Chapter 241: Chat Map
———Kenni———
<4: 19 pm>
“Damn, that’s crazy. How did you increase your access level?” I said while looking at the control panels.
“It’s complicated.” She said with a straight face as she looked at the current screen on display. “Mind you, I only have enough access to get into this room in the first place. I tried, but for now we can only do bird’s eye view, which is its most basic function. We’re also only restricted to seven thousands kilometers in radius for our viewing.”
“Well that’s a bit lame. So what does it actually do though? If it’s just a fancy map with more detail there’s no reason for it to be so restrictive.” This being one of the secret areas means that this is definitely not a place they want people to accidentally wander into.
“It can zoom in and capture footage in real time, and with its ability to detect individuals, it means that we can check the movement of the population and such very easily. It can also be used to search for battles as well, since it can detect spikes in mana.” Oh. Now that’s interesting. Certainly quite helpful, even if those are the only things we have access to.
“...I just realized something, isn’t seven thousand kilometers more than enough to observe the entirety of the States?” That’s actually a massive amount of area that covers a lot of Canada as well, and a good deal of countries down south.
“Indeed. The full access would presumably allow an observation on the entire world.” Damn. That’s a crazy amount of power to have even to a small group of people. “I don’t know if they have been using this place frequently, or if they even require it to have so much reach and awareness of everything happening in the area. Regardless, this place is quite convenient for the two of us, I believe.”
“It’ll definitely be… I still don’t have higher level access than you though. I can’t come here by myself.” The fact that she’s not telling me her secrets to getting it is certainly annoying. I do know that the hunt for higher level access is intentional to make people explore the area more. There’s probably a way to bypass that little game, but I doubt they’re going to be giving out freebies. If they didn’t give it to anyone in our class, then no one else is getting it.
“That’s your problem to solve. Now then, let’s check to see any records of battles happening in the area we can reasonably travel to.” She said before walking over to the control panel and began searching.
“How detailed is it gonna be?” I muttered as I waited for the result to show up in full.
“Quite detailed, even in this form.” She said before the screen started to zoom in and start showing more details. “We’re searching for recent battles in at least three days. All those dots and symbols are what the system recorded. The more complicated the symbol, the more significant the damage is.”
“Hmm…” I said while looking at the map and everything that was recorded. There hadn’t been any significant battles happening around here in a while, it looks like. Can’t really find anything that’s more than a scuffle. “Guess we have to look a bit outward… Have you been checking it frequently?”
“No. Aside from yesterday after school hours, I haven’t actually checked anything.” She answered. “By the way, would you like to see the real-time tracker?”
“The what? Sure. Sounds kinda scary.” I wanna see if it does what I think it does.
She pressed a few buttons and suddenly we saw a bunch of dots on the map, some moving, some not.
“It’s not very detailed thanks to the limitation imposed on those without higher level of access, but at this level we can see things like spikes in power that indicate a fight or a spell being casted, and the level of accuracy seems to be at almost a hundred percent. The only thing it can’t accurately record is someone’s activity in a dungeon, that seems to be completely out of its observation range.” Even at this level this seems like a very dangerous piece of tech. I can’t imagine that one of these doesn't exist elsewhere, and probably with all of its functions available. From how she worded it, it can easily intrude on other people’s privacy and gather an enormous quantity of data. For what purpose? Who cares? I just don’t want to think about it further than that. “And that is also only available up to three days in terms of record. Mind you, extremely powerful individuals can mask their power enough to avoid detection even from this, though its extremely subtle method means very few would even feel it.”
“How extreme are we talking here, since I have no idea something like this is even a thing.” I consider myself a pretty strong individual and all that.
“Very extreme. So the likes of Wiina and Rico.” She gave out some examples. So those who are basically impossible to ever catch up to, ain’t that something. The same group of people who are probably complicit in creating this thing in the first place.
She seems to be searching something as she moves the map to a state to the north and rewinding the recorded movement.
“As you can see here. This is my own movement.” She said while focusing on a dot on the map that is painted red to show the danger level. Looks like she’s showing her movement from when she’s going for a rematch, with the speed of her dot moving being significantly faster than the others on the replay. Probably because of that rocket scythe of hers.
“Hey, is the power reading super accurate?” I asked, seeing that her dot is a different color than the others. I see some yellow ones in a building near the dungeon, but I don’t know what that means either.
“No. It’s only when it’s recording an active battle that it can gauge things with much better accuracy.” She answered. “I fought her inside the dungeon, so the battle cannot be recorded, just so we’re clear.”
“…So did she fight at all during the past three days?” That can give me a metric to work with.
“I was planning on showing you that.” She said before meddling with the controls and the location change, moving up north again and changing to battle records, and the time was rewinded.
And on the screen, a battle with a danger level of A+. Now that is above something that could already perform a city-destroying attack. That plus mark means that it’s on the cusp of the double A rank, which is at least five times more destructive than something that could destroy a city.
She then opened up a profile for one of the combatants that has been blurred out except for the calculated danger level which is at A+.
“Hmm… I guess you would be considered to be at double A? Since you win and all that.” It’s hard to tell since the higher the rank means higher the ballpark. Even someone who is considered an A rank threat could be twice as strong as someone under the same criteria. I believe it’s vague on purpose to account for possible fluctuations. Even things that seem trivial like the combatant’s mood or surrounding environment could tip the scale. As a general rule of thumb, if they’re the same rank, they can beat each other up, that’s about it.
“Perhaps, the plus increment is quite small even though the power level between each tier is exponentially higher.” She said, clearly not caring too much about it. “It doesn’t really matter. Let’s actually start searching for opponents through the battle records.”
She then starts searching by filtering out anything below a certain rank and then zooming out the map until we can see all the recent battles.
“Huh? What’s that one?” I said, calling out to one of the bigger dots that has a special symbol on it. It’s not too far from where we are, as in the state below us.
She zoomed in and opened up the detail page on it, and the map is displaying a ruined city from a bird's eye view.
“AA+ rank? No wonder the map looks like that.” I remarked. That’s a danger level none of us have ever dealt with to my understanding. “Is it a human or a monster? If it’s a monster, then dealing with it won’t be hard with the two of us.”
“Seems to be something sentient.” She answered as she read through the details. “Just one individual is doing this. Probably the hardest fight of our lives if we don’t include trying to antagonize certain figures.”
“Speaking of the hardest fight… I think the hardest I got was still that frog woman. Besides that there’s also those damn birds. We still don’t know what’s causing them to roam around, right?” Looking back at it, those things put up a bigger fight than basically everything else. It’s also been a long time since I fought that frog woman, so maybe they’re even stronger than her?
“It’s solved by now, so I don’t really care.” She bluntly stated.
Now where specifically does this take place… West Virginia, it’s like in the middle of the state… The affected area is quite massive, as one would expect of something on the cusp of being categorized as a country-destroyer.
“What in the world happened for the place to be so wrecked?” Could she maybe show the replay even from above.
“Let’s find out then.” She said before she rewind the footage to the time of the fight and remove most of the UI so we can get a better look.
So it was intact just yesterday, and in only an hour all of it was either destroyed or badly damaged. There’s no way that place is habitable.
“Whoever that was is still there?” I pointed out as the rewind stopped and we returned to the present time, with the big dot on the map still being there. “Now that’s an interesting find. Looks like the state not known for its intelligence can at least produce someone beefy for us to use as a punching bag.”
“That danger rank does pose quite a threat. Realistically speaking, with this individual being a whole rank higher, even if we find a few more people at our level to subdue this thing, it might not be enough.” Emmie pointed out.
“Huh? When were you such a chicken?” I said with a smirk, not that it’s going to be easy to make out in this dark room.
“I am saying that for your benefit.” She replied. Is it now?
“Whatever. I guess we’ll see who chicken out first tomorrow.” I said while looking at the target moving about in the abandoned city. Clearly not someone of sound mind or even have a plan. I think whoever this is could use company, or perhaps someone to put them out of their misery.
With how things are going, this person is gonna become a threat. I don’t really know anyone or anything from the surrounding area, but as the saying goes, you never know what you’ll need in the future, even something from a far away place could hold some value at some point.
Me blasting that city in half was more because I was in the moment and I wanted to finish that fight big, but it looks like the others don’t quite see it that way.
“It’s nice that they have already cleared out the area for us. There’s no way for me to get blamed for destroying a city this time around. It was already a lost cause.” It means I can completely go out right from the start. Nothing to weigh me down.
“Just make sure to not make it worse, at least.” Oh come on! Have some more faith, will ya?