As we increased propulsion and pushed against the water, a notice popped up on a part of the surrounding monitors. What’s this? Beware of electric shock…?
“Huh? Does that mean we’re being electrified!?”
“Soaking in water and conducting electricity… makes sense.”
“If we’d come in power suits, we’d be dead for sure…”
As we talked, the light grew closer and closer, and finally, the end of the dungeon came into view.
“Let’s get out of here!”
“Be careful, Tonbo!”
Third Eye burst out of the dungeon entrance, now a giant hole spewing water, with water splashing everywhere. The first thing that caught my eye was the huge serpent’s head spewing water, and beside it, another serpent head of the same size, its mouth wide open.
After following the two-headed serpent’s body, a three-headed serpent was waiting for me.
“It’s got three heads!?”
“Could this be the tail end of that two-headed serpent?”
As Third Eye fired the rifle at the base of the three heads, the triple-headed serpent dodged it, wriggling like the two-headed one did.
“It’s dodging too!”
In the dense forest, with trees double the height of Third Eye lining up like walls and only towering mountains visible through the gaps, the giant serpent approached, knocking down trees as it advanced towards us.
“I did a scan but couldn’t find any large heat sources, and I don’t think there are any settlements! Switch to burst mode and shoot!”
As Mars manipulated the holographic tablet, the words [BURST-FIRE] flashed in green letters on the surrounding display. Pulling the trigger, a swirling burst of light erupted from the muzzle, causing trees and the ground ahead to explode one after the other.
“Is this Burst Mode!?”
“Just shoot the snake already!”
“I am, but…!”
Despite repeatedly aiming the rifle at the snake, it now lifted its head without flinching.
“Isn’t something off? It’s hitting, right?”
“Wait, without the princess, I have to do the analysis manually…”
As Mars became engrossed in the tablet, the snake moved. It lunged directly without breathing fire.
“Beam Sword!”
As Third Eye retreated, it drew the Beam Sword towards the snake’s nose. However, the blade warped just before hitting the snake and dispersed into thin air. Third Eye was then caught by the snake’s mouth and flailed about like a tantrum-throwing child’s toy.
“Ahhhhh!”
“Tonbo, got it! It’s a force field! Probably generated by electrical discharge from its powerful neck, interfering with charged particles!”
“Meaning?”
“A barrier is up!”
“What should we do?”
“Attack with something physical!”
“Alright! Punch it!”
Grabbing onto the snake’s neck, I swung the beam rifle’s stock at its nose. As the snake’s nose was pierced, it wildly thrashed about, slamming its face into the ground and trees. As I repeatedly struck the same spot while watching the chaotic movements, red text suddenly appeared in front of me.
[C2 FATAL ERROR]
“What’s this!?”
“C2… Your left arm that got bitten is damaged!”
“Uh oh!”
“Tonbo, bring out the secret weapon! The makeshift gun!”
“Huh!?”
“The one we used against the dragon!”
“Why now?”
Despite the question, I pull out a can-juice shaped contraband gun from the junkyard, and Mars climbs up onto my shoulder with it, transformed with a crunching sound. I’m in a little bit of pain as Mars’ legs are tangled around my neck.
“Tonbo, hold on tight while I open the hatch!”
“Seriously!?”
Silently, the hatch opened, and a fierce gust of wind rushed in as the giant snake lunged at me.
“Hold on!”
With those words, Mars pulled the trigger of the gun protruding above my head, creating a small hole in the snake’s forehead. As I clung to the seat with all my might, the hole grew bigger, spurting blood until it pierced through to the other side.
At that moment, a strong sense of weightlessness overcame me. With the snake’s head dead, the bitten arm detached, and Third Eye was launched into the air.
“Ahh! Ahh! I’m gonna dieeee!”
“You won’t die.”
With those words, the hatch closed, and gravity returned, causing me to slump onto the seat as Third Eye crashed into the ground.
“Whew… thought I was a goner!”
“If you were being bitten, you’d be dead by now.”
“Just… a word!”
“Look, it’s coming!”
“Ahh! I don’t like snakes! Snakes are scary!”
I quickly activated Third Eye and distanced myself from the snake.
“What’s… happening to left arm…? Is it turning to stone…?”
“Turning to stone!?”
Upon inspecting the immobile left arm, I noticed parts of it had turned grey, resembling concrete. Especially around the joints, grey substance clung tightly, rendering it stiff.
“Is it petrification breath!?”
“It really does look like an enemy from one of Tonbo’s games… What do we do? Run?”
While being swung around and thrown, before I knew it, the snake had positioned itself where we had come out of the dungeon. Even if we wanted to escape, we couldn’t return to Saitama without getting past the snake… I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“No, let’s do it…”
“What about weapons? Hit it with a fallen tree? It might hold out for one hit.”
“When we assembled Third Eye… didn’t it say there was an emergency purge function in the core?”
“Oh, yeah, the left arm is in the way.”
When Mars operated it, the screen displayed [C2 PURGE], and the left arm fell off with a clunk. I threw away the beam rifle and picked up the left arm, which had been petrified into a solid block.
“Tonbo… what are you going to do?”
“This is the hardest… I can do it… I can do it… I should be able to handle it even in a situation like this…!”
I remembered that amazing version of myself I had seen in a dream someday, that face full of confidence and daring. I looked at my right hand and clenched it tightly. Right now, I might be weak and unreliable, but if the current me is truly connected to that version of myself… there’s no way I’ll lose to a snake like this!
“Let’s go!”
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With the petrified left arm held like a spear, I leaped into the neck of the three-headed snake. Adjusting the direction of gravity control minutely and clinging to the snake, which was trying to avoid me by wriggling, I thrust the fist, which had become a spear, into its giant scales while crushing them.
“We did it!”
“Not yet!”
While being showered in blood flowing like a waterfall, Third Eye attached itself to the writhing snake’s neck. Then, with the left arm still protruding, I used my right arm’s elbow to support it and opened the wound on the neck. The amount of blood flowing increased rapidly, and the ground around us reflected in the monitor became like a hellish pool of blood.
“Tonbo! That’s enough! Let’s retract it!”
“Got it!”
I kicked the snake with Third Eye and flew into the air, watching it writhe. That was the giant monster that had wreaked havoc on Saitama, and there was no choice but to kill it. Even though I thought that, strangely, it was painful to watch a living creature die in agony.
Still, I watched as it died, somehow feeling that doing so was a matter of courtesy to the opponent I had killed.
“Is it dead?”
“Let’s wait until the heat completely disappears from its body. Now, while we can, let’s retrieve the beam rifle.”
“Got it.”
I picked up the beam rifle I had discarded earlier and slumped back into the seat in a daze.
“Tonbo, have a drink.”
“No, I don’t feel like it…”
“Just drink it.”
At Mars’s insistence from above, I took a sip of the sports drink I had taken from the junkyard. Then I realized how parched my body was and ended up drinking it all in one go.
“What about Mars?”
“I prefer sweet things.”
“Don’t spill it from up there.”
Laughing and saying that, I finally realized that my face was tense. Just like during the Dragon incident, I was still in a daze this time, and it wouldn’t have been strange if I had been the one defeated instead. Thinking that, a wave of fatigue suddenly washed over me.
“Feeling exhausted?”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Just a little more effort.”
“Well, a field trip isn’t over until you get back home…”
Saying that and laughing alone, Mars, who was peering down from above, looked puzzled.
“It’s important not to let your guard down on the way back, but it would be a total loss if we didn’t store the snake’s corpse. You can store it now; it looks like it’s completely dead.”
“Oh, right…”
Certainly, this battle with the snake was irregular, but our original goal was to obtain such a big catch and exchange it for a spaceship. I’m not an adventurer or a warrior of the universe; I’m the head of a commercial organization, the president of a small to medium-sized company. Fighting, protecting, defeating with cool robots alone… that’s not enough…
Feeling the fatigue again, I… had Mars kneel down for me, then proceeded towards the snake, whose arm remained protruding like a gravestone.
“But, given the size of the junkyard, it won’t fit whole…”
“What if we tear it into three?”
“Let’s do that.”
I cleanly divided the two intact heads and the partially damaged one with the beam sword, adjusting their vertical lengths, and then placed them on the Third Eye’s hand for retrieval. Of course, I also retrieved the petrified left arm. Fearful of dropping them, I cautiously returned to the cockpit. As the hatch closed with a click, I let out a long sigh.
“Should we chase after the snake’s body all the way to the end?”
I asked Mars. But the snake’s body was ridiculously long, stretching from the dungeon’s entrance deep into the forest, making the search difficult.
“No… let’s stop. I didn’t intend to chase it all the way to another world, and the Third Eye is already in bad shape.”
To continue chasing would require more preparedness both in equipment and in spirit.
“Well, there’s no sign of the body being dragged away like when we cut off the bifurcated heads, and it’s completely lost its body heat, so let’s consider it defeated. The princess must be worried too.”
“Let’s do that. Man, I’m really tired…”
I nodded along with Mars’s words, directing the Third Eye towards the dungeon that had emerged.
“However, I’d like to seal this entrance to prevent something similar from coming out again.”
“Should we shoot the beam rifle like crazy and cause a collapse?”
“I’d rather not be buried alive here by shooting the ceiling, so let’s set the rifle to malfunction and detonate it.”
Before I finished speaking, Mars began manipulating the tablet-sized holograph he had summoned with gestures.
“I’ve set it to explode a minute after pulling the trigger, so let’s install it a bit further away.”
“Ugh… bidding farewell to this beam rifle that served us so well…”
“You can find the same thing in a junkyard.”
I discarded the beam rifle, pulling the trigger about a hundred meters from the entrance, and then returned to the still waterless dungeon.
“It’s… connected! What happened!?”
“Oh! Hime!”
As soon as the communication with the princess was established, a boom! followed by vibrations, and a continuous bass sound, echoed, and rocks started falling from the ceiling. The discarded beam rifle had exploded, causing a collapse.
“What!? What happened!?”
“Oh well, we went all the way to another world. We collapsed the entrance and came back.”
“And we defeated the snake.”
Flying through the darkness just like we did on the way here, I reported the situation to the princess, whose communication had been interrupted.
“So, are both of you okay?”
“We’re fine, we’re fine! There’s another snake on the other side of the dungeon, with three heads…”
“Three heads!? Why did it gain another one!?”
“I’ll tell you later. We’re about to head back, but what about the dungeon entrance?”
“The Self-Defense Force has it surrounded, but they haven’t entered yet, so it’s safe to come out.”
“Alright, then let’s pick up the pace.”
“Understood.”
Following Mars’s instructions, I increased the speed and stretched my arms upward, letting out a groan as my back cracked and a “Ugh” escaped from my throat. Mars, too, stretched while perched on my knees, lifting his butt up and yawning wide.
“I’m tired.”
“Seriously. Sitting on Tonbo’s knees is uncomfortable; I want to go back and sleep.”
While saying such selfish things, Mars, the cat, sat in a seiza posture and swayed his tail. I vaguely reached out towards his back with my tired mind… only to have my hand knocked away with a “Nyaa!” by a cat punch.
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