Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 20 - Chapter SS1

Altar’s PK History

Caldina

“A toast to our success.”

“Cheers.”

“Cheers!”

Following the events on Eltram, the three members of Goblin Street came back from their death penalty and held a little celebration at a bar. While all of them had died, they had still managed to get the Marshall IIs that they had come for—and thanks to the deal with Moneygold, they had even managed to find a good buyer for them.

This was their first success in a while, and they chose to celebrate it with the money they had right now.

As they enjoyed a feast that was luxurious by their current standards, Eldridge, pestered by Niala and Fey, told them how the fight played out.

“Huh? But that’s basically a win for you. You’d have totally had it if they hadn’t butted in. IF weren’t playin’ fair,” said Fey upon hearing the story, clearly upset.

“It wasn’t a duel. PK battles really aren’t the place for fairness,” Eldridge said, readily accepting the result. He himself ambushed others on the regular, so he really felt like he couldn’t complain if it happened to him. “But man...IF, huh? I can’t say I expected to fight Sechs’s clan like this,” he said, his thoughts wandering to the past.

“Speaking of, did you ever fight Sechs Würfel directly?” Niala asked.

“I did. I stood no chance, though, so I backed out before it was over.”

Sechs was the one who had first taken the title of “Altar’s strongest PK” from him.

“You stood no chance? Whaddya mean?”

“He’s a slime, so taking his body parts is pointless, and there’s nothing for me to gain from it.”

“Ohhh...” Niala and Fey said in unison.

“Since physical attacks don’t work on him, I tried using Gems, but he blocked the one with Crimson Sphere in it using some heat-absorbing shield he copied somewhere. I realized that I couldn’t win an endurance match against him and backed out...and some time later, everyone started calling him ‘Altar’s strongest PK’ instead. That’s how it went.”

With Eldridge having a bad matchup against him and Sechs being a Superior, the public opinion quickly shifted. Soon enough, Sechs was widely considered to be the most powerful PK in Altar.

Looking back, Sechs might’ve actually been the first in Eldridge’s long chain of unfortunate encounters with incompatible Superiors.

“Even if I wanted to come up with a plan and try for round two, Sechs was the one who gained more levels and abilities as time went by. Ultimately, I realized that going up against him was just a waste and started sharing info with B3 and people like that so I could keep track of where he was active and avoid him.”

Sechs was a man who committed crime for the sake of crime—a man whose means and goals were one and the same. Even to PKs, he was an entity who didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

Going anywhere this absurd individual was active could mean getting caught up in whatever villainous acts he might commit. Because of that, they took to treating him like a rabid bear best avoided—though “bear” was probably a better description of Sechs’s rival rather than Sechs himself.

“Then Sechs was sent to the gaol, and when I thought it was gonna be between just me and B3...” Eldridge paused, emptied his glass of booze, put on a bitter face, and let out a sigh. “...Kashimiya came from Tenchi.”

“Ohhh...” Niala and Fey said in unison.

And then there was the rabid...or rather, the vorpal hare. Most duelists and standout PKs had experienced having their heads lopped off by Kashimiya, and Eldridge was no exception. Not even Skeleton could save him from that fate.

Because of that, once Sechs left, the title of “Altar’s strongest PK” went to Kashimiya. That was also around the time when King of Light’s obsessive search for reference material began to stand out.

Eldridge fell silent as he reflected upon the past and thought, With the kind of PKs they have, Altar may have been even more of a hellscape than Caldina.