Chapter 68: Putting Feelings Into a Moment, Part 15
Clank. The sound of a knee hitting the ground echoed. Given that I'm forcibly half-naked, my knee meeting the dirt wouldn't produce that kind of metallic sound. Oikatzo and Pencilgon were both wearing gear that was clearly high in VIT, but even their equipment wouldn't ring out this heavily. So did Kirin just drop to a knee? If so, the earth itself would be shaking. Which meant the one who'd taken a knee here was—
Sunraku: "............"
Sunraku: "Doesn't look like we've beaten him."
Wethermon the Tombguard had dropped to one knee and stopped moving. At a glance it looked like a damage window... but there was no way that was anything other than a "keep your distance and observe" motion. As if backing up my hypothesis, Pencilgon — having stashed the Scales of Price into her inventory — rose to her feet warily.
Pencilgon: "Here it comes, you two... from here on, it gets bad."
On top of Kirin — which had frozen in place, its movements synchronized with Wethermon's — Oikatzo, who'd taken leave of his senses and tied himself to the horse's neck, was visibly baffled even from a distance. Actually, stop that. Making me laugh with that visual... you're killing the tension here.
Pencilgon: "Even back when Ashura Kai still had decent members, they only reached this point once. We're provisionally calling it Phase Three... but last time, Wethermon's opening move wiped the whole party."
Sunraku: "So even you only know what he opens with."
But the flip side was: all three of us did know what his first move would be.
Phase One: ten minutes against Wethermon alone. Phase Two: Kirin enters the fight, multi-target battle against both Wethermon and Kirin simultaneously. And now Phase Three — which only Pencilgon had ever reached — where Wethermon the Tombguard triggers "Self-Destruction" and opens with a full-field AoE.
Sunraku: "You said you had some kind of secret plan for this part!"
Back when Pencilgon had fought him, the shockwave had erupted the instant Wethermon cracked his own armor and let out a roar. Even exhausted as they were, it'd wiped all five survivors — Pencilgon included — in a single full-HP erasure. She'd told us during the strategy meeting that she'd prepared a countermeasure for that attack. Sorry, but with my stats, solidifying my defense would still mean getting vaporized. If you can't handle this, we're done.
Pencilgon: "Katzo-kun! Kirin's behavior might change too, stay alert!"
Oikatzo: "Got it...!"
Oikatzo — who'd been engaged in the advanced art (in every sense) of rodeo-by-tying-yourself-to-a-horse — gulped down a recovery potion like he was showering in it and untied his restraints.
Pencilgon: "From here on, it's uncharted territory. Steel yourselves."
Sunraku: "First-time clears are the fundamentals of gaming. I've been steeled since the start."
Pencilgon: "Then good...!"
From her inventory, Pencilgon pulled something... a potion? A bottle with some kind of liquid inside. Without hesitation or fear, she strode toward the motionless Wethermon the Tombguard.
Pencilgon: "Oh, and if this doesn't work, you're on your own, okay?"
Sunraku: "Hey!"
My protest, the cracks appearing in Wethermon's armor — which had boasted terrifying VIT up to now — and Pencilgon hurling the potion bottle at Wethermon all happened practically at once. The bottle struck Wethermon the Tombguard with a satisfying crack. The armor, though riddled with cracks, was no less formidable; the bottle couldn't withstand the collision and shattered, dousing Wethermon in the faintly blue-glowing water it contained.
And then, as if unleashing something — or, to put it in meta terms, as Wethermon tried to execute a roar animation—
Wethermon: "OOOOOOHHH... GAH?!"
The motion was forcibly interrupted. White smoke — clearly the result of damage — rose from deep within the cracks.
Pencilgon: "Hell yeah, bingo!"
Sunraku: "What did you do?!"
My body was already preparing for the battle to come, even as my mouth demanded an explanation.
Pencilgon: "This game's world-building and setting are the keys to clearing it, right? I'd been convinced this whole time that Wethermon the Tombguard was 'a cyborg who mechanized his body with Age-of-the-Gods technology.'"
And really, if you looked at Wethermon — who outwardly was unmistakably a powered-suit robot — and tried to guess his true nature, it wasn't strange to think "cyborg" first, given Setsuna's story and the sci-fi-tinged "Age of the Gods" setting in Shangri-La Frontier.
Pencilgon: "But then — I don't know where the intel came from, but Sunraku-kun brought back that phrase, 'one who failed to die.' And from there, the reverse side of the picture started coming into focus... In short, whatever the process was, by classification, that thing is an 'undead monster.'"
Which meant, Pencilgon continued, readying her weapon — a spear, her strongest and most favored arm:
Pencilgon: "'Saint-chan's Holy Water' — painstakingly crafted by Shangri-La Frontier's idol Saint-chan herself... The strongest-grade anti-undead potion, which I paid an arm and a leg for through back channels. Its power's the real deal."
Saint-chan’s Holy Water (suggestive)... no, there's no deeper meaning there, really, seriously. I mean, Saint-chan’s Holy Water (suggestive), distributed through back channels... that's completely that, isn't it?
Pencilgon: "I understand what you're implying, but it's not that kind of that."
Sunraku: "Pretty dirty work for a top model, huh?"
Pencilgon: "Flowers bloom beautifully by drawing up both the pure and the murky... The full-field shockwave's been stopped. From here on, even I'm flying blind!"
Apparently, while Saint-chan’s Holy Water (suggestive) could obstruct the full-party attack, it couldn't deliver a fatal blow. As if shrugging off its death throes, Wethermon the Tombguard's shoulders, arms, waist... armor across his entire body burst and shattered. From the cracks all over him, blue-flame-like energy spewed forth like blood from a wound.
The cybernetic impression he'd given off until just moments ago transformed in the blink of an eye. As he slowly rose to his feet with fissures spreading across his entire body, his figure — wreathed in blue flame — was that of a restless ghost, perfectly fitting the phrase "specter of the past." Pencilgon seemed fully ready to fight Wethermon, but... uh, maybe glance sideways for a sec?
Sunraku: "Uh, look. Sorry to interrupt your eagerness to fight Wethermon the Tombguard, but go help Oikatzo."
Pencilgon: "Huh? Well, I am on assist, but... huh?"
Yeah, I’m making that same face under this thing I’ve got on my head.
Sunraku: "The time-limit victory condition's pretty much confirmed. The limit's probably thirty minutes."
Our sidelong glances fell upon what had been the Tactical Mount Kirin — now transformed, warped into the shape of a half-finished suit of armor, missing its head and torso. Before it stood Oikatzo, baffled but holding his fighting pose. I see. So that's how it works — Wethermon merges with that to become a giant armored form.
Sunraku: "Even with that slapdash stat boost, fighting the completed 'thing' under level restrictions is impossible. You at least get that we can't let that former-horse, now-giant-armor link up with Wethermon, right?"
In other words, for however many minutes remained in this endurance battle, our three-man role assignment was to keep the two of them from merging. How to split our numbers between the Kirin Armor and Wethermon himself, who to send against Wethermon... Pencilgon could come up with that answer in seconds.
Pencilgon: "Yeah. When I saw Wethermon and Kirin merge before, it was a centaur-like shape. So in Phase Three, there's a separate form..."
Pencilgon stared grimly at the Kirin Armor as it began to move. Her role — assisting both me and Oikatzo — hadn't changed. But which of us she prioritized didn't need much thought.
Pencilgon: "............Sunraku-kun. I'll provide what assist I can... but can you handle this?"
Sunraku: "Leave it to me."
That wasn't bravado. I'd finished running my own tests on my end, and more than anything, the fact that my predictions had been right had suddenly brought victory into sight. After confirming that Pencilgon was heading to support Oikatzo, I advanced toward the blue-flame-wreathed specter. Even knowing he wouldn't answer, my mouth opened on its own. I'd gotten nicely immersed in the game now — performance peaks at times like this.
Sunraku: "...Ever since Pencilgon told me your combat patterns, there's been something I couldn't stop wondering. 'Isn't that boring as hell?'"
Wethermon: "............"
I see. You endure until a mighty enemy self-destructs. You slip through blades, flee desperately from the presence of death, yet never run from the fight itself. It's the kind of spotlight moment that echoes "I'll hold them off — you go on ahead." As a story, it's not boring. It'd be in the entertaining category.
But this isn't a novel, or a manga, or an anime. It's a game. The one fighting the threat, the one enduring, isn't a fictional character — it's me. So is a boss that's nothing but "survive for thirty minutes" really fun as a game?
I'll say it outright: of course it's trash-boring. Five minutes, maybe ten, fine. But thirty minutes of nothing but running, dodging, and enduring? That's crap game design from the ground up. Even as an event battle, it's crap. If Unique Monsters prioritized story over gameplay, that'd be one thing — but I have faith.
Sunraku: "Because a god-tier game wouldn't do that."
Balancing world-building and gameplay — countless games have failed at that adjustment and been branded as trash: "prioritized gameplay, story's crap," "too faithful to the story, gameplay's crap," "both are crap, dammit!" But I believed that Shangri-La Frontier would always deliver both at a passing grade or higher. Even if a Unique Monster was designed as endgame content, if it forced players to endure for twenty minutes, then surely — surely — a player's turn to let loose and vent would come around.
That's why, even when Pencilgon gave the order to "prioritize endurance and gear accordingly," I'd still believed in that "what if" and made this. Believing that a turn where I could "properly beat down Wethermon the Tombguard" would definitely come.
Blue flames spewed from Wethermon's entire body, even wreathing his blade. His attack came — an overhead slash meant to split my skull. I activated Parrying Protection and deflected it... with my head.
Wethermon: "...!"
Sunraku: "Impressive, right? Even I've never parried with my head before... I practiced properly, you know."
The headgear that had just deflected a blue-flame-clad blade was no longer that flimsy bird mask with an intense glare. If I'd tried the same thing with that, my head would be in two pieces. Covering my entire face, the "helmet" — which, thanks to Bilac, had gained the deep navy gleam of its base material's true color — bore four distinctive horns. As expected of the armor-freak Quad Beetle — it didn't even get a single crack from taking Wethermon's attack. Though, if we kept clashing, it'd probably shatter eventually.
Sunraku: "War Horn Helm [Four Armor]. Made from Quad Beetle materials, this is one of the few pieces of gear in all of Shangri-La Frontier that has... an active hitbox."
The Quad Beetle horns and mandibles attached to the helm had collision detection. You could headbutt to attack, and even headbutt to parry. Sure, you could argue that if you're going to the trouble of swinging your head around to parry, just use a weapon — but even so, I'd mastered head-parrying with the War Horn Helm [Four Armor].
Sunraku: "Because if I can parry with my head... both hands are free."
Naturally, the War Horn Helm — made from Quad Beetle's heavy armor — was significantly heavier than the Staring Bird Mask. It had no place in Phase One and Two, which were all about evasion and endurance. But just as I'd predicted, in Phase Three, Wethermon the Tombguard's invincibility had been lost — through the self-destruction of his armor.
Sunraku: "Eat my eighty thousand Mani!"
If he was going self-destruct and throwing everything away, we'd play our trump cards too. There'd been no chance to use this during the endurance battle since it didn't mesh — but now, I could bring its full power to bear.
The paired blades granted their true form by a yakuza bunny. And the skill grimoire that a veteran trash-game hunter — me — had been pressured into buying by the sheer force radiating from a certain smile... ahem, that I had purchased. If I'd gone to all that pointless expense, I'd damn well make it count!
I slashed at empty air with Togetsu: Waxing and Waning, both wreathed in prism-like effects. Wethermon seemed to understand that my blades couldn't reach him from this distance; unconcerned, he shifted into a thrust stance... but behind Wethermon, in what should have been empty space, I could see it — a wavering, a distortion.
Sunraku: "Watch your six."
Wethermon: "...!?"
My verdict after using it: Vorpal Blade Art [Water Mirror Moon] is extremely useful... and extremely awkward. This skill activates by generating a mirror-image hitbox of your attack behind the enemy in front of you. To put it simply: the attack hitbox alone teleports behind the enemy.
But that's not where this skill's true value lies. If you manage to land a critical hit with an attack via this already-convoluted-hitbox skill... your own aggro... vanishes.
A sudden slash from behind. Wethermon the Tombguard judged it a new ambush, and his wariness toward the "enemy" that had slashed him from nowhere completely pulled his attention away from me. He spun and swung his blade — but nothing was there. Truly, it was the moon reflected on water. It may shine as brightly as the moon in the night sky, but it's nothing more than an illusion.
Sunraku: "If a wound on the back is a shame, then sorry — feel plenty ashamed."
Assassin Pierce: a skill that increases in power when the condition "enemy mob is unaware of you or has no aggro toward you" is met. The blade of Waxing stabbed into Wethermon the Tombguard's defenseless back — into a crack from which energy was gushing. Effects scattered, polygons danced. In an instant, aggro snapped back to me. As Wethermon, who'd been facing away, began turning his body back toward me, I wreathed the withdrawn Waxing in yet another layer of effects.
Sunraku: "Drill Piercer!"
The blade swept along the exact trajectory I'd predicted — passing just over my head, since I'd ducked in advance. Without hesitation, I drove the tip of Waxing upward from directly below, straight into the fissure in his formidable armor.
Sunraku: "So... with bonuses, a weak point, and a critical... do you still have your stagger-immunity super armor?"
The spiral effect burst against the weak-point wound created by his self-destruction. And Wethermon the Tombguard — for the first time in this entire battle — performed a stagger animation.
Sunraku: "Time to let off some steam!"
From here on, it was my turn. This wasn't like Phase One or Two, where he wouldn't even flinch at my attacks. After twenty minutes, my turn had finally come around... Brace yourself, Wethermon the Tombguard — I'm going to beat you senseless!
Sunraku: "Fuhahahahahahahahahahahaha!!"
Tension at its peak, I slammed Oppressive Kick into the reeling Wethermon and laughed loud and clear.