Chapter 171: Evil Was Destroyed!
Do you know the term "rewarding good and punishing evil"? To encourage good and to chastise evil. An exceedingly rational and simple system born from humans forming society not through instinct but through reason. When mafia or military units that shouldn't exist get involved, things get more complicated—but GH:C is a game designed around extremely simple clashes between heroes and villains. Depending on the players, it can turn into justice versus justice, or evil versus evil. But in the end, the sun is always watching, and the nail that sticks out gets hammered down until the head is crushed in a single blow. That's what they call karmic retribution... Huh, I thought I was musing about rewarding good and punishing evil. Well, whatever.
Announcer (broadcast): "A meteor of justice blazes through! No Name has no way to stop it!"
Commentator (broadcast): "The combo landed perfectly. Turning this around will be difficult."
Perhaps it's my imagination, but the commentary feels more lively than during Pencilgon's peak rampage. I totally get it, though. It's hard to cheerfully narrate those atrocities. That was less "cheerful" and more a "regrettable" tragedy, after all. To think she'd do something like that... no, more like, to think that such an act will remain as video data for all eternity... At times like this, I truly lament the advancement of civilization.
Well, from a personal perspective, after the match ended, Alex—who looked like death itself—got a sudden appearance from his girlfriend, and they started a disgustingly sweet rom-com routine right there in front of a worldwide audience. So I'd say he deserves to get thrashed by Pencilgon about three more times.
No Face: "But that aside, isn’t it impressive?"
A total beatdown. No, a complete and utter beatdown. A "Beatdown of Beatdowns" unfolded before us—no other words can describe it. Explosive flowers bloom throughout the city, but they're all too late. The walls, pillars, roads, cars—the explosions can't keep up with the azure trajectory, as if a superball had gained a will of its own. Not that Pencilgon is simply detonating whenever the blue blur gets close. She's predicting the location from the general trajectory and pre-detonating them, and yet the azure meteor still can't be caught. Unbelievable as it is, she's dodging after seeing the explosion.
If I knew the bomb placements in advance and had a few practice runs, I might be able to pull off the same trick. But doing it live, on the fly, while charging through that scumbag pencil's manually operated minefield—I can confidently say that's a near-impossible feat. Those predictive blasts are practically in the realm of RNG. And this is the woman who once got 25 kills in an FPS using nothing but bombs, without firing a single bullet.
Yet, the meteor Metius... Sylvia Goldberg broke through Pencilgon's minefield with ridiculous ease and is now landing a flawless combo, relentlessly shaving away Clockfire's HP. Zero sign of any mistake.
No Face: "Magnificent."
Nu2meg: "Well, I guess it is a magnificent beatdown, in a way... but we're losing. Shouldn't you sugarcoat it a little?"
No Face: "Hm? Ah, no, no. Plummeting from the peak straight to rock bottom is her specialty."
And what's more, she's even secretly prepared countermeasures. That's Pencilgon—no, Pencil Warrior—the gamer. But that's not what I'm calling magnificent.
The face of the frilled-lizard doll, with its directional explosive effect, bursts apart. But it doesn't reach her—a kick from the side sends it flying.
No Name: "So catfights don't mean you can just beat me to a pulp, huh..."
Even if this is a battle between felines, a Munchkin Pencilgon challenging a lion like Sylvia hardly seems like a fair fight. Stalling for time is impossible. The opponent smashes through our setups head-on, and the difference in mobility is just too vast.
(Metius is definitely a speed-focused character, but more than that—her movements are perfectly optimized.)
And on top of that, she's even cunning enough to deliberately break her own optimization to throw feints. Detonating the last doll bomb she'd planted, she tries to collapse a building to farm gauge, but the hero's evacuation calls have already cleared the NPCs. She can't recover nearly as much Villainic Gauge as she'd initially expected.
(No, there's no way I'm winning this. She's almost as strong as Sunraku-kun when he's at his absolute peak...)
This is America's top player, Sylvia Goldberg. Pencilgon hallucinates a reaper's scythe whirling at super-speed, but unfortunately, getting instantly decapitated is something she grew thoroughly accustomed to with Wethermon. However, adding superball-like movement to an instant-kill attack was not part of the deal—hence, unwinnable. She grabs a thin pipe jutting from the rubble and tries to use it as a spear to intercept, but it's dodged with a movement pattern that's hard to even describe.
(All that's left is to entrust it to him, I guess...)
So then, Pencilgon's three final duties:
- Delay defeat and buy time, just as Megumi did.
- Go out in a spectacular blaze as atonement for all her prior atrocities.
- Relay as much information as possible about Sylvia's current strength to the main act.
(As long as we ultimately achieve the goal...!!)
No Name: "Top-grade suuuushiiiii—!! Guwaah—!!"
Nu2meg: "...Why is she talking about sushi now?"
Clockfire eats Metius's ultimate move, "Metia Strike," and explodes along with her dying scream. Why she looked satisfied is understandable—even among pro gamers, there are entertainer types who prioritize delighting the audience over their own win rate, specializing in heel play. Even taking that into account, that nameless player was a bit too extreme. But why she chose "Japanese fish-on-rice" as her final words—no one knows. No, seriously, I have no idea.
To whom that cry was truly directed—only the one who wants to eat sushi, the vice-captain who wants barbecue, the vanguard who doesn't really care but if forced to choose wants pasta, and the captain who will ultimately foot the bill for all of it, will ever know.
Like a classic tokusatsu monster, Clockfire went out in a spectacular explosion, but it's still just a game. The person inside, Pencilgon, emerges from the VR system looking perfectly fine.
No Name: "Man, she's strong. That's a monster, a genuine monster."
No Face: "Put it in simpler terms."
No Name: "Wethermon with +100 AGI."
No Face: "So a fighter jet or something."
The end of that round was brutal. She was getting juggled like a soccer ball.
No Name: "I think I held out pretty well, considering. What do you think?"
No Face: "...Honestly, as long as I can solve the gauge problem with that approach, I think I can at least hang in there with her."
No Name: "I see. Yeah, then I'll go buy you at least a little time, so loosen up that tension."
Her majestic stride toward the mic Sasa-Fishcake-san is holding out—even with her face and identity hidden, the model still shines through. If she didn't have a voice changer, wouldn't she have been exposed pretty easily?
Still, the performance of Sylvia Goldberg that Pencilgon put her body on the line to reveal was, as expected—no, even more so—upgraded from last year. It's probably just a combination of aerial jumps, wall kicks, and dashes, but it has no brakes. Whatever it is, her movements can't be tracked. She can even react to placed skills on sight. Clockfire as a character was simply fatally mismatched against Sylvia Goldberg.
No Face: "It's probably a combined technique of center-of-gravity control and on-the-fly route calculation judgment..."
It's tough. The fact that I have to stall for time against that from now on is the toughest part of all. Roughly thirty minutes bought by Natsume-san, plus about twenty-five from Pencilgon's first match, just over twenty-five minutes of atrocities I'm almost too ashamed to mention for her second, and the ten-minute evil-extermination just now. Including the gaps between matches and everything else, almost two hours are about to pass. Say what you will, Pencilgon is amazing. She practically single-handedly bought all the time we needed.
But he's not here. He's not coming. That idiot, that damn Katzo, isn't here. We buy time with everything we have, and Katzo, having wrapped up the RwH6 tournament, shows up looking like nothing happened. That was the entirety of the plan. Since the key to the final phase still hasn't arrived, the time-buying operation isn't over.
Which means the vice-captain... no, my role as the anchor of the time-buying trio is to stall against that monster to the absolute limit. Once I dive into the virtual world, I can't know what's happening in reality. I won't be able to tell whether Katzo's arrived or not. Which means even if Katzo does arrive, the member currently in-dive has to keep buying time with everything they've got. To be blunt, Megumi's performance was a failing grade for stalling. Still, her brave effort was true to the plan.
As for Pencilgon, needless to say, she's a genuine demon, an ogre, a Pencil Warrior (a metaphor, not a noun). Not only did she buy time in-game, she even talked circles around Sasa-Fishcake-san in the post-match interview, deliberately dragging it out into a long conversation. I'm tempted to say, "Isn't she enough by herself?" But we knew Pencilgon couldn't stand a chance against Sylvia Goldberg.
No Face: "Which is exactly why I'm here, huh."
My role: rear guard, reserve, final defensive line, secret bullet—whatever you want to call it. Sniping Sylvia Goldberg alone is my job. And with a handicap: I have to do it with the back of the blade. The moment America's number one came in as the third fighter, we were forced into a major plan revision.
In the first place, this operation was about buying time for Katzo's return, but also ensuring the "Uomi Kei vs. Sylvia Goldberg" matchup would happen. When Sylvia Goldberg came in as the third fighter, my role became "buy time while absolutely losing."
Let me be honest: I want to punch Katzo and spit on him right now. Sure, I chose this, but the result is I have to do something that's practically match-fixing.
However, there is one piece of good news. Sylvia Goldberg is even stronger than we imagined. Given the nature of stalling, I absolutely have to take at least one round. And to do that, like it or not, I'll have to go all-out.
Prepare yourself, Sylvia Goldberg. My full strength only lasts two rounds. And to drag you into our stage-play time-buying scheme, I have to sandbag and throw the match against you.
No Face: "I'm gonna beat you senseless...!"