ShangriLa Frontier ~ Shitty Games Hunter Challenges Godly Game ~

「Oi, you look as if baby car flattened you, you know?」

After that, I tried jumping in three more times, every time trying out entirely different things to see if they would yield a different result. And each time I died while still being in mid-air, striking some really grotesque or even extremely funny poses. But even though it was sure netting me a whole lot of points for creativity and artistic values alone, under the watchful gaze of the “Ivory” I was not even getting anywhere near the center of the hole, and I was starting to think that there might not be anything that can be done to cheat the system in here.

A baby car? What’s that supposed to even be? While all the other players seemed to have that one particular question mark hanging over their heads, the “Ivory” approached us once again, her sharp look feeling somewhat different, as if there was a smile hidden behind it. It was barely recognizable, but it was sure there.

「SEEING YOU IN PERSON NOW, I AM ONLY GOING TO SAY IT ONCE, SO LISTEN WELL…… I CAN SEE NOW WHY YOU WERE ABLE TO CONQUER THE LEVIATHAN. I CAN SEE THAT YOUR WISDOM IS INDEED A REAL THING.」

「Baby Car…… Oh, I see, I get it! Is this supposed to be some sort of a new player joke?」

Oh? Won’t you look at that! If it isn’t the Professor! I thought it was awfully quiet in here for some reason, but it looks like he finally decided to join in on the conversation.

「Seeing how you call everyone in here as your “Children”, I do believe that the conclusion that can be drawn from this can only mean one thing…… This place right here, it is the birthplace of us Players, am I correct?」

「WONDERFUL, SIMPLY MARVELOUS REASONING, PROFESSOR. YOU ARE THE SECOND PERSON TO EVER CORRECTLY GUESS WHAT THIS PLACE IS AT A GLANCE…… YES, THAT’S RIGHT. BORN FROM THE WIND WITH THE WIND GONE, THIS IS THE PLACE WHERE ALL OF YOU BEGUN YOUR JOURNEY IN EARNEST, THE WOMB THAT BESTOWED YOU UPON THE WORLD.」

「So, like…… what? Does that mean that this is supposed to be our home in this game? Is that it?」

「Hey, I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t even remember ever being on board of a weird spaceship like that. And I surely did not consent to being put in a place like that……!」

「This may sound weird to you all, but I am actually surprisingly on board with that idea. I even find it surprisingly fitting.」

「Dude, you should really stop taking with that pacifier inside of your mouth, it’s making it really hard to be able to distinguish what you are saying…… At the very last, I assume that this is a pacifier. Because it is, right? RIGHT?」

So, does that mean that this place is actually like an elevator or something? You know, , like a system that carries mail tubes, but it actually carries pods filled with players and then distributes them onto the outside world? Something like that? Because, you know…… this is a Sci-Fi game as well, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it was like that. And all that wiring and pipelines and masses of metal that are all over this place? I bet that they are transporting players all over the place at this exact moment. And at the speed that could easily turn any normal player into a mashed potatoes if you were ever to be sucked into one of those bad boys. And if it was not the case in here…… Well, talk about a whole lot of wasted potential.

「Well then, what the hell are we even supposed to do here?」

「Does that mean that we need to just physically avoid this thing altogether?」

「No, something like that is going to be pretty much impossible. The timing is way too strict to do something like that. I even think that deflecting those things with skills and magic might actually be way too hard to pull off consistently.」

「If Tsuchinoko-san says so, then there must be at least some semblance of truth to it…… Or do you perhaps have any other more probable explanation, Exploding Green Peas-san?」

「Hey, why am I not surprised? You know what? Right about now I feel like that one kid at school who’s getting constantly picked up to answer the questions of the teacher only because my name is a little bit rarer than that of all the other kids in class!」

「No, I think that it’s a really uncool thing to do as a teacher. Only picking up students with weird or unique names, that is. Talk about lack of any creativity whatsoever. Not to mention if I were to do it, I would have quit my profession on the same day!」

「Alright, it was an unnecessary addition for sure, but hearing an opinion of a genuine educator makes that even more powerful than I would have thought!」

The Exploding Green Peas shook his head as though he could not believe what he was hearing, and then looked towards the “Ivory” who was still hanging in mid-air. As for the hologram, she did not participate in the conversation since that statement she made before, and she seemed genuinely disinterested to our current conversation. And here I was hoping that certain keywords would get a reaction out of her. Namely: “floor”, “wall”, “ceiling” and “holes”. So maybe they were all a bust, or maybe it was that she was just really good with keeping up the poker face act.

「So? What are we supposed to do now? Do we have to consider some different approaches?」

「Not necessarily. It may very well be just me imagining things, but I suspect that this giant hole might actually be fake. But it would be hard to actually see if that theory is true or not without the right tools to conduct some much needed verification. But for the time being I suggest that we focus our efforts onto the outer edges of this place.」

「And by that, you mean……?」

「Behemoth…… Or should we actually call this thing right here Bahamut? Oh well , it doesn’t really matter all that much…… What matters here is that this ship is huge. Really huge. And I mean not only counting from the tip of the head towards the end of the tail, but also its width. …… Plus there is the size of the waist to consider as well, amongst few other things.」

「So basically what you are saying here is that this hole might not actually be limited to the confines of the Behemoth, but that it is actually reaching out even beyond it? Is that it?」

「Sunraku-kun, so going by your logic, this hole right here does not go to the bottom of Behemoth, but reaches out even beyond its bottom, probably towards the depths of the Earth itself…… But looking down right now, where we are all standing, I can see some sort of a gate or perhaps a door in the wall…… It’s really kind of strange, if I am to be quite honest here.」