Chapter 529: An Orchestra For You, Part 11

Author's Preface
The last Wind Advantage Ancient Battlefield of the Heisei era is pure hell!!!!!!! [*1]
What do you mean the cutoff is already double the previous one just five hours in!!!!!!!!!!!
What am I, a guy whose setup requires 10 button presses and 1 summon just to hit 20 million, supposed to do!!!!!!!!!!


Ah, yes, I'm not running away. The monsters are just taking a break, yes, yes.

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Dirmonton Style.

Secret Art "Roaring Echo Palm"... Unsuitable because it assumes fighting monsters.

Agrosso Style.

Secret Art "Vortex"... A throwing technique meant for PvP, but to put it bluntly, it's a strict downgrade of "Tidal RushOoshike." Unsuitable.

Blade-less Sword Style.

Secret Art "Ashura Successive Slashing Hands"... A continuous flurry of knife-hands. While incredibly powerful, it leaves the user hopelessly defenseless if the opponent gets behind them. Unfortunately, unsuitable.

Shooting Star Kick Style.

Secret Art "Meteor Strike"... Piqued my interest since it was a player-created style, but opening the lid, it was just a follower of Sylvia Goldberg. If I had to comment, as long as that monster insists on using specific movements, neither Katzo, Amelia Sullivan, nor I would struggle against her. She makes her finishing moves exactly that—guaranteed finishers—because she is the real-life Meteor. Unsuitable.

Hitting Things With a Bat Usually Wins Style.

Secret Art "Beatdown"... Another player-created style. While it holds a certain kind of truth, I had to tearfully pass on it. The swings are way too wide... Unsuitable.

Kingdom Knight Martial Arts.

Secret Art "Armored Kumite"... Interesting. The fact that the grappling assumes the user is wearing armor made me wonder if it could work, but it's hyper-specialized for countering and the movements are way too slow. However, since a counter-strategy designed for dealing with weapons might prove useful, keeping it as a candidate to half-assedly mimic isn't a bad idea. Unsuitable (*).

Tri-Divinity Monk Fist Style.

Secret Art "Seven-Color Mixture 【Iris Bombardment】"... I don't want my setup overlapping with Katzo's, so rejected.

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

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

......

"Dammit..."

It's not that any of these styles are weak; it's just that none of them perfectly snap into the highly specific situation I'm looking for. It's like having puzzle pieces that look similar but just won't fit into the jigsaw. There's just one thing, one missing piece, and if I could just fill it...

"Right, Emul?"

"Sunraku-san, you always finish your thought process completely before asking a question desu wa..."

"Have I left the world behind once again...?"

"...Don't you just mean you're an outcast desu wa? Hobyobyobyobyo!!!"

You little brat, you want me to stretch those cheeks out like a hamster, you little brat?

While squishing and stretching the cheeks of the Emul resting on my head, I narrow my eyes at the scene unfolding below me.

"Still, though... that's amazing, it's straight out of a Musou game."

We're in Thirdrema, specifically on the outer walls of the fortress city that has, in a sense, become the hottest front line on the New Continent right now.

───The Wandering Great Azure Plague.

The Raid Monster representing the "Blue" of the Old Continent. It's an emaciated horse advancing single-handedly toward Thirdrema, systematically wiping out... no, sickening out every player it encounters the moment it appears.

The absurd maximum participant limit of 1,000 isn't because it has insane physical strength or anything like that; it's entirely due to its incredibly unique combat gimmick.

"Look, Emul, judging by their gear, those guys are pretty high level."

"They sure seem awfully full of confidence desu wa?"

They probably maxed out their poison resistance or something... their equipment definitely gives off that vibe. We're too far away to see their names or stats from here, but their overflowing confidence makes it look as if they're boldly declaring, "We're going to be the heroes."

"That's the Gorgon Basilisk set. It blocks not only normal poison but also special status ailments like petrification, so..."

"There's petrification in this game?"

"It doesn't literally turn you to stone; it's the type where your muscles lock up. People have done some testing, and the working theory is that it might be emitting some sort of electromagnetic wave."

...And who is this person?

"...Ah, right, recognizing faces is a one-way street here. Hello, I'm with 【Library】."

"Ah, hello."

A light nod. Thinking about why a front-line clan member is in a place like this is a waste of time, so I turn my gaze back to the heroic figures of the sacrific—I mean, the brave heroes.

The five players, clad in their countermeasure gear, march boldly forward, while the emaciated blue horse just casually clopping along doesn't even show any overt hostility toward them...

"Ah, they've entered the 'range'."

"It shaves off your maximum HP, right?"

"Yup. At level 99, it takes about five seconds... For them, maybe eight?"

Exactly. That is the defining characteristic of the Wandering Great Azure Plague. It's an "illness" that doesn't just drain your HP, but literally shaves away your maximum HP cap, with the rate and speed of the reduction increasing based on the target's level.

What makes it so nasty is that because your actual maximum cap—to use an analogy, the size of the bucket itself—is being shrunk, healing methods are completely useless.

"And on top of that, the closer you get, the more symptoms stack..."

"Ah, one of them collapsed."

"Judging by the symptoms, it looks like his lungs gave out. They say you start choking on your breaths, like you just finished a full marathon."

"That's a very specific kind of terrible..."

Subtracting the one who crumpled to the ground and despawned amid violent coughing fits, four remain. They're about twenty meters away from the Great Azure Plague.

But then another one drops out. The spot he's clutching is his chest... Ah, I don't even need to ask.

"Cardiac arrest. I heard from a female player that it feels as suffocating as wearing a bra where only the left cup is a different size."

"That's a comparison guys fundamentally can't understand..."

"I'm a woman, and even I don't really get it."

Silence.

Choosing the wrong dialogue option here feels like it would lead to something horrible, so I choose to pass.

"Oh, they're in mid-range class firing distance."

"Ah... the magic-users..."

"Is there a problem with that?"

Don't tell me it has magic resistance too? As the thought crosses my mind, I look down just in time to see the mage cast a spell and... explode.

"Huh?"

"Did those guys seriously think that gear alone would be enough? When someone who's 'infected' casts a spell, it misfires in a rampaging state."

"So magic is practically sealed?"

"No, not necessarily. For low-level players, it's just a straight firepower buff. Well, they do take a bit of self-inflicted damage, though."

Two left, five meters from the Great Azure Plague. The only ones surviving are two tanks—is it because of their high VIT? I vaguely recall immunity to diseases in this game scaling off VIT.

"They made it into melee range, but..."

"Well, it is a Raid Monster, after all..."

With a participant limit of a thousand, it might not literally be a monster worth a thousand soldiers, but at the very least, its HP isn't something just two players can whittle down.

One takes a direct hit from the blue-black miasma the Great Azure Plague vomits from its mouth, convulsing as he collapses. The other gets his entire head bitten and grabbed by the Plague, and then... slam, slam, slam...

"Yup."

"Well, I wouldn't just say 'yup'."

"Since anyone over level 50 just becomes a hindrance—a reverse level-cap, basically—the outcome was pretty much set in stone the moment they charged in with only five people."

"Five people just died like it was nothing, but the Pioneers are completely unfazed desu wa..."

The unit price of a player's life is less than a tenth of an NPC's, it can't be helped. Gotta switch gears and move on.

"So the optimal solution really is just to gang up on it?"

"Yup. The ideal strat would be to gather a thousand level 30 players and just have them march forward over a mountain of corpses."

"That's such a bloody, thoroughly unglamorous visual..."

A Raid Monster that even small-fry can fight. The reality is that it forces the idiom "many drops make a shower" onto you in the most literal sense. Man, what a trash mob.

"The thing is, it's getting really bad right now."

"What is?"

"The Wandering Great Azure Plague initially spawned much further away. Once its existence was confirmed, a few people charged in to test things out... and now it's gotten close enough that we can clearly see its shape from here."

"...Let me guess, from a base-defense perspective, this is really bad?"

"It's about as bad as having a knife at your throat, ahaha."

Generally speaking, doesn't society call that a checkmate...? Knowing the management of this game, they'll genuinely wipe Thirdrema off the map.

"And it's just so impossible to get everyone on the same page. I know it can't be helped since the game just started for a lot of them, but... everyone just charges in whenever they want, and since login times are all over the place, our schedule is full of holes..."

Ah, yeah, Raid Monsters are essentially a massive game of jump rope... having missing links and gaps in the lineup is brutal. Hmm...

"Hey, about that thing... Ah, no, maybe I should phrase it like this."

"What is it?"

"Wanna try running some tests with 【Maximum SpeedSpeed Holder】 factored in?"

"That sounds wonderful!!"

As expected of an investigation clan, they're always down for a ride......... Now then? Keep me company while I blow off some steam, Wandering Great Azure Plague.

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Author's Afterword
・ Wandering Great Azure Plague
The Raid Monster of the Old Continent, representing the Light Blue. While its direct combat power is far inferior to the Blue of the LeftLeft Blue—everyone's favorite Crazed Ultramarine—the Great Azure Plague, serving the role of Aether's "Immune System," fluctuates the immunity to mana in all living creatures via mana particles.
This manifests as a malfunction of the Mana Organ, inflicting various detrimental effects on the lifeforms belonging to Project Number One and Number Two.



───The breath of the sneering horse effortlessly tramples over the monumental achievements that the people of the Divine Age bet everything to accomplish.

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Translator's Notes

• [1] Ancient Battlefield of the Heisei era: Granblue Fantasy's Guild War event (Unite and Fight). The Heisei era in Japan ended on April 30, 2019.