A hilarious gag that makes you want to read it out loud (self-praise).
Chapter 239: Just What Is This Painful Stagnation?
Pencilgon: "Hmm... hehehe. Well, I figured that old tanuki would try to negotiate with you directly sooner or later, Sunraku-kun. But I guess he just couldn't pass up this chance, huh..."
Sunraku: "What do we do?"
Pencilgon: "If we can get the Library on our side, I'm willing to pay a bit of a price."
Pencilgon smiled, clearly enjoying herself, but she didn't say anything specific about the direct negotiation I'd ratted out.
Pencilgon: "You can probably let them have anything that isn't especially dangerous information."
She seemed to be up to no good, using Oikatzo and Kyotimate as her pawns. Man, she really comes alive when she's scheming...
Pencilgon: "I was trying to behave myself after going straight, but the situation around us is practically screaming at me to act. What can I say... hehehehe. It would've been nice to bring in Team 10PM too, but I guess that's asking too much..."
Sunraku: "Hey, I'm going back to playing solo. That okay?"
Pencilgon: "Go for it. Just don't bail on me tomorrow, okay?"
Look, this is basically a clan-wide event. I'm not heartless enough to just disappear.
Rust and Mold are the type to shake hands after a match, and Akitsu Akane seems like she thinks all players are friends. They're probably not going to like this kind of messy PvP. I actually asked them, and they didn't seem interested, so the three of them won't be joining tomorrow's negotiation.
I'll find out what Pencilgon's planning when the day comes. For now, I'll just do what I want. If things go bad, I might have to take a break from SLF for a while.
Or so I thought.
Sunraku: "Huh? Vash... big bro Vash isn't here?"
Emul: "That's right, wa. Daddy went out to see a friend, wa!"
I'd returned to Rabituza with a Magic Scroll, planning to hand the Δ devices to Vash—who is probably a Unique Monster—but it seems I'd just missed him.
Sunraku: "I see..."
Foiled from the start. This is the kind of inconvenience you get in games where you can't advance time on your own. In SLF, time is linked to real life, so Vash won't just come back no matter what I do. Fine.
Sunraku: "I'm going to sleep!"
Emul: "Good night, wa!"
Except the sun hasn't even set yet!
I wasn't really in the mood for SLF, with everything getting jumbled up—things to do, things I should do, things I tried to do. So I decided to go back to that thing I'd bought recently.
Sunraku: "...'Full Cooperation from Ryuguin Fugaku! VR Kendo Class: Extreme.' The word power is insane for a simple training software."
I looked it up on a whim, and this is the real deal, supervised by a grandmaster swordsman who was insanely strong. And as you might have guessed... the “secret boss” Mana mentioned is none other than Ryuguin Fugaku himself—whose name, by the way, is ridiculously cool.
I heard he's already passed away, but before his death, UCE provided full support and succeeded in creating a highly accurate trace AI of him, a real strong samurai who appeared in the modern age of digital peak.
There's this technology called trace AI. For a while, some know-it-all realists held bizarre protests about clones and ethics, but if you strip away all the complicated theory, the gist is: it's an AI that traces the thoughts of the original person as faithfully as possible.
You wear a special VR system and have them perform certain actions in cyberspace. By recording and reflecting their movement patterns and thought processes, you create an AI with a thinking pattern incredibly close to the real person. It's just an extreme extrapolation of "how this person would move," so it doesn't develop its own ego, and it certainly has no human rights.
The result was the AI known as the “secret boss”: A.I. Ultimate Master.
Sunraku: "So the normal one is the AI Kendo Master, and Extreme appears if you meet the special conditions..."
Normally, you’d face the AI Kendo Master as the final opponent. But from 5th dan onward, as the difficulty increases, you have to combine the characters on all the hanging scrolls in the VR dojo and recite them on the title screen to unlock the secret boss.
Sunraku: "At least it wasn't something like 'get all S-ranks'..."
It's half-game-like, so the demands aren't that strict. Even with a terrible evaluation, if you completely go off the path of the sword, you can still hold your own at the lower difficulty grades.
I drove a jumping kick into the stomach of the AI Kendo Instructor and, while it was staggered, smacked it with a full-force swing. I cleared it. The evaluator gave me the harsh verdict: "E rating (trash)."
Besides, the fact that you can toggle the kendo gi on and off in the first place suggests the developers had some degree of unorthodoxy in mind.
Sunraku: "As expected, when you get to the level of a true martial arts master... they're just plain strong..."
I'd been playing through it bit by bit, but around the 4th dan, I started struggling for real. Once you move past the lower dan ranks to the AI title-holder difficulties, it's just trial and error. I've already kissed the floor dozens of times against those AI mannequins that move so smoothly you'd think they were hovering, and they pull off go no sen [countering after the opponent initiates] as their default. At this point, I've let go of all pretense and unlocked all the unorthodox moves: American football tackles, pro wrestling moves, everything. I'm barely scraping by with a G-rank minimum.
Sunraku: "I really took it for granted... action games where you can boost your stats with skills..."
I want to tweak my avatar's stats in this software. More specifically, I want to boost my AGI by about 1.5 times. And while they're at it, adding a double jump would be even better.
Sunraku: "So next is the normal final boss..."
Time to beat him down!
I beat him down. (One win, two draws, forty-three losses.)
The winning move was a German suplex. But I'm exhausted... so exhausted...
Sunraku: "This is ridiculous. I'm barely breathing from taking a break from SLF... Well, fine."
I'll go challenge the secret boss and then get back to SLF. Back to the title screen...
Sunraku: "Let's see... 'Young buds, east and west, hone yourselves, step over the withered leaves, and bloom into full flowers'?"
It's a tanka, but I'm not sure what it means. No, don't underestimate the classical Japanese skills of a high school student! Let's see... the seasonal word is "withered leaves," I guess?
The title screen for this VR Kendo Class starts when you open the dojo’s doors. And if you enter the dojo after using the special command to unlock the secret boss...
Dual-wielding has been unlocked in mode selection!
Online Battle Mode: Modified has been unlocked!
Hidden difficulty A.I. Ultimate Master has been unlocked!
There it is. The first two modes are probably unlocked by beating the normal boss. Anyway, without a moment's hesitation, I selected the difficulty and faced it as it appeared, holding a bamboo sword projected into the void.
Sunraku: "Dual-wielding, huh..."
I'd only done a quick search on Ryuguin Fugaku. So this is the first time I'm learning that the style of the deceased swordsman was dual-wielding. And also...
Sunraku: "Guh!?"
...I'm also learning for the first time just how strong he is, powerful enough to strike my head within a mere five seconds. It's not the unfair speed of someone like Wethermon. It's just plain fast. And he moves with optimal efficiency, landing a blow before I can even react.
This is going to be a tough fight. A truly tough one.
Sunraku: "I'm awake!"
Emul: "Good morning, wa!"
But the sun's already set!
Emul: "He's back, wa!"
Sunraku: "Alright, let's go, Emul!"
I'm frustrated about not finding a way to beat the VR Ryuguin Fugaku, so I'm going to blow off some steam by making progress on the Bonus Unique Scenario.
Walking through the halls of the Rabbit Palace, I thought back on the state of the Unique so far.
None of the other Uniques are any reference for this one. Unlike Wethermon, which is just about beating down an enemy, or Ctarnidd, which ultimately boils down to a gimmick-laden dungeon, this Bonus Unique Scenario has way too many stages to it.
It seems its progression is tied to clearing other Bonus Unique Scenarios, and there are still many things left to do beyond the errand quest. Will I end up fighting Vash at the end? Or are there other completion conditions? Come to think of it, can Unique Monsters actually be defeated...?
Let's think in reverse. Maybe Wethermon being defeatable was the exception, and normally, Unique Monsters don't disappear when you beat them... meaning they're meant to be fought multiple times? When you think about it, it's called a Unique "Scenario." The goal is to clear the story surrounding the Unique Monster. It's not necessarily that the Unique Monster itself plays the role of the final boss.
That's not entirely unlikely. For example, if "Setsuna of Bygone Days" were the Unique Monster, then Wethermon would be the boss within that scenario. The scenario wouldn't fall apart. Even with Ctarnidd, if you look at it differently, you could just say we went on a picnic in his sandbox and played with a big octopus.
Sunraku: "What even makes a Unique Monster a 'Unique' in the first place...? Their place in the story? the Divine Era? Their role as inheritors of the world's lore...?"
Emul: "Sunraku-san! You're zoning out again, wa! We're already in front of the door, wa!"
Ugh, don’t pull my cape. My cape!
Sunraku: "Alright, let's go report that we've completed the errand."
What in the world is going to happen...
To get straight to the point, it turned out that Akitsu Akane had logged in earlier and, following an Invitation from Rabituza, had gone to the colosseum. So I scooped up Emul and ran at full speed to the colosseum.
Q. How strong is this old man, Fugaku?
A. To put it in VR novel terms, he's on the level of a resident of the world of Vagabond, damn it.