Chapter 280: The Dragon's Calamity Endures, and the Wolf Howls ~ The Beast of Lightning and Fire Confronts the Sword Wolf, Part 10

"───Cloud over, O azure sky. Laugh into the darkened heavens. The roaring applause falls short. That is the hammer of judgment, falling from the heavens."

Just as I thought.
I had predicted this. Was there really any reason why Psyger-100 wouldn't be able to do that same thing Rei-shi had pulled off?
While dealing with what was likely her most specialized number of swords... controlling the Quintet in a way that practically forced me to deal with it, Psyger-100's lips, tongue, and throat spun words into a sentence, establishing it as a Chant. From the moment she used 【Surging Lightning Melody (Stun Beat)】, I had considered this possibility at about a sixty percent likelihood.

The possibility that Psyger-100 was a Magic Swordsman who had mastered both magic and swordplay.

"The poet sings, it is the prestige of God. The priest preaches, it is divine punishment from God."

"Well then........."

There are three countermeasures. Stop her before she finishes casting? Dodge it? Or... use it here.
All of them are realistic. The third option in particular, while highly difficult, creates a glaring weakness, meaning if I mess up, I could end up spectacularly blowing myself up.

That's exactly why I'll choose the third option.

I'll be honest, winning or losing doesn't really matter to me anymore. Regardless of whether the final outcome is victory or defeat... somehow, I feel like I could just accept either with a, "Well, I guess that's how it is." So then, what is the true nature of this impulse driving me right now? I already know its name. After all, it's something I've had a long relationship with ever since I first started playing games, and something that will undoubtedly stay with me from here on out.

"Guess I'll shift up another gear."

"I proclaim the truth. It contains no righteousness, it contains no evil. It is pure, absolute violence."

The chant didn't stop. She was forcibly maintaining her continuously draining MP with recovery items that outpaced the consumption, somehow squeezing out the cost for the magic on top of it. Psyger-100 was using resources far too precious to be casually burned in a standard PvP match.

If that's the case, it's only polite for me to exhaust my "entire body and soul" right here in this exact moment... because that is romance.

"Alright, following Meiki-kun's lead, why don't you have your debut too......... Mirror Shield of the Nether-King (Dis Pater)!!"

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

.........

......

That's right. Truth be told, among the weapons I possessed, there was one single, cowardly item hiding among them.
By loudly advertising its ability to "reflect magic," it had cleverly hidden the fact that it too was actually industrial waste.

Its name is the Re-Legacy Weapon: Bilac's "Mirror Shield of the Nether-King (Dis Pater)." Following the "Brilliant Scorpion Gauntlets (Gilta Brille)," it is an ancient armament resurrected in the modern age bearing the Bilac seal of approval.

Crafted from the materials of the Atlanticus Repnorca, it is a gimmick weapon boasting durability that won't even budge from half-baked impacts, possessing the comprehensive performance to even repel magic... That much is certainly true.
However, this thing was hiding a certain fact.

To begin with, the ultimate mechanism equipped in both Legacy and Re-Legacy Weapons—the 【Exceed Charge】—is divided into several classifications.
For instance, the Brilliant Scorpion Gauntlets' Exceed Charge, "Reject," is more accurately described as a "Reject-type 【Exceed Charge】" rather than a unique ultimate move in its own right.

So then, what classification does the defendant "Mirror Shield of the Nether-King's" Exceed Charge fall under?
The answer is simple. The Overdrive of this shield grants the user a powerful buff upon fulfilling specific conditions...

Yes, it grants a powerful buff.

Contrary to the Isana Togetsu "Meiki"—whose standalone ability was trash but barely managed to fulfill its role as a sheath through its combination effect—this shield had a ridiculous underlying circumstance where its most crucial ultimate move was a completely useless piece of junk.

However, right here in this exact moment.

I can use it. I'll use the Exceed Charge possessed by the Mirror Shield of the Nether-King, and in my maximum enhanced state, I will strike down Psyger-100.

"Roar! The hammer of uproarious laughter! Strike the earth, and shatter all enemies that block my path!"

A half-naked dual-wielder specializing entirely in mobility. That is strictly my appearance in ShanFro.
You'd best not underestimate the magical insight of the man known as the "Death Metal Magician," the assault captain of the rebel army who fought against the "UIE"... Under Idea Empire, commonly known as the Shimonetania Empire, which exhausted every form of atrocity in a Trash Game that was inevitably exploited exactly as everyone expected it would be, leading to its eventual downfall.

To begin with, the most crucial element of magic battles in gaming is undoubtedly the name of the spell. If it has a fire element in the name, you know flames are coming. If it has something like "Meteor," you can even predict exactly how the flames will come flying at you.
Depending on the game, using original vocabulary can sometimes make it impossible to know without seeing it firsthand... but at least in ShanFro, spell names are decided based on the former rule.

As long as they don't create spells using "porn video titles and descriptions" like that Great Demon Lord of Dirty Jokes did in that game from the past, magic battles are far too easy. The only reason I ended up obnoxiously knowledgeable about porn videos I've never seen or bought is almost entirely that bastard's fault.
That Player (Final Boss), who continued to resurrect in that world even after being banned exactly sixteen times, was an absolute master of magic-integrated combat—aside from their hopelessly garbage methods of expression.
Because of that, the few of us capable of dealing with them had no choice but to handle them, which naturally meant the number of times we were subjected to an endless barrage of dirty jokes increased exponentially.

"...I just remembered something really unpleasant."

Whatever. We managed to sing them to death right before the servers shut down, so it's all in the past now. Relentlessly hurling dirty jokes that bypassed the NG word filters at minors... seriously, what the hell is wrong with that guy as a human being?
I mean, actually pronouncing punctuation marks out loud while speaking is just straight-up insane...

"Strike and shatter, Thunder! That is a starving mad dog biting down! That is a loyal hound destroying the enemy in accordance with my will!"

The spell being unleashed falls under the lightning category. Lightning-attribute magic, which often balances high firepower and speed, is basically like playing Old Maid where you have to guess between two options.

Namely, "Front, or Above." Due to the nature of lightning, it either drops from the heavens or fires straight forward from the caster's hand like a laser. And as long as I know that, as long as I have the speed to act on that knowledge...

"Full throttle!"

Activation of the Levin Trigger: Hazard. Consecutive activation of Moment Sight.
As pitch-black lightning mixed with the sparks leaking from my cracked body, in a slow-motion world, two actions stepped into their final stages toward fruition.

"【Violence Thunder】!"

"【Exceed Charge】!"

Controlling the amplified sensitivity triggered by the Overflow, toward the tip of Psyger-100's pointing hand... toward the heavens, I raised the Mirror Shield of the Nether-King above me, as if donning a woven hat.
Are the Servant Swords surrounding me meant to prevent my escape? Too bad, I'll just catch it head-on.

The completion of her chant. The initiation of my mechanism. The beast of lightning plummeting from the heavens aiming for me, and—

The Mirror Shield of the Nether-King (Dis Pater) blooming open occurred at almost the exact same time.

Allow me to show you. The Exceed Charge that is no longer industrial waste... the power of "Convert"!

A collision and a simultaneous explosion. Accompanied by a massive roar perfectly befitting lightning, my body vanished into a cloud of dust.

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

.........

......

───I didn't defeat him.

Psyger-100 instinctively realized it.
By using a massive amount of recovery items from her inventory to produce healing that outpaced the MP continuously drained by her Servant Swords, she had unleashed the highest firepower in her arsenal: a fully chanted 【Violence Thunder】.
Due to the flaw that the impact point cannot be altered once set, making sure Sunraku didn't move was crucial. Ultimately, using the Servant Swords—which were already pushed to their limit just by making them float—as a makeshift barrier had successfully guaranteed the magic's hit, but...

There is a difference between heaven and earth between "couldn't move" and "didn't move."
And the mere fact that he took some sort of action was more than enough to warrant extreme caution—something she had been forced to understand to an agonizing degree up to this very moment.

"Exceed Charge...? What on earth did he use?"

Judging from the fact that it was a shield, was it a defensive skill? Considering he called it a Charge, was it a push-back type skill?

The truth that it wasn't a rush type of Charge, but an accumulation type of Charge. And exactly what Sunraku had done, and what had occurred... The answer was revealed from within the dust cloud.

"【Exceed Charge】, Type 'Convert'... While it normally reflects magic as a 'Mirror,' by intentionally taking it into the mechanism as a 'Lens,' it converts the absorbed magic. It grants an increase to all of the user's stats and applies the Enchantment 'Nether-Flame'."

With a goh, the dust cloud was swept aside.
An aura resembling pale blue flames clung to the left arm extending from the smokescreen. And at the end of that left arm, the entity that emerged from the dust cloud...

"Monster-ification, is it...?"

"As if."

It possessed an appearance far too detached from humanity, clad in pitch-black lightning, with its entire body engulfed in flames.

"Well then, time for a one-liner."

The head of the man wielding two crystal swords of gold and ultramarine transformed into a shape mimicking a fish...

"Grilled Salmon."

".........Fufu."

"Opening!"

Closing the distance with extraordinary speed, the burning man unleashed a kick wreathed in roaring flames and lightning, sending Psyger-100's body flying.

Author's Afterword
For a protagonist who accepts getting ganked or chewed up with a "Well, that's just Trash Games for you," to call someone an "unpleasant memory"... If I describe that guy as having "Fetishes: All of them," perhaps that will convey just how dangerously deranged he is.

He's a freak who becomes exclusively active in VR—taking the mechanics of the VR system in my setting and exploiting them to freely alter his voice and even bend his joints backward. An entirely different breed from Sunraku.
The fact that his brain is so thoroughly dyed pink it makes Josette look like a modest lady might actually be a blessing in disguise. If he felt like it, he could easily use his skills for actual crimes, but he pours 100% of his talent into sexual harassment instead.

• Enchantment "Nether-Flame":
  A state where the skin of the entire body is burning as an energy body. Because it's purely an enchantment, once the effect ends, the user doesn't turn into an anatomical model or suffer 3000x increased sensitivity like Jagi after getting hit by Seiei-ko.
  In addition to the Exceed Charge's all-stat enhancement, it applies a separate stat correction, resistance to all magical attacks, slip damage to anyone who touches the user, and so on. It feels like an alternate version of "Special State: Ancient Lightning."
  To summarize, the current protagonist isn't just saying "You'll get burned if you touch me," but rather, "If you touch me, you'll get burned, electrocuted, have your status ailment resistance lowered, and suffer a chance to be paralyzed... Also, I'm going to actively beat you up."
  What the hell is this purely malicious Metal Slime?

Visually, Sunraku's Third Form looks like that one God who boosts fire-attribute normal attacks by 100%, except his head is a salmon and he's electrified. Is he a monster?