Chapter 270: Scrap and Build

Author's Preface

This isn't a mistake, my pen was flowing so I'm doing a back-to-back post. Please forgive me if I take tomorrow off (Setting up my defensive lines).

"How gruesome. Though from an observer's perspective, this is top-tier entertainment."

"Byakko's abilities are 'Intake' and 'Exhaust', right? Compressing dirt and firing landslides out of its fists, or sucking in air for boosts like it did just now... It doesn't really suit my style."

"You think so? I thought it'd be perfect for Sunraku-kun."

"The air-compression acceleration feels nice, but managing the attacks is pretty severe. He makes it look like he's just attacking normally, but he has to be constantly executing sudden brakes and micro-accelerations."

I'm fundamentally the type to move non-stop from a starting point to an endpoint, but that machine's mechanics require repeatedly moving from a starting point to an extremely short endpoint over and over again.
It's basically just doing rapid side-steps. While I'm not incapable of executing those complex movements that require constant acceleration and stopping, the compatibility just isn't there.

"It's like... drawing a circle using only straight lines. To make it closer to a sphere, you have to constantly shift the angle by one degree and connect the lines."

In that regard, my compatibility with Seiryu was absolutely insane. Since it let me create paths in mid-air and glide along them, the degree of freedom was off the charts. If you combined it with Gravity Zero, pulling off bug-like movements was a breeze as long as your semicircular canals could handle it.

"What is that thing?"

"Ah, I guess Kyogoku-chan doesn't know? That's 'Byakko,' one of the Non-Standard Tactical Mechas, and its terminal 'Bambu.' It's the defeat reward for the Unique Monster 'Wethermon the Tombguard,' alongside three other mechas."

"No... Ah, yeah, I'm curious about that too, but that's not it... He's just, incredibly strong..."

"Well, he literally eats by doing this for a living."

Black Wolf's second member was a player in a long coat carrying a katana. It seemed like he was trying to use some kind of draw-attack art, but OiKatzo had accelerated, closed the distance in an instant, and pinned down the pommel of his sword, preventing him from unsheathing it at all.

"Sword-Drawing Technique (Sword Won't Draw)."

"It's like a Peperoncino without pasta."

"Isn't that... um, just olive oil?"

"No, no, Zero-chan, there's still garlic and chili peppers, right~?"

"I personally think that the moment it loses its identity as pasta, it's a lost cause."

The pasta-less pasta boy danced through the air. Since everyone here is lightly armored, watching them get sent flying is actually hilarious.
Well, we're a bunch of lightly armored glass cannons too, so we can't really talk... Ah? What is it? Even if I'm half-naked, I still count as lightly armored!

"Sunraku-kun sometimes looks like he's picking a fight with his own thoughts, which is super funny. Are you an Ouroboros or something?"

"Instead of locally producing and consuming, is it more like self-producing and self-consuming? I'm not a Crystal Scorpion, you know."

Launched into the air by a somersault kick that clearly exceeded standard jump-acceleration, the pasta-less pasta boy was sent rocketing upwards. Watching him shatter into polygons in mid-air was somewhat akin to watching a firework.

"Alright, next up is Liberies-kun."

"It's Liberios. Don't get his name wrong."

"You're wrong too. It's Liberius."

"Um... It's, Liberios, actually..."

It's not exactly a hard name to remember, yet managing to misspell it with such exquisite inaccuracy might actually be a talent in and of itself.

That being said, he's lucky too. Bringing a Tactical Mecha—a sci-fi element—into a fantasy setting is quite the cheat code, but there's an entirely fair (fatal) drawback: the battery... or rather, the reactor's time limit.
The fuel efficiency when the mecha is combined with the Special Enhanced Armor is absolute dogshit. Just standing there drains a massive amount of energy, so his time should be running out right about now.

"Even if his insides are questionable, he's still a top player. He really tanked that one-sided beating."

Well then, how will OiKatzo move? If I remember correctly, he...

Hasn't hit the level cap yet, right?

............

.........

......

『Energy is BAD, ze...』

"Well, naturally, after moving around that crazily..."

Casually ignoring the overly-enthusiastic Empty warning from Byakko, OiKatzo looked at his third opponent... Liberi... Liberidos? Whatever it was.

"That's quite the troublesome Unique... But I assume it has a time limit, correct?"

"Well, yeah. If it was limitless, it'd just be straight-up broken."

OiKatzo's current level is 86. It's not low, but it's far too unreliable a stat line to face Liberios, who has likely been repeatedly utilizing Level Down Builds.
However, it wasn't as if OiKatzo had simply coasted to level 86 through sheer inertia after having his level forcibly dropped to the low 20s by a certain fiend's schemes.

"For now... I'll have you work until the reactor's energy is completely spent, Byakko!"

『Oh, Yeaaaaaaah!』

A deep breath. Accelerated by the Exhaust, the chalk-white pugilist pulled his fist back.

"Kuh... 'Slick Rampage'!"

Perhaps watching from the sidelines felt entirely different from actually facing it, because Liberios activated a skill with a deep frown. The greatsword in his hands was clad in a skill effect, causing Byakko's accelerated iron fist to slip right off the blade.

(Slick Rampage... If I remember correctly, that's an attack skill that nullifies being repelled... I see, so you can use it for parrying too.)

"Cannot be repelled" and "Will absolutely sever" do not necessarily coexist. Skills are not omnipotent. Byakko's fist—which possessed enough raw strength to rival the skill's correction—was parried, sliding over the blade. Having completely evaded a strike that could have potentially turned into a 100-to-0 combo like the previous two opponents, Liberios went on the offensive.

"Freeze and surge... 'Cocytus'!"

"Tch! Exhaust!"

A flash. The blast of atmosphere shot from Byakko's shins blew OiKatzo in a completely absurd direction. A split second later, as if a hand that had failed to grasp a jewel was lingering in regret, frost bloomed across Byakko's arm.

"So that's the rumored 'Cocytus', huh."

"Yes, it's a Unique Weapon, a magic sword rivaling even our Leader's 'Excalibur'... As the Sub-Leader of Black Wolf, I'll be paying you back for that."

"Unfortunately for you, our local fiend gave me an order to sweep three of you... The fact that it's not a full sweep pisses me off a bit, but looking at it another way..."

『Oh, Empty...』

The out-of-fuel Byakko vanished. Battering Ram vanished. Bambu vanished.
Standing on the ground was a single pugilist. His demeanor completely erased any disadvantage that being Level 86 might suggest, and even without knowing his background, his presence alone was enough to convey his true strength.

"I don't have a whole collection of Uniques like a certain idiot over there, I don't go around extorting NPCs and hatching evil plots like a certain fiend over there, and I haven't broken past the level cap like a certain newly-joined street slasher..."

Hack & Slash. To carve and cut down. Its true essence is the loop of combat and enhancement. For a system designed to make you continuously stronger until the day the game's servers shut down, Uniques and the like are ultimately nothing more than different colors of paint on the canvas.

"If you pile things up, you get stronger. Even if you can't multiply, as long as you can add, you can still reach a hundred."

If that is true, then possessing a Unique has nothing to do with true strength. If an environment is set up to allow you to unleash your full power, even commercially available weapons and armor can rival a one-of-a-kind weapon.
That is the fundamental philosophy of OiKatzo—one entirely different from Sunraku's "Use everything you can get your hands on to become stronger," and Pencilgon's "Even I am nothing more than a cog in the machine."

"Stack it up and push it to the absolute limit. Simple and clean, don't you think?"

That being said, OiKatzo floated a bitter smile.
His current Battle Style, which was so far removed from his own philosophy, truly felt like stacking stones on the banks of the Sanzu River.

"These are the Gauntlets of the Master... The clear reward for the quest that triggers when you fully train the 'Monk' job. And when I equip this...!"

Bakya! The gauntlets—which clearly displayed the brilliant work of a master craftsman—shattered. It wasn't damage from combat, nor were they at their durability limit to begin with.
OiKatzo destroyed them of his own volition.

Fist weapons, self-destruction, 'Monk'... Despite being described as having "questionable insides," Liberios—the Sub-Leader of Shangri-La Frontier's top clan "Black Wolf"—arrived at the answer.

Similar to Liberios's "Swordmaster," which is an advanced class of Swordsman, this was an advanced melee class derived from Monk and Fighter.

It was the incarnation of high-risk, high-reward—born from mixing the Monk's prerequisite of fighting bare-handed with zero equipment, and the Fighter's trait of increasing firepower as their equipment took damage.

A class mocked as a "Resource-Eater" because it requires the user to destroy their own weapons to grant buffs scaling with the destroyed item, yet boasts so many users due to its absurdly high firepower. That class's name is:

"Destroyer...!"

"I'll make up for my lack of firepower by stacking up Scrap and Build...!"

To resist the freezing magic sword, a light accompanied by the sound of destruction roared.

Author's Afterword

• Cocytus:
  The magic sword wielded by Liberios. By consuming MP, it applies a freezing effect centered around the blade.
  Its defining characteristic is its extremely limited countermeasures. If you take a direct hit with your bare body, the effect will not dissipate unless you use a status-recovery item, and you will continuously take frostbite DoT.
  The most troublesome part is that your hands go numb, severely restricting your player skills.

I try not to touch upon job-related lore too much. Why, you ask? Because I could endlessly theorize about job settings and would never be able to return to the main story.

Destroyer and Swordmaster are Advanced Classes. From there, fulfilling certain conditions (for example, winning an NPC-sponsored martial arts tournament) opens the path to a Supreme Class.
While the conditions for changing jobs to Sword Saint are known, they are so absurdly strict that there aren't many who have actually achieved it.

Fundamentally, simply standing on the absolute front lines of progression with just an Advanced Class isn't a problem, but naturally, a player possessing a "Supreme Class," "Unique Class," or "Hidden Class" will be one step ahead of the rest.

Bonus:

• Half-Naked: Main [Mercenary (Unregistered)], Sub [Arcanum: The Fool]

• Pencil: Main [Magic Spearman], Sub [Hero]

• Katzo: Main [Destroyer], Sub [Various]

• Psyger-0: Main [Paladin], Sub [Dark Knight]

• Kyogoku: Main [Swordmaster], Sub [Six Blades of the Nine-Tails]

• Psyger-100: Main [Sword Saint], Sub [Hero]

• Argent Owl: Main [Gladiator], Sub [Priest]

Apparently, despite the story progressing quite a bit, there's a protagonist who is essentially unemployed. I really want to find him a job soon.