Chapter 182: The Path to Bearing Fruit
X-Day is approaching, and personal matters are piling up, so daily updates may be a little difficult.
Sorry for the inconvenience, and thank you for your continued support of SLF.
By the way, for jungle-related reasons, X-Day is scheduled for the 4th through the 7th.
No Face: “Honestly, that’s the most annoying thing to deal with.”
No Name: “Natsume did something along those lines too, but when you match hero vs. hero or villain vs. villain, that’s what happens.”
What Katzo presented to Sylvia Goldberg was, in a word, “choices.” And we believe this is the single biggest gimmick in this game.
First, the initial binary choice: “Is Katzo, controlling Silver Jumper, aiming to secure the cube, or to defeat Metius?” At a glance it looks like he’s prioritizing the cube. But that earlier ambush planted a seed of doubt in Sylvia Goldberg’s mind: maybe he’ll just keep ambushing and chip her down.
Then the next choice—no, a triple choice: “What will Katzo do in this three-way deadlock between the NPC villain, the player, and himself?” The nasty part is that this choice is linked to the first one. If Katzo is aiming for the cube, leaving that meat-mass villain—I think it was called Xeno-something, but who cares right now—leaving that meat-mass alone lets Katzo freely farm gauge.
So should Sylvia interfere with Katzo? Well, not so fast. If Katzo’s actual goal is to defeat Metius, then leaving the meat-mass alone and attacking Katzo is exactly what he expects. Which means she’d be dancing in the palm of his hand, and her caution spikes whether she likes it or not.
Then the third option: Should she accept giving Katzo gauge and take down the meat-mass herself, so Metius can farm gauge too? Yeah, right. Sylvia Goldberg can’t pick that one. This option can’t be resolved without first solving the initial binary choice. In terms of instantaneous acceleration, Metius wins. But when it comes to escape involving long-distance movement, Silver Jumper—who can gain both distance and height—has the edge. Worst case, she’d contribute to her opponent’s gauge farming and then let him slip away with high probability.
No Face: “You really come up with some nasty strategies, Strategist No Name.”
No Name: “No, no, I don’t want to hear that from the one who came up with the original draft, Sergeant No Face.”
Same principle as the Lycagon clone fight. By slamming your opponent with a multitude of choices all at once, you bind their thinking. This tactic, which can even ensnare cutting-edge AI, isn’t usable in a regular fighting game. But in this game, where the situation inside the sandbox is always shifting, it becomes possible.
A slow-acting poison eating away at Sylvia Goldberg, whose mind still carries the afterimages of both a born trapper and a born grappler. By showing her both at the same time, her thinking is bound and dulled. And Sylvia Goldberg will remember—ah, that’s right. Didn’t the one who picked a tactic similar to this fight in the very first round?
Heh heh heh. Naturally, that’s a trap too. I don’t mean any disrespect to Natsume, but at the very least, Sylvia Goldberg does not consider Megumi Natsume a heavy enough threat. That’s exactly why pulling off something like recalling Natsume’s tactics mid-battle is not something even the champion can do easily. It’s about as hard as remembering what you ate for dinner two nights ago while playing a rhythm game.
We’d been operating on the premise of completely ignoring cube capture from the start—me and Pencilgon both—specifically to keep them from thinking up countermeasures against cube-focused strategies. Misdirection. Yeah, that’s the word. Misdirection. According to Pencilgon, “Because Star Rain mains grappling-based fighting, irregular shifts in game category become the greatest weapon.” I have no damn clue what that means.
No Face: “But it’s about time.”
No Name: “Sylvia-chan’s thought patterns lean pretty meatheaded, so she’s gonna snap soon… I think.”
Even an idiot knows how to solve a difficult problem with extreme simplicity. And Sylvia Goldberg has the power to pull it off. Alright, Katzo. This is where the real fight begins.
Sylvia Goldberg stopped thinking the moment her HP hit fifty percent.
Was Silver Jumper aiming to secure the cube, or to defeat her? Should she ignore the suddenly intruding meat-mass, Xenoselgus, or deal with it? Should she interfere with Silver Jumper’s gauge farming, or build her own gauge first?
(I don’t know what he’s planning, so I’ll just punch Kei.)
Yes, indeed. Sylvia Goldberg rushed to a conclusion. Distracted by the overwhelming result, she overlooked a simple fact. Behind Uomi Kei—behind Silver Jumper—stood a gamer of the same type who could read her thoughts, and another gamer who spun those reads into intricate schemes.
There is no correct answer to the choices Kei presented. It’s not a footrace where you compete under the same conditions—it’s a delayed-choice rock-paper-scissors where the presenter holds an overwhelming advantage. The moment the answerer chooses, you simply make the opposite the correct answer. In the first place, the optimal choice Sylvia should have made was to reset the situation entirely.
The corpses of the villains who fell before her sneer. Trying to recall Yugdraia’s movements dulls Sylvia’s thinking. The vivid imagery of Clockfire and Cursed Prison clouds her thoughts. The villains weren’t just buying time. They’d been attacking every member of Star Rain from the very beginning. Not their HP in the data. Not their stamina in reality.
They were attacking their thinking.
And the ultimate, fundamental premise: by abandoning thought and narrowing her field of vision, Sylvia Goldberg bared her throat to the very foundation of fighting games. A premise so obvious it hardly needs stating.
Namely, that in fighting games, one-versus-many does not exist.
Kei: “Bunch of scumbags who think up the nastiest things… But I’m taking this round!!”
Metius charges Silver Jumper in a straight line. Her thinking, focused solely on defeating her opponent, narrows to just herself and Silver Jumper. The other battle character is erased from her awareness. Because she has reached the pinnacle as a fighting gamer, the concept of “me and my opponent”—the one-on-one duel—is her very foundation. As a pro gamer who mains fighting games, she can’t comprehend Kei’s movements, honed alongside his scumbag friends in games governed by entirely different rules.
In other game categories, this technique is called “Monster Player Kill.” Forcibly transferring aggro onto a common enemy, pinning it on your opponent alone. A wicked technique that has mobs carry out the killing of players for you. For example—a beast rampaging on pure instinct. Which prey does it target: the one wary of it, or the one whose attention has turned away?
Sylvia: “Nghu…!?”
Kei: “Looking away isn’t good. Don’t you agree, Metius?”
A monster living only for slaughter and self-destruction, devoid of reason. A super-heavyweight villain with mass several times that of Silver Jumper or Metius—easily exceeding even heavily armored Cursed Prison—slams into Metius with a tackle, sending her flying effortlessly.
Kei: “This isn’t fair and square. Is that what you’re thinking?”
Kei fully agrees. The very fact that Pencilgon could thrive here means this game is already no longer a fighting game.
Kei: “This is the Global Game Competition. Allow me to introduce everyone watching… and most of all, you, to what this game is truly about.”
In this game world, anyone can become a hero. Anyone can become a villain. But in other words—
It also means experiencing the hero’s hardships, and the villain’s karma, all the more vividly.
Megumi: “Yes! Kei took the round!!”
No Name: “The way the meat-mass kicked her in the ass at the end was way too hilarious.”
No Face: “We couldn’t hear it over the system audio, but judging by her lip movements, she yelled ‘Ohyuu.’”
No Name: “No way. We can use that as material for the next three years.”
Megumi: “Can’t you be a little happy!?”
Happy, she says… Sure, taking the first round is good news, but the next round’s probably going to be a living hellscape…
The strategy we painstakingly simmered and stewed, brought to fruition by Katzo—even if it’s the royal road in this game, by the standards of conventional fighting games, it’s heresy upon heresy. A bizarre scheme so sideways you’d need to install a warp gate just to reach it. It almost looks like mockery.
In truth, for Katzo himself, executing it is like trying to tame a rampaging horse in the middle of a tornado. It’s nowhere near as easy as it looks. I mean, managing the aggro on that meat-mass… or rather, on mobs in general, is way harder than you’d think. And he has to skillfully pin it all on Sylvia Goldberg… on that Sylvia Goldberg.
And because I think the same way, I know. I know exactly how it would feel if I were the one getting beaten down in a co-op play with an NPC in that situation.
Ahh. Ahh… The switch would click on. The so-called “snap switch.”
Even I, an amateur gamer, managed to cling on that far against the undefeated number one in America on pure emotional tension-boost. If Sylvia Goldberg were to do the same—
The result was demonstrated just four minutes later: Metius, expressionless as a Noh mask, having utterly massacred both the meat-mass and Silver Jumper.
No Name: “…Ha ha ha. Look, Pumpkin-kun. It’s so insane the whole venue’s recoiling.”
No Face: “Well, yeah… That was just…”
My personal “Sylvia TAS Theory” suddenly gained a terrifying amount of credibility. What the hell was that…? What?
The character Metius fundamentally carries the handicap of linear movement. To turn a corner, she has to stop once and make a sharp ninety-degree turn. Normally, Sylvia’s Metius achieves unpredictable, high-speed movement by ricocheting like a superball in a small room—kicking off the ground, kicking off the air, kicking off objects—
No Face: “But to actually, seriously pull off ‘just step-spam in place to force a curve’…”
Mind-boggling. Speech-defying. Metius, who should only be able to turn in straight lines, traced a smooth arc and… slithered around the corner.
No matter what had happened before—even in the moment she traded mutual KOs with Cursed Prison—Sylvia Goldberg had always let her emotions show. This merciless slaughter, a massacre almost too cruel to watch, overwhelmed the venue even more than Clockfire’s peak rampage.
No Face: “That was an unexpected boost… but this is a chance.”
I know because I’ve been in the same state. That’s exactly why I can say this. That snap-boost… is horrendously exhausting. It’s like ignoring all pacing and sprinting at full speed in the middle of a marathon. Even if you set an overwhelming split record… what awaits you afterward is an empty tank.
Sylvia Goldberg is indeed a monster of toughness. But that monster of toughness snapped and poured out her entire heart and soul. Yes. This is the biggest chance. The bird that flew higher, faster, and harder than anyone else is now… running out of breath.
No Face: “You’ve got this, Katzo…”
This is the biggest cheer I can send. The last thing we’re counting on isn’t RNG, and it isn’t luck. Right?
No Face: “We’ve got the blessing of caffeine on our side.”
Natsume… why are you looking at me like that when I just sent a perfectly sincere cheer? Like I’m some kind of “idiot”?
Megumi: “I’ll land the finishing blow, but yeah, I think ‘idiot’ sums it up. Pumpkin Stewed in Energy Drink-kun.”
No Name: “That sounds disgusting.”
Sweat runs down his cheek. No—that’s an illusion. This digital body doesn’t have such physiological reactions. If he feels it, it must be sweat shed by his real body in the real world.
(What the hell was that?! She can still multi-stage boost her gears!? N-No… That kind of absurdly forced performance—she can’t pull that off repeatedly.)
A sudden transformation, as if a switch had been flipped. A transcendent technique so incredible he doubted his own eyes even as he witnessed it… Kei had seen it before. Yes. That “snap” is a state Sunraku occasionally shows. A momentary limiter release, powered mainly by rage, irritation, and maxed-out, high-tension emotional gauge. A desperate art that, even from the outside, looks like it’s burning through brain cells at a terrifying rate. At the very least, Kei can’t do it. Feels like it’d shave years off his life.
(At the very least, Sunraku is basically hungover after pulling that off… It’s not something you can do without serious risk.)
A once-in-a-lifetime chance. Sylvia, who he’s chased but never overtaken, is now, in this very moment, within reach.
This isn’t mere coincidence. It’s the time his friends carved out to come here. The time they earned. The path they paved. All of it led to this single moment. Which means there are only two things left for him to do.
Beat Sylvia Goldberg. And somehow figure out how to reconcile barbecue and sushi while consulting his wallet. That’s it.
Kei: “Now… let’s win!”
Kei may secure victory, but he never lets himself become convinced of it. Yet, in this moment… he simply can’t imagine losing.
Xenoselgus