An absolutely god-tier set of pulls: I got Light Mirin from a desperate single draw, then Limited Ferry from a ten-pull I scraped together.
I can just get Wind Big Sis with a Surprise Ticket!!
Chapter 507: Resound, Grateful Legacy — I’m a Cursed Prison
No Face: “Accelerate! Full speed ahead! RELENTLESS PURSUUUUIT!!”
Hannya: “Fucking hell! There’s no hesitation in your movements… Are you thinking with your goddamn spinal cord!?”
You’re damn right! Now that you've made me draw Iaifist, winning or losing is down to the outcome! If you’ve got time to hesitate over how you get there, throw another punch!!
No Face: “This is what an ordinary guy’s gotta do to keep up with a pro!”
Hannya: “You have the nerve to call yourself ordinary!?”
Amelia Sullivan isn’t someone who gets more and more fired up like Sylvia and me. Her speech may be rough, but her playstyle is thoroughly calm. I doubt she’s literally reading my mind, but I get the feeling she’s already worked out the broad tendencies of how I fight in this short time.
And there’s an enormous gulf between us in terms of fighting-game experience. A fighting game is basically a fistfight. Being strong in full-dive VR doesn’t necessarily make someone strong in real life, but someone who knows martial arts in reality still has a certain advantage.
So what about someone who knows fighting games? Obviously, they’re going to be good at pretty much any fighting game.
Heavyweight characters have their own distinctive way of fighting. And hoping that America’s number-two player—a fighter who can go toe-to-toe with Sylvia Goldberg using heavyweight characters—is somehow bad at fighting against heavyweights would be harder than finding a fish that can’t swim.
No Face: “Ever heard of Venus Fight?”
Hannya: “Like hell I have!”
No Face: “Then this’ll be your first time seeing it! DESCENDING THUNDER HAMMER—EL THOR!!”
I mean, I’d be shocked if she’d covered Japanese fighting games starring beautiful girls too.
Without a moment’s hesitation, I throw my only weapon, the mechanical hammer. Loaded with plenty of centrifugal force and kinetic energy, the blow is intercepted by the laser on my opponent’s remaining wing and sent flying upward… Perfect position. Thanks for helping me recreate the move!!
No Face: “I’m gonna fry your brain!”
Hannya: “Like I’d take that head-on!!”
I catch the mechanical hammer as it comes falling back down and continue moving forward. In the original move, you jump, catch it, then bring it crashing down… but unfortunately, I can’t jump in my current form. I’ll have to settle for a running overhead smash instead.
No Face: “Hyaaah!!”
Hannya: “Guuoh!!”
My Cursed Prison, reinforced mainly around the lower body and constantly hovering, has a slightly higher viewpoint than her Cursed Prison.
Gripping the very end of the hammer’s handle, I swing down with all my might. Combined with my acceleration, it’s got enough power to be a finishing blow. But my opponent thrusts the right arm reinforced with Colonel into the hammer’s path and successfully blocks it, fully prepared to take damage in the process.
Hannya: “I’m not dead yet!”
No Face: “Then die right now!”
A cross-counter! But once again, our fists collide!! I’ve driven my opponent’s HP back down to the tiniest sliver. Here’s your death sentence, delivered with free shipping!!
No Face: “Quickdraw…!!”
Hannya: “I’ll chip you down!!”
Rather than the right arm I used for the cross-counter, I throw a quickdraw punch with my left, which I’d kept drawn back in its ready position. My opponent twists that massive body around, evidently planning to hit me with the wing’s laser. Sounds good. Let’s trade damage!!
Turning the armored body to point the wing at me also brings the wing itself within my reach. I don’t care if my extended right hand gets burned; I grab the mechanical wing while it’s firing its laser.
As I yank the wing toward me, I drive a straight spear-hand thrust at my opponent, reaching for that one-frame advantage!!
Hannya: “Guhah!!”
The instant that strike drives into my opponent’s throat, the beam of light shooting from the wing stops dead.
For one brief moment, silence falls. I glance at my Gauge, now down to about seventy percent, then let go of the mechanical wing I’d been gripping. The massive armored body crumples to the ground, apparently unable to muster any more strength.
Hannya: “…Fine. You’re the Real… I guess.”
Crack, crack, crack. The pieces of the Machine Swarm (Mechanitan) that my opponent had been wearing begin falling away. It almost seems to signify the end of the Machine Swarm now that it has lost its head. Yet even as the defeated body is exposed and about to vanish, the flames of fighting spirit burn on—as though those very flames might reduce it to ashes.
Hannya: “But… the one who’s going to win…”
The outline of the 1P-colored Cursed Prison wavers slightly, and vanishes.
No Face: “You left that sentence unfinished. I’ll finish it for you. The one who’s going to win… is me.”
Normally I’m a modest, humble guy, so I guess the reason I’m acting like such an arrogant prick is that I’m syncing up with the character of Cursed Prison.
Then again, pro gamers are basically half celebrities, so a bit of fan service like this is probably normal, right? Yeah.
No Face: “All right… now comes the real test.”
I never intended to lose in the first place, and there’s not much else I can prepare at this point… So I should at least change the battlefield.
No Face: “It’s the final battle. I’ll set one hell of a stage for you, defeated soldier…”
Let’s put on a proper WΔ spectacle, shall we?
◇
The real world (expanded edition) was going absolutely wild.
Eight: “And that’s ittt! The 1P Cursed Prison has been defeated! The Real Cursed Prison is right here, wouldn’t you say!?”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “Congratulations! Amelia and No Face were both amazing!”
Kei: “Uh, staff? Can we get a few censor beeps put in here? No?”
Watching Silver, who was supposed to be a mere spectator, inexplicably high-five Eight, Kei found himself reflecting on what had just unfolded.
Eight: “That was incredible. For No Face’s side, all the groundwork he’d been laying since the start just paid off in spectacular fashion.”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “I figured he was doing something off-camera, but he was preparing an entirely new version of his fighting style!”
Kei: “Yeah. I secretly checked just now, and that special form seriously hasn’t even been discovered for a full day. Talk about luck, or whatever you’d call it…”
The game doesn’t decide which of the three NPC factions will appear until after character selection is complete. In other words, at the start of the match, that faction was only one of three possible outcomes.
Kei: “He probably took Display out early so the cameras couldn’t reveal where he was hiding his stash. Display does gain more and more of an information advantage the longer a match goes on…”
Eight: “If he’d been collecting materials with Display still around, the worst-case scenario was that Hannya-san’s Cursed Prison could have absorbed them instead.”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “And the style using Colonel—Kernel—and Commander was built for mid- to long-range fighting. When somebody can close the distance that quickly, its advantages don’t mean a thing.”
Although none of that was what had the comment section—filled with messages from viewers watching the program live—so worked up.
Kei: “The comments are going absolutely crazy too.”
Eight: “I’m not very familiar with all this, so it didn’t really click for me, but those names No Face-san was shouting for his moves…”
Kei: “Mortal Lariat is the special move of a character from Desma 4… Death Match 4, to give its full title. You catch the opponent with a lariat, spin around with them, and launch them flying… It’s incredibly flashy because of the unusual camera work. Thunder Hammer—El Thor is… well, the version he did was a little different, but I think that’s the special move of a character from Venus Fight, a game that turns gods from all sorts of mythologies into cute girls.”
Eight: “Um… they’re not actually Cursed Prison’s moves, so is there really any point in going out of his way to do them?”
Kei: “Hmm… to be completely frank, not really. But this time around there are two benefits. The first is that it throws Amelia off balance.”
Recreating battle styles from all over the world and throughout history on the fly means that the way you fight becomes unpredictable in itself.
Kei: “Even with a hammer, throwing it or smashing somebody with it completely changes how you move. With that little HP left, wasn’t it pretty much inevitable Hannya would go down before being able to adapt?”
Eight: “And what’s the other benefit?”
Kei: “If you pull it off, you get hyped.”
Eight: “Wait… what?”
Kei: “No, I’m completely serious. This guy— ahem! People like Sylvia Goldberg and No Face perform better the more fired up they get.”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “Yaaay! Everybody watching?”
Kei: “Hey, hey, Silver. Don’t start waving just because somebody said Sylvia Goldberg’s name.”
The balance of the match was now almost completely even. Cursed Prison had lost around thirty percent of its HP, but retained the advantage of four-legged mobility. Meanwhile, Amelia, playing Hannya, had successfully brought her third character, Zenoselgus—a mainstay of hers since the days of GH:B, Galaxia Heroes: Burst—to this point in perfect condition.
Eight: “Which of the two do you think is going to win?”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “Who knows?”
Eight: “Who knows, you say…?”
Mysterious Silver Mask: “I’ll tell you something, Eight. Not even God can decide the outcome of an exciting battle. Only the two people fighting can decide that. And only the future knows what it will be.”
The battle unfolding in the triangular city was at last rushing toward its final stage.
Facing one another were a suit of cursed armor and a strange castaway. And then… Valkyrie, the defeated battle maiden.