'll never know.

There was a great ripping sound, a tearing as if through vast layers of flesh. It was followed by a dull roar from the Fish around him, sound so immense that seemed to engulf his entire world. He marshaled the Blue, casting it as a mantle about him, and tore free from the cocoon of brine to face this interloper who had wounded his home.

No one was there.

He looked up. Through the fathomless mountains-deep flesh he could see the faint line of the open sky above, a cut that had penetrated all that fearsome musculature to stop finally at this esophagus-cave within.

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Hunger sure knows how to make an entrance. That first Artful Thorn really hit it where it hurt. One of our best purchases, truth to be told, all but eliminating our need for further attacking techniques. For all that 7-Arete Praxis techniques are (relatively) cheap, they are also quite reliable and powerful thanks to being less draining while still providing an absolute effect. If they didn't require such great exertion, we could abandon the rest of our offensive and defensive arsenal entirely and just focus on developing the Praxis. Alas, for now the drain is still too great and the techniques are mostly relegated to being trump cards, but perhaps they will become easier to use as we become stronger and research Adorie's bloodline further.

Ber clenched his fist. A level-appropriate enemy? The System displayed only static and anarchy, meaningless characters shifting across panels. No help from that quarter. To so wound this Fish of the Blue would require serious power, strength physical and magical beyond the limits of ordinary magi. With his mastery of the Color he could level cities with a gesture, yet it would not be wise to overestimate his strength. The depth of this enemy's cut had shown them capable of the same, but offered little data on the upper limits of their capacity.

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A level-inappropriate enemy, more like. This is giving me the impression that Ber himself is unaware of the extent of the Armament-Fish's power. Strength capable of leveling cities? That would be barely a blip on the Fish's radar. The only reason we could hurt the Fish like that was because we cheated with the Praxis, our actual attacking potential is well below what would be necessary to significantly wound the Fish. Yeah, that he doesn't immediately flee in terror shows his ignorance of just how dangerous the Armament-Fish is, and how impressive the damage we dealt on first strike actually was.

Still, he could not meekly hide away. The Fish of the Blue was the source of his strength; he was akin to a barnacle feeding parasitically off its exuded power, and to abandon now it would be to abandon his own progression, for the System was too bereft to offer any concrete aid further. If this enemy was a specialized hunter, lacking general strength but unusually effective against monsters of this size, then maybe Bearic stood a chance. If, however, they were truly the Fish's equal in strength, then retreat was the only prudent path.

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Well, he's both right and wrong in his estimations. We are in fact a specialized hunter, Artful Thorn, anti-Rank abilities and speed allowing us to hit way above our weight. But that hardly makes any difference for Bearic. The difference between the Fish and him is so great that anything that could hurt the former means certain death for him. I understand not wanting to abandon such an easy source of power, but his risk assessment betrayed Ber once again, this time making him face a challenge where he should have run as fast as he could. Not that Bearic escaping would have made much of a difference, our Rank and speed mean we would have noticed and intercepted him no matter how hard he tried to hide.

He would scout out the foe and see if they were something he could overcome.

Ber scrambled up the interior walls of the Fish and peeked his head out of the cut their attacker had made. He moved with utmost speed, scarcely a blur to the senses of magi, utterly invisible to the unaided eye.

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So the Blue magic lets him make projections of his sword slashes and increases his speed? What we had seen of it so far at least. Not too impressive, truth to be told, though I suppose we didn't give him a chance to strut his stuff. Still, if defeating him qualified us for Signs, I expect the magic that came from the Armament-Fish to have been exceptional in some way. Too bad its workings will have to remain a mystery.

And yet, as soon as he broke the surface, he was flying, spinning, plunging into the sky, spray of blood half-obscuring his vision as he tried to turn and found his neck unresponsive. Finally he saw his headless body fallen limply below, arterial spray rapidly discoloring the form.

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I don't know if this was intentional on Hunger's part or just bad luck. Hunger could probably sense him with Blood magic or just raw Rank, and so reflexively decapitated the strange guy that had suddenly emerged from within the Fish. But the idea that he was just unlucky enough to get in the way of Hunger's attack is funnier, and is probably something Hunger's Rank could cause too.

The Hungering One stopped next to his corpse, nose wrinkled in distaste, and looked curiously up at him. There was faint recognition in that golden, glistening eye.

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Huh, Ber did mention that he smelled. Should have taken care of his personal hygiene if he wanted to die with dignity. No way we're touching him now, so the most he'll get is likely a sea burial.

It had two arms now, its sword unbroken, shining with a colder, more-piercing shade of Blue. The shock of its unfurled Pressure was like nothing he'd experienced before, a bomb-blast of abrupt terror as sudden and total as a child's first peal of thunder. He summoned his Color about him, hoping wildly that it could transport him downwards, somehow stitch him back onto his body - but it could barely exist in the wake of that Pressure, let alone exert his will.

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We finally get to stomp someone with our Pressure instead of being on the losing side of the equation, what a nice feeling. Though hadn't Ber experienced the Armament-Fish's Pressure before? Seriously, how did he end up inside the Armament-Fish while completely bypassing all the dangers and unaware just how strong his 'home' was. Apo-chan must have cheated something fierce to allow this confluence of events. By the way, we should learn how to stitch our head back onto our neck too if the Ring doesn't let us do it already, it seems like a useful life skill, especially given our habit of sticking our head out.

Ah, he thought finally. He'd never stood a chance.

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I suppose there was some faint possibility of us not scaling sufficiently quickly, especially if we hadn't gotten Aabcehmu's Nameless Patreon boost. But in the end you could say that this game had been rigged from the very start. Should have become a Cursebearer if he wanted to be someone of relevance in the grand scheme of things!

Blue the sky and blue the sea and blue the titan thundering below, and white the froth of the wrath-tillered waves as they slapped uselessly against the titans warring. The Fish of the Blue was dying. Spinning still, he fell further now, and struck the cold salty waters of the ocean below.

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To be honest, I expected a much more difficult fight out of the Fish, but I can't say I dislike this development. Sometimes we just make the right choices and have luck on our side, leading to such seemingly easy wins. Things could have been much worse if we didn't roll so well or if Ber had somehow managed to become the Fish's pilot, lending it his tactical acumen. Seriously, getting upstaged by Ber as he grabbed the pilot seat that should have rightfully belonged to us would have ended in enough quester salt to drown out the Voyaging Sea.

The Blue was receding at last. Darkness instead claimed him. This, at least, had been of a pattern he could understand. The Hungering One was a Secret Boss, and Ber had not been prepared.

Game over.

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A Gamer to the very end, thinking of terms like secret bosses even as he's dying. It's a bit pathetic that we had lived in the shadow of fear of this guy for so long, but power doesn't discriminate based on mental disorders. Rather, mental disorders often lead to great power in fiction for some reason. It would have been even less acceptable to lose to this quintessential MMORPG punk, so perhaps it's for the best that he had spurred us on to reach these heights.

Sometimes it's nice to have simple opponents like this, especially if I contrast his competence with the Lord Protector, who managed to deal us two staggering blows (including capture of Versch next chapter) before we even saw his face.

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Get R A N K E D son

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A bit anticlimactic, but overall a satisfying end for our long-time nemesis. Perhaps this is what he deserved after causing so much grief, getting dealt with as a side-effect in the course of defeating a serious threat. Better luck next time!