Infinite Dendrogram: Volume 15
Table of Contents
Cover
Color Illustrations
Conjunction: The Game Board They Know as This World
Chapter Eighteen: Values
Chapter Nineteen: Hero
Chapter Twenty: The Fiery Dance of the Jiangshi and the Mummy
Chapter Twenty-One: The Blades and Shields of Altar
Chapter From the Past: Memories of Fire
Chapter Twenty-Two: What Was Sought
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Humanoid Irregularity
Chapter Twenty-Four: Don’t Touch the GAME OVER
Chapter From the Past: What is Untouchable, What Shouldn’t be Touched
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Incarnation of Maelstroms
Chapter Twenty-Six: Supernova
Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Life of Fire
Epilogue
The Final Epilogue: Him, Her, and...
Afterword
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
Conjunction: The Game Board They Know as This World
The Gaol, Café “Dice”
Two figures were sitting in a café and playing a game of chess.
One was a black-haired man with a smile on his face, while the other was a tired-looking young woman.
“Board games are profoundly simple,” said the man, moving his knight to take the lady’s bishop. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
This man was none other than King of Crime, Sechs Würfel — the proprietor of this establishment and the leader of the Illegal Frontier clan.
“...Not at all,” the lady replied. “This is actually pretty hard for me...” She was Gerbera, a member of the aforementioned clan, as well as a freeloader here. As she played, her eyes were glazed over.
This was a slow business day, so the two had decided to pass the time with chess, but Gerbera was less than an amateur at the game. Even with handicaps, she was losing badly.
“Chess is simple,” Sechs insisted as he took another one of Gerbera’s pieces. “After all, there are only two factions on the board, and only one king for each of them to take. In reality, the number of factions can never be known, and there might be multiple kings that must fall in order to take each faction down. Also, there is a chance that the world itself — the game board, if you will — would bare its fangs, as well. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“The world itself, huh...? You mean natural disasters like earthquakes? Oh, that reminds me — my dad told me about how he barely survived something like that back when he was a kid. Japan gets earthquakes all the time, doesn’t it?”
Being half-Japanese and half-British, Gerbera had a certain degree of knowledge about Japan from her father. He always told her that the people there feared a few things: earthquakes, lightning, fire, and their fathers.
Would I also be afraid of my dad if I lived there? she wondered.
“Natural disasters... Well, I suppose you could call them that,” said Sechs.
“...The way you’re phrasing it is making me curious,” Gerbera replied — as though Sechs’s description of the world “baring its fangs” wasn’t intriguing enough to begin with.
“It was certainly a disaster... But at the same time...I think it was the game board’s ‘king.’”
Sechs’s words were truly bizarre — he seemed to be implying that the world itself was another player. That would be akin to the very chessboard they were using joining the game and playing against them.
...How would it move its pieces? Gerbera wondered, completely serious.
“Oh, right. I’ve yet to tell anyone in I.F. about that encounter. I’ll have to distribute the information later.”
“...Huh? You were talking about this world? Not reality...?” Gerbera asked in surprise.
“Yes,” Sechs nodded. “Back then, I believe I saw the ‘king-piece’ of this world... Though, I suppose it’s more fitting to call it the final boss.”
Sechs casually stated something very shocking.
Gerbera’s tired eyes and mouth went wide in surprise.
“...Am I reading too much into this, or did you just drop a bombshell on me? This game has a final boss? Seriously? Something above raid bosses like the SUBMs...?”
“Yes. The term ‘final boss’ suits this quite well, actually. Though, according to a friend of mine, it’s the final boss of the world this game used to be. Observers like the Red King are the final bosses of the game this world is now.”
Presenting information he’d gained from the most ancient monster of all — The Skydragon King — Sechs took a sip of his coffee.
“...Dendro isn’t the first game in the series...? And...a ‘friend’ of yours? I... Are you sure you should be telling me this? I really wouldn’t want to get a death penalty or something for knowing too much...”
“There’s no need to worry about that. The control AIs would never do anything to affect the Masters irreversibly. Though, I suppose that doesn’t apply to psychological damage.”
“Hm?”
“I mean, the trauma from things like a tian friend of yours dying a horrible death.”
“...Ohh. Well, there are lots of people who can’t handle gore... But...where did you encounter this final boss, anyway? Some created dungeon...? Oh! I know! You’re from Altar, so it’s probably the Tomb Labyrinth, right?”
“I’m sorry, but no. It was in the capital, but not in that dungeon.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Sechs had just implied that the final boss was in the city of Altea itself, and Gerbera couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could possibly run into something like that in such a mundane place.
“The final boss I met had a human form and led a human life,” Sechs said with a smile on his face.
“...Wh-huuhh?” Her companion’s words made Gerbera freeze up.
As he looked at her with amusement, Sechs remembered the latest report.
I believe today is the day Zeta will fulfill Dryfe’s request and assault Altea, he thought. Zeta and La Crima — two core members of I.F. — had combined forces to attack the capital of the kingdom.
Dryfe’s goal in this was to bring a certain entity out into the open and — if possible — finish it off.
Sechs was fairly certain that this “entity” was none other than the thing he’d seen back then.
I suppose I ended up talking about it because the memory was in the back of my mind... he thought.
Sechs believed that through this event, Dryfe would find out what he knew. That would cause a drastic shift in the world, much like it had during the war in which Sechs challenged Shu to a battle he couldn’t refuse.
Does that mean it would also be stirred into motion? I’m far away from it all at the moment, though. It would be quite a bother if everything ended while I’m still stuck here, he thought as he looked outside, at the scenery of the gaol.
A false sky, a false horizon...a false world, built by Red King using walls of spatial fixation.
“I suppose it must be starting right about now,” he muttered, looking out at the closed world — though he seemed to truly be seeing something far beyond its walls.
Chapter Eighteen: Values
The Royal Capital of Altea, City Quarter
Shortly after the peace talks at the border fell apart, Altea was thrown into a state of chaos when it found itself under attack by grotesque hybrids of bee and human — Apis Ideas.
They killed people using their poisonous, spear-like stingers — and upon death, their victims exploded violently, causing damage to anyone nearby. It would be accurate to call them murderous bioweapons. The guards and Masters inside the city fought back against them while attempting to get the inhabitants to safety, but each and ev
ery Apis Idea possessed stats that surpassed even Demi-Dragon-tier creatures. Of the Altarian tians, only the Royal Guard had any chance of fighting them one-on-one, so they were forced to face the monsters in groups.
Even Masters who could take on an Apis Idea each weren’t having it easy.
“Riser! They’re not just strong — they blow up too! We can’t fight ’em close up!” shouted Lang, the hippogriff-mounted Gale Rider and member of the Babylonian Battlegroup.
“Tell the other members to fight with guns, bows, and magic. Anyone without a ranged attack can use the Gems in the clan’s storage!”
“Roger that!” Lang was talking to a man riding a motorbike smuggled from Dryfe. Another Gale Rider, this man was Masked Riser, number six in the duel rankings, as well as the acting leader of the Babylonian Battlegroup. While he drove the bike through the streets and shot at the bee-men with a rifle, he used a magical comms device to talk to his clan members.
...Good thing I got Fuso to heal me, Masked Riser thought. Tsukuyo had healed all the wounds he’d sustained in his fight against Chrono Crown. With his Embryo damaged, he wasn’t as powerful as he could be, but thanks to her healing abilities, he could at least still fight.
As a temporary replacement for Hermod, Masked Riser was using an MP-powered motorbike that had been leaked from Dryfe.
Things really aren’t looking so good right now though, he thought. At the moment, there were few combat-capable Masters in the capital.
Most of the duel rankers had been assassinated the day before yesterday and their death penalties had yet to expire, while The Lunar Society and Death Period — the first- and second-ranked clans — were at the peace talks. The third, K&R, was missing their two Superior Jobs.
And because The Lunar Society and K&R were both based in Altea, most of the other ranking clans had chosen to set up in other cities. Because of this, the only Masters around who were capable of fighting this wave of enemies were the members of the Babylonian Battlegroup, the rest of K&R besides Kashimiya and Rosa, and a handful of others.
As for the kill rankers... Most of them aren’t here, but I guess there aren’t many of them who can fight in a city. Like the very top ranker — King of Destruction, Shu Starling — most of the kill rankers possessed immense firepower that was best suited for taking on swarms of monsters. The majority of them would only be of limited use in this situation.
“Damn it! This is too much for us! It’s like we’re playing chess and our side hasn’t got a queen!” Lang said, his thoughts running similar to Riser’s.
In response, Riser swallowed his worries and said, “That still leaves the knights, the bishops, the rooks, and the pawns. Let’s show them what we’re made of.”
“...All right!” Lang said, trying to pull himself together.
“I’ll go east. You meet up with squad B and head west.”
“Roger that!”
After about a minute of driving, Riser arrived at a barricade blocking the road.
Beyond it was one of Altea’s several town halls; it seemed like it was being used as a shelter and the barricade was there to protect the people inside.
Near the roadblock stood several people, all of them dressed in the uniform of the city guard.
“You are...Masked Riser!” one of them said as Riser came close. His unique-looking mask and long history as a duel ranker made him well-known among the kingdom’s tians.
“How’s the situation here?” he asked, dismounting from the bike.
“We repelled the first and second wave, but we’ve suffered some casualties of our own...and a third wave might be on the way.”
“Are you saying that this place is being targeted specifically?”
“Yes. It’s not just here, though. They seem to be prioritizing locations where there are a lot of people.”
It looked as though the bee-men were attacking at random, but they were actually trying to be as efficient as possible — efficient at killing people, that is.
They had enough sentience to attack where they would do the most harm, and they exploded upon death to do even more damage.
“According to guards stationed elsewhere, these bee-men are coming in everywhere, even the rear entrances, and—”
“The bee-men have appeared at the national church’s shelter! The explosions are threatening the evacuees!”
“Damn it...!” the guard captain cursed. This wasn’t the first time today he’d received news like that.
Among the bee-men, some of them had been bee-men from the very beginning, and others had started out looking human.
The latter often blended in among the evacuating citizens to hide inside shelters before revealing their true forms in a fatal explosion.
Their efficiency at slaughter was as impressive as it was fearsome.
The shelters can’t refuse to take in the evacuees, but it’s difficult to tell them apart from the disguised bee-men... This is bad, Riser thought.
Not even Reveal could expose them. It only showed their names and a low job level that didn’t reflect their true stats, and unlike monsters, their names didn’t display above their heads. That latter fact made it extremely difficult to tell them apart from normal humans — and it was also proof that, despite their grotesque appearance, these bee creatures were also human.
“What are they, anyway?! Some Legendarian tribe?!” The guard captain’s words left Riser deep in thought.
If they’re not monsters, that’s the most obvious assumption...but that can’t be it. According to a Babylonian Battlegroup member who had a job from the researcher grouping, the post-transformation bee-men had the “insectoid” typing. That just wasn’t normal.
No matter how insect-like they looked, a humanoid tribe would always be of the “human” type. There were jobs that changed this, such as Lich, which turned the humanoid that had it into “undead,” and Ogre Samurai, which did the same with “Oni.” However, according to Reveal, the bee-men had no such jobs.
Even if it was some kind of job, it wouldn’t explain the transformation ability or why the stats don’t match their levels... Hold on, he thought to himself as he realized there was another possibility — that these might be humans who had been warped by Embryos or UBMs.
It was unlikely, though, that UBMs would commit such a complicated act of terrorism. Riser had been in this world a long time, but even he could only think of one such example — the Exodragon King that had schemed behind the scenes in Gideon.
But that would mean that these bee-men were created by a Master, and...how could anyone like that actually exist...? Riser didn’t want to believe that. If that were true, it would mean that there was a Master who turned tians into living weapons. He was a solid worlder and really didn’t want to accept that someone so callous really existed in Dendro.
“...Whatever the case, I have to stop these attacks on the shelter.” Even if the bee-men were transformed tians, he’d already resolved to stop them from harming any more innocent people.
What he needed right now was a means of telling evacuees and the bee-men apart, but his Babylonian Battlegroup didn’t have anyone with an Embryo that could help in that regard.
Right as Riser began to fear that the bee-men would retain the element of surprise all the way through...
“U-Um...!”
...a girl called out to him.
“Hm? You’re...” She seemed familiar to him.
This girl and Riser both knew Ray and had been in each other’s presence several times now.
“I’m Kasumi...from Death Period...” Kasumi was a member of Death Period who had been unable to participate in the peace talks due to real life circumstances. She was accompanied by Io and Fujinon, who also couldn’t join Ray for similar reasons.
“Yeah, I remember you. All of you,” said Riser. “So you stayed here in Altar, huh?”
“Y-Yes...! Umm... I have something...to say...!”
“You do?”
Kasumi nodded before showing Ri
ser the board in her hands — her Embryo, Taijitu.
“My...my Taijitu can show the locations and levels of nearby Embryos...!” Before, it could only pinpoint the Masters themselves, but its recent ascension to a high-ranking Type Angel-Arms had expanded this ability to their Embryos as well.
Riser instantly understood what she was getting at.
“Those bee-men...” Kasumi said. “They’re all marked as ‘VII’...Superior Embryos...!” Taijitu was reacting to the fragments of a certain Embryo within the bee-men and displaying their locations.
“Superior... Wait, more importantly, you’re saying that you can tell them apart from regular humans even when they’re disguised?!”
“Yes...!” That was great news. The greatest threat right now were the bee-men blending in with the evacuees, so dealing with them would greatly reduce the casualties.
“Can you tell us where they are?” Riser asked.
“Yes...! I’ll mark them...! So please...inform everyone else!” Kasumi said before looking into her Taijitu and touching its surface.
She traced her finger over the many “VII” signals it was displaying.
“Taijitu...Marking!” The moment she used that skill, their surroundings slightly changed.
A downward-pointing triangle, looking like something straight out of a GPS app, suddenly appeared above one of the evacuees heading to the nearby shelter.
That was it — the mark distinguishing the enemies blending in among the tians.
“...There’s one!” Kasumi called.
“Got it!” Io and Fujinon quickly leaped into action. Fujinon — now a high-rank job, Geomancer — used earth magic to bind their target in place.
“BZzzZZzzZz...” The moment he was bound, the man instantly transformed into a grotesque human-bee hybrid.
However, a moment later, he was split in half by a giant axe — none other than Io’s Embryo, Five-Ring.
It exploded as it died, but since there was no one nearby, the explosion did no further harm.
In fact, Five-Ring was so large and long that the explosion didn’t move it an inch, and Io was so far away that she almost didn’t feel the shock wave from the blast.