Chapter 69: Putting Feelings Into a Moment, Part 16
Wethermon the Tombguard. He possesses stagger immunity against almost every attack—the so-called super armor—and the Tactical Mount [Kirin] interferes as well. On top of that, Pencilgon had only briefly observed the existence of a third phase triggered by self-destruction. From those clues, she had zeroed in on “Wethermon destroying himself as time passes” as the intended clear method.
(The first ten minutes: survive against Wethermon. The next ten: split members to handle Kirin and prevent the two from merging. Then, once the area-wide attack triggers and attacks begin to work on Wethermon, shift to the offensive... So that's the sequence.)
Oikatzo: "I'm hearing what sounds like a lunatic cackling. Is that guy okay?"
Pencilgon: "I'd like to believe he's fine... but either way, if we don't stop this thing, we've got no shot."
Attack skills with bonus effects — useless against Wethermon in Phase One and Two, where he was practically invincible. Now that they'd been unlocked, Sunraku's survival rate had risen... or so Pencilgon assessed. That type gets more motivated and more skillful the worse the adversity gets—correction, the more the adversity is a trash game. Judging by the nonstop high-pitched laughter echoing since he'd begun venting twenty minutes of pent-up endurance frustration, he seemed to still be alive.
Pencilgon: "Sunraku-kun said it too, but if this thing links up with Wethermon, it's probably game over. If Wethermon can take damage now, this thing should be vulnerable too... I think."
Oikatzo: "At the very least, this isn't the kind of enemy two people can take down."
If Wethermon the Tombguard himself represented the extreme limit of humanoid enemies, then the current Kirin Armor was something far simpler — a design of pure, straightforward strength.
Oikatzo: "So, like... any hidden trump cards? Like that bottle you chucked at Wethermon?"
Pencilgon: "Funny you ask — I've actually got one."
As she spoke, Pencilgon pulled the few remaining items from her now very sparse inventory.
Pencilgon: "Ta-daa!"
Oikatzo: "What's that?"
Pencilgon: "It's a little drug called Evil Force. For the sake of your mental health, don't ask about the ingredients."
Oikatzo: "Effects?"
Pencilgon: "For fifteen minutes, you essentially get level-99 stats. In exchange, the side-effect penalties are brutal. I've used it before — all kinds of awful."
Oikatzo: "Okay."
Oikatzo took one of the three black pills — helpfully prepared in advance — and used it without a moment's hesitation. The next instant, everything in Oikatzo’s world inverted.
Oikatzo: "Whoa!"
Pencilgon: "First up: visual color inversion. Though, given that this field already looked like its colors were reversed, maybe not a huge issue? On top of that, your hearing gets all muffled, your sense of smell goes dead... It's not exactly fatal, but all five senses get dulled or scrambled. And honestly, even that is just the appetizer."
Pencilgon had taken her own Evil Force, confirmed the massive stack of buffs now applied to her, and turned once more to face the Kirin Armor.
Pencilgon: "Now, from here on out, it's a battle against the crushing feeling of losing one level every thirty seconds...!"
Oikatzo: "HUH?!"
A forbidden doping item that, in exchange for the heavy restriction of effectively consuming thirty levels, lets even a grade-schooler become the strongest — for fifteen minutes. Drugged to the gills by Evil Force, concocted from monster parts that were visually unhealthy and that you really wouldn't want to touch even as data, the two of them dashed toward the Kirin Armor — which was attempting to move toward Sunraku, or more precisely, toward Wethermon the Tombguard fighting Sunraku.
Oikatzo: "Dammit, after this is over I've gotta start back from level 20...?! Ugh, whatever — get ready to be a punching bag, you damn robot!"
Having taken on a humanoid shape, the Kirin Armor now shared humanity's weaknesses. The instant its leg slammed into the ground, Oikatzo wreathed his fist in crimson light and aimed for its joints.
Oikatzo: "Red, Black... combine to Scarlet! Mixed Fist Spirit [Scarlet Flash]! And from there — In-Fight into... Dual Impact!"
A jab from his left fist, glowing with a scarlet deeper than red and brighter than black, struck the knee joint of the Kirin Armor. But the Kirin Armor wasn't so fragile as to waver at that level of force. Oikatzo knew that. The cross-shaped mark that surfaced where his left fist had struck — he drove his right fist into it with a full-force straight.
The next instant, an impact like a colorless, heatless explosion assaulted the Kirin Armor's knee joint. Even a frame that massive couldn't no-sell that much stress to the knee — the Kirin Armor buckled unnaturally, like someone whose knee had just given out.
Oikatzo: "Switch!"
Pencilgon: "Got it!"
Like flicking a switch, Oikatzo and Pencilgon swapped positions. The tip of her spear aimed for... the same knee joint Oikatzo had targeted.
Pencilgon: "That knee... I'm going to bully it until it shatters...!"
The spear Pencilgon gripped was already layered with multiple enchantments, and Pencilgon herself was stacked with self-applied buffs. The effect wreathing the spear as it thrust into the Kirin Armor's knee joint — already wounded and gouged — was Spear of Sunrays, one of the highest-tier spear skills. The attack released stored heat in a punishing follow-up, but even then, the Kirin Armor's knee joint didn't break.
Pencilgon: "So tough..."
Oikatzo: "But damage went through. This really is the critical point."
Oikatzo: "Anyway, dodge-fest starts for us too!"
Missiles launched from the Kirin Armor's back — homing in on both of them — were evaded by Oikatzo and Pencilgon, each using their own methods. In that opening, the Kirin Armor rose to its feet, then demonstratively aimed its palm at Pencilgon and fired a laser packed with immense heat and destructive force.
Pencilgon: "Crap—!"
The heat ray seared across Pencilgon's left side as she twisted. Thanks to Evil Force's effects, she miraculously wasn't killed outright, but her left half had destabilized to the point where it looked ready to dissolve into polygons at any moment.
Oikatzo: "Heave-ho!"
Pencilgon: "A little warning would've been nice!"
In a split-second decision, Pencilgon deftly turned the spear's tip toward herself with just her right arm and, without hesitation, stabbed it into her own stomach. Her paltry remaining HP was wiped out, and just before her body could burst into polygons, the revival item Oikatzo had thrown brought her back at full health.
Pencilgon: "If my left arm's useless, I'm just dead weight as a spear user...!"
Pulling a Magic Scroll from her inventory, she deftly slammed the lightning magic sealed within it into the Kirin Armor's knee joint, then ran forward with her spear at the ready.
Oikatzo: "Fist Aura ‘Red Impact,’ High Strength, Mighty-Strength Infusion… fall!"
With Rope Puppet [Snake], the rope coiled around the Kirin Armor's leg. Oikatzo — having applied every STR buff he had — pulled the rope in the exact opposite direction of the Kirin Armor's movement. Different from a knee buckling — more like getting your leg hooked — the Kirin Armor's stance collapsed, toppling face-first. In that gap, both of them slammed in their attacks.
Oikatzo: "Dammit, we're short on firepower, short on volume, short on everything!"
Pencilgon: "If we can hold aggro and not die, we're doing our job, Katzo-kun. We can hit it now, sure, but this is still an endurance fight...!"
As they dealt with the scatter-type laser sweep fired from the Kirin Armor's palm — taking only the bare minimum of hits — the two of them readied their weapons once more.
Oikatzo: "So what's a perfect score look like?"
Pencilgon: "Well, that would be turning that rampaging robot into scrap, obviously."
Oikatzo: "I see. Then let's aim for it — full marks and a gold star!"
I snapped my head upward from below and knocked aside the horizontal slash aimed at taking my neck off. Head-parrying is useful, but damn, it’s tiring…
Sunraku: "Tch... figured. It's not designed for one level-50 player to solo."
I'd landed plenty of hits, staggered him a fair number of times, but... no surprise, he wasn't an opponent I could beat alone. He was in the same category as Lycagon the Nightslayer, after all. I knew that. But I'd held out against Lycagon until it had chewed my leg off and munched on my upper body — so against something close to a human opponent with hyper-speed frame attacks, I had nothing to fear.
Sunraku: "Maybe your trash-game level just isn't high enough."
I'm not saying you should level up your trash-game quotient. I'm not saying that.
The War Horn Helm [Four Armor] was tough, sure, but the real standout was how well the Togetsu — Moonblades: Waxing & Waning was performing. Being able to self-manage your own HP — that's a powerful element in any game, past or present, East or West.
(HP management done... Now, when to use them.)
HP was a little under a third. The opponent's level was far above mine. The hunger parameter was nicely bottomed out, too. That meant the activation conditions for both Climax Boost and Hunger Wolf were met. The question was: when. Climax Boost would last for five minutes as long as I kept my HP at one-third. But Hunger Wolf, even building on that, only lasted for one minute.
(No way this ends smoothly, just quietly reaching the time limit.)
A full-field attack? More frame attacks? Or something else entirely? At the very least, it wouldn't end with a simple "time's up, battle over." As Wethermon's blue flames traced arcs through the void in a three-hit combo, I dealt with it through steps and deflections. The moment his descending blade came closest to the ground, I stomped on the back of his sword.
The pain in the sole of my foot — like burning — was an illusion. I knew there was no damage hitbox there. Strictly speaking, the sensation was that of being burned, but my HP bar hadn't moved a millimeter. I wasn't actually being burned; the "pain" was about as hot as touching a coffee cup filled with hot coffee — effectively harmless.
Activate Best Step. My foot, planted not even on flat ground but on the back of a blade, launched into an ideal leap.
Sunraku: "Hah!"
I threw Waning behind me, activated In-Fight, then followed up with Hand of Fortune — slamming a punch into his face. As he reeled back, I drove Waxing into him, kicked off his chestplate to gain distance. About a second of weightlessness, then landing. I stayed wary of Wethermon's movements while retrieving the discarded Waning.
Sunraku: "Ow, ow... I really want some gloves."
Punching metal barehanded — without skills or magic to assist you, like Oikatzo has — just means your own fist takes damage. While recovering stamina, and to distract myself from the boredom growing in inverse proportion to my rising excitement, I spoke to Wethermon.
Sunraku: "What's the matter? So shocked that your robot-samurai swordsmanship doesn't work?"
Sorry, but I can manually reproduce actions from other games to some extent. When it comes to taking down Wethermon the Tombguard — who's ultimately tuned around this game's skills and magic — that's a huge advantage. The dual-blade footwork I'm using right now originated from another game, after all.
Sunraku: "Well, undead or cyborg or whatever — just keep getting chipped down and self-destruct."
Wethermon: "…A…"
Sunraku: "!!"
...No. This is different. This is something else. He's just standing there, silently re-gripping his blade. He's made "sounds" several times up to now, but this was clearly different. That was... a word.
Wethermon: "…A…lice"
Sunraku: "What...?"
Wethermon: "That… fragment… Alice… has… been woven…?"
It wasn't the Unique Monster "Wethermon the Tombguard." It was the words of the character "Wethermon the Tombguard" — a character within the game Shangri-La Frontier. From Vash’s words, from Pencilgon's analysis, I'd arbitrarily assumed he was some kind of monster where "the soul is dead but the body still moves." But now, standing before me, was an armored warrior speaking through a genuine AI.
Sunraku: "Alice...?"
Wethermon: "Eternity... is, endless... My body... decays... I see, not... their... distant, futures... yet... Truly... 'The Frontier'... has, been, realized..."
Sunraku: "Oi, oi, oi—don’t pull that on me in a situation like this…!"
With every single neuron in my brain devoted to taking down Wethermon the Tombguard, how the hell am I supposed to spare any brainpower for lore analysis right now?! Wait — is this an event flag?! Pencilgon's theory was right — but then, so was mine. Something's coming. The moment this dialogue event ends — something is.
Wethermon: "Go forth... Scion... of Project Two. If... you would... trample... my oath... then... by my... 'Clear Sky Conquest'... be... destroyed."
A shiver ran down my spine — like an electric current — an alarm bell ringing in my data-driven consciousness.
Sunraku: "Oh crap."
In the very next instant, I would learn — with my own body — just what the character Wethermon the Tombguard truly meant by "getting serious."