Chapter 168: Outwitting the Outwitted's Outwitting

I'm busy with fried chicken on the ancient battlefield, doing null-rarity farming for Urmun to get a vote for Indy-chan. I have Shiva, Sethlance, and Zaoshen, but no Agnis—so it's a sad bonito team. Silva cannon doesn't use lemon. I probably can't update tomorrow. Sorry. If I could trade, maybe I'd have four arms...

No Face: "Haah, as expected of a pro gamer. Trouble, trouble."

Clockfire's "dolls" require the bomb to be within her line of sight for remote detonation—strictly speaking, within the line of sight of the prosthetic eye in her left eye. If you've got a top-tier mobility tool like the helicopter in Round 1, that's not a major drawback. But right at the start of a round like now, a certain weakness becomes glaringly obvious.

It's simple: if you're in a situation where even moving is difficult right after the round begins, then a bomb going off means she's nearby. So the counterplay against Clockfire is absurdly easy—ignore the bombs and capture the real body. That's it.

Dr. Sandalphon: "Ha-haa! Found ya, lady knight!!"

Clockfire: "Oh my. Men who rush in are unpopular, you know?"

Dr. Sandalphon: "Wild men are way more popular."

There's no longer any value in active bombs. Better to burn through them to recover her deployable stock. And this man, rumored to never stop chasing women, won't be soft enough to overlook the opening.

Clockfire: "I'll pass... on that!"

Behind Dr. Sandalphon, several fleeing NPCs detonate. With that as the signal, the standoff shifts to a clash.

(Crap, too fast...!)

Dr. Sandalphon: "That's payback for last round! Take it with the tip!"

Clockfire: "No thanks!"

Deployable stock: eight. Deployed count: twelve. Remote detonation isn't available. So she buys distance at the cost of her own HP. Dr. Sandalphon is a close-range brawler who manipulates psychic powers. His signature move is the Psycho Fist—wrapping his fists in telekinetic force to increase punching power. Specifically, it hits twice, though at slightly reduced rapid-fire capability.

Using the power of the prosthetic eye embedded in her left eye, Pencilgon conjures a dog doll and holds it up between herself and the fist. The dog doll is sandwiched between Pencilgon and Lucas's punch. The impact of the Psycho Fist warps the fancy dog's body, crushes it... and it detonates.

Clockfire: "Ugh... feels like having one of those electric ab stimulators on my stomach...!"

Detonation. Detonation. Detonation. She locks eyes with the NPCs barely within view and detonates three more.

Clockfire: "Sympathetic detonation! Lucky!"

Deployable stock: thirteen. Deployed count: seven. Using dolls like a buckler to catch punches, she buys distance with the blast that engulfs them both.

(This is bad... The NPCs are scattering. I need to recover them all while they're still around here.)

Dr. Sandalphon: "Oi, oi! You don't think about other guys during a date! Look only at me!"

Clockfire: "If you're proposing, come back after you get your medical license, quack!"

Explosions. Knockback. Get back up. The distance to her planned intercept point is far, and if she lets the fleeing NPCs escape, her bomb count is going to be restricted.

(Sure, I planned to lose this round anyway... but there's still such a thing as how you lose.)

In this game, field changes carry over between rounds. Which means NPCs with bombs attached to them carry over too.

(Seven people, huh... HP's a little over sixty percent. Map-wise, I can't get back there without slipping past the skirt-chaser...)

She detonates without missing an NPC who flickers into view for an instant—fortunately, it was at the front of the detonation queue. But now there are no other NPCs in her line of sight. She needs to resolve this situation—trapped between buildings—immediately.

(If this were Sunraku-kun or Katzo-kun, they'd probably solve this with a counter or a guard throw or something... but against a pro gamer, that's not happening for me... Alright.)

The most critical tool in negotiation is a smile. A soft smile projects composure. Maybe she's hiding some trick up her sleeve—that doubt becomes poison and slows the enemy's movements. That is Pencilgon's true main weapon. Making the opponent think. Making them doubt. Not like some tension-happy idiot who buffs himself by elevating his own state, not like some guy who can't trigger Unique Monsters on his own who buffs himself by refining his research and experience... but a strategy that debuffs the opponent using words and the situation.

Clockfire: "I don't need to watch my back. You can only move in a straight line... What'll you do if I say this was all according to plan?"

Dr. Sandalphon: "I'll just keep moving straight."

Clockfire: "Well, that's just fine!"

She's extracted the intel she needs. Now it's just execution. Pencilgon grins and without hesitation launches herself forward—Dr. Sandalphon's body tenses in alert. You can say anything with your mouth. That's exactly why Lucas is wary of a non-existent countermeasure when the charge is actually executed. That's why, when Clockfire rushes the enemy, slips right past him, and keeps going... not just the opponent, but even the audience freezes for a few seconds.

Clockfire: "Ahh-ha-ha, morooooon! Trying to drag a girl into a back alley? You're three light-years too early, you morooooooon!!"

Dr. Sandalphon: "That's distance, not time!!"

Towa Amane, age twenty-four: delivers an elementary-school-level taunt, then sprints at full speed. If you clipped just this one scene, you'd never believe it was happening on the big stage being broadcast worldwide. But Pencilgon isn't fleeing and abandoning the match. She's maintaining the thread-thin spider's silk leading to victory and climbing it for all it's worth.

(Still two minutes... I'd like to buy at least five more, but...!)

Dr. Sandalphon: "Waiiiit uuuuup!!"

Clockfire: "I'd rather play hide-and-seek than tag, honestly!"

Dr. Sandalphon: "Like hell I'm letting you!!"

(Yeah, figures... Oh, two recovered.)

Five bombs still deployed. How does she recover them, flee, and stall for time—all three without missing a single one? For now, she blows up some innocent civilians, retrieves the dolls, and begins sprinting full-force to prepare the finale.

No Face: "Pfft, heh heh... Maybe we should give her points for not flipping the bird...?"

Nu2meg: "Even taking that into account, acting like such a child in a huge public venue... I'm getting a headache."

No Face: "Well, Natsume-san's heel play isn't just overshadowed—it's been blown clean out of existence. So all's well that ends well, I guess."

Nu2meg: "...Wait, was she acting like that on purpose for this?"

No Face: "Nah, nah. That's just how she is."

As Natsume-san cradles her head in her hands and stops moving, I furrow my brow under my helmet and set my mouth in a frown. The roughly thirty minutes Natsume-san earned, plus the time Pencilgon's racked up now, comes to about forty-five minutes. If Pencilgon can scrape together an hour total including this match and the next, and—purely hypothetically—if she can buy thirty more against Sylvia Goldberg, that's two hours. If Katzo's mess doesn't drag on, our job will be done.

That said, if everything went smoothly in this world, we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with. It might sound harsh, but I never thought from the start that Pencilgon could hold out for three consecutive matches. In fact, Pencilgon herself knows that best.

No Face: "Forty minutes would be a good run, if we're lucky...?"

Unexpectedly—or perhaps, in a sense, expectedly—the pros' adaptability is just that high. Originally, the plan was predicated on Pencilgon avoiding contact with the enemy entirely from start to finish. Even with a thirty-second head start at the beginning, and with her having done a fair bit of preparation, she was still found in no time. You want to ask why they're playing tag in a fighting game, but Clockfire's bomb placement is so diabolical that her overall physical specs are set low. Since she'll eventually be caught, this equilibrium won't hold for long.

No Face: "In the end, it all depends on how hard Pe—... No Name pushes herself. So there's only one thing we can do."

Nu2meg: "Pray?"

No Face: "Laugh at her disgrace."

Natsume-san looks at me with a face like a cat doing the flehmen response. I ignore it. Well, well, Pencilgon—by all means, entertain the two of us with nothing better to do! Fuhahahahaha!!

Ah—cameraman, don't point the lens this way! I get nervous!

Natsume-chan is gradually turning into the facial-expression comic relief...