Chapter 418: Bringing the Light of United to the Abyss

【Wolfgang】

OiKatzo: Heyyyy Sunrakuu

OiKatzo: It's not scary, so come on outttt

OiKatzo: ……Tch, so it really is a trash game focus period, huh...?

Rust: What's that?

Pencil Knight King: Sunraku-kun tries to clear games with a heavy story all at once during his days off.

Pencil Knight King: During that time, he pretty much stops responding to emails and stuff.

Rust: Hmm.

Psyger-0: Did you have some business with him?

OiKatzo: Eh? No, not really?

Pencil Knight King: Doubt.

Kyogoku: I haven't known you long, but I can at least tell when you're lying.

Rust: The context before and after your statement is already contradicting itself.

OiKatzo: It brings tears to my eyes to feel a certain kind of trust.

OiKatzo: Well, whatever. Pencilgon, there's a guest looking for you and Sunraku.

Pencil Knight King: A guest…………… Eh, that person?

Pencil Knight King: Shall we have her go home?

Pencil Knight King: Sunraku-kun, come on outtt! If I'm going down the path of Asura, I'm taking you with meee!!

Mold: Eh, what happened?

OiKatzo: Well, there's a bit of history.

Pencil Knight King: Seriously~…… This is just straight-up annoying……

Akitsu Akane: What kind of person is she?

Pencil Knight King: Hmm~…… Well, yeah. Katzo-kun probably knows her better than I do.

OiKatzo: You know, an amiable machine.

Rust: ……I can't see her humanity.

OiKatzo: You don't need to worry about it, as long as you don't step over a certain line, she's just a normal person.

Pencil Knight King: Let me change the subject a bit, okay? Or rather, there's something I want to ask Akitsu Akane-chan.

Akitsu Akane: Yes!

Pencil Knight King: You know how Saint-chan sent out an event notification? I was wondering what Noirlind was up to.

Akitsu Akane: Yes! He's super fired up, saying 'I will definitely defeat Siegwurm this time!' We're holding strategy meetings together!!

Pencil Knight King: ………?

Akitsu Akane: Was something strange about that?

OiKatzo: You've gone as far as planning strategies together……?

Kyogoku: Isn't Noirlind completely head over heels for you?

Akitsu Akane: Also, he said that since it's an all-out war, he'll be bringing the Dragonewts along too.

Pencil Knight King: Wait, time out. Please explain more about these Dragonewts?

Akitsu Akane: They're apparently 'the winged dragon people chosen by the Black Dragon-sama!'

Akitsu Akane: They can actually fly for short distances and breathe fire, it's amazing.

Pencil Knight King: Ahーyeah, sorry? My words weren't clear enough.

Pencil Knight King: I want to hear the specific schedule of his advance.

Kyogoku: Ah, that's what you meant.

OiKatzo: Actually, there's a part of this where it's not clear who exactly we're supposed to defeat in the end.

Rust: Do we defeat the five colored dragons, or do we defeat Siegwurm?

Mold: That's true, but going by this flow, won't this turn into a super massive raid involving all the players?

Rust: Fighting packed like sardines?

Kyogoku: First, we aggressively prune the players to clear up the surroundings……

OiKatzo: A red-name mass-production event, the flood of complaints is inevitable.

Pencil Knight King: Hmm~, something smells fishy.

Pencil Knight King: This really feels like the kind of Unique Scenario where the subjugation and whatever is supposed to happen after the New Continent has been explored to some extent, but……

Pencil Knight King: From a game perspective, I don't get the intention behind gathering them all in one place to be defeated all together.

OiKatzo: Actually, what if the face-off is just an event scene where a loss is guaranteed?

Mold: The Saint is talking about a 'decisive battle' and stuff, so a guaranteed loss seems unlikely, don't you think?

Akitsu Akane: Noirlind-san was saying 'Either they die or I die, there is no retreating until the battle is decided!' you know?

Pencil Knight King: There are some things bothering me, but everyone, the day of the decisive battle... one day has passed, so are you free seven days from now?

Rust: We have no problems.

Akitsu Akane: I'm good to go!

OiKatzo: If it were two weeks later, it would be impossible, but I'm fine.

Kyogoku: Ahー, the morning might be difficult.

Pencil Knight King: I've taken a leave of absence.

Pencil Knight King: Now then, all that's left is our bullet and Saiga-imouto-chan.

Psyger-0: I am fine, yes.

Psyger-0: Should I ask Sunraku-san?

Pencil Knight King: I see. Well, Sunraku-kun will probably be fine anyway, so there's no need to ask him right now—.

Pencil Knight King: Hmm?

Pencil Knight King: Wait a second.

OiKatzo: Did something happen?

Rust: ……Sunraku isn't responding to emails or anything right now.

Rust: That should be the case for everyone here.

OiKatzo: Ah.

Psyger-0: Eh?

Pencil Knight King: Hmm~, Saiga-imouto-chan... in order to hear from someone who isn't responding to emails and stuff.

OiKatzo: You have no choice but to meet them in real life, right?

Psyger-0: No, I don't.

Psyger-0: Um.

Psyger-0: It's like, telepathy.

Kyogoku: That's a bit of a stretch, don't you think?

Kyogoku: Wait, so... Heh, you're close enough to casually meet up in real life.

Pencil Knight King: I'm pretty sure that girl doesn't use a stage name or anything...

Pencil Knight King: Oh my, checkmate.

Psyger-0: No, wai.

OiKatzo: It's fine, it's fine. It's not like she's going to leak personal information.

Pencil Knight King: I'm just gonna use this material to tease her, after all!!

Kyogoku: Too malicious...

Pencil Knight King: Spotting the line where it stays a joke is the mark of a first-rate player.

Rust: A first-rate fiend?

Mold: Please stop trying to make me laugh...

Akitsu Akane: ???

"Yosha, oraaaaah!! Blind clear, you bastard!!"

It was your bad luck that your final form took a scorpion-like shape, Dark General! You underestimated the sheer height of my anti-scorpion EXP, and I have to say, that was the cause of your defeat... Hm?

"Did the back of my neck just tingle a bit...?"

The Intuition system is a Bakumatsu mechanic; there's no way it's implemented in Epic of President Legend... Different developers, for starters. Was it just my imagination?

Well whatever, more importantly, that was long... Despite stubbornly pushing through the strategy right after receiving the clear report from Takeda-shi, it was a massive struggle...
You should have told me earlier that the proficiency level of the allied forces becomes a crucial element in the second half. Leading me to believe it'd be an easy win as long as the President did his best, only to hit me with this...

A final boss calling himself the Demon God Emperor appears after eating the Emperor to gain some mysterious power called 'Emperor Power', forces a defeat event on me, kidnaps my secretary character along with the holy relic 'Flag of Unification', and now the United States is currently reduced to a disorganized mob.
In game terms, it's a stat-boosting item for the army, but lore-wise, it's an object of unified will, meaning without it, the army loses all cohesion.

In short, you're forced to secure an A-Rank result or higher while your entire army's stats are halved. It doesn't make the game unwinnable, but the road to clearing it becomes considerably longer.
Takeda-shi, who had already cleared it, was in that state typical of those who beat Epic of President Legend where they don't say much, but judging from fragmented information, he probably farmed scores against trash mobs to raise the proficiency of his army.

"But I dare not choose that path...!!"

Manpower is the ultimate strength. Let me show you here what it truly means to be a match for a thousand... Namely, a restricted army proficiency run.
In this game, the army's results and the difficulty for the President (Player) are linked. The higher the score the army achieves, the fewer enemies the player faces, and the difficulty drops.
It seems there are some enemies you can't beat unless you do that, but... I'm not backing down here.

During the Army Phase, I'll deploy only the Royal Guard, who have high combat and survival power!! I'll secure the B+ guaranteed line by achieving the All-Survive Bonus!! And I'll farm the rest of the score through the President's solo play!!

"The Purgatory General is dead, I just dealt with the Dark General... which General was left again?"

Anyway, the flow of the story was to defeat the former generals of the Empire who were evilly reincarnated by demons, gather items, and open the path to the Demon God Imperial Capital... I think.

"Mr. President! Enemy reinforcements!"

"The reinforcement system is definitely garbage! This is the fifth time in a single encounter!!"

• Let's go! Show them the President's Aura!!

• Retreat! We are no match for them as we are now!!

• Sky... butterfly...

With Rice-chan currently kidnapped by the purple muscle-freak known as the Demon God Emperor, my only partner is the Bottom-Left Frame-kun. You really never miss a chance to throw in a joke choice, do you...

"Sortie! Don't underestimate the President, you bastards!!"

I'll save Rice-chan, who overflows with infinitely more Intelligence than a certain piece of junk!! Follow me, Purgatory Battalion!!

Author's Afterword
Takeda-shi: Employs a legitimate strategy, steadily raising the army's level for a well-balanced clear.
Protagonist: Active Thermopylae. "If the strongest 300 men take down 100 each, we can handle up to 30,000! It's fine, I'll take down 1,000 myself!"

• Dragonewts

To be completely blunt, they are just Lizardmen. Generally, a species infected by the "Factors" scattered by Dragons undergoes several processes to become a Dragon-Blood Vampire.
However, Lizardmen show an exceptionally different mutation, and that is the Dragonewts. Therefore, a player cannot directly convert to a Dragonewt; they must first convert to a Lizardman and then fulfill the necessary conditions.
They possess the trait of altering their appearance based on the nature of the "Factor" they are infected by. The ones Akitsu Akane encountered were former Lizardmen who had received the "Factor" from the Black Dragon Noirlind.
There's a strict rule forbidding the use of the characters "No," "I," "R," "L," "I," "N," and "D" in their names, but as long as you casually lower your head, things remain peaceful. The Red Dragon's territory is particularly harsh.
Well, only the Black and Red Dragons have Dragonewts serving them. The Green Dragon is an old geezer, the White Dragon is crazy, and the Blue Dragon is dead.

Dragonewts fundamentally look down on Lizardmen, but this is because the inherent nature or ethos of the Lizardmen remains within the Dragonewts.
They are a species that loves freedom above all else; the power they obtained came at the cost of subservience. In the end, which is happier: a free weakling, or an unfree powerhouse?