Curse Nightmare Party – Jagan Yousei ga Yuku VRMMO - Chapter 29

29 : Shortcut – 1

“Now then, I guess I should check the other staircase and the hole in the ceiling.”
With my newly acquired『Taruwiveno +』, I moved to the 2nd layer and went through the usual procedures of defeating a Poisonous Bite Rat by afflicting it with the poison condition. While the other rats were drawn to the corpse, I headed towards the stairs in which I had yet to climb.
Did I have a method to defeat the rats in the 3rd layer?
If anything, I’m going to the 3rd layer in order to search for that.
Until I can find a solution…… let’s just run away at full speed whenever a dangling meat fern flower starts to bloom.
I should have a chance to do so right before it actually happens.

“Hmm…… This is a different location, probably.”
Anyhow, the divergent stairway brought me to the 3rd layer upon ascending up, but as expected, it put me in a different spot than the first staircase that I climbed.
There were distinctions in the pathway that could be seen as you stepped out from the stairs as well as variations in the arranged layout of the dangling meat fern flowers.

“Then, what about this opening?”
Next, I forced myself into the 3rd layer through the hole that was in the ceiling of the 2nd layer.

“Uwaa……”
“Chuu?”
My destination was a room where the ceiling and 4 walls surrounding it were covered in the moss of the dangling meat fern flowers…… though, it would’ve been fine if it was just that.
The problem was that once I strayed away from my current foothold, there was a hole that was deep enough to the point where I couldn’t even see the bottom of it and dangling meat fern flower vines continued to grow down the hole in earnest.
It appears the space here was particularly strange.
Despite that, the curse concentration was still at 10.
This room had become considerably peculiar, but it didn’t seem like it was the center of the dungeon.
Wait no, perhaps a different room might’ve been forcibly bending or distorting the space here.

“Let’s just pull it up for now.”
If nothing else, the long dangling meat fern flower vine was an item that I wanted.
With that being said, I tugged a nearby vine closer to me and used a piece of rebar that was protruding out of the hole to hoist the vine up little by little.

“……”

“Chuaaaaaa……”
It’s long…… really long…… 5 meters? 10 meters? In any case, it’s long.
I keep pulling and pulling it up, but I couldn’t see an end to this.

“Phew, finally.”
At last, the vine was around 30 meters in length.
However, it probably didn’t reach all the way to the bottom even if it was that long.
The end portion of the vine seemed to be normal with no flower buds blooming.

“I’m curious as to what the bottom of the hole was like, but I guess I shouldn’t bother with it right now.”
After I finished dragging up the vine, I flew towards the ceiling and stripped off the moss at its root to detach it from said ceiling.
Then, I stored the vine and the moss that was stuck to the root separately inside of the fur bag.

“What about the other openings”
I went back to the 2nd layer and investigated the other holes in the ceiling.
Only, there wasn’t anything unusual about them compared to the hole before and every one of them just put me in a normal spot within the 3rd layer’s labyrinth.
Personally, I for sure thought one of them could’ve been a shortcut, but…… well, can’t be helped if there’s not much here.
Also, I couldn’t find anything that could’ve worked as a counter-measure for the aforementioned rats, so I’ll put that aside for now.
Since I’ve obtained a rather excellent vine, let’s move on to the other thing I wanted to do earlier.

“Then, onto the next.”
I went over to the broken part of the building’s wall.
Leaning outside of the building, I confirmed again that the 4th layer’s wall was broken where I would jump up towards.

“Suu…… Sei-!”
Then, I leapt up in full force as I came out of the building.

“Nuooooo!!”
The moment I reached the highest point of my jump, I wholeheartedly flapped my wings and forcibly elevated my body.

“Hmph!”
I extended out one arm and hung onto the edge of the 4th layer.
Now, this is where it begins.
Because of the levitation curse on my body, I was only able to touch the ground…… or rather, what the system recognizes as the ground for a short moment.
Therefore, my body immediately began to float up as I hung onto the edge. However, since there was no friction, I started to slip back down due to the center of gravity.

“It’s now or never……!!”
Inversely, it also meant that I had touched it for an instant.
After coming in contact with the floor, my body rose.
In other words, if I flapped my wings with my utmost strength, I’d be able to resist the slipping descent.

“I’ll do this in one shot!!”
I bent my joints as I floated on up and as soon as I rose to the surface, I extended them all at once while pressing them against the floor!
Then, my body advanced forward just for a slight bit and the overall amount of my body that’s entered the 4th layer had increased!
And if I keep repeating this over and over again…..

“Fwaa, haa…… I somehow managed to climb up.”
I was able to place my center of gravity onto the 4th level.
The shortcut was a success.
Also, the fact that the Poisonous Bite Rats were acting docile as I was climbing up was something that I had ascertained with my eyes.

“Now then……”
I took the long dangling meat fern flower vine that I had obtained earlier out from my fur bag.
Then I clutched onto part of its root, jumped up and stuck it against the ceiling.

“With this, the shortcut’s more or less complete.”
I made sure that it was posted securely before kicking the vine out of the building and letting it suspend down.
This should allow me to travel past the 3rd layer by going up and down the vine.
The rats can’t damage the dangling meat fern flower seemingly due to orders from above so the vine likely won’t be severed either.

“Well, let’s try it out, shall we?”
“Chuu“
I grasped the vine and lightly flapped my wings to lower my speed as I exited the building.

“Yeah, it’s quite stable, isn’t it.”
When I had reached the walls of the 3rd layer, I vaguely wrapped the vine around my body and took on a position where I somewhat stood on the 3rd layer’s wall while I gazed at the scenery outside of the building.
There wasn’t anything particularly different compared to the last time I looked at it.
However, it was pretty fascinating to see the numerous dungeons and fields mingled together as well as the monsters who were strutting around as they please, which you could catch sight of if you squinted hard enough.

“Hm? Ahh, so there was something else there that’s different from previously.”
Here, I once again spot a group of 6 human-like entities brazenly walking on the road.
Thereupon, I contemplated a little.
I had already verified that『Magic Eye of Poison・１＋』could reach from here.
I wouldn’t get any items upon defeating them and it was dubious to say that I would even properly receive the experience points, so the value in taking them down was low.
Though, I haven’t tried fighting while I was clinging to a dangling meat fern flower vine yet.
For argument’s sake, if I were to get into a situation where I would encounter the giant bird-looking creature again like I did earlier, it’ll be worth it to investigate whether or not I could retaliate against it and there was no harm in trying so now.

“『Taruwiveno』”
With that said, I used 13 of my eyes and injected『Magic Eye of Poison・１＋』into the leading vanguard of the 6 member group.
Let’s see, it applied Poison (78) on a full hit, huh.
The overall damage should exceed 3000, I believe.
In any case, they’ll definitely die. No doubt about it.
By the way, before its strengthening, the amount of poison that was dealt with a full hit was (65) and the total damage was a little over 2000, so even if it was just 1, you could see the significance in increasing the number of the fixed value.
Nevertheless, this was all within my expectations.
However, from here on, the group of 6 displayed a reaction that was unanticipated to me.

“Hah? What the hell are they doing, those guys.”
“Chuu?”
“No, I don’t really get it, but they started attacking each other.”
“Chuchuu?”

For some reason, the one who had gotten poisoned initiated an attack on the others.

“Hm, it seems like they really are trying to kill each other. Was it perhaps a struggle over recovery items?”
“Chuuu?
“For now, let’s just spread the poison to the others.”
They mistook my poison as an attack from someone that was with them, but their actions were far too desperate, or rather, there weren’t even any hints of a verbal dispute.
On top of that, if they were aiming for the recovery items, that probably meant that they didn’t have an item that could cure the poison itself.
Of course, they also didn’t want to die.
That’s why they went to steal away their fellow group member’s own recovery items.
From there, once they suspected something, everything else ended up looking suspicious which led to them starting a scuffle…… I guess?

“With this, all 6 of them have received a fair share of poison.”
At any rate, unlike the previous group of 6, it appears that this one was too fragile, or perhaps I should say that there was no sign of trust between them.
Were they really okay with that?
For the time being, the 6 of them had been inflicted with a lethal level of poison, so I decided to watch over them attentively until their complete defeat-, or not…… An unrelated monster had charged in and wiped them all out.

“Oh, this one has good reaction timing.”
The light brown quadruped monster rushed in and….. defeated the survivors before quickly hiding itself behind cover.
It appears that even though it didn’t know where I was exactly, it seemed to have understood what conditions I needed to have set up.
At this point, I concluded that the four-legged beast was definitely a player.
I believe it had experience from a different game, but the player possessed movements that were clearly familiar with attacks from a super long distance.

“Fumu, I wonder if I should take note of it in case I come across it in the future.”
According to the official website, once the game begins its service and a little over 2 weeks has elapsed, the first official event, which was considered to be a PvP tournament, would be held on the Sunday of the week after next.
I don’t know if it’ll appear in the event and there isn’t much information out right now, but it probably wouldn’t be good to expose one’s cards, right?

“Well then, I guess I should explore up to the 5th layer by the end of today.”
As I summarized my thoughts, I climbed up the vine and went back to the 4th layer.