DAY 121
NIGHT
Getting inside your opponent’s head is somewhat easier when he’s using Blockhead.
THE WHITE LOSER INN
GIRLS' MEETING
HARUKA-KUN WIGGLED OUT of his daily lecture. But if there was any lecture for him to miss, it would’ve been this one. Today was more of a test of Haruka-kun’s abilities than anything, and besides, he turned out to be (mostly) innocent for once. All he was guilty of was teaching Faleria-san some weird breathing technique.
“If he can dodge our battle formations, he can dodge anything.”
“Yeah. It looks like he’s got his old evasion skills back.”
“He should be fine in most dungeons, provided he doesn’t go too deep.”
“Yeah… That stirs up old, unpleasant memories.”
So, what’d happened this evening? We put Haruka-kun through his paces. We learned he taught the dungeon emperors the Lamaze method, but lord only knows why, as the dungeon emperors couldn’t procreate with Haruka-kun to begin with. We learned he was innocent of more untoward actions, although he did teach Faleria-san his patented “hiiiyah” scream, and while we were busy lecturing him for something he didn’t do, he distracted us with heavenly cotton candy and got away scot-free. How dare he, giving us this, this, sweet, gooey, tasty, high-calorie treat! You know what? That calls for another lecture!
“God, was it good though…”
“It just melted in my mouth. I’ve never had anything like it.”
Haruka-kun also informed us that our new undergarments, which the test lecture had also pushed to their limits, provided better defense than our old ones. I definitely felt something, like an extra skin made of magic over my own, when I put them on. It wasn’t a bad feeling, though. I felt more secure. Well-defended. The new underwear used less MP than the old set, and if it gave an extra layer of security, then it was downright miraculous in my book.
“I’m surprised the underwear is so comfortable when it’s riddled with sigils and talismans.”
“Right? This level of comfort and breathability is out of this world.”
“Not to mention, it lifts here, tucks there, and makes me look way slimmer.”
“Yeah! They’re so easy to move in, they make me look way more athletic than I really am. But…is anyone else embarrassed to be seen wearing these things, or is just me?”
“Nope. Not just you.”
Hence the need to lecture Haruka-kun. These clothes left nothing to the imagination. I’d never worn anything so thin or clinging in my life. But as a perk, they did a number on Haruka-kun. You should have seen him in that meeting. He turned red to the ears, and his eyes wandered around the room so fast it made me dizzy to watch.
“We’ve told him a million times we don’t mind him looking, though.”
“You know him. If there’s even a sliver of a smidgen of a chance that we mind, he won’t believe us for a minute.”
Speaking of people we didn’t believe for a minute… Haruka-kun had the unique knack of landing himself in certain-death situations and walking out relatively unscathed. It didn’t mean I could believe him when he said he would be fine, and it didn’t give me peace of mind. This stupid boy worried me to death, and that’s what made all of this so darn complicated.
“I wasn’t aware Qing Qigong could do that twisty thing he showed off earlier.”
“It can’t. That’s silk reeling, chansijin. It twists an incoming attack to essentially nullify it.”
“Oh, I see. Is that why he was walking all hunched over?”
“No, that was just him hiding his crotch.”
That’s why we treated Haruka-kun like the enemy. And so we tested him. We formulated strategies to kill him, because the first step to keeping someone safe was to put ourselves in his enemy’s shoes and figure out all their tricks. Every time we tried to hurt him, we discovered Haruka-kun was much weaker than we’d known—and, in turn, much more of a wily bastard.
“If I was Haruka-kun’s enemy…I would be so annoyed at him!”
“Right? The way he clowns on you while dodging every hit makes me want to punch his lights out!”
Haruka-kun had the defenses of a sheet of paper. We could have killed him easily with brute force alone. But, from the moment we’d first attempted to place ourselves in a would-be killer’s shoes, we realized how absurdly difficult he was to destroy. And if that wasn’t an unsolvable puzzle, killing Haruka-kun and not being immediately eviscerated by his companions presented a second, thornier problem.
“We can swarm him because he doesn’t fight back.”
“Yeah. He wouldn’t dare touch us if his life depended on it.”
“At the same time, he’s a force to be reckoned with in dungeons. You never know what bizarro weapon he’ll pick up and slaughter you with in some weird-ass way.”
“That’s Haruka-kun for you: baffling to friend and foe alike.”
We’d tried crushing Haruka-kun to death during the lecture, knowing he wouldn’t dare fight back—Haruka-kun would rather have bitten off his own hand than touch one of us in an inappropriate area. But in true battle, that reticence could have been the death of him. Haruka-kun could have mopped the floor with us easily; Sex Monad was lethal to us teenage girls. It could, we were told, reduce a girl to “death” multiple times per second!
“Even as a thought experiment, fighting Haruka-kun is a mess of contradictions.”
“Yeah… At this point, the existence of monsters makes more logical sense than he does.”
Haruka-kun could die easily, yet he couldn’t be killed. A single hit could do him in, but he was the strongest fighter of us all. He canceled out logic. He was a paradox, a perversion of the iron law of Gundam memes—he would die if hit, but by virtue of being unhittable, he was unkillable.
“You can try to apply logic to him, but there’s no winning a battle of wits against his Wisdom Skill.”
“Any human being is theoretically killable. The question is, is Haruka-kun a human being?”
“Yeah… You can’t even attack him where he’s weak.”
Right? Like, Haruka-kun was so darn weird you couldn’t even use a hostage situation to keep him in check. He’d straight-up kill you before you could try to negotiate with him. Kidnap a friend, and he’d never show up to the ransom meeting. You might get a letter if you were lucky, but whether that letter was in any way intelligible was another story. Then, the minute you turned to leave, he’d jump you and kill you. It was like getting a nightmare in the mail—Haruka-kun was always, always sure to show up.
“Poison doesn’t work on him. He doesn’t fall for traps.”
“And he could disable both anyway. You could cast magic, but he’ll simply absorb or reflect all of it.”
“Physical attacks seem like a surer bet, but coming up with a way to physically kill Haruka-kun is a nightmare.”
“He has enough food in his item bag to last a lifetime, so you can’t even siege him and starve him out.”
“You could try to lock him away somewhere, but he’ll inevitably wriggle out and wing his way back home. That is, if he doesn’t blow the enclosure to smithereens first.”
Not to mention, Haruka-kun seemed like the type to sit down and get cozy if held under siege…
“We just have to catch him off guard! Exploit his weakness!”
“Yeah, and he’s very weak to those short shorts…”
“Problem is, we always run up against the same wall. It seems impossible to trick both Jupiter Eye and Wisdom.”
“He’s super weak to anything erotic.”
“So, the only way to beat him is appeal to the human element?”
“But when it comes to sex, we don’t stand a chance against Haruka-kun.”
“The one thing that can trip him up, the one thing he goes out of his way to get tripped up by…”
“Say it with me: Sexy. Female. Assassins.”
“You think sexy female assassins can stand up to Sex Monad?”
“…Run away, sexy female assassins!”
We ran this meeting at regular intervals to give the problem serious thought, but unfortunately, we’d never hit upon a satisfying answer. We wanted to protect Haruka-kun, but his unkillability made him too darn hard to protect. At the same time, he had zero sense of personal danger and walked blithely into bad situations constantly. It made no sense! He had amazing detection Skills; he was a treasure chest of Skills and amazing equipment. His ridiculously OP gear may have left him with terrible defense, but he had virtually infinite offense.
“Hey, I have an idea! How about we wait for him to die of old age?”
“I think that’s our only hope.”
Even living on the frontier couldn’t save people from the ravages of age. The sheer amount of magi in the land poisoned people, shortening their lifespans. But then Haruka-kun sucked up magi by the truckload and came out of it healthier than ever. So I just didn’t know. People could live up to a hundred and twenty years, or so I’d heard, and reaching level 30 stretched a person’s lifespan a good 10 to 20 percent longer.
Old age would someday claim Haruka-kun, but that would be an issue another hundred years down the line. As for us, who were over level 100, we would probably live twice as long. I wouldn’t be surprised if we lived to be over two hundred. The dungeon emperors… Sheesh, they would probably live forever.
Man, imagine an eternity without Haruka-kun in it. That was a scary thought. But one that only applied, I suppose, if he was human.
Let’s talk about what it means to be human. Okay, yes—I knew he insisted to high heaven that he was still human. But even he wasn’t sure, and it was impossible to predict what exactly might be his fate. Human beings didn’t transmogrify their insides to be stronger. Humans didn’t draw magic sigils with their own nerves and blood vessels. Humans couldn’t gain the wisdom of the immortal sages, couldn’t master qigong, couldn’t suck up magi from the earth and use it to heal themselves. So I thought…I thought maybe we didn’t have to worry about old age claiming Haruka-kun? Maybe?
“Um… We could hit him with a crucifix and see what happens.”
“Ooh, that might do it. He is an enemy of god.”
“No, but he’s made and sold rosaries before. And it’s not like crosses have the same meaning here.”
“Oh, that’s true. Then…how about a wooden stake through the heart?”
“That would kill anybody! Haruka-kun’s just the one person likely to bounce back from that!”