Chapter 171: Evil Has Perished!

Are you familiar with the concept of Kanzen Choaku—rewarding good and punishing evil? It's an incredibly rational and simple system born from humans using reason, rather than pure instinct, to form a society.
While you can't exactly apply that logic to factions where mafias or massive syndicates don't exist, GH:C is a game fundamentally designed around a highly simple clash between Heroes and Villains.
Depending on the players, it might end up being a clash of justice vs. justice, or a collision of evil vs. evil, but at the end of the day, the heavens are always watching, and the nail that gets too cocky is bound to get hammered down until its skull caves in.
That's what they call poetic justice... Wait, I was trying to think about rewarding good and punishing evil, but whatever.

<<The meteor of justice dashes through! The player No Name is completely helpless!>>

<<She's fully locked into a combo now; making a comeback from here is going to be extremely difficult!>>

I might be imagining it, but the commentary sounds even more lively now than it did during Pencilgon's peak. I totally get how they feel, though. It'd be hard for anyone to enthusiastically cast that horrific atrocity she just committed.
It was less of a thrilling spectacle and more of a catastrophic disaster, after all. To think she'd actually pull something like that... and worse, to think that footage is going to remain on the internet as video data for all eternity... For once in my life, I genuinely lament the advancement of human civilization.

Though, speaking from a purely personal standpoint, seeing Alex sitting there looking like a dead man after the match ended, only for his girlfriend to suddenly show up and start a sickeningly sweet rom-com right in front of a global audience—yeah, honestly, I think Pencilgon should have beaten him up about three more times.

"Well, putting that aside, it's quite the spectacular sight."

A curbstomp. It was an absolute curbstomp. It was the curbstomp of all curbstomps, to the point where no word other than "curbstomp" could accurately describe the beatdown currently unfolding.

Explosions bloomed all across the city, but every single one of them was a step too late.
Walls, pillars, roads, cars—no matter where the bombs went off, the explosions simply couldn't catch up to the blue streak of light bouncing around like a sentient superball.
It wasn't as if Pencilgon was doing something as simple as waiting for the blue light to get close before detonating them, either.
She was calculating the trajectory and preemptively detonating the bombs where her opponent should be, yet she still couldn't catch the blue meteor. Incredible as it sounds, her opponent was actually seeing the explosions first and then dodging.

If I already knew where the bombs were planted and had a few practice runs, I might be able to pull off the same trick, but to do it completely blind, on the first try, while sprinting through a minefield manually operated by that Pencilgon? I can say with absolute certainty that it's a near-impossible feat. After all, that morality-deficient pencil's predictive bombing is practically in the realm of RNG at this point. This is the same psycho who racked up 25 kills in an FPS using nothing but bombs without firing a single bullet.

But the meteor... Metius... who effortlessly breached Pencilgon's minefield—Sylvia Goldberg—was slamming flawless combos into her without even a hint of a misinput, rapidly shredding Clockfire's health bar to pieces.

"It's a spectacular sight."

"I mean, sure, it's a spectacular beatdown, but... considering she's losing, shouldn't you sugarcoat it a bit?"

"Hm? Ah, no, no. Plummeting straight from the absolute peak to rock bottom is her signature move."

And secretly preparing a backup plan while doing it is exactly the kind of gamer Pencilgon—no, the Pencil Warrior—is. But that's not what I was calling spectacular.

The frill-necked lizard doll with a directional blast effect had its face blown off. But it didn't reach her; it was kicked away from the side.

"Just because it's a catfight doesn't mean it has to be a total one-sided massacre..."

Even if this was technically a battle between felines, the current situation of a Munchkin challenging a Lion didn't exactly scream "equal footing."
Stalling for time was impossible. Her opponent was just brute-forcing through all her setups, and their baseline mobility was far too drastically different.

(Metius is a speed-focused character, sure, but it's more than just that—her movements are completely optimized.)

What's worse, she even had the cunning to intentionally break that optimization just to throw out feints.
Pencilgon detonated her final hidden doll bomb, trying to collapse a building to farm meter, but thanks to the Hero's warnings, the NPCs had already evacuated, meaning she couldn't recover nearly as much of the Villainic Gauge as she'd planned.

(Yeah, there's zero chance of winning this. She might actually be as strong as Sunraku-kun when he's absolutely peaking...)

This was the Number One Player in the US, Sylvia Goldberg. For a brief second, Pencilgon hallucinated a Grim Reaper's scythe being swung at hyperspeed, but unfortunately for her, she was already way too used to getting instantly decapitated by a speed-demon thanks to Wethermon. However, no one had ever told her that the instakill attacks would come packaged with bouncy-ball physics. Therefore, she couldn't win.
She grabbed a thin broken pipe sticking out of the rubble and readied it like a spear to intercept, but it was easily dodged with a maneuver that was hard to even put into words.

(Guess I just have to leave the rest to him, huh...)

Because of that, Pencilgon only had three final jobs left to do.

Drag out her defeat to stall for time, just like Natsume did.
Suffer a spectacular, flashy defeat as payback for her earlier atrocities.
And pass on as much information about Sylvia's current strength to the heavy hitter.

(As long as we achieve our goal in the end...!!)

"Premium Sushiiiiiiii! Gwaaaaah!!"

"...Why are you bringing up sushi now?"

Taking Metius's Super Art, "Meteor Strike," straight to the face, Clockfire exploded alongside her dying scream.
I could tell she was weirdly satisfied with it. Even among pro gamers, there are entertainer types who prioritize putting on a show for the audience over their actual win rate, usually through heel plays. Even taking that into account, that No Name player was a bit too extreme.
But why she chose Japanese fish on rice for her dying words, I have no idea. No, seriously, I don't get it.

Who exactly that scream was directed at—the only ones who understood were the person herself who wanted sushi, the Vice-Captain who wanted Yakiniku, the Vanguard who didn't really care but would take pasta if forced to choose, and the Captain who was ultimately going to be the one footing the bill for all of it.

Despite exploding spectacularly like a monster-of-the-week from an old tokusatsu show, it was ultimately just a game. The person inside, Pencilgon, sat up from her VR system looking perfectly fine.

"Man, she's strong. That girl's a monster, an absolute monster."

"Put it in terms I can understand."

"Wethermon with +100 AGI."

"Is she a fighter jet or something?"

It really was brutal near the end. She was getting juggled like a soccer ball.

"I think I managed to hold out pretty well for my standards, what do you think?"

"...Honestly, as long as I go in with that, I can probably keep up with her as long as I can manage my gauge."

"Gotcha. Alright, well, I'm gonna go stall for whatever time I can, so just relax and loosen up."

Walking confidently toward the microphone Sasakama was holding out, she oozed the aura of a professional model despite hiding her face and identity. If it weren't for the voice changer, she probably would have been outed instantly.

Still, the specs of Sylvia Goldberg that Pencilgon laid her life on the line to reveal proved that she had, as expected, upgraded since last year.
It was likely just a combination of aerial jumps, wall kicks, and dashes, but there were simply no brakes.
Either way, her movements were impossible to track, and since she could react to trap setups after seeing them, the character Clockfire was a fatally terrible matchup against Sylvia Goldberg.

"It's probably a combined technique of center-of-gravity control and the decision-making speed to calculate routes on the fly, but..."

This is rough. The fact that I'm the one who has to stall against that from here on out is what makes it the roughest.
Natsume bought roughly thirty minutes. Pencilgon bought about twenty-five minutes in her first match, committed a twenty-five-minute atrocity in her second match that I hesitate to even speak of, and then spent ten minutes getting her evil purged just now.
Factoring in the breaks between matches and other miscellaneous stuff, it was getting close to two hours. Say what you will about her, but Pencilgon is incredible. She basically bought all the necessary time entirely on her own.

But he's not here. He's not here. That idiot Bakatzo is not here.
We were supposed to stall for time with everything we had, and Katzo—having cleared his RwH6 tournament—was supposed to casually group up with us like it was nothing. That was the entirety of the plan. And since the key to the final phase still hasn't arrived, the stalling phase isn't over yet.

In that case, as the Vice-Captain... no, as the Captain of the Three Stalling Musketeers, my role is to stall that monster to my absolute limits.
Once I dive into the virtual reality world, I won't be able to know what's happening in the real world. I won't be able to check if Katzo has arrived or not.
Which means, even if Katzo does arrive, the member currently diving has to stall with everything they've got. To be completely blunt, Natsume gets a failing grade when it comes to stalling, but her fighting spirit was faithful to the operation.

Pencilgon goes without saying. She's a genuine devil, a demon, a Pencil Warrior (used as a metaphor, not a noun). Not only did she stall in-game, but she's currently fast-talking Sasakama in her post-match interview to intentionally drag it out.
Honestly, doesn't she just win this by herself? I'm tempted to say it, but I knew Pencilgon couldn't actually defeat Sylvia Goldberg.

"And that's exactly why I'm here, huh."

My role is the rear guard, the reserve, the final defense line, the Secret Bullet... call it whatever you want, my only job is to snipe Sylvia Goldberg. And to do it with the handicap of pulling my punches, too.
The moment the Number One in the US (Zen-Ichi) stepped up as the third opponent, we were forced to drastically alter our strategy.

Originally, this operation was meant to stall for time until Katzo returned, but it also served another purpose: setting up the match between "Uomi Kei vs. Sylvia Goldberg."
Because Sylvia Goldberg showed up as the third opponent, my role instantly shifted to "stalling for time while making absolutely sure I lose."

I'll be honest. Even now, I feel like punching Katzo and spitting on him. Sure, I'm the one who chose the character, but as a result, I'm basically being forced to throw the match.

However, there is one piece of good news. Sylvia Goldberg is far stronger than I imagined.
Due to the nature of stalling, I absolutely have to steal at least 1 round. And to do that, whether I want to or not, I'm going to have to go all out.

Prepare yourself, Sylvia Goldberg. My full power only lasts for 2 rounds.
And to drag you onto our stage, I'm going to have to style on you and throw the match.

"I'm gonna beat the absolute crap out of you...!"

Author's Afterword
Sylvia: (Sushi...?)
Sasakama-san: (Sushi...?)
The Audience: (Why sushi...?)
Sunraku: (I wanted Yakiniku, though...)
Natsume: (I just want some light pasta...)

Katzo: "Uwoooooh dammit! Medic! Mediiiic!"