Chapter 54: Putting Feelings Into a Moment, Part 2
Pencilgon: "To put it bluntly, 'Wethermon the Tombguard' is a Unique Monster Ashura-Kai's been keeping secret ever since they discovered it last winter. Now it's just this sad sack they use as an EXP server to level new members and a punching bag for PvP practice."
Just encountering a Unique Monster grants experience. If you could monopolize the location of a Unique Monster that isn't a random encounter like Lycagon the Nightslayer, it'd be the ultimate leveling spot. I see—the leader of Ashura-Kai is quite the efficiency nut.
Pencilgon: "They've kept it so hidden they even forced the members who left to keep quiet. But still... don't you think that's just wrong?"
Sunraku: "Well, yeah."
Katzo: "At the very least, doing that in an MMO is kinda nonsense."
It's like staring at a full-course banquet and never touching it, I guess. Not that I'm saying it's bad, and I'm not about to judge... but if they're not gonna do it, then we might as well, right?
Pencilgon: "So we're going to exploit a gap in Ashura-Kai's watch and slip into the area where Wethermon the Tombguard is. Shall I go over the specific strategy?"
Pencil Warrior sent us a "Player Book," an item players can write information into themselves. The fact that she had it prepared beforehand means this is a pretty meticulously crafted plan.
Unique Monster "Wethermon the Tombguard" becomes fightable by accepting the EX Unique Scenario "With Love from This Shore to the Other."
The conditions to accept the Unique Scenario are: on a full moon night, visit the Hidden Garden—a secret area within the Prismatic Forest Grotto—without equipping any weapons whatsoever. There, you can speak with the Unique NPC "Setsuna of Bygone Days" to accept the quest.
Sunraku: "Huh..."
Pencilgon: "What's up? I'll answer any questions."
Sunraku: "Nah, just thinking out loud."
EX Unique Scenario, huh... So EX scenarios really are directly tied to Unique Monsters. Which would mean that thing I triggered is also... no, let's not think about that right now.
After accepting the scenario, visit the Hidden Garden on the night of a new moon, and a path to a further hidden field will appear.
Katzo: "I've never done a Unique Scenario, so I gotta ask—are they all this convoluted?"
Pencilgon: "Hmm, hard to say... Set-chan—the NPC—does give you hints that point you in the right direction, so as long as you've triggered the flags, there's not that much to agonize over."
Sunraku: "And from the next page on, it's the strategy info for Wethermon."
Upon battle start, Wethermon the Tombguard activates a skill that "caps the level of all characters in the battle area except himself at 50." All players are forced to fight with their stats drastically reduced.
This is because, simultaneous with the level reduction, all "status points allocated between levels 51 and 99" vanish for the duration of the battle.
Verification confirms this effect also applies to NPCs, so we must conclude that strategies relying on a party of high-level NPCs are also pointless.
Hold up a second.
Sunraku: "It interferes with levels and stats? I get from reading that it's only during battle, but... isn't this basically impossible? That thing's gotta be way over level 100, right?"
Pencilgon: "A player with Appraisal checked—it was level 200. Even a full-power brain-dead attacker can't scratch it. A total cheat skill... It's probably a special victory type."
Forcing a 150-level gap, leaving him at four times our level, is pretty vicious. Still, a special victory type... the kind often seen in event battles where you need to fulfill a different condition instead of reducing the enemy's HP to zero. So-called "unwinnable battles" fall under this too, but an unwinnable event against a Unique Monster in a decisive showdown is out of the question.
Possible conditions include "securing or destroying a specific object," "surviving for a set duration," "surviving a specific attack"... and on the rarer side, things like "persuasion during battle."
Katzo: "I see—so that's why you said level doesn't matter."
Sunraku: "Yeah, with this, players who rely on overpowering with levels are nothing but meat shields."
Well, meat shields are a fine role in their own right—tanks are the prime example. But with a forced level gap of 150, even a tank would just be a bit tougher than a light warrior, not much more.
Sunraku: "Any guesses on the victory condition, by the way?"
Pencilgon: "For now, I think we can rule out an unwinnable event or anything object-related. I suspect it's a time-survival condition, but no confirmation."
Katzo: "Hmm... oh, the attack patterns are written down too. Appreciate that."
For Katzo, a fighting game player, knowing the opponent's moves in advance is a huge boon. When we talked about it before, he said something pretty outlandish like, "If I know the frame data, I can counter-poke." I'm a little bummed that the thrill of going in blind gets diminished, but since Pencil Warrior's plan hinges on a one-shot success, I can't complain.
Normal attacks are mostly sword-based, with occasional unarmed strikes. However, when the choice is between unarmed and sword attacks, its thought routine prioritizes sword attacks.
Below are the special actions Wethermon the Tombguard has been confirmed to use thus far:
· Tachikaze (Severing Wind) A god-speed quick-draw strike, rumored to activate in 1 frame. Lethal guard-piercing capability. If it hits, you die. Must be evaded by reading the tell. That said, the tell itself is short, so you should probably assume getting targeted means death.
· Nyudogumo (Cumulonimbus) After a charge animation, a giant cloud arm sweeps across the entire area. If it hits, you die. Safe zones are likely above and at point-blank range. If you have the AGI, you might be able to outrun it.
· Raisho (Thunder Bell) Wreathes the sword in lightning, bombarding a wide area. If it hits, you die. The impact points home in on players to some extent. Impact locations can overlap, so players clustering together will be wiped out in one go.
Man, this is Owata-style perfection—dying on hit is just a given, huh? And with this level of performance, its full arsenal still hasn't been revealed?
Katzo: "AoE attacks... I'm not great with those."
Sunraku: "Don't fighting games normally have full-screen attacks?"
Katzo: "What era of fighting games are you talking about? In full-dive, a no-questions-asked full-screen attack is impossible to deal with. Even Constipation doesn't pull anything that unreasonable."
Full-screen attacks that existed in old 2D fighters gradually vanished as games shifted to 3D and then full-dive. In full-dive, players have to physically deal with attacks using their own bodies, so full-screen attacks that indiscriminately apply damage to all space have declined with the times. At most, you get AoE attacks.
Wethermon's skills aren't quite full-screen, but an attack that sweeps the entire area is plenty troublesome. Having safe zones is merciful, but... I see, this is thoroughly meta-gaming against large-party combat. If players swarm the safe zone, they get jammed up and wiped. And if numbers thin out, it's an inevitable death spiral.
Pencilgon: "Wethermon itself is plenty strong, but the real headache is this. I timed it—it comes out roughly ten minutes in. Wethermon's additional armament..."
Sunraku: "Tactical Mount 'Kirin'...?"
Roughly ten minutes after battle start, Wethermon summons an additional armament.
The Tactical Mount "Kirin" in its first form appears as something you'd call a horse-shaped robot—but its performance is so far out of category it's practically a genre error, scattering missiles and lasers as it rampages across the entire area, making it extremely dangerous.
Furthermore, if left unchecked, it will merge with Wethermon, at which point the situation becomes hopeless.
As a countermeasure: if any entity other than Wethermon—that is, a player—leaps onto Kirin, Kirin interrupts all actions and enters a bucking animation. Players must endure this continuously.
Words I really shouldn't be seeing in a fantasy game are popping up here and there... missiles, seriously? But the substance is pure trouble. You're forced to deal with it whether you like it or not, and if you mess up, Wethermon himself becomes untouchable.
I see... the rough outline of the plan is coming into focus.
Sunraku: "So I handle Wethermon, Katzo handles Kirin, and you... are on assist?"
Pencilgon: "Exactly. After fighting that, my conclusion is this, Sunraku-kun: you're the only one who can deal with Wethermon's attacks. It has to be you—the one who can beat a pro gamer three out of ten times in reaction speed."
Katzo: "That's fine, but why am I on horse duty? I'm not exactly a rodeo expert."
Pencilgon: "Hey, Katzo-kun—didn't you used to play Caba-Cra?"
Sunraku: "Caba-Cra?"
Not a cabaret club... probably an abbreviated game title, but it's a name I don't recognize. I see—so it's probably not a trash game. If Katzo's involved, it must be a fighting game... but current-gen fighting games—where you don't need physical training and even amateurs can slug it out like pro boxers—are one of the biggest categories in VR gaming. That's why massive numbers of fighting games, domestic and international, get released.
Even among those, if we're talking trash games or barely passable ones, even I'd have some idea. But when it comes to the genuinely good or god-tier games, the names are just barely clinging to the edges of my memory.
Katzo: "You even looked into that... Alright, I'll take on this Kirin thing."
Katzo tossed another tea sweet into his mouth and settled in to read the material in earnest.
Sunraku: "But even so, isn't three people way too few? Personally, I'd want at least five."
Specifically, one more person handling Kirin, and on top of Pencil Warrior on assist, I'd like a mage for direct buff enhancement and, if possible, debuff support. When I asked with that implication, the answer came back with a strained smile.
Pencilgon: "Don't count on buff support. At the very least, we once tried ten people stacking massive attack buffs on one person, and it was still a crushing defeat... no, a total rout."
Forced Owata-style through level restriction, an add, and rampaging chaos via merging... no matter how you slice it, it's too strong. A special victory condition is practically guaranteed, but unless we pin down exactly what that condition is, our odds are slim.
Sunraku: "Assuming Katzo handles Kirin and I handle Wethermon, what about you?"
Pencilgon: "I'll commit to guerrilla support—assisting where needed and preventing the battle lines from collapsing. I can't stop Wethermon myself, after all."
Effectively, with two people, there's no real "battle line" to speak of, but it's a fact that if either side collapses, it's game over.
Pencilgon: "Alright then, next I'll go over the specific progression in detail..."
Pencilgon: "...And that about sums it up. Operating on the assumption that 'time elapsed' is the victory condition, that's how we'll challenge Wethermon the Tombguard."
Wethermon's combat style, the field's characteristics, Kirin's attack patterns... we discussed everything and before we knew it, the date had changed. There was debate that the name "Tombguard" might mean the victory condition involves performing some action on a specific object—likely a grave. But the thought of messing with the grave Wethermon protects and triggering a berserk mode... that'd be a nightmare. So we concluded on a full-survival challenge.
It was then that a question suddenly popped into my head, and I voiced it.
Sunraku: "Oh, right—I've got an NPC in my party at the moment. What should I do about that?"
Pencilgon: "You mean that bunny the SF-Zoo leader was making a terrifying face over?"
Katzo: "Man, a Unique... so jealous. I wanna find a Unique of my own..."
I tried to make a smug face and got smacked with the Player Book. Not with the corner—never with the corner!
Pencilgon: "Hmm... I think you should leave her out. In Shangri-La Frontier..."
...NPCs don't respawn.
Somehow, I'd had a feeling. But even so, Pencil Warrior's words hit me with a weight that sank straight through.