Chapter 152: Pretend to Be the Limit of Blazing Light, If Only for an Instant

Rakuro: "Dirty! That's so dirty, goddammit!"

Towa: "Ahh, sorry, I don't really speak sore-loser-barking, y'know? I can't quite make out what you're saaaying!!"

Rakuro: "Demon! Devil! Fiend!"

This woman pulled something that would kill off thousands of NPCs! Though, I mean, I'd also scrapped about three dozen cars, mainly luxury ones… but she was evil on a whole other level…

Kei: "What'd she do?"

Rakuro: "She played Jenga with a building."

Kei: "She's a goddamn demon…"

Pencilgon, cackling against the backdrop of the gradually collapsing building, swarmed by hordes of NPCs all crying "Help me, hero!"… The sheer viciousness of the tactic was jaw-dropping. Maybe I should've just gone for a simpler knockout.

Kei: "Including you, Meg—how did this game feel when you tried it?"

First impressions of the game, huh… Let's see…

Rakuro: "A populace-simulation game. (With battle elements.)"

Towa: "Sandbox tower offense. Villains only, mind you."

Megumi: "'It demands a sweeping field of vision and a uniquely high degree of situational awareness'… Wait, do I have to give a convoluted answer too?"

Kei: "Meg's fine just the way she is. Those two just have bugs stuck to their neurons that can't be erased."

Megumi: "O-Oh… So the way I am now is fine…"

Towa: "Hey, Sunraku-san… how do you suggest we respond to this?"

Rakuro: "Why not flip 'em the bird with a smile?"

What is this, a scene from a mid-route galge? You shoving this in my face, Katzo? You shoving this in my face? But the guy himself doesn't seem to see it that way—which means that's what's going on, huh. Khh—ptooey!!

Kei: "I don't know why I'm receiving the full force of your silent scorn, but… we'll get serious about strategy tomorrow. For now—hey, Sunraku, you mind one match?"

Rakuro: "Hm? Sure, don't mind."

Kei: "But I've got just one request on my end… I want you to use Metius."

Rakuro: "…You want me to go watch match footage of this Sylvia whoever?"

Kei: "Nah, don't bother. Whatever version of Sylvia Goldberg shows up is gonna have evolved past the last one anyway."

—With that said, come at me for real.

That was Katzo's order.

In the form of the hero Metius—who, depending on how you looked at him, seemed one step away from breaking into a feverish dance—I gazed down from the rooftop of a skyscraper at Chaos City, where the streetscape had been completely transformed from just moments before.

Rakuro: "So… how long's it been since I fought that guy in a fighting game that isn't crawling with bugs…?"

In terms of a brand-new game, I had the advantage. But considering this was built on the SLF engine and Katzo had sunk serious time into the previous title, the matchup was probably 6:4 against me…

Rakuro: "Eh, doesn't matter. What I do doesn't change."

If you had to sum up the character Metius in a single phrase, it'd be "high-mobility attacker covering all x, y, and z axes." Air jumps, wall running, and high-speed dash performance were monstrous. His weakness was steps and right-angle turns, but when it came to racing across this sprawling stage, his mobility was top-class among all currently selectable characters. The only catch was that his base damage was a bit low—you had to land more hits.

Rakuro: "If I remember right, Katzo's character was Amdrava…"

A hero character with arms of magma, a close-range fighter who could melt concrete and rebar, then fire the molten slag like bullets. The molten-iron shots were slow overall, so dodging them was easy unless you were caught off guard. But the one who'd move to make them land was Katzo… the player named Uomi Kei.

Rakuro: "Fortunately, there aren't even five characters who can beat Metius in mobility. I'll control the pace… No, wait. That's his aim."

Same playstyle, same character. Even a monkey could grasp that this sparring session was aimed at taking on Sylvia Somebody. Which meant I should assume Katzo had countermeasures against a Metius with a mobility advantage.

Since this was a Hero vs. Hero match, ignoring Katzo entirely and going for rescue ops and NPC villain extermination was also an option. It was a perfectly valid rule of the game—nothing underhanded about it.

Rakuro: "That said…"

Personally, I wasn't too keen on my most recent result against Katzo—no, Modor Katzo—sitting there as a loss.

Leaping from building to building, I scanned the area and spotted a scorching glow, distinct from any streetlamp, in the center of a park hemmed in by the forest of skyscrapers.

Rakuro: "The gong's already rung… Strike first, strike hard!"

I leaped from the building, then air-jumped. Metius's special technique, Star Road, let me race through the air for five seconds. Ordinarily, I'd want to burn a Gauge technique here and launch a surprise attack, but unfortunately my Gauge was bone-dry. I'd settle for a flying kick straight out of a tokusatsu hero show—first strike from above. Ahh, I wish I could bring this move into SLF.

Kei: "All that jangling racket makes it way too obvious!"

Rakuro: "I'm well aware…!"

That said, this Metius character constantly had a light-particle effect swirling around him, and his feet were never even touching the ground. Which meant that, in a situation like this, the game would automatically produce sound effects. He was a character spectacularly ill-suited to stealth, but what I wanted right now wasn't the feel of a decisive hit—it was simply for the game to register the attack.

In this game, falling from a certain height didn't deal damage, but it did force you into a landing animation. However, attack animations drastically shortened that recovery.

In response to my flying kick, Katzo—Amdrava—raised his arms in defense. With the sizzling sound of heat dissolving matter, both our HP dropped. Even for him, a kick launched from the top of a skyscraper couldn't be fully negated by a guard; the shockwave punching through shaved a tiny sliver of Amdrava's health, and Metius took damage in return.

Amdrava's greatest trait, if I recalled, was his "Lava Armor"—limited to his arms, it dealt damage to anyone who touched him. Something like spiked armor restricted to the arms, it added bonus damage to both offensive and defensive maneuvers using them.

Kei: "Hitting me accurately from that height… nicely done!"

Rakuro: "Well, you've got a pretty obvious marker!"

Sticking close to Amdrava in close-quarters combat was a bad matchup for Metius. Blocking my attacks would mean eating chip damage, and I had no business crushing my own mobility advantage. The optimal approach, then, was hit-and-away… float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

I backstepped to make distance and looked for an opening. Damn it, I'd forgotten to verify whether Amdrava's appearance changed depending on whether his molten-iron shot was ready or not. Not knowing whether a projectile was in play was a pretty serious problem… but agonizing would just get us a stalemate. Assuming he did have a ranged attack, I'd push forward.

I built momentum and closed in. Amdrava aimed his right arm—now a blazing mass—at me like a turret sighting its target. So the molten-iron shot was real. I upped my alert level but didn't order my legs to slow.

Five strides in, Metius hit dash speed, putting out a velocity that was head and shoulders above the rest of the cast. Less than five meters between us now. No shot fired. A bluff? Or was he planning to use it at point-blank range, not as a projectile? Three meters. He pulled his right arm back… A bluff! The right arm of lava dropped into a stance for intercepting my attack—was he aiming for a parry? Two meters. We were both well within striking range. Still, the attacks that could reach from here were limited—nothing beyond pokes. One meter… we could both hit.

In his lore, Metius had supposedly mastered Jeet Kune Do, and from his nimble footwork could launch a torrent of blows… despite being a salaryman. So most of his techniques were close-range. If I wanted to land the fastest possible blow, I'd slip into his guard and land one hit… No!!

Rakuro: "—Guh, nnh… ngh?!"

Right hand. Feint. Body. Shadow. Left hand. Left hand. It's coming. It's coming!!

It wasn't even thought anymore. Before I could scrutinize the fragments of information my eyes were sending me in broken bursts, I twisted my body with everything I had and leaped, slipping past Amdrava's right flank. In the next instant, from his left hand—hidden behind his body as he'd angled his right side forward—a lump of molten iron shot out, spraying magma like buckshot.

The searing light that singed my skin with passive heat grazed my right side and shot past behind me. I'd dodged a direct hit, but my opening momentum was completely crushed… Did you think I'd say that?

Kei: "You reacted from there…?!"

Rakuro: "When it's voluntary, that's called a dodge…!"

Even in an emergency response beyond anything I'd planned, I still had the reins of my own body. There was a world of difference between getting blasted backward by a direct hit and hurling yourself into a roll. I wasn't sure if he'd aimed for it, but Amdrava's molten-iron shot had been fired dead at the center of my chest. To evade it, I'd wrenched my body into a left spin like a bullet.

Without killing the movement, without letting it decay, I poured more strength into it as if to push it further—and the sky and ground swapped places. I rolled left around my front-to-back axis, and the moment my inverted vision snapped back to normal, I landed as if kicking off the ground, shook my head once to recover my equilibrium, and ducked low with zero hesitation.

Then, with my right foot as the center point of a circle and my left leg tracing the hand of a clock, I swept low to collapse his stance. The target: the back of his knee. Take this toe-kick knee-buckler!

Kei: "Don't underestimate me!"

Rakuro: "Shut up and fall!"

This toe-kick knee-buckler had two advantages over the standard method—getting behind someone and pressing their knee with your own: the speed from initiation to impact was much faster, and the kick itself dealt damage. But since I was performing it in a stance close to a roundhouse kick, being a biped meant that when one leg was my support, the only limb left for attacking was the other. That limited me to striking just one knee, but I hadn't been expecting a critical hit from an awkward counterattack anyway.

Forced into a one-legged stance, Amdrava—unlike the lean-muscled Metius—had the build of a heavyweight boxer and maintained his balance even on a single leg. A lot of that was probably down to the player's own sense, but it also spoke to the sheer core stability of the "Amdrava" character himself. Now, what to do? I'd swept his leg, but I didn't have the breathing room to follow up. Metius's combos required launching the opponent into the air, so chaining into one from this position was tough. In that case, I'd pull back once, then focus on low-to-high attacks to disrupt—

Kei: "Ah—sorry. Call the match."

Rakuro: "Nwah?"

A car can't stop on a dime. My body was already mid-motion into the next move, and there was no halting it just because someone suddenly declared no contest. When those words came flying out of the mouth of Amdrava—Katzo—who'd been brimming with battle spirit seconds before, before the surprise or confusion could even register, I'd already launched into a jump with my kicking leg screaming—I decided I'd think about what it meant after I finished the move. Namely…

Kei: "Gwah?!"

Rakuro: "Unfortunate accident. Smile and forgive."

As the high kick connected with his jaw and sent him flying, I offered Katzo my most sincerely heartfelt apology.

Rakuro: "…So? What were you thinking, declaring no contest out of nowhere? When you're the one who asked for the match."

Kei: "Sorry, sorry. It's just, y'know… after actually fighting Metius as a kind of virtual-Sylvia spar, I'm convinced. Amdrava probably can't win."

Rakuro: "Really? I had a feeling it'd be a pretty tough fight."

The guy's like a character with spiked shields permanently equipped on both arms. If he kept fighting in a boxing style, he could whittle down his opponent's HP while staying on the defensive. And by his nature, against a Metius who has to get close to land hits, he should have a decent advantage. Or so I thought. When I conveyed those impressions—with a bit of taunting mixed in—the pro gamer gave me a truly excellent smile and explained, in the simplest possible terms, "why my current self just can't do it." Listen here, Katzo… fists don't have conversational skills. So put that fist down, okay?

Kei: "Well, to put it bluntly… that monster Sylvia Goldberg is faster than you are right now."

Rakuro: "Seriously?"

Faster than me… Isn't that basically Wethermon (official TAS) level?

[I want to get back to writing SLF… but I also want to write this… but more than anything, I want to be thinking about settings!! Monster ones, especially!! That's how I feel these days.]