Chapter 282: The Dragon's Calamity Endures, and the Wolf Howls 〜 The Beast of Lightning and Fire Confronts the Sword Wolf, Part 12

Author's Preface

Slightly revised.

Improvising Chuunibyou-style sentences, replacing the names of existing spells with different words that share the same pronunciation, and mixing them into a camouflage incantation to turn it into a surprise attack.
Spell Creation... Back in "Forbidden Spells," which no longer exists, it was actually quite an important technique. As long as you kept the mindset of "casually blasting a spell by surprise in the middle of a chat" in the back of your head, it was relatively easy.

"I see, I see! This sure is convenient, oi!"

This is practically mandatory for PvP, isn't it... No, if the opponent gets used to anti-magic countermeasures, I might just end up exposing a fatal opening instead. But well, as they say, it all depends on how you use bugs and scissors. If you can utilize it properly, this result is what you get.

"My bad! I'm completely physical with exactly zero spells learned!!"

Before Psyger-100's flinch state ended, I closed into a fatal distance.
I won't... choose a draw attack here. Since Psyger-100's sub-job is "Hero," I don't know the exact probability of that Holy Sword's Endure effect triggering.
If it was at a "rarely" level, I'd throw out a massive attack without hesitation, but since there's always the possibility that it's a "rarely (actually 50%)" situation, if I'm going to do this, I have to completely chip her to death.

"First, a two-hit Vanguard!!"

Activating Blade-Breaking Flurry, Ultimate Martial Reliance, and Sword Dance 【Spinning Blade】. Having boosted my weapon's firepower, I swung 【Pale Sheen】—still acting as a single sword—upward from below.
At this exact moment, thanks to the effect of Dirty Sword, an attack with an increased multiplier smashed into the flinching Psyger-100...

"Ooooryaaaa!!"

"Kuuuh!"

Vorpal Blade Arts 【Half-Moon Severing】. Exactly as the name implies, a half-moon slash tracing the wound with the returning blade.
The Holy Sword shone, and Psyger-100's body was enveloped in a golden effect... Endure triggered, huh. Alright, from here on out, it's a genuine game of chicken. Let's enjoy this extreme situation where merely tripping could spell death!

"Pray to the RNG!"

"Not yet!!"

Activating Formula Drift. Drawing a massive circle that makes you want to call it a slip rather than a drift, I circled around to Psyger-100's back.
Perhaps unable to catch up with the mobility of my Overflow state, Servant Swords pierced the ground I had just passed through.

"Right there!!"

"Oops, tototo... It's still my turn!"

I dodged the slash fired in anticipation of where I was going to circle around to. However, I have absolutely no intention of loosening my grip on this distance—the chance at victory that, if let go, I would never be able to reel back in.

"【Surging Lightning Melody (Stun Beat)】!"

"Kuh... So that cloak is the trick!"

"Excellent observation!"

Cycling through my skills, I kept running while burning through the boons I had obtained at the cost of my life like water.
Since I practically had zero HP from the start due to the demerit of the Levin Trigger: Hazard, and recovering it would just result in it instantly halving again anyway, you could say my synchronization rate with the "Fool" Arcanum had reached an all-time high. Who are you calling a Fool, you bastard?

If it hits, great. Even if it doesn't, it forces a reaction out of her.

"First strike! Second strike! Third strike!"

The first strike was dodged. The second strike was blocked by a Servant Sword acting as a shield. The third strike pierced Psyger-100's right shoulder alongside flames and lightning... yet the golden effect shone brilliantly, as if to declare that it would not let the Hero die. The fact that the effect looked slightly different from earlier bothered me a bit, but I left that suspicion in the past.

"You're persistent...!"

"Indomitability... is the privilege of a Hero, isn't it...!?"

It was a chaotic dance of Servant Swords completely devoid of skill or finesse, aimed purely at peeling me away from her. However, I continuously shifted my positioning, sometimes using Psyger-100 herself as a shield, to ensure I didn't lose distance.

"Tch..."

Clean hit, the Holy Sword shines. Chip damage, the Holy Sword shines. Clean hit, the Holy Sword shines again.
Daaaaaaa! Just how many times is this thing triggering!? There's a limit to bullshit RNG, you know! Wait, is her luck just that good? Or is my RNG luck just garbage!?

"Shut up! If I beat you until you die, you'll die!"

Scolding myself, I scraped together every last drop of my concentration, which could snap at any moment. Even if I run out of gas, I just have to keep sprinting! Burn, like the hellfire of caffeine!

Click. Several clock hands inside my head pointed to the exact same number. The certainty that a foothold as thin as a spider's thread had finally connected to the edge of a distant cliff.

"Right here!!!"

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

.........

......

Psyger-100 saw it.
She saw the demon of fire and lightning—whose very touch clearly inflicted some sort of demerit—use the deep-navy greatsword with a golden core thrust into the ground as a foothold to leap into the air.

She no longer even had the time to spare expressing emotion toward it. Before the thoughts bubbling like foam in her brain could vanish, she assembled what her five clear digital senses perceived.

(Weapons, discarded... Above, coordinate advantage, Servant Swords, won't make it in time...)

The conclusion she derived.
Calling the Servant Swords back to form a formation would be far too slow. In that case, she erased the six Servant Swords herself and bet everything she had on the single Holy Sword.
Even if an attack came from above, she would fuse her indomitable resolve and desperate determination into this single, guaranteed strike that she absolutely would not miss.

"【Servant ・ Solo】!!"

It was a secret technique acquired the exact moment one obtained the Sword Saint job. An ultimate flying slash born from relentless training, living up to its name by increasing in power the longer the user has employed it.
From bottom to top. Tracing the trajectory of the slash drawn by the blade's tip, she pierced the blazing fire and lightning directly above her.

"【Primal Slash】!!"

The golden slash resembled a rising dragon. What answered the Sword Saint's will was not words, but a single swing.
Driven not by a theorized trajectory but by pure intuition, the golden slash struck Sunraku, and...

It passed right through.

"Wha..."

"Did the moon reflecting on the lake blind you?"

Ton, the sound of landing.
Because it was such an extreme, split-second moment, she had failed to notice the unnatural detail that Sunraku, dancing through the air, hadn't moved a single inch.
Vorpal Blade Arts 【Fading Mirror】. Even if it couldn't fulfill its role as an aggro decoy against monsters, as a decoy to deceive the eyes of an opponent, the results spoke for themselves.

The acceleration of the jump via Shana-oh Possession. A top-to-bottom, heaven-and-earth-inverting leap using Flit Float... And then, a return to "Pale Sheen" via Formula Drift, which had been made reusable thanks to the recast reduction of "The Fool."

"This is the finale."

The Servant Swords were gone, and her sword, aimed upward, couldn't reach in front of her.
The moon wrapped in pale light. A golden moonlight entirely different from the brilliance of the Holy Sword released a flash of light accompanied by a gale.

"Eclipse Vorpal" combined with the Seiten Style Secret Art "First Sword", "Hayakaze". An all-out draw slash—the very same technique that had severed even the Inexhaustible Snake—tore through Psyger-100, passing by her side as the two crossed paths.

However, even so, the Holy Sword endured.

An astounding five consecutive Endures. An activation that truly had to be called a coincidence... no, a genuine miracle.
Was it Psyger-100's good fortune, or Sunraku's bad luck? Only the system knew.

"Hayakaze" is an all-out strike, meaning once unleashed, the user cannot move for a short time. In that case, could the Hero give thanks to the trajectory of her own body and claim victory? No, she could not.

"............Ah."

It was an attack that should have originally secured victory. Even though it failed to fully deplete her HP, the "certainty of defeat" carved into Psyger-100 herself severed the thread of tension and concentration the Sword Saint had been desperately maintaining.

"...Here's the weather forecast."

Unable to move from the posture he held after swinging his sword, Sunraku muttered softly.

"Sunny with a chance of Weapon Rain. Watch out."

Trash Game Hunters might hope for good RNG, but they never trust it. If there is even a 1% chance, they will try again and again. That is precisely why he had prepared one final follow-up attack.
The instant he let go of "Pale Sheen," the system processed the released weapon as an object, temporarily putting him in an unarmed state. He utilized this property to deploy additional armaments.

Fading Mirror was a double decoy. The true strike was Hayakaze, and the backup was a rain of weapons.

The spectators watching from the stands had seen it. They saw Sunraku, at the exact moment of his jump, throw his deployed weapons straight up into the air. And they saw those weapons falling straight down (toward Psyger-100) in accordance with the physical engine.

"This, is.........!?"

"Just die already, Hero-sama."

The Aspiring Blades of the Hero (Duxram) plunged into the ground right in front of Psyger-100's eyes. The Brilliant Scorpion Gauntlets (Gilta Brille) landed wildly off the mark. And the twin swords of the bee buried themselves into the shoulder of the Sword Saint and Hero...

A sixth miracle did not occur.

Author's Afterword
Emperor Bee Twin Swords: "Alright, we got the finishing blowwwwwww!!"

• Q. So basically, what did this highly flammable & electrified Metal Slime actually do?

• A. To summarize:

• Jumped using "Pale Sheen" thrust into the ground as a foothold, boosted by Shana-oh Possession.

• Deployed weapons and threw them straight up while twisting his body to change posture.

• Activated Fading Mirror the moment he was directly above Psyger-100, making her think he was above her while simultaneously hiding the weapons he had thrown even higher.

• Used Flit Float while shifting his posture so his head faced downward, executing an upside-down jump and landing while performing a somersault.

• Used Formula Drift the exact moment he landed to disengage, completely escaping Psyger-100's field of vision while returning to the spot where "Pale Sheen" was stabbed into the ground, entering a draw-slash stance.

• Unleashed the "Eclipse Vorpal" & "Hayakaze" combo, aiming for the exact moment Psyger-100 was stuck in the recovery frames of her ultimate move.

• Failed to finish her off, but the weapons he threw upward rained down like a shower, resulting in checkmate.

By the way, the Holy Sword's Endure activation rate is roughly 25%. If you think of it as a Focus Band that triggers a quarter of the time, you can probably understand how broken it is. Well, the tragedy for Momo-chan is that even if a piece of trash endures an attack, it doesn't make much difference from Lycaon's perspective.

By the way, if you wanted to build an ideal party to defeat Lycaon (Clone), asking the tanks from SF-Zoo for cooperation would actually work quite well. While Josette is the absolute strongest tank as an individual, in terms of splitting roles among multiple people to continuously support the frontline, the tanks of SF-Zoo are top-tier.
In ShanFro, a half-baked min-max build is just garbage, but if you push it to the absolute limit and min-max with a proper strategy in mind, you can fulfill certain roles to some extent—just like the fake magical girl's wife or the SF-Zoo tank group. In short, only the fierce warriors who manage to endure the "industrial waste" phase from level 1 to around 70 can truly enjoy the min-max life from level 71 onward.