Chapter 175: The High-Spirited High-Speeder: Torque Burst

The first one goes without saying: "Benpi," or Berserk Online Passion. It's a demon realm where you abandon human form to endlessly fight non-human battles, and it's there that I mastered the art of fighting having discarded all human pride. Or rather, mastering that was the absolute bare minimum starting line, so you could say I took the initiative to actively strip away my own humanity.

The second is Animal Fight Online... commonly known as "Gorillion Online." It's a game with the concept of players becoming animals and engaging in wild battles... but while that might be fine for an ancient civilization-style controller game, for a Full-Dive game where you actively discard your human body, the handling can only be described in one word: atrocious. And worst of all, despite having dozens of playable characters, 99.9% of them are strictly "inferior versions of the Lion," which just shows how fundamentally terrible the balance adjustments are.

Even after receiving nerfs in an update, the Lion's throne as the strongest remained completely unshaken, and the meta became absolutely flooded with Lions capable of stunlocking you with cat punches, and low-kick Gorillas that were strangely strong only against Lions—it was just that kind of game. Is it some King of the Beasts buff? But really, why a Gorilla?

I mastered the way beasts fight through this Gorillion game. Back then I wryly smiled and thought, "Where the hell is this ever going to be useful?", but now I can confidently say it. It was pretty damn useful.

And the third one. Because of an incredibly absurd game system and a post-apocalyptic... no, a Bakumatsu era vibe that felt like they trampled all human goodwill into a bloody paste, scattered it in the dirt, and plowed it over, it was a bizarre masterpiece widely known as the "game strictly for elite loners"—its name is Tsujigiri Capriccio: Online, commonly known as "Bakumatsu." It's a sandbox open-world game with an incredibly simple premise: regardless of whether they are players or NPCs, "the more you slash, the higher your score."

Players are handed a single katana and tossed into an open-field motif of Edo during the Bakumatsu period, and they are immediately welcomed with a warm baptism from veterans scheming to spawn-kill newbies. To be more specific, players are relentlessly slaughtered over and over until the veterans get bored, and what awaits them next is a silent night raid by NPC street slashers—which, to be specific again, lasts until morning.

So, while relentlessly being hunted as the weak without getting their spirits broken, the weak occasionally band together to deliver "Divine Punishment" [*1] upon higher-level players... deliver "Divine Punishment" [*1] upon Shogunate retainers who respawn about once a week... deliver "Divine Punishment" [*2] upon their own comrades over loot disputes... and occasionally deliver "Divine Punishment" [*3] upon completely innocent town girls. As this cycle repeats, the players eventually reach a point where they trust absolutely nothing but themselves and their weapons, and before they know it, they are waiting at the newbie spawn points right alongside the very veterans who used to spawn-camp them. It's that kind of game.

It's a game where its Bakumatsu-level chaos tends to steal all the attention, but the truth is, there was actually a lot to learn from it. The technique that proved especially useful for clearing Trash Games later on was striking the gaps in rhythm. NPCs have distinct openings, whether it's the gap between programmed actions or right in the middle of performing a specific motion. And if it's a player, an opening is born the exact moment their focus slips.

You could call it something like a musical rest. You close the distance the precise second a clear break in tension occurs, drawing your katana faster than the opponent can react and slashing them down—or sometimes being slashed down yourself. Games where "everyone but yourself is practically an enemy" exist elsewhere, like United Rounds, but you could say my PvP skills were heavily sharpened in this game, which placed a far heavier emphasis on instantaneous, split-second offense and defense.

I consider this "rhythm shifting" to be an extremely crucial factor in PvP. Feints, delays, and post-initiative counters all broadly fall into this category, and so do the surprise attack skills I polished in Bakumatsu. Sylvia Goldberg is the exact same type as me, the kind that forces their own rhythm onto the opponent—and since she slams her rhythm into you at maximum volume, most players get completely swallowed by that noise and pummeled. Just like I was a little while ago.

This is just a guess, but Katzo and the other players who actually put up a good fight probably studied the roaring rhythm Sylvia forces on them and shifted toward a tactic of countering it. It's not a mistake—it really isn't—but so long as the fact remains that Sylvia Goldberg's undefeated record is yet to be broken, it also means it isn't the correct answer.

Sylvia Goldberg's strength is that the beat and rhythm she possesses are constantly updating. Much like a hero awakening at the absolute last second, or a car shifting into an even higher gear, her rhythm changes. That means the counter-strategies you've maintained up to that point have to be rebuilt from scratch, and usually, this is where players fail to catch up to Sylvia Goldberg's rhythm and lose. If that's the case, how exactly do you beat Sylvia Goldberg? This is where the absolute fundamentals of fighting games come into play. Fighting games are, essentially, the convergence of options; you narrow down the actions your opponent can take and force your own attacks onto them.

The absolute best countermeasure against Sylvia Goldberg isn't a reactive counter; it's not a post-initiative strike, but a pre-initiative trap. You slam your options in her face first, and then hammer a counter into whichever one she chooses. She's troublesome because you don't know where or when her attacks are coming from, so if a bird is flying around all over the place, you just have to shove it in a birdcage. To catch a meteor moving way too fast, you can't be playing on the back foot—you have to seize the initiative.

"Guh...!"

"Do your best, my semicircular canals! Kiiiiick!"

Abusing the pivot turns, I lift one leg and unleash a kick while spinning in a posture resembling a camel spin in figure skating. In Gorillion Online, it was one of the Gorilla's gauge moves that granted a one-sided advantage solely against Lions, but regardless, dealing with this kick is a massive pain in the ass. After all, it's basically a fan with exposed blades; recklessly get too close and your HP just gets chipped away.

"Ugh, how annoying... Who even are you...?!"

"Just your average mercenary, hired with money and food... Hah!"

My roaring iron leg thrashes Metius, launching her dancing into the air for the who-knows-how-many-th time. Sure, I'm taking a non-trivial amount of damage over here too—primarily to my semicircular canals—but it goes without saying who holds the advantage now. I'll just shake my head to fix my wobbling core.

"I'm taking this round! Go flying!"

Flames erupt from the exhausts sprouting all over my body, and the headlights on my front cowls flash on. With a deafening roar, Cursed Prison ferociously charges at the cornered Metius. With her posture broken, Metius doesn't have the time to run away; the only options left for her are to intercept or roll to the side to evade.

"Fine, I'll gift you this round."

And she chose to intercept.

"But the Hero is the one who always wins in the end, isn't that right, my archenemy?"

"This isn't a comic, it's a game."

Impact. From the very start, there was no way a character boasting high speed but severely lacking in durability could take a massive-mass collision with zero damage. Even so, her successful counter chipped away at Cursed Prison's health bar just as Metius's own HP hit 0.

The carnivore-like grin she flashed right before shattering and disappearing was more than enough to foretell just how intensely brutal the next round would be... Hah, like I give a shit. I'm going to make you eat dirt all the way through, so you better be prepared.

『He takes a round baaaaaack! Competitor No Face knocks out Competitor Sylvia with movements that are incredibly difficult to commentate on, looking like a completely different person from Round 1!』

『Wow, that was an incredible match... I understand absorbing the police motorcycles to secure mobility, but it looks as though he's forcibly pushing through delicate adjustments using those wild, exaggerated movements...』

『We definitely need to hear more about this... Oh, Competitor Uomi, you've arrived!』

"Hahaha, you're so mean... Hey everyone, how's it going?"

Seeing Katzo waving to the camera with a gentle smile despite lowering his brows in apparent embarrassment, Pencilgon let her mouth fall half-open under her mask with an internal Ugh.

Not that she was in any position to talk, but he was wearing a remarkably pristine-looking disguise right now. If Pencilgon or Sunraku had said those exact same lines, whatever came out of their mouths would have almost certainly been pure venom.

『Earlier, Competitor No Face called himself a mercenary. What exactly does that mean?』

"Hmm, well, same goes for that John Doe sitting right over there... but they're basically my friends. Our other team members had some scheduling conflicts come up, so they rushed in as emergency helpers, you see."

"Isn't 'John Doe' a bit harsh for a lady?"

"My bad, my bad. John-ette Doe, then."

This bastard just casually spat venom at me. Fighting the urge to instinctively let a fist fly, Pencilgon maintained her facade with an internal hahaha, this little shit.

For some reason, Natsume was anxiously looking back and forth between Pencilgon's mask and hands, but Pencilgon simply tilted her head, wondering what was making the girl so nervous. It didn't even cross her mind that she had unconsciously clenched her fists and looked ready to start swinging at any moment.

『Even so, those two just showed us a completely incredible match... Could they perhaps be pro gamers?』

"That part is a secret too. Doesn't that make them feel way more mysterious?"

If a conscious Sunraku had been physically present, Katzo's total personality flip was so drastic he probably would have instinctively screamed, "You're wearing way too many layers of disguise!" But right now, Sunraku was just about to begin the third round.

『They might just achieve an unprecedented feat that no one has ever accomplished before...』

"No way, no way, no way, if that guy can win, then even I can win... after all, I keep a 70% win rate against him."

Even though you almost guaranteed lose whenever you guys fight blind. Keeping those words buried in her chest was the very least of Pencilgon's samurai mercy.

But honestly, was the currently wildly rampaging Sunraku even remembering his original goal of "passing the baton to Katzo"?

The third round begins.

Author's Afterword
Yay! Thinking up settings for Trash Games is so fuuuun!

Post-Apocalyptic Round Table: The developers technically made it with "cooperation between players" in mind, but Pencilgon turned it into her personal feeding ground.

Bakumatsu: The developers inherently built the game expecting a "Battle Royale between players," leading to pervert street slashers spamming Divine Punishment.

Gorillion: Gorillas with inexplicably sharp leg techniques and Lions stunlocking with cat punches rampaging through the savanna.

Translator's Notes

• *[1] Divine Punishment (beat down): The Japanese text specifically uses the kanji for "Divine Punishment" (天誅) but forces the ruby reading "beat down" (袋叩き).

• *[2] Divine Punishment (cannibalize): Here, "Divine Punishment" is given the forced reading for "cannibalize" or "turning on each other" (共食い).

• *[3] Divine Punishment (farm EXP): And here, "Divine Punishment" is forced to be read as "EXP farming" (経験値稼ぎ), highlighting the absolute breakdown of morals in the game.