Chapter 167: Dance, Dance in the Theater of Scumbags

You could say technological progress has elevated realism to the level of an actual threat.
Fancy dolls scattered everywhere, exploding flames, and echoing bizarrely through the agonizing screams is Pencilgon's laughter. The pitiful ordinary citizens—if the police they rely on are getting blown up just the same, their last resort is obviously the Heroes.
Help us, Hero! Help us, Doctor! Because we heard you would save us!

They weren't even people anymore—just a tsunami of meat meant to body-block the Hero's movements. If you were a Villain, you could just sweep them away and trample over them without a shred of hesitation, mercy, or compassion. But a Hero can't do that. Even if they could, it wouldn't be Heroic.
That's why they freeze up. Why they hesitate. Why they overlook it.

...Why they overlook the fact that mixed in with the cries for help is a voice saying, "Here, hold this."

『Kyaaaaa!』

Sasakama-san's scream blasted through the microphone at max volume. On the screen, the bomb-strapped NPC planted among the civilians begging for help detonated, sending Dr. Sandalphon flying through the air along with the rest of the crowd.

『Haaah... This certainly isn't a fighting game anymore... If anything, it's turned into a simulation game.』

That's exactly why the demons laugh, why the devils sneer. Pencilgon is out here laughing while committing atrocities so vile they'd make actual fiends go pale.
Screams of "Look out!" rained down from the audience toward Dr. Sandalphon, but those warnings couldn't reach him. While Lucas was stuck playing a Musou game where he wasn't allowed to attack, only we, the third-party observers, realized that Pencilgon had already made the cameraman and reporter step off the helicopter, slapped a bomb on the pilot, and was now elegantly looking down at everything from the sky.

"I've been stuck helping her test helicopter flight paths since yesterday..."

As if to say don't underestimate me by thinking I only know how to take hostages, her methods of manipulating and herding the NPCs were cruelty incarnate. A scumbag actively proving through actual gameplay that Yggdrya's earlier atrocities were mere child's play in comparison.
As long as her real face and name aren't exposed, she's practically invincible. They're infinitely close to humans, but at the end of the day, they're just NPCs, which makes them easy to control. The fact that she can spout lines like that and actually execute on them makes me seriously wonder—is it really okay to broadcast this to the entire world?

"Ah man, her final boss switch got completely flipped."

Inside the helicopter, Clockfire let out a boisterous, theatrical villain laugh that fit the scene perfectly. Smiling, she waved goodbye to the pilot and jumped out of the chopper. A few seconds later, exactly as expected, the cockpit exploded, and the hunk of metal plummeted to the earth, spewing smoke and flames.

Inside Chaos City—which was rapidly escalating from a simple terrorist attack into a full-blown biohazard level disaster—Dr. Sandalphon narrowly escaped the NPC bombings and spotted Clockfire smiling and waving at him from a building's rooftop.

『Lucas charges into the building! And No Name prepares to intercept... wait, no she doesn't! Ahh! She's taking the elevator! She's just normally riding the elevator down!』

『Looking at it from the outside, watching Lucas frantically sprint up the stairs is honestly kind of comical...』

I'm starting to feel pure pity for the playboy getting completely toyed with, but Pencilgon was steadily burning through the time limit, effectively putting her money where her mouth is regarding her strategy.
And the reward waiting for Dr. Sandalphon after sprinting all the way to the rooftop? Clockfire, having already reached the ground floor, waving back up at him in an incredibly infuriating taunt. Honestly, there aren't many people who could maintain their composure after being made a fool of to this extent. Even if he kept his cool, noise would start bleeding into his thoughts.
By prioritizing cornering her through the shortest possible route, massive holes of carelessness would open up in his gameplay. And she's nowhere near kind enough to let those openings slide.

"Time is at 9 minutes 43 seconds... She's farming the clock perfectly just like she promised."

Fall damage doesn't exist in this game. To chase down the scuttling Clockfire, Dr. Sandalphon carelessly jumped off the rooftop. Waiting to greet him at the bottom was Clockfire waving her hands and yelling, "Come on!"—along with the Gauge Move perfectly identical to her that the tailcoat-wearing lunatic had cleverly hidden behind her back.
The rest is simple math. 100 and 20. If you subtract 30 from both numbers, which one hits 0 first?

"See?"

"No, what do you mean 'See?'..."

The moment NPCs with free will are involved, her annoyance factor skyrockets exponentially. The key here isn't her strength, it's her pure toxicity.
If she simply got stronger, she'd be easy to deal with—you'd just adjust your mental stack and raise your expectations of what the enemy can do. But when the annoyance factor doubles, the whole paradigm shifts.
Take Lucas just now: approaching a trap-heavy character like Clockfire by falling from the sky—an action that completely locks your movement options—is the absolute height of stupidity. If he'd thought about it calmly, he would have realized she was using her real body as bait for an ambush.
But factor in the relentless harassment using NPCs as a meat shield, the stress of watching all your efforts amount to nothing, and above all, the infuriating taunts. Combine those, and you breed reckless actions and minor lapses in judgment. She never misses those tiny gaps. By the time you notice, a blade is already at your throat.

"I dunno, man. Her whole playstyle is just pure 'Demon Lord'."

"...That's shockingly accurate."

Imposing countless hardships, forcing you to clear them one by one just to earn the right to challenge the boss. Just like a good old-school RPG, her biggest weakness is getting cornered in a room and ganked by the party.

"Alright, this is where she really shows her true colors."

"That wasn't her true colors just now?!"

『That wasn't her true colors just now?!』

Geh, Sasakama-san came over here with the mic? Crap, what do I do? I was originally going to say, "She's gonna dramatically stage her own loss just to stall out the clock," but I obviously can't broadcast that to the entire world! Actually, can you please stop pointing the camera at me? Ahh, dammit.

"Uh, ah... well, as you can see, she's, ah... throwing away efficiency to prioritize efficiency for the sake of the theatrical performance, I guess...? Ahem, well, you know how it is. Once you step onto a stage she's built, it's pretty damn hard to exit halfway through. Yep."

St-Stop it! Don't look at me with those eyes, Natsume-shi! Stop telling me, Ah, this guy sucks at public speaking, with your eyes! I mean, you're absolutely right, but still!
No, calm down, calm down. RP. Stick to the RP. The Pumpkin Mercenary is the cynical and cool No Face. He wouldn't get flustered just because a few tens of thousands of people are staring at him! Probably!

"Or rather, this game clearly has a lot of Villain characters who aren't primarily designed for direct combat, right? I doubt the devs actively encourage anything that atrocious, but, uh... they definitely designed them with behind-the-scenes sabotage in mind, y'know?"

『Meaning?』

Please tag in! I sent a telepathic SOS to Natsume-shi!
She completely ignored me. Dammit!!

"Villains build their gauge by causing damage to the city, but as the match goes on, it gets harder and harder to build meter... sir. Conversely, as the match drags on, it becomes much easier for the Hero to resolve the 'damage' the Villain caused, which means their meter builds a lot faster."

Simply put, the Villain is the pencil, the Hero is the eraser, and the stage is a blank notebook. In the early game, the Villain can scribble on the blank notebook however they want, and the Hero has to wait until the Villain dirties the pages. It's a clever system that mechanically enforces the idea that Heroes can't exist without Villains.
But eventually, a notebook runs out of space to write on, and the dirtier the pages get with pencil marks, the more the eraser gets to shine. That's the basic mechanic behind the 'Villain has early-game advantage, Hero has late-game advantage' concept.
At a glance, it seems heavily Villain-favored, but from a Villain player's perspective, it actually comes with a ton of massive headaches.

Fundamentally, to a Hero, a Villain is 'the evil that must be defeated and the reason for their existence.' Defeating the enemy is the Hero's job; it's their entire purpose in life.
But to a Villain, a Hero is nothing more than 'an obstacle that showed up while trying to achieve their goal.' Sure, there are some Villains whose whole schtick becomes defeating the Hero, but generally, fighting the Hero is just a side quest. Scheming up no good and pulling it off is the true essence of a Villain.

And in this game, which faithfully adapts American comics to an obsessive degree, that exact rule applies. Meaning a 'direct clash between Hero and Villain' offers very little benefit to the Villain.
Heroes build up their Heroic Gauge by saving people in trouble and fighting to defeat the Villain. But Villains barely get any Villainic Gauge from directly brawling with a Hero.
A Villain has to farm as much meter as humanly possible before the Hero arrives just to force a fair fight. Conversely, if they fail to farm meter, the Hero's advantage snowballs as the clock ticks down.

"...In short, the optimal strategy for a Villain player is to take actions that keep them 'hidden from the Hero' for as long as possible. Y'know the whole Tortoise and the Hare fairy tale? It's basically that."

『I see... So the Villain is the tortoise and the Hero is the hare. It becomes a question of how much of a lead the tortoise can build before the hare wakes up and starts moving. If the tortoise doesn't run like its life depends on it, the hare will easily catch up and overtake it.』

"Exactly... what I meant."

Once Sasakama-san and the camera finally backed off, I let out a massive sigh. Giving speeches like this is supposed to be Katzo or Pencilgon's turf. Me? I'm way more suited to... just charging in without a single thought in my head. Wait, is that why they always roast me for being a loose cannon? Dammit.

Anyway, she makes it look like she's farming meter effortlessly, but Pencilgon's little performance is actually an incredibly tight tightrope walk.
It looks like her manipulation tactics are completely controlling the pace of the match, but the counter-strategy to beat it is actually pretty damn simple.

『And Round 2 has officially begun...! Oh! What is Lucas doing?!』

Looks like he actually saw right through it.
On the giant screen, Dr. Sandalphon completely ignored the NPCs begging for help—even aggressively shoving them aside—as he sprinted straight ahead to hunt down Clockfire.

Author's Afterword
By the way, city damage and stuff carries over between rounds, so even though Pencilgon looks like she's chilling, she's actually fighting by the skin of her teeth.

Professor Clockfire: "Hey there, kids! Make sure to take good care of your ammo[*1]!"

・Comic "Hydro Hands"
A story where Aquos, a firefighter who gained water-manipulation powers thanks to Galaxia Comics' resident "It's Usually This Guy's Fault," Galaxeus, fights as the Hero "Hydro Hands."
Major Villains include the Psycho-Bomber "Clockfire," who finds pure ecstasy in destroying peace, and the merchant of death "Show Window," who fires off missiles in the middle of the city under the guise of "live-fire testing" various weapons.
The series is highly rated for its depiction of Aquos agonizing over whether to prioritize saving lives or defeating Villains, as well as featuring a roster of Villains who have significantly more screws loose in their heads compared to other comics.

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Ammo: The Kanji reads "Remaining Ammo" while the Ruby text ironically forces the reading "NPCs".