Chapter 440: Dragons, O Dragons! Part Seventeen

I suddenly thought, “I’d like to write some SLF fanfiction...” It took me ten seconds to realize what those words meant. I’m the creator...

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It flowed like the wind.

It came without pause like the rain.

It raged like thunder.

In other words, it was a crimson storm given form.

Oikatzo: “...All right, let’s get moving on our end too!”

Psyger-100: “I’m impressed you could look at that and sum it up so easily...”

Oikatzo: “Well, that level of craziness is pretty normal for him... Mostly, I’m just thinking his menu handling hasn’t changed.”

From Oikatzo’s point of view, Sunraku’s greatest strength was not his reaction speed or the experience he had accumulated through trash games.

It was how quickly he adapted to user interfaces—to UI itself.

This was not limited to SLF. In games where players operated menus to “call out” weapons, window operation during combat was extremely important.

Oikatzo: “SLF’s windows are called up by thought and operated with your fingers, right? Other games use that kind of UI too, but... Sunraku places the coordinates right by his ‘hands’ and operates it without looking.”

The red beast laughed.

It looked like a dragon, a wolf, a shark, and a bird of prey. At the very least, one thing was clear: it existed to harm enemies and devour prey.

Its hands moved constantly. Every so often it called a window into place beside them; the instant a hand became free after throwing a weapon, another weapon appeared in it, then vanished back again as the cycle of calling and returning weapons repeated at dizzying speed.

Twin blades danced.

Iron fists crushed enemies.

Flames traced paths through the air.

Then, before anyone realized it, an ultra-greatsword reeled back into its hand tore through the wind and reduced another enemy to the same fate.

Psyger-0: “Without looking...?”

Oikatzo: “He’s memorized things like how fast the list scrolls when he swipes and where each option will appear. He calls it the ‘Item Quick-Draw Technique.’ Even if he isn’t looking, one of his hands is still occupied, so he’s vulnerable if someone closes in during it.”

Psyger-100: “A stunt...?”

Oikatzo: “Not really. If you put the weapons you want at the very top and bottom of your item list, it’s actually pretty easy to pull them out.”

Oikatzo regularly did similar things himself. It was not some ability only one person in a million could perform.

Sunraku’s real strength was that he could adapt to practically any UI almost immediately.

Oikatzo: “...There was that one time he complained, ‘This UI is so awful it’s unbelievable.’”

If Oikatzo remembered correctly, every time the item screen opened, badly timed voice lines and other interruptions played. At worst, it could take an entire minute to retrieve an item.

After briefly losing himself in the memory, Oikatzo came back to his senses, let out a breath, and refocused.

Oikatzo: “Guess we should find Rust and Mold... Oh, right. Psyger-100-san, do you know where the Dragon Blood Demons are?”

Psyger-100: “The Dragon Blood Demons... Ah, the ones the chef players were so excited about. I believe they were made to fight Bryleinyego’s lesser dragons because it would have been a shame to let them die carelessly...”

For better or worse, the Dragon Blood Demons joining them had merely been a repeat of their earlier contact with the elves. Even Psyger-100 seemed to have little impression of them. She pressed a hand to her temple and forced herself to remember where they had gone.

Psyger-100: “Ah, now I remember. I believe the Skull Azuchi buff made things safer, so they began targeting Deuredhowl.”

Oikatzo: “Which means...”

At that moment, Deuredhowl had been chased by the players until it crashed into Bryleinyego. The two dragons were now locked in an extremely undignified struggle to force their aggro onto each other.

In other words...

Oikatzo: “Ah, there they are!”

Rust: “Ueh?! Oh, it’s just Oikatzo-san...”

Mold: “...Has it been a few hours?”

He had found the mismatched pair with almost no trouble at all.

Parts of their equipment were covered in soot or had begun to melt, clearly showing that they had fought a fierce battle against a fire-element enemy. Still, they did not appear to have been pushed far enough to make fighting difficult.

Oikatzo: “The Rust Plan is underway. All that’s left is to meet up with Pencilgon and enter the final stage.”

Mold: “The plan... what?”

Oikatzo: “That idiot rampaging over there finally brought the base with him... You know, that robot.”

Rust: “I see... I see—what?!”

It was an excellent double take.

Mold: “That wasn’t a monster?!”

Beside her, Mold had also done a double take. Those two were always perfectly in sync. While thinking about something so pointless, Oikatzo turned toward the green dragon’s combat zone—the other battlefield.

Oikatzo: “The ownership of the Tactical Machine Beasts and powered armor is divided between three people. Even if we make them shared clan property, we need approval from all three. Oh, and this is the reactor that powers them.”

Rust: “W-wait, wha—huh—”

Oikatzo casually tossed the Out-of-Spec Ether Reactor as though passing someone an apple.

Rust caught it with the same care she would have used to catch a newborn baby.

Oikatzo: “They’ll probably come over here too... Somehow, everything I needed to do ended without me putting in any effort.”

Oikatzo was not quite on the level of Akitsu Akane, who practically nullified the desire sensor, but he had set some of the finest records in professional gaming, and his luck with pulls was still very strong.

That was why everything had gone so smoothly.

And that was also why he was unknowingly moving himself farther away from any chance of triggering a Unique Scenario.

Oikatzo: “Now then... Let’s see how the New Money Plan is going...”

The situation was strange to begin with.

One of the clear conditions was to “defeat Siegwurm,” yet Siegwurm himself remained high in the sky.

There was no way the game expected Tactical Machine Beasts and powered armor to have already spread among most of the player base at this point.

If that was not the prerequisite, then some kind of trigger had to exist within the course of the Siegwurm battle.

The gold flying in the distant heights remained far beyond their reach. Only one person had reached it so far, and Oikatzo doubted that person had used the intended method.

There had to be some condition that would make Siegwurm descend to the ground.

Oikatzo thought through the possibilities.

Oikatzo: “...Heroes, B.I.G., character evaluation—”

Pencilgon: “—Something like, ‘The total positive B.I.G. evaluation calculated from all players must reach or exceed a certain value,’ right?”

Oikatzo: “Hm? You’re late, Pencilgon.”

Pencilgon: “Well, it was being so annoyingly persistent... I tracked down Tottori the Shimahne-kun and dumped all of Blockentreed’s aggro on him.”

Somewhere on the battlefield, an archer being praised as a hero let out a scream.

It dissolved into the noise of battle without ever reaching Pencilgon’s group.

As far as Pencilgon was concerned, Blockentreed was now a problem of the past. She drank an HP-restoring potion while watching the battlefield, where white, red, and one more red creature were rampaging.

Pencilgon: “Phew. It feels like it’s usually been a long time whenever I meet Sunraku-kun in-game... He’s certainly gone feral.”

Oikatzo: “Yeah. Like a black bass or something.”

Pencilgon: “An invasive species from trash games, huh? Heh-heh. Nicely put, Katzo-kun.”

They naturally mocked Sunraku as they spoke.

Pencilgon, followed by the Human Dragora, now down to seven members, looked up at the sky and then surveyed the ground.

Pencilgon: “With all that talk about heroes, the condition is probably somewhere around there. At the very least, I heard a rumor that Sunraku-kun challenged him one-on-one and had his challenge accepted...”

Oikatzo: “Then in the worst case, isn’t it possible he’ll never come down?”

Pencilgon: “Come now, Katzo-kun. dragon slaying—Dragon Slay—is a heroic legend shared across the entire world.”

Oikatzo: “Oh... So he might descend when one of the Color Dragons is defeated...”

Pencilgon: “That would be inconvenient for us, but it’s probably the most likely answer...”

According to Wolfgang’s policy, Noirlind absolutely had to survive.

That meant their “sacrificial pieces” would have to be one of the red, white, or green dragons.

Pencilgon: “No, let’s continue as we are! From fighting it, I can tell Blockentreed can hold out for quite a while. In that case, we’ll wear down both red and white and take the high-risk, high-return route of creating a bunch of ‘idle players’!”

Oikatzo: “The return might be big, but isn’t the risk even bigger?”

As the number of Color Dragons fell, the number of players attacking the remaining dragons would naturally rise.

That would strengthen the forces available against Siegwurm, but it was also a double-edged sword that could increase the number of weapons pointed at Noirlind.

Furthermore, the anti-Noirlind faction possessed the enormous trump card known as Skull Azuchi.

The massive enhancement buff that had even reduced Deuredhowl’s jet-like flames would undoubtedly win the players’ support.

Pencilgon: “Then let’s use Siegwurm as our example.”

Oikatzo: “What do you mean?”

Pencilgon: “—‘Come, heroes’... something like that.”