Chapter 239: What Exactly is a Painful Stagnation?

Author's Preface
A super hilarious pun that makes you want to read it aloud. (Self-praise)

"Nn~... Nfufufu, well, I figured that tanuki geezer would try to negotiate with Sunraku-kun solo sooner or later, but as expected, he didn't miss this opportunity, huh..."

"What do we do?"

"To be completely honest, if we can get Library on our side, a bit of an expense is within an acceptable range."

Pencilgon flashed a highly amused smile, but didn't say anything in particular about the solo negotiation I had snitched on. She merely replied, "It's fine to leak things as long as it isn't any particularly dangerous information."
She seems to be using OiKatzo and Kyou-Ultimate as errand boys for some evil scheme. She's really lively, isn't she...

"Since I washed my hands of all that, I was planning on staying quiet, but the surrounding situation is whispering to me to make a move, so it can't be helped... Nfufufufu. If possible, I'd have liked to drag Team 10PM into this as well, but I guess I shouldn't be greedy..."

"Heeey, I'm going back to solo play, is that fine~?"

"Do as you like~. Just don't ditch tomorrow~."

It's essentially a clan-wide event, so I don't have an ungrateful enough personality to just evaporate with a feigned look of ignorance.

Rust and Mold, who basically shake hands after every match, and Akitsu Akane, who probably thinks "All players are comrades!", likely wouldn't enjoy this kind of tense, muddy interpersonal conflict.
I actually asked them casually, but they seemed uninterested, so those three won't be participating in tomorrow's discussion.

I'll find out exactly what Pencilgon is planning to do on the day of the meeting... but well, for now, I suppose I'll play how I want to play.
In the worst-case scenario, I could always take a break from ShanFro for a while.

Or so I said, but.

"Eh? Vash... Boss isn't here?"

"Yes sir, Father went out saying he was going to meet a friend desu wa!"

Having returned to Rabituza using a Disposable Magic Scroll, I planned on handing the Delta Devices to Vash—who, to be completely honest, is probably a Unique Monster—but it seems we completely missed each other.

"Is that so..."

My enthusiasm got crushed right out of the gate. Games where you can't manually advance the time are inconvenient at times like this.
ShanFro is linked to real-world time, so no matter how much I struggle, it's not like Vash is going to come back instantly... Alright!

"I'm going to sleep!"

"Goodnight desu wa!"

The sun hasn't even set yet, though!

I feel like the things I want to do, need to do, and should do are all getting tangled up, and I'm not really in the mood for ShanFro right now, so I decided to resume that thing I bought recently.

"...'Special Advisor: Ryuguin Fugaku! VR Kendo Classroom: Extreme.' It's just educational software, but the vocabulary is way too powerful."

I looked into it on a whim, but this piece of work was supervised by an absurdly strong old man who was a grandmaster of Kendo.
And as you might have guessed... the hidden boss Iwamaki-san mentioned is none other than Ryuguin Fugaku (His name is way too cool) himself.

It seems he has already passed away, but before his death, UCE fully cooperated to successfully develop an exquisite trace AI of a real strong samurai who appeared in the modern cyber golden age.

There is a technology called "Trace AI."
For a while, Realists with superficial knowledge threw a fit, protesting with nonsensical arguments about clones and ethics, but to skip all the overly complicated theories and summarize it: it's "an AI that traces the original person's thought processes as faithfully as possible."

The person equips a special VR system and is made to perform various actions within cyberspace. By recording and reflecting their behavioral patterns and thought processes during those actions, an AI possessing thought patterns infinitely close to the original person is completed.

Since it merely pursues "How would this person move?" to the absolute limit, it doesn't actually gain self-awareness, and naturally, it doesn't have human rights or any of that nonsense either.
The entity completed through this process is the AI Hanshi: Extreme, commonly known as the "Hidden Boss."

"AI Hanshi appears during normal play, and Extreme was unlocked by fulfilling a special condition, right...?"

If you play normally, the final opponent you fight is the AI Hanshi. But as the difficulty increases past the 5th Dan, if you string together all the characters written on the hanging scrolls displayed inside the VR Kendo dojo and recite them on the title screen... the hidden boss appears. Or so I've heard.

"Thank god it wasn't something like 'Get an S-Rank on everything.'"

It's half a game, so they wouldn't impose a quota that strict.
Even with a disastrous evaluation, as long as you go all-out in straying from the path of the sword, you can somewhat hold your own even at the Dan difficulties.

I landed a flying dropkick squarely into the gut of the "AI Kyoshi" difficulty, and while it was staggered, I smashed it with a full swing. Clear. From the evaluator, I received the harsh grade of "E Rank (You Garbage)."
Or rather, the fact that you can toggle the Kendo uniform on and off in the first place means the developers made this with the assumption of somewhat unorthodox play, right?

"As expected... when you reach the level of a normal martial arts master, they're just normally strong..."

I've been playing little by little, but around the 4th Dan, I started genuinely struggling.
Once you pass the Dan ranks and the difficulty reaches AI ◯-shi, it just becomes a continuous cycle of trial and error.
I've already been made to bite the floor easily over several dozen times by an AI mannequin that moves so smoothly it looks like it's hovering, and defaults to Go no Sen (counter-attacking). Or rather, since I can't afford to care about appearances anymore, I've completely unbanned unorthodox tactics like American football tackles and pro-wrestling moves, barely scraping by with a G Rank (The absolute lowest).

"Action games where you can pump your stats up with skills are truly magnificent..."

I want to mess with my avatar's stats in this software. Specifically, I want my AGI multiplied by roughly 1.5.
Also, if I could double jump, I'd be even happier.

"Next is the normal final boss, huh..."

I'll slap him down!

I slapped him down (1 Win, 2 Draws, 43 Losses).

The deciding blow was a German Suplex... but I'm tired... I'm so very tired...

"It's a bit pathetic to be gasping for breath during my break from ShanFro... Now then."

For now, I'll charge the hidden boss and then head back to ShanFro. Return to the title screen, and...

"Umm... 'Young buds, to the west and east, hone yourselves, trample the dead leaves, and bloom into a grand flower'?"

A Tanka poem, huh. I can't quite grasp the meaning, but... hey, don't underestimate the classical Japanese power of an active high school student.
Umm... So this means... Yeah, the seasonal word is dead leaves, right?

The title screen of this VR Kendo Classroom begins with you opening the doors to a dojo. And if you enter the dojo where the hidden boss has been unlocked by inputting the special command...

『Dual Wielding has been unlocked in Mode Selection!』

『Online Versus Mode: Custom has been unlocked!』

『Hidden Difficulty: AI Hanshi Extreme has been unlocked!』

Here it is. The first two were probably unlocked by defeating the normal boss.
Putting that aside, I selected the difficulty without hesitation, equipped the bamboo sword materialized in empty space, and faced off against the entity that appeared.

"Dual wielding, huh..."

I had only done surface-level research on the person known as Ryuguin Fugaku.
Therefore, it was my first time learning that the style of the deceased Kendo master standing before me was dual wielding............

"Ogue!?"

And it was also my first time learning that he was strong enough to smash a strike into my skull in a mere five seconds.
It wasn't an unreasonable speed like Wethermon's. It was just normally fast. And before I could react, he struck me with an optimal movement across the shortest possible distance.

...This is going to be a struggle. A fierce one.

"I'm awake!"

"Good morning desu wa!"

The sun has already set, though!

"He's back desu wa!"

"Alright, let's go, Emul!"

Right now, I'm irritated because I can't find a single clue on how to defeat VR Ryuguin Fugaku. I'll blow off some steam by advancing the Unique Scenario EX.

While walking down the halls of the Rabbit Palace, I recalled the state of the Uniques so far.
At the current juncture, the other Uniques don't serve as a good reference. Unlike Wethermon, who you just have to beat down, or Ctarrnid, which is ultimately just a gimmick-heavy dungeon clear, this EX Scenario has way too many steps.

The situation progressed under the condition of clearing another Unique Scenario EX, and on top of the errand quests, I get the feeling there are still many things left to do.
Will I ultimately have to fight Vash, or are there other completion conditions...? Thinking about it that way, can a Unique Monster even be defeated in the first place?

Let's think about this in reverse. Rather, the fact that Wethermon could be defeated makes him the exception. Originally, a Unique Monster is something that doesn't disappear even if defeated... In other words, they're monsters that can be fought again, aren't they?
If you think about it carefully, it's a Unique Scenario. The goal is to clear the story surrounding the Unique Monster, so it's not like the Unique Monster itself necessarily has to serve as the boss that must be defeated.

It's a rather high possibility. Hypothetically speaking, if "Setsuna of Distant Days" was the Unique Monster, the boss within her scenario would be Wethermon, but the scenario itself wouldn't fall apart.
Even with Ctarrnid, if you change your perspective, you could say we just went on a picnic to the sandbox he created and played with a giant octopus.

"To begin with, what exactly makes a Unique Monster 'Unique'...? Is it their position in the story, the Divine Age, or some sort of legacy element in the world's lore..."

"Sunraku-san! You're spacing out again desu wa! We're already in front of the door desu wa!"

Gueh. Stop pulling my cape, stop pulling it.

"Alright, let's go report the completion of the errand."

Now then, I wonder what will happen...

Well, to get straight to the conclusion: it seems Akitsu Akane, who had logged in earlier, had gone to the Colosseum due to the "Invitation from Rabituza." So I grabbed Emul and sprinted to the Colosseum at full speed.

Author's Afterword

Q. Just how strong is this old man Fugaku?
A. Categorically speaking, this is a VR novel, but he's at the level of "You're a resident of the Vagabond world, aren't you?"

Well, to be completely honest, purely regarding Unique Monsters, it's "Story >> Gameplay" due to the Genius-san's fierce protests. Furthermore, if all of the Genius-san's opinions had passed, the number of inequality signs between Story and Gameplay would have been multiplied by ten. Amachi and Tsukuyogi worked really, really hard.