Chapter 54: Dedicated to a Moment, Part 2

"In a word, 'Tombguard Wethermon' is a Unique Monster that the Ashura-kai has kept secret ever since they discovered it last winter. Now, it's a pitiful existence used as an experience farm for leveling new members and a practice dummy for PvP."

Just encountering a Unique Monster yields experience points. Certainly, if you could monopolize the location of a Unique Monster that isn't a random encounter like Lycaon, there would be no better place for leveling. I see, the leader of the Ashura-kai seems to be quite the efficiency junkie.

"Their level of concealment is so thorough they put a gag order on members who went out of their way to leave. But you know, don't you think that's wrong?"

"Well, I guess."

"At the very least, doing that in an MMO is somewhat nonsensical, I think."

Should I say it's like staring at a full-course Manchu-Han Imperial Feast without taking a bite? It's not necessarily bad, and I don't intend to blame them... but I do think if they aren't going to do it, then it's fine if we do.

"That's why we're going to slip through the Ashura-kai's guard and sneak into the area where Tombguard Wethermon is. Shall we discuss the specific strategy?"

Pencil Warrior sent us a "Player Book," an item that allows players themselves to write information into it. The fact that she had this prepared beforehand suggests this is a plan that has been worked out quite meticulously.

Unique Monster "Tombguard Wethermon" is a humanoid Unique Monster that can be fought by accepting the Unique Scenario EX: "From This Shore to the Far Shore with Love."

The condition for accepting the Unique Scenario is to visit the hidden area "The Secret Garden" in the Prismatic Forest Cave on a night of the Full Moon with absolutely no weapons equipped. By conversing with the Unique NPC "Setsuna of Distant Days" who appears there, the scenario can be accepted.

"Hmm..."

"Something wrong? If you have questions, I'll answer."

"No, just thinking to myself."

Unique Scenario EX, huh... As I thought, "EX" indicates a scenario directly related to a Unique Monster. If that's the case, then the one I triggered is also... No, let's not think about that right now.

By accepting the scenario and visiting "The Secret Garden" on the night of a New Moon, the path to a further hidden field will appear.

"I still haven't done a Unique Scenario, so I want to ask: are all 'Unique' things this roundabout?"

"Who knows? Set-chan... the NPC hints at it pretty clearly, so once you trigger the flag, there isn't much to get confused about."

"So, the next page is the walkthrough info for Wethermon?"

Tombguard Wethermon activates a skill simultaneously with the start of combat that sets "the level cap of all characters in the combat area excluding himself to 50." As a result, all players are forced to fight with significantly lowered stats.

This is because, at the same time the level is lowered, "status points allocated between levels 51 and 99" vanish for the duration of the battle.

Verification results show that this effect also applies to NPCs, so we have no choice but to conclude that the strategy of stacking high-level NPCs is meaningless.

Okay, wait a second.

"Interference with levels and stats? Reading it, I understand it's limited to during combat... but isn't this an impossible game? The enemy is probably easily over level 100, right?"

"A player with Appraisal checked, and he was level 200. It's a cheat skill that even muscle-brained attackers at full power can't put a scratch on... most likely, it's a Special Victory Condition type."

Forcing a quadruple score difference with a 150-level gap is quite vicious. That said, a "Special Victory Condition"... it's the type often seen in event battles where you don't reduce the enemy's HP to 0 but need to achieve a different condition. So-called "scripted loss events" fall into this category, but a scripted loss in a decisive battle with a Unique Monster is unlikely. Possible conditions include "securing or destroying a specific object," "surviving for a set time," or "surviving a specific attack"... In rare cases, there's even "persuasion during combat."

"I see, so this is the reason why level doesn't matter."

"True, with this, players who rely on levels to push through would just become meat shields."

Well, being a meat shield is a respectable role; tanks are the prime example of that. But if a 150-level gap is forced upon you, a tank won't be much different from a light warrior—just slightly tougher.

"By the way, any leads on the victory condition?"

"For now, I think we can assume the chances of it being a scripted loss or object-related are slim. I suspect it's time survival, but I don't have proof."

"Hmm... Oh, the attack patterns are written down too. Appreciated."

For a fighting gamer like Katzo, knowing the opponent's moves is extremely grateful. When we talked about this before, he gave me the rather absurd statement, "If I know the frame data, I can interrupt it." It's a bit dissatisfying to have the fun of a blind run taken away, but since Pencil Warrior's plan hinges on success in a single attempt, I can't complain.

Normal attacks are mostly performed using a katana, occasionally mixing in hand-to-hand strikes. However, if given a choice between a hand-to-hand attack and a katana attack, the AI routine prioritizes the katana.

The following are the special moves used by Tombguard Wethermon that have been identified so far:

• Wind Cutter (Tachikaze): A god-speed Iai slash suspected to have a 1-frame startup. Fatal-level guard penetration performance. If it hits, you die. Necessary to read the preliminary motion and evade. However, the preliminary motion itself is short, so you should proceed with the assumption that if you get targeted, you die.
• Thunderhead Cloud (Nyūdōgumo): After a charging motion, sweeps the entire area with a giant arm made of clouds. If it hits, you die. The safe zone is likely directly above or at point-blank range. If you have AGI, you might be able to outrun it?
• Thunder Bell (Raishō): Clads the katana in lightning and bombards a wide area. If it hits, you die. The impact location homes in on the player to some extent. Since the impact points overlap, if players are clustered together, they will be wiped out in one go.

Hey, hey, this is extreme Owata-style. Is "if you get hit, you die" the baseline premise? And despite boasting this kind of performance, the full picture still isn't clear?

"Global attacks, huh... I'm bad at those."

"Doesn't a normal fighting game have full-screen attacks?"

"What era of fighting games are you talking about? In Full Dive, an undeniable full-screen attack leaves you helpless. That's an unreasonable attack on the level of constipation."

Full-screen attacks existed in old 2D fighting games, but they disappeared as games transitioned to 3D and Full Dive. In Full Dive, players have to deal with things physically, so full-screen attacks that unconditionally deal damage to all space have decreased with the times. Even if they exist, it's usually just an area-of-effect (AoE) attack. Wethermon's skill doesn't go as far as full-screen, but an attack that sweeps the entire area is quite troublesome. The fact that there's a safe zone is merciful, but... I see, it's thoroughly meta-ing large-scale battles. If players rush poorly into the safe zone, they get clogged up and wiped out. And if numbers decrease, it becomes a hopeless battle of attrition.

"Wethermon himself is considerably strong, but the truly troublesome one is this. I timed it, and it comes out roughly ten minutes in—Wethermon's additional armament..."

"Tactical Horse: [Kirin]?"

Approximately ten minutes after the battle starts, Wethermon summons additional armament.

The Tactical Horse [Kirin] takes the form of a horse-shaped robot in its first phase, but its performance seems completely from the wrong genre. It rampages across the entire area while scattering missiles and lasers, making it extremely dangerous.

Furthermore, if left alone, it combines with Wethermon, creating a situation that becomes impossible to deal with.

As a countermeasure, if an entity other than Wethermon—meaning a player—jumps onto [Kirin], Kirin will interrupt all actions and enter a "bucking" motion to throw them off. You just have to endure that indefinitely.

Words that shouldn't be seen in a fantasy game appear here and there... Missiles? But the contents are troublesome indeed. You're forced to deal with it whether you want to or not, and if you mess up, the main body, Wethermon, becomes untouchable. I see... the rough plan is becoming visible.

"I take Wethermon, Katzo takes Kirin, and you... take assist?"

"Great insight. As a conclusion from fighting that thing, Sunraku-kun, I believe only you can deal with Wethermon's attacks. Only you, who can take 30% of wins off a Pro Gamer with pure reaction speed... right?"

"That's fine, but why am I on horse duty? It's not like I'm good at rodeos."

"Katzo-kun, you play Cava-Cri, right?"

"Cava-Cri?"

Short for Cabaret Club... no, probably a game abbreviation I don't know... I see, it must not be a trash game. Since it relates to Katzo, it must be a fighting game... but modern fighting games, where you don't need physical training yet even an amateur can exchange blows like a pro boxer, are a massive category with a large population in VR gaming. Consequently, massive amounts of fighting games are released domestically and internationally. Among them, if it's a trash game or barely a mediocre game, I might know it, but if it's a good game or god-tier game, I'd only vaguely recall the name at best.

"You investigated that far... Alright, I'll take charge of that Kirin thing."

Katzo popped another tea snack into his mouth and settled into a posture for serious reading.

"But still, isn't three people too few? Personally, I'd want five."

Specifically, I'd want another person for Kirin duty, plus a magic class to provide more direct buffs and, if possible, debuff support in addition to Pencil Warrior's assist. When I asked with that implication, the answer I got came with a wry smile.

"Don't expect buff support. At the very least, we once had ten people buff one guy's attack to the max, and it was still a crushing defeat... no, a total wipeout."

Forced Owata-style via level cap, additional mobs, an uncontrollable rampage upon combination... It's too strong no matter how you look at it. It's safe to assume a special victory condition is almost certain, but unless we pin down what exactly that condition is, our chances of winning are slim.

"Assuming Katzo handles Kirin and I handle Wethermon, what about you?"

"I intend to act as a rover, providing assists and dedicating myself to preventing the collapse of the battle line. I can't stop Wethermon myself, after all."

Practically speaking, with just two people, there isn't really a "battle line," but it is a fact that if either one of us crumbles, it's over.

"Then next, let me explain the specific progression..."

"...And that's the gist of it. We will challenge Tombguard Wethermon with the premise that 'Time Survival' is the victory condition."

We discussed Wethermon's combat style, the field's characteristics, Kirin's hitboxes... before we knew it, the date had changed. There was some debate that since his name is "Tombguard," perhaps performing some action on a specific object—likely the tomb—was the victory condition. However, we decided that if we messed with the tomb the Tombguard was guarding and he entered a frenzy mode, we'd be in trouble. So, we concluded on a challenge through thorough endurance. And here, I voiced a doubt that suddenly came to mind.

"Ah, right. I have an NPC in my party right now; what should I do?"

"That rabbit-chan the SF-Zoo leader was looking at with a dangerous face?"

"Nice~, a Unique is nice~. I want to find a Unique too~."

I put on a smug face and got hit with the Player Book. Stop with the corner of the book! Not the corner!

"Hmm, I think you should remove her. In ShanFro..."

NPCs do not respawn.

Even though I had a vague feeling that was the case, Pencil Warrior's words had the power to strike deep into me with a heavy thud.

Author's Notes & Lore:

Cava-Cri (Formal Name: Cavalry Crisis)

A new type of fighting game billed as "Fighting Game between Cavalry." Aside from the fact that, from an animal welfare perspective, the horses are in constant invincibility mode whether getting stabbed by spears or shot by beams, it is a well-regarded "Good Game."

Players lose if their HP hits 0 or if they fall off their horse. Like traditional fighting games, you can unleash Super Arts by filling a gauge.

Incidentally, for April Fools', they did a joke update where you could ride a Pegasus for aerial battles. The response was bigger than expected, so there are rumors it might be formally implemented... or maybe not.