Chapter 272: The Beast of Lightning and Fire Confronts the Sword Wolf, Part 2

Author's Preface

Truth be told, I was planning on dropping a little side story in Inventoria along the lines of, "Even if you turn it into an Isekai Reincarnation game, this is just debug mode!" But I was violently ill, so please forgive my April Fool's joke being "Thought it was 6 PM? It was 6 PM!"...!
My illness was cured after eating and sleeping... wait, was I just hungry?

Thinking about it carefully, I suddenly realized when the golden sword and spear clashed that the composition of this battle was actually Hero vs Hero.

"Hey, Rei-shi, what's the ability of that Holy Sword? Or whatever it is."

"The Holy Sword Excalibur... shares the universal effects of all Hero Weapons: resurrection and... auto-repair. And the other effect is..."

"Adversity Awakening, was it?"

"Yes... Um, K-Kyogoku...-san?"

"It's Kyou-Ultimate, Saiga-san?"

For some reason, it felt like sparks practically crackled between Rei-shi and Kyou-timate. Was this some kind of provocation unique to PKers?
By the way, in Bakumatsu, simply placing your hand on your sword is recognized as picking a fight, and you'll immediately get Divine Punishment. Some people exploit that by provoking players to do it, turning them into a punching bag via triggered Divine Punishment.

"I can roughly guess from the name, but Adversity Awakening basically means..."

"When you're in a pinch, all your stats aside from HP and MP get massively buffed. Plus, it has a chance-based Endure effect as a bonus."

"...With that level of performance?"

I couldn't help but mutter at the very boss-like fact that pushing her into a corner only makes her stronger, while watching Pencilgon fend off four flying swords by spamming items that clearly looked like underhanded tricks.

"I heard Psyger-0-san and Akitsu Akane defeated Lycaon with just the three of you. Looking at it the other way around, how is it that Black Wolf hasn't managed to defeat an opponent that can be beaten by such a small group until now...?"

"My sister has... well, she's encountered Lycaon a fair number of times... but we either lacked enough party members, or our class composition was too unbalanced..."

Ah, the tragedy of ruthless login RNG. Furthermore, apparently "Black Wolf" hadn't even grasped the existence of Lycaon's invisible clones until very recently.
In our case, we managed to fulfill the conditions to maintain the high-spec electric fan known as Suzaku—or rather, the ideal battlefield. Preparing something like Suzaku isn't something you can just do easily.

In other words, they needed a cloudless night, all members of an ideal party to log in simultaneously and act as a group, and on top of that, trigger a random encounter. That's an RNG jackpot that would break even my spirit.

"Because... players who log in during the night... well, they mostly drift toward Team 10PM..."

"Ah."

Well, true. If I had to choose between "Black Wolf"—which is top-class but filled with people like Liberios—and "Team 10PM," which is full of working adults logging in at the exact same time as me... yeah, I might choose the latter.

"Therefore, for my sister personally... um, it's a bit mean to say it like this, but... I believe she intends to eliminate Liberios-san and the others to unify the clan's consciousness..."

"If that's the case, she could just intentionally struggle and then lose... No, if someone with that much actual skill loses too easily, that would actually give it away."

Because she's too strong, holding back would be too obvious. Wait? Does that mean the fish over there immediately dropping dead and Pencilgon heading out purely on the premise of losing means...

"Wow, Pencilgon is amazing. Look at her, she's trying to curse her to death without a shred of hesitation."

"So either Kyou-timate or I have to win, huh..."

Because we pulled Rei-shi over to our side, we can't use her as a combatant for this. For a moment, the card game "Old Maid" crossed my mind, but in terms of sheer malice, Pencilgon—who's currently fighting—is a far bigger Joker, so I shook that stupid thought away.

"Was she always that strong?"

"It seems she prepared all sorts of things for the Wethermon fight, and she probably improved her skills too, right?"

"I see..."

Like she was playing baseball or golf, Pencilgon batted a red straw doll—violently pierced with five-inch nails—using her spear. Judging from Psyger-100's reaction, it was definitely something she didn't want to get hit by, because, unusually, she used the four swords she normally dedicated to offense to defend, deflecting the Crimson Straw Dolls away.
Pencilgon unleashed a thrust aiming exactly for the moment her opponent's guard solidified, but Psyger-100 was already taking evasive action behind the line of swords serving as her shield.

"Since Caledfwlch has an armor-piercing effect, it's practically a natural enemy to opponents with low VIT stats."

"Just because it's a spear (Yari)?"

"Defendant OiKatzo, sentenced to death for committing a garbage-tier pun."

"Amnesty! Amnesty, please!"

I'll take the fact that I was thinking the exact same thing to my grave.
But more importantly, does Psyger-100 have low VIT? For someone with low VIT, she isn't exactly fast either. Is she completely relying on her swords for defense?

"No, that's not it. If Awakening buffs your stats, the only things she actually needs are HP and MP."

"Correct. Sword Saint, if you aren't careful, consumes MP as violently as a specialized magic class. Especially when heavily relying on 'Quintet', it requires MP on par with an actual mage."

It's completely different from my direction, but the core concept is similar. In my case, I accept near-death for the sake of benefits. In her case, being near-death becomes the benefit.
Depending on the exact details of this "Adversity Awakening," it's highly likely Psyger-100 is a player exactly like me—one who fights on the premise of being in a pinch. Players of this type are completely used to being pushed into a corner, meaning her sheer tenacity in the final stages of a fight will be a nightmare to deal with.

"You say it has high consumption, but is her fuel efficiency good enough to last through two consecutive fights?"

"My sister compensates for her MP recovery... using accessories, so..."

Makes sense. Apparently, she stuffed every recovery item she had into a mini-inventory—basically an extremely degraded version of Inventoria—and is using another accessory to bypass the recovery animation.
...The fact that she's essentially replicating what I do with the Star Cloak of Lapistella and Inventoria, but without Uniques, just proves we have a lot in common. That aside, I really want an accessory that cuts recovery animations. I wonder if I can ask her where to get it later.

"So you're saying she can rampage like that and still has the stamina to keep going... Isn't she basically just a Boss?"

"On this, I actually agree with OiKatzo... She crushed all of her player-specific weaknesses so thoroughly she basically turned into a Boss."

Armor-piercing means she can completely ignore the defense values of armor and force the attack to land directly against the durability of the physical body.
While it's highly effective against monsters with tough outer shells, Pencilgon was currently launching a valiant offensive using a Holy Spear clearly meant for PvP. However, the moment she failed to seize the range advantage, the conclusion was half-decided.

"Honestly, what would you do if you had to fight her a second time?"

"At first I thought it was completely unreasonable bullshit, but she's probably manually controlling a semi-auto system, right? If that's the case... yeah, I think I could figure out how to deal with it after about three tries."

True. No matter how incredible the VR realism is, manually controlling four swords perfectly from scratch is impossible. The movements are likely set to auto to some extent—things like "float behind me" or "fly straight at the target."

Conversely, that means she can shift the auto-controls manually at will, but even so, it isn't an entirely flawless setup.

"Exactly. Even a Sword Saint isn't invincible. If she runs out of MP, her performance drops to the level of a normal Swordsman. And even ignoring that, moving while simultaneously controlling four swords will inevitably create openings. And I can pierce through those openings."

Makes sense. The human brain isn't perfectly wired for everyone to be able to multitask. Even if you can, there's a strict limit to your capacity. If there wasn't, computers wouldn't need to exist in this world.

"Add to that the fact that I'm a PKer who's already broken past the level cap... Leave it to me. I'll make sure to properly fulfill my role as a newly joined member of Wolfgang."

As Kyou-timate puffed her chest out with a fufun and twitched her beast ears, OiKatzo and I silently exchanged glances. Ah, we're definitely thinking the exact same thing.

"This is the quintessential setup for a strong character who exists purely to be a jobber..."

"No, it's too early to make that call, Sunraku. These days, it's not rare for joke characters who seem like jobbers to actually pull off Giant Killings."

"Level-wise, we're the Giants here, right? Besides, she's a Hero over there. A literal Hero."

"Honestly, who knows. That build is specialized specifically for Lycaon, right? PvP customs should technically have the advantage here, right?"

Since I'm the only one who knows this, it can't be helped, but... Considering she's that Saiga-san's sister, she's absolutely the type to have obscenely high combat power in real life too...

For some reason, an intense wave of anxiety began washing over us. But regardless, Pencilgon was sliced cleanly in half like a villain in a historical samurai drama, so it was time for the next round.

"Now then... Time to hunt a wolf."

"Kyogoku-chan, you sound completely like a jobber right now."

Pencilgon! Shh! Stay!

Putting it into words will just trigger the flag even harder!

Author's Afterword
By the way, the Crimson Straw Dolls Pencilgon was throwing around are the exact opposite of the one she used to nullify Animalia's hex a while back. These are dangerous items that "apply a counter + delayed instant-death curse to whoever hits them."
They don't have much effect on opponents with dispel abilities, but since the effect stacks, it's an incredibly troublesome item you absolutely cannot afford to hit carelessly.