Chapter 30

The world shifted and we appeared in a high fantasy world. There were two shocked maids there, one with blue hair and one with red. Truck-kun knocked them aside, eating the magic thrown at him.

I knew exactly what to do. I ran. Truck-kun might know magic, but I knew Isekai. I dashed around the large mansion, looking for the right person. Unfortunately, Truck-kun caught me and I was instantly shredded. I died.

But in this Isekai, that wasn’t a problem. I felt the Isekai erase everyone’s memories and put everything back.

Everything was reset. I wasn't dead, the blue and red haired maids were back to panicking at our sudden appearance, and Truck-kun couldn’t remember a thing.

This time I ran for the window. Truck-kun caught me half way through the windows with an elephant tusk.

Another reset. I went deeper into the house. That time I died on the stairs.

Another reset. I dashed between the maid sisters and felt bad about what happened to them, but it gave me time to explore the house more before Truck-kun caught me and I died.

Another reset. It was going to take perfect reflexes and uncanny luck to fight Truck-kun face to face. Good thing I had infinite retries.

Reset after reset after reset. I died and came back. Finally I found the woman I was looking for outside the building on the grounds of the estate. She was dressed in white, and screamed upon seeing Truck-kun.

But the girl in white wasn’t the same one from the Isekai story called Un:Null. It was Nyarin. I had been rather busy and apparently the Isekai spell had decided to put Nyarin into the role of the girl with the white dress.

My real plan involved the small cat creature following Nyarin, called Puke. It wasn't really a cat, and it had a dangerous secret and was strongly protective of the girl in white.

The cat thing took one look at Truck-kun and reacted. This was the first reset in which I had found the girl and Puke, and everything went perfectly. Which was good, I had already experienced enough dying for one day.

Truck-kun was frozen solid, then crushed. The most dangerous thing now was Puke, so I ran. The cat thing had grown into a multi-story monster.

Frozen solid, Truck-kun couldn't move. That is, until he started actually eating the cold that had frozen his body. I saw it happen through my True Vision. Cold is apparently different in dreams, because Truck-kun was able to eat himself free of the cold and thaw.

Puke froze him again, then killed Truck-kun with a stomp that shattered the Baku into a million pieces.

I watched from a safe-enough distance. I saw Truck-kun die, frozen to pieces. But Truck-kun was immortal. He simply shrugged off death and came back, consuming the ice and Puke and everything.

I focused, shifting to another Isekai that might provide me just the weapon I needed at that moment.

The next Isekai was based on an VR game that had been canceled called “The World Tree Game”, because no one in their right mind would actually name a game after the ancient Norse myth of the World Tree. That's just unpronounceable.

I stumbled through the Tomb of Nazanick'name, looking for the Arena of Nazanick'name. I had watched the show about this Isekai a couple of times, but apparently that didn't give me a perfect understanding of the layout.

Where was that Arena?

Truck-kun hooked and growled and warbled as he chased me. He crushed walls and broke stone with his paws, tentacles, and even wings as he came.

I only had one chance to make the next tactic work. This Isekai didn't come with free resets if I died. But the video game that served as the basis for this Isekai did have some really cool Planet Items that I could use.

Truck-kun was catching up, and in a moment of luck I turned to find an entrance to the Arena of Nazanick'name, a massive amphitheater. I had summoned myself as close as possible to a specific item, and made sure Nyarin was nowhere near this fight.

What happened next would be very dangerous. There was a chance that this Planet Item could actually kill me if I used it wrong.

The other characters from the Isekai were there, except for the Landlord. I supposed that made sense, given that the role of Landlord was supposed to be played by the customer experiencing the Isekai.

I picked up the spear called Longeenuff, activated it, and threw it at Truck-kun.

He was impossible to miss. He had grown larger than a horse and was running right at me.

The spear of Longeenuff was designed to kill immortals.

It struck and Truck-kun hooked and barked in surprise. His hooves and paws halted.

My True Vision saw him die. It wasn't just that his body stopped living, but rather that inexorable, unchangeable death took hold of him and permanently sealed him away.

Above me in the amphitheater seating I heard a familiar voice. Nyarin had been dressed up as a character from the Landlord Isekai. Her hair was still a mix of orange, white, and black but she had two thick horns curving from her temples and a pair of black wings anchored at her waist.

She was learning forward, hands on a railing, eyes filled with excitement. I had struck Truck-kun down. Her white dress with matching gloves waved at me.

And then Truck-kun ate death. I saw it happen through the True Vision.

It had to have been the most horrific, triumphant, marvelous, and unholy things I had ever seen. He didn't just eat the Isekai dream substance that tried to define him as dead. He consumed the very idea, not just the dream matter of death in this Isekai, but everything about his death.

When he did that I experienced something. It wasn't exactly pain in my head. I was far worse than just pain. Pain would have been a simple, quantifiable thing. I was being unmade, destroyed, and obliterated and made to feel every instant of it.

Truck-kun was more than just a dream eater. When he had consumed death itself in this place he had been eating substance made from my own dreams. I had felt it as he took a big bite out of me. Even in defying death in this place he was hurting me, somewhere deep.

I had to admit it, even after all of the deception with Isekai and fighting Truck-kun like this I was still a big fan of Truck-kun. It didn’t matter that he was a horrific roiling soup of animal parts. He was incredible. There was no way I could possibly defeat him. What a magnificent enemy.

Sooner or later I was going to lose any extended fight with Truck-kun. I couldn’t defeat him even on my luckiest day and he could not be stopped.

As he came back to life he was clearly frustrated. Even if he couldn’t be physically fatigued or defeated, he was beginning to be deeply frustrated. He growled as life came back to his bizarre body that moved like a tidal wave of animal life.

Time for the next step in the plan.