Chapter 280: The Sword Wolf Faces the Thunder-Fire Beast, Part 10
Psyger-100: "—O blue heavens, cast your shadow. Laugh into the dark sky. The roaring applause cannot reach. It is the iron hammer of judgment descending from the heavens."
I knew it. I'd suspected as much. Was there any reason Psyger-100 couldn't do what Rei-shi had pulled off? Psyger-100's lips, her tongue, her throat spun the words into sentences and made them a chant... while dealing with Fivefold Ensemble: Quintet — likely the number of blades she's most skilled with — and controlling movements that, conversely, forced me to deal with them. The moment she used Stun Beat, I'd put the possibility at about sixty percent.
The possibility that Psyger-100 is a magic swordsman who wields both magic and swordsmanship.
Psyger-100: "The poet sings: it is God's authority. The priest preaches: it is divine punishment from God."
Sunraku: "Now then..."
Three options. Stop it before she uses it? Dodge it? Or... use that here? All of them are realistic. The third one in particular — the difficulty is high, but it creates a clear weakness, so if I screw up I could blow myself up spectacularly.
So I'll pick the third option.
I'll be honest: winning or losing doesn't matter to me anymore. Whether the final outcome is victory or defeat... somehow I feel like I could accept either with a "Yeah, that figures." So what is this impulse driving me right now? I already know its name. After all, it's been with me since I started my very first game, and it'll keep being with me from here on out.
Sunraku: "Time to shift gears again."
Psyger-100: "I speak the truth. It has no justice. It has no evil. It is pure, ultimate violence."
The chant doesn't stop. She forcibly sustains her continuously dropping MP with recovery that outpaces it, and on top of that she's even scraping together the cost for magic. Psyger-100 is burning through resources that should be far too precious to waste on a simple PvP match.
In that case, the polite thing — no, the romantic thing — is for me to burn through everything I've got in this moment too.
Sunraku: "Alright, following Netherlight-kun, you get your debut too... Let's make a show of it... Dis Pater, Nether King's Mirror Shield!!"
Actually, among the weapons I own, there was one thing that wasn't a coward, but a cowardly object. By advertising its ability to "reflect magic," it had cleverly hidden the fact that it too was industrial waste.
Its name is Re-Legacy Weapon: Bilac "Dis Pater, Nether King's Mirror Shield" — following the "Gilta Brille," a Bilac-brand ancient weapon revived in the modern age.
Made from the materials of the Atlanticus Lepnorca, it's a gimmick weapon with durability that won't budge from a half-hearted impact, and the all-inclusive performance of even repelling magic... That much is definitely true. But this thing was hiding a certain fact.
To begin with, the Exceed Charge mechanism equipped on all the Re-Legacy Weapons is divided into several types. In other words, the Gilta Brille's Exceed Charge — Reject — isn't so much a unique special move as it is "an Exceed Charge of the Reject type." That's the correct way to put it.
So, what type does the defendant, Dis Pater, Nether King's Mirror Shield, fall under? The answer is simple: this shield's Exceed Charge, when certain conditions are met, grants the user a powerful buff...
Yes. It grants a powerful buff.
Unlike Whalelore Moonblade: Netherlight, whose standalone ability was garbage but managed to barely function as a sheath through combination effects, this one had the utterly stupid behind-the-scenes problem of its crucial special move being a piece of junk.
But right now, in this moment...
It's usable. I can use Dis Pater's Exceed Charge, and take down Psyger-100 in the most enhanced state I've ever had.
Psyger-100: "Cry out! Iron hammer of roaring laughter, strike the earth and smash all foes who block my path!"
Half-naked and dual-wielding, mobility-specialized Sunraku — that's just my form in SLF. In a trash game that's already dead because someone exploited game systems that were obviously exploitable, I was called "Death Metal Magician" — the assault captain of the resistance that fought against the "UIE"... the Under Idea Empire, commonly known as the Shimonetania Empire, which committed every wickedness imaginable. Don't underestimate my magic insight.
The most important element in a game's magic battle is, after all, the name of the magic. If the name has a fire element, you know flames are coming. If "meteor" is in there, you can even read how the flames will fly. Some games use original words, making it impossible without seeing the actual thing... but at least in SLF, magic names are determined by the former rule.
Unlike that world-game from the past, where magic was made from "AV descriptions and titles" like that perverted demon king did, magic battles here are far too easy. The fact that I ended up weirdly knowledgeable about AVs I'd never seen or bought is mostly that bastard's fault. The final boss player who kept coming back to that world even after sixteen bans was, aside from his hopelessly shitty methods of expression, a master of magic-imbued combat. So me and a few others had to deal with him, which naturally meant getting showered with dirty jokes more and more often.
Sunraku: "...Remembered something unpleasant."
Well, whatever. Since I managed to sing him to death right before the service ended, it's all over now. What kind of person just hurls obscene talk that dodges banned words even at minors? And seriously, pronouncing punctuation marks while speaking with your mouth? That's insane...
Psyger-100: "Shatter, thunderclap! It is the starving mad dog that devours! It is the loyal hound that obeys my will and destroys my enemies!"
The magic being unleashed is thunder-based. Lightning-attribute magic, which often balances firepower and speed, is like drawing one of two choices in Old Maid — either "front" or "above." Given lightning's nature, does it drop lightning from the sky, or does it fire forward from the hand like a laser? If you can figure out even that much, and you have the speed to move based on that knowledge...
Sunraku: "Full throttle!"
Activate Levin Trigger: Hazard. Then immediately follow with Moment Sight. As jet-black lightning mixes with sparks leaking from my cracked body, two movements in a slowed-down world step into their final approach toward realization.
Psyger-100: "Violence Thunder!"
Sunraku: "Exceed Charge!"
Controlling the motion that triggered the Overflow, I raise Dis Pater, Nether King's Mirror Shield, upward — toward the sky at the tip of Psyger-100's outstretched hand — as if putting on a woven hat. The Sworvant blades surrounding me probably mean to keep me from dodging. Too bad — I'll just take it head-on.
Her chant reaches completion. My function begins activation. The lightning beast descends from the heavens straight toward me, and...
Dis Pater, Nether King's Mirror Shield, blooms open — at nearly the same instant.
Let's see what you've got — the Exceed Charge that's no longer industrial waste... the power of Conversion!
The moment of impact, an explosion. Along with a thunderous roar fitting for lightning, my body vanished into a cloud of dust.
—He wasn't down.
Psyger-100 knew it intuitively. The full-chant Violence Thunder — the highest-firepower spell in her arsenal — unleashed with recovery that outpaced the MP continuously drained by Sworvant, using the massive stock of recovery items in her inventory. Its flaw is that the impact point can't be changed after setting, so it was crucial to keep Sunraku from moving. And in practice, the barrier of Sworvant blades, which she could only barely keep floating, did result in the magic landing successfully...
But "couldn't move" and "didn't move" are worlds apart. And the fact that he took some kind of action — that alone is more than enough reason for vigilance. She's learned that the hard way, over and over, up to this very moment.
Psyger-100: "Exceed Charge...? What did he use?"
Given it's a shield, maybe a defense-type skill? If "Charge" means a rushing charge, maybe a pushback-type skill? But for this one, it's not a rushing charge — it's an accumulation charge. And what Sunraku did, what happened... the answer is revealed from within the dust cloud.
Sunraku: "Exceed Charge, type: Conversion... Normally, it acts as a 'mirror' to reflect magic. But by deliberately taking it into the mechanism as a 'lens,' it converts the absorbed magic, granting the user a boost to all stats and the enchant 'Netherflame.'"
Boom. The dust cloud is swept aside. A left arm extends from the curtain of smoke, wreathed in an aura like blue flame. And at the end of that left arm, what emerged from the dust cloud was...
Psyger-100: "Monster transformation...?"
Sunraku: "Like hell it is."
Clad in jet-black lightning... wreathed in flames across its entire body... it was a figure far too removed from humanity.
Sunraku: "Alright, here's a quick gag."
The head of the man holding two crystal swords — gold and ultramarine — changes into one modeled after a fish...
Sunraku: "Grilled salmon."
Psyger-100: "...Heh heh."
Sunraku: "Opening!"
The burning man closed in at a terrifying speed, and Psyger-100's body was sent flying by a kick wreathed in flame and lightning.