Surviving a Shounen Manga

Does This Even Make Sense?

Tiling–.

[Warning!]

[Intention to violate plausibility has been detected]

[Acts are prohibited by the preceding plot]

[Movement is restricted for 2 minutes as a cumulative penalty]

[Author's favourability decreases by 10]

[Character's level decreases slightly]

[Are you sure you want to bypass the sanction?]

– Remaining chances: 2

Two chances left?

Just then,

‘Ah!'

I blinked, remembering.

A feature called ‘preceding plot can be ignored' that I'd received from the system as my level rose.

In addition to the eight veto rights I had purchased, two more lives (?) were left.

‘No, ait. The function seems a bit different from the veto ticket?'

Wasn't this close to a ‘fundamental right' guaranteed by the system? It felt a little different from a product I could buy with points.

I decided to save it for now. There might not be that much difference in the effects, but the veto might not work against high severity penalties.

Instead, I consumed one [penalty veto] in the inventory tab.

And then,

– When used, the following penalties are removed

1. Limited movement for 2 minutes

2. Slight decrease in character level

※ Author's favourability reduction cannot be vetoed.

– Are you sure you want to decline the penalty? This veto is one-time use only.

A confirmation message appeared.

Looking at the emphasis on one-time use, even the system knew that it was expensive.

But I couldn't help it. If I didn't use the veto, my life itself might get snuffed out, and then what use would my points be?

‘Confirm.'

Then, the pressure that had been pressing upon my body disappeared in an instant.

It really works.

I looked straight ahead.

There stood a man, looking at me with wary eyes.

Wales.

A man with a skull-like face, wrinkled body, and neat long locks of straight hair for some reason.

A character who wielded a great spear the length of his own body as a weapon, and mainly used a ‘one-shot kill' attack to end battles in a single blow.

Judging only by overall significance in the plot, he wasn't some bigshot. He was more of the type that would appear with a cocky smirk but would get smashed flat in the end.

Nevertheless, the reason he was able to appear at least occasionally before Leo and party before they passed the King's Road in the original work, was because both his appearance and attack style was full of personality.

A rake-thin man with neat, straight hair, with a gigantic spear, aiming it horizontally, and delivering a deadly blow.

He was obviously quirky enough to create a maniac fan base.

Anyway, he was a very suitable guy to be used as the first sacrifice in my ‘lead character hunting'.

Wales seemed to feel an aura of danger from me as I grinned at him.

"… Are you the real Squatjaw?"

"That's right."

"But… I don’t think you have any treasures."

"That’s right, too."

"I don’t understand. You put your treasures into someone else's hands? And blocked the people chasing him? What are you thinking?"

"All of this has a deep meaning. Do you think you can understand everything in the world?"

Then,

"…"

Wales nodded quickly, and grabbed his spear.

"That’s right. There are many things in the world that I don't understand. But it's also true that there's an easy way to solve this. Once I poke a few holes in you, you'll sing on you own without even waiting for me to ask. There's no need to waste time talking."

Saying so, he lowered his posture, pulling his spear all the way back.

Whoo.

This guy had a pretty brutal side.

Well, some readers must've liked that too.

I grinned at him again, then picked up a long wooden stick lying nearby. Then I took the exact same pose.

And then,

"What are you doing?"

His eyes were full of wonder.

I must've looked crazy. Maybe he thought I was joking.

But I had no intention of making him understand. I wanted him to look at me with his eyes full of ‘How is this possible?!' The more he did that, the more the readers would feel the same way.

Actually, before I started this ‘lead character hunting', I'd decided upon a set of guidelines.

Just mimic their skills and beat them at their own game.

This was an arc where numerous characters were scheduled to appear and show off their unique abilities. What could be more eye-catching at this juncture than beating each one with the same ability?

I was going to reveal my ‘goblin background' in this arc anyway, so there was no worry about the readers questioning it either. Rather, I hoped that their questions would be amplified.

So, I was going to apply [Mimic Acrobat] straightaway.

But,

"… Huh?"

Suddenly, an unexpected problem occurred.

The ability didn't activate.

‘What?'

I tried again, but ran into the same problem. It was a failure.

How unexpected.

"Wait, wait!"

I quickly changed my position and raised my hand to stop my opponent.

"What are you doing?"

"Wait, wait just one minute!"

I just carefully reproduced the situation in my head.

Why didn't it work?

All conditions had already been met. I knew his face and name, had seen his ability before, and knew how it worked. And next, my physical ability was also superior…

At that moment,

‘… No way.'

It felt like my heart was about to burst.

There was no question. Unless this guy's unique ability had suddenly been changed, there was only one condition that I possibly couldn't satisfy.

Physical ability.

What the current situation meant was clear. My physical ability was insufficient to mimic this guy's unique ability.

… Did this even make sense?

Of course, it was true that this guy's unique ability required a particularly strong body. Since the ability belonged to the type that drew in the body's inherent power to the fullest to achive an explosive release, inevitably the underlying body had to be strong. In fact, a meme had even made the rounds in the fan community for a while about how that skinny body was actually full of compressed, wiry muscles.

But nevertheless, this made no sense.

How could I possibly be weaker in power than this guy?

The small list I'd made of guys possibly stronger than me had already been as conservative as possible. To be honest, I'd actually been considering whether it might be worthwhile to have a tussle with Karl Zayed…

"Eeh…"

I was feeling terribly frustrated.

Of course, there was no objective data to show strength as a numerical value. My standard for measuring a character's strength was also ambiguous. At most, I was just making a judgment based on ‘character significance' or ‘history with other opponents'.

But that didn't make it a lie. Since this guy's one-hit special attack could be blocked and even completely destroyed by just a bullet from Kiriko, I could only rank him as someone who ‘can't stand even a single shot from Kiriko'.

"Hey, are you trying to buy time or something? If you're afraid…"

"Ugh, wait! I said wait!"

"…"

I hurriedly looked up my status window.

Had I read it wrong? Had it been cut down even more?

The status window was still the updated version even after my drop in level.

[Character Level]

– Current rating: Supporting

– Current value: 716

– Experience: 2%

– Value to reach the next level: ?

– Preceding plot can be ignored: 2 times

As I thought.

Originally it'd been in the early 1000s, now it was cut to the early 700s.

‘Why…'

It'd be most reasonable to say I was now at around 70% of my original level.

And to be honest, it wasn't a bad number. Nothing too dissatisfying. This much could be quickly restored, and I'd honestly thought I wouldn't have any trouble dealing with these ‘two-bit mob characters'.

Also, this wasn't the only metric I was using to mentally calculate my overall strength.

There were two more.

1. Physical body strength and intensity,

2. Identifying unique abilities that could be mimicked.

These two.

And the results weren't bad.

In terms of physical might, during my measurements, I hadn't felt ‘weakened' too much, and I hadn't had any trouble mimicking the unique abilities of Leo's party, which were my baseline. And even then, I was mimicking them from a few chapters further on.

Of course, their unique abilities weren't 1:1 with their physiques like Karl Zayed, so it was true that they were easier to mimic in that sense. But even so, they were the main characters of this story. They were the ones who'd restore their power the fastest.

So, based on all of this, I'd thought that I had reasonably measured my strength in my own way.

"Haah…"

It really felt like my mentality was breaking down.

Not to mention that all my plans had gone awry, I didn't even know if I could quickly deal with the guy in front of me.

I looked back at Wales again.

He also seemed to have decided to just attack.

"I don't know if you thought delaying the time would help, but it's led to your death. If you'd run as soon as you met us, you might've saved your life."

The spear in his hands began to glow brightly.

It looked like he'd been cleverly gathering strength while I was busy thinking. The destructive power of his one shot strike would intensify the longer it gathered power.

"… Alright, I suppose this is it."

Slap-!

I slapped my cheeks with both hands.

Then I quickly cleared my mind.

I could ponder over the possible reasons later.

Maybe I'd been overestimating my own strength, or maybe this guy was stronger than I'd thought.

Besides, that was the point of ‘power balance adjustment', wasn't it? In order to balance the new characters, the power of the current strongest had to be cut to size.

Looking at it that way, it was a problem that I'd considered the power levels of the original to compare. Since I'd become one of the strongest people in the world, yet the original never had somebody like me.

And on top of that, the author might've applied a separate adjustment only on certain characters. It might've been naive to think that all existing characters would've been weakened by ‘equal proportions'.

Anyway, it was my fault.

I had to admit what I had to admit and adapt to this new reality. If I only kept idly muttering to myself, I'd definitely be blown away by the coming attack.

But…

"Even so, I can still deal with you."

I quickly activated a unique ability.

It wasn't a goblin ability. Mental abilities might indeed tide me over the current situation, but they didn't have much reader appeal. They weren't flashy, after all.

It was embarassing, but since I'd paid such a high price and came to hunt the leading characters, shouldn't I show a decent performance?

So, this was the one I chose.

[Six Burning Bullets].

I pulled out two revolvers from my waist that'd suddenly appeared.

Quickly rotated the chambers.

Both chambers received the same type of bullet.

Penetration X penetration.

‘I'm sorry, Kiriko, but I have no choice but to use it in advance.'

Starting with this arc, Kiriko's significance and battle scenes would increase rapidly.

Probably because the main character and the party had weakened so visibly in the aftermath of the power balance adjustment. So the author had to immediately start work on character enhancement in the original.

And among Kiriko's opponents, there was also this guy called Wales, and to his shock, his spear had been mercilessly dismantled by Kiriko's bullets. The ‘one-hit deathblow' from a guy who had a stronger body than me now.

Of course, it wasn't just a straightforward test of power.

In terms of power alone, Wales might've been stronger. No, he almost definitely was.

The reason why Kiriko was still able to win was because he'd aimed directly at that ‘blindspot in that fatal blow'.

"Are you… that confident because you have a couple of guns?"

Wales' spear suddenly shone with a dazzling light. Looked like he'd fully gathered his strength.

And then,

"This is a spear that can pierce though even a missile that contains the essence of Northland science. If you can stop it, stop it."

His great spear shot at me.

And the moment the tip of the spear reached in front of me,

Bang! Bang!

I shot ‘overlapped' bullets at the center of the spear, the nucleus of that energy.

And then,

Pshng–.

Pop–.

My bullet pierced his spear very easily.

For a moment, Wales' face turned red with astonishment.

"Wh-, what…?"

Of course, my magic bullet also lost its power and disappeared.

But nevertheless,

"You want to try again?"

Victory and defeat was clear at a glance.

What Wales used was a one-hit fatal attack, and I just shot just two bullets.

Again, I only had to rotate the chambers the same way, and –

Clackackack – click!

The bullets were loaded once again.

"Uh, how…."

Wales looked like he's gone completely insane.

Well, no wonder. The attack that had condensed all his strength had been scattered with just two bullets.

"The essence of your one hit special doesn’t lie in how much power you can gather. It's about condensing that power and focusing it through a single point."

As long as you broke through its centre, all that power would quickly disperse in all directions.

Kiriko's magic bullets could not only combine different properties, but also overlap the same property to dramtically strengthen it.

And I'd struck that nexus of energy with two penetrative bullets overlapped.

AKA, the ‘awl.'

This was Kiriko's weapon that had defeated Wales in the original.

"The reason you were able to pierce the Northland missiles is simple. Because your spear was the smaller of the two. And I beat you the same way. Compared to my bullets, your spear's just way too wide."

"That, how can that…"

To be honest, I did feel a little guilty, bluffing like that. This was a Wales-specific solution that Kiriko had had to squeeze his brain dry to come up with.

Due to this battle between us, perhaps the next battle between those two would take a different route.

‘Eh, I don't care…'

Those two would have to be the ones to figure it out. Or the author would.

I turned back.

I'd never really considered finishing him off here.

He'd already been beaten down, and my strength had been proven too.

The leading point of view would probably change hands soon.

And indeed,

– The leading point of view of the chapter has changed.

– The main character of the current chapter is ‘Dorian'.

The results were as expected.

"Whoo…"

The next opponent was a bit of a headache.

He wasn't going to be easy to beat. No, if I thought he wasn't going to be easy, maybe in reality he'd turn out to be really troublesome.

To be honest, it didn't seem like I could just go deal with him as I pleased. It might be better to take a more cautious approach, to carefully choose an ability that would be optimized to beat him in the safest and most satisfing way.

‘Come to think of it, if these guys are already giving me trouble, I might have to make some proper preparations for the ‘real contenders'.'

I felt the tension slowly ratchet up through my body.

A heart-pounding sensation that I hadn't felt for a while.

"… Haah."

Now was only one down. There was a long way to go.

I shook my head once to shake off my thoughts, then immediately shouted.

"Cocoa, let’s move!"

"Ah, I guess it'll take some time…"

Kiriko nodded at Yan's words.

He'd expected that.

"It should. Because this is a puzzle, to find the real one among the Squatjaws. That's more of a decipherer's job than a guide's, right?"

At that,

"I thought you were going to forever stay an idiot… Hoh, have you gotten a little smarter?"

Siana nodded her head.

"Can you find him or not?"

"You're back to asking a stupid question again. It only lasted a second. Have you forgotten?"

Then,

"I’m the kind of person who never gets anything wrong."

She smiled and added.

Well, at least she was confident.

Irrespective of whether she was right or not.

That was then.

"But… what are you looking for?"

Siana asked a slightly random question.

"What do you mean?"

When Kiriko looked at her with puzzled eyes, she continued with a strange smile.

"The treasure? Or… Squatjaw?"

It was an absurd statement. What did that…

Wait, maybe?

"… Are you saying that Squatjaw and the treasure are not at the same place? Isn't Squatjaw holding the treasure?"

Siana nodded.

"I can’t be sure… but I think, maybe?"

"…"

There was a moment of silence.

Before long, Kiriko spoke slowly.

"The treasure will probably be found by Leo’s side."

"Why? Leo seems to want a battle with Squatjaw."

"I know. That guy is obsessed with Squatjaw. The only problem is that redheaded girl with Leo. After all, that girl is the one looking for the path. I don't think she'd be bothered about the difference. She's probably aiming purely for the treasure."

Siana also nodded in agreement.

"Hmmm… that’s a reasonable analysis. How unlike you."

"I'm not an idiot."

"Yes, yes, amazing. Anyway, what about you? Are you going for the treasure? Or Squatjaw?"

"… Well."

Kiriko was also interested in Squatjaw. But not to the same extent as Leo. Or Siana, for that matter.

To be honest, he couldn't understand why they paid so much attention to Squatjaw. They'd bumped into him a few times and been beaten, but at best, those matches had been nothing more than ‘games'.

What if they preperly fought as adventurers, as ‘adversaries'? He'd never thought that he might lose.

And, in fact, more than Squatjaw, there was another guy who'd truly shocked him.

Karl Zayed.

A human being against whom he could never be sure of victory, even in a proper clash.

Rather, it was because of that man that his interest in Squatjaw had deepened. Because he really didn't understand how Squatjaw's team had been able to beat that guy during the qualification exam.

"Looks like you're more interested in the latter."

Siana seemed to have guessed his mind, and smiled lightly.

"I was just wondering if there was anything more interesting going on."

But just as Kiriko was going to add more –

Siana suddenly said something strange.

"For example… something like that?"

"Huh?"

A strange sight came to Kiriko's eyes as he turned his head following Siana's finger.

People and objects were bouncing up like firecrackers bursting into the sky. A giant sword of immense size, one of the squat-jawed goblins, everything was soaring into the air without discrimination.

"… He really is here."

He didn't know how the fight had broken out, but they'd chosen the wrong opponent.

Because that monster was strong enough to treat almost all humans like toys without needing any special abilities.

Kiriko's eyes lit up for a moment.

It was Karl Zayed.

He'd arrived.

Editor's Notes:

None for this chapter.

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