Chapter 530: An Orchestra For You, Part 12
Author's Preface
That despair you feel when clashing with a morning-rush squad, like, "Ah, we really have to beat each other to death, huh..."
[*1]
The final Ancient Battlefield of the Heisei era is still a pain in the Reiwa...[*2]
The Wandering Great Azure Plague. Its size is actually smaller... than a normal horse. Are you actually a pony or something?
But its small size, which increases the difficulty of sniping from a distance, is a welcome factor for the testing I'm about to do.
"Amazing, people with that 'let's just die for now!' mentality are a rare breed in ShanFro, so speaking as a tester, it's super appreciated, Bunny-chan〜."
"It's Emul desu wa!!"
"Hmm... right, your cheeks are so soft〜"
"Guh, this person is coming on way too strong desu waー!!"
The type to force their own rhythm onto the other party, meaning she's the same kind of deal as Sylvia Goldberg when she's in the zone. I'm counting on you as a scape-rabbit rather than a scapegoat, Emul.
"So that horse, the closer you get, it shaves off your max HP, and if you get even closer, another symptom 'develops', right?"
"Exactly, and by the way, we've tested various things and it's highly likely to be a respiratory infection. What's more, it pierces right through gas mask-type gear."
"What kind of bio-terrorism is that... no, actually, hearing that makes me feel better."
"Was there a single reassuring element in what I just said....?"
It's a huge chunk of reassurance; after all, just knowing the process involves infection via respiration is a godsend, and the very fact that it's a respiratory infection makes a smile naturally spill across my face.
"Err, alright, I'll now explain the outline for the 'Go Straight and Send It Flying' test."
"Hear, hear〜"
"Go straight and send it flying, that's it."
Setting up my theoretical maximum speed is a hassle so that's a bit out of the question, but well, just lightly...
Levin Trigger: Hazard, convert LUC to VIT with the Indigo Chalice, front clear, look right, look left, look right again...
"Ah, hey, mage over there, step aside for a sec-"
"Huh?"
They stepped aside? Alright, let's go.
"Ah, I'm recording this like an experiment log, wanna leave a comment?"
"Experiment log, Month X, Day X... If this experiment succeeds, humanity will surely advance to the next stage..."
"Isn't that the intro for something that fails eighty percent of the time?"
The pattern where a monster with absurdly high regeneration is born, a classic trope in action-oriented horror games.
"Three processes are required... Status enhancement, route securement, and..."
The courage to march to my death without a moment's hesitation!!
"Testing! What kind of behavior will the Wandering Great Azure Plague exhibit when subjected to a head-on traffic collisionー!!"
"Whew! Looks like we're gonna get some great footage〜!!"
Critical Speed activate! Go straight and send it flying!!
Normally, running on the ground with this skill carries a high probability of turning me into a stain on the floor or a wall, so I use it in conjunction with mid-air jumps for three-dimensional maneuvering, but just for this once, I'm accelerating non-stop straight toward the obstacle.
Using Critical Speed on the ground while in the Lightning-Clad state is pretty risky; after all, mess up your movements and you end up using the ground as a grater to make grated-Sunraku. That's why, strictly speaking, I'm sprinting with a slight upward trajectory, as if running up a slope.
"Kuh."
Not enough distance, I have no choice; the probability of failure increases, but I'm gonna carve out my steps all at once!!
Critical Speed is an acceleration skill like a centipede cannon where velocity is added with every single step.[*3] Since the acceleration applies in the direction you step, depending on how you use it, there's even a technique to cancel out acceleration with more acceleration for a safe landing.
So, what happens if you perform continuous steps in a short span of time?
"Heburu?!"
This happens.
Losing my balance, my body goes flying into a tailspin, dancing through the air like a poorly thrown paper airplane. No, that's not it—the acceleration from the three consecutive steps I took refuses to let me fly off in the wrong direction.
Fundamentally, the action of running is the movement of alternately bringing your right and left foot forward. When you do that instantaneously at an idiotic acceleration multiplier, the balance normally maintained by your sense of equilibrium completely collapses in an instant. To put it into perspective, it feels like being violently shaken left and right.
But you've underestimated me, Great Azure Plague. I was already perfectly fine with having just 1 HP left from the start, and if it's a respiratory infection, I'll just impact before I can even breathe it in───!!
"Eat this and drop dead, Bullet Plancha Suici—Beryuh!!!" [*4]
"Brrrrrrrrooaaaa!!?"
I bit my tongue, and my body—having flown sideways into the torso of the scrawny horse—slammed belly-first into it, bending into a loose "<" shape as the kinetic energy detonated.
The closer I get, the more debuffs are applied? Right, then let's see what happens if I bring enough speed to close the distance before it becomes a fatal wound.
It interferes with magic? Unfortunately, this raw meat called me is pure physical.
Now then, time to check the answers. What happens to a grotesque, eyeless scrawny horse when it eats a sideways Plancha Suicida delivered at maximum speed?
"Gubeah!!?"
"Brrrrrrr!!?"
Caught in a suicide tackle with absolutely zero foresight, the Great Azure Plague goes violently flying back in the exact opposite direction it came from, and for the record, I'm flying right along with it.
*Splat!* One horse and one person are slammed into the ground, tumbling over and over just like that. Naturally, with my max HP shaved off on top of the crash, my health has hit zero, so I'm about to die any second now, but just before I croak, I catch a brief glimpse of the Great Azure Plague grinding its neck into the dirt.
"Huh?"
Isn't there... a weird crack on its back? *Guh.*
◆
"Did you get some good footage?"
"It's so damn funny, can I upload it to a video site?"
"What's the title?"
"Hmm, maybe 'Landed a Lucha move on a horse lolol' or something?"
"Looks like that thing is about to molt."
"Tell me more."
As expected of Library, I guess. She instantly switched to her lore-theorist face.
"There was a weird crack on its back. It looked too strange to be self-inflicted, so it's probably a wound that was there before I rammed into it."
"Couldn't it just be a design choice?"
"The Devouring Great Crimson Clad had four or five forms, you know."
"Hmm... So the one who defeated the Great Crimson Clad really was... Hmm."
Did my mouth just do a triple axel or something? I'm letting things slip way too easily. Oh well, whatever. It's the kind of content where succeeding waves of challengers are a given anyway.
"I have no intention of hiding it anyway since the Siegwurm fight, but I want the people following after me to suffer, so I won't reveal the strategy."
"Meanie〜"
Let's get back on topic. Unlike me, the still-living Wandering Great Azure Plague seems to be wary of the sudden shoebill luchador, and has stopped its movements, albeit likely temporarily.
Realizing that missing this chance would be bad—something even a beginner could understand—the sparsely scattered players swarm toward it with a clamor. But it's still a brutal opponent even for high-level players, and I can see players dropping dead here and there before they even reach the Great Azure Plague.
"This is quite the feat, Sunraku-san. It'd be one thing if the Great Azure Plague simply came to a halt, but this is the first time I've ever seen it blatantly on guard."
"Isn't a catapult the optimal solution for this thing?"
"A catapult... Would that fall under the 'requires indispensable NPC cooperation' category?"
"I don't even know if we can build one in the first place."
At the very least, anything under fifty meters can fit into the Inventoria, so the possibility isn't zero.
Blasting it away with massive amounts of mass seems to be the optimal solution, and even without a meat-bullet suicide attack like mine, having a means to hurl substantial mass at it from a distance should allow for an advantageous approach... assuming we ignore the whole suspected second-form thing, that is.
"If you do the same thing about ten more times, it looks like we could force it quite a distance away from Thirdrema."
"Right, well, I'm heading to the New Continent, so..."
"Come to think of it, why did you come all the way out here?"
"Training. Let's go, Emul."
"Yes sir!"
◇
"Man, we got to see something really interesting〜. If he can die with that much gusto, I totally get how he can manage demon marches in ShanFro."
"Keeping up with that guy is such a paaaain..."
"You can say that again〜, it totally makes sense why Wolfgang feels like they've completely let go of the reins. Leaving that guy to his own devices definitely seems like he'll pull off something amazing."
"......"
"Hmm, as far as we've investigated, he's already flying way ahead of the curve, yet he says 'training', huh... If we're talking about something timely, maybe it's related to Orchestra?"
"Couldn't it be Goldunine...?"
"Ah, could be that too. But personally, I'd really like it to be related to Orchestra."
"...Well, this unit ain't the one who has to suffer anyway."
"Mirei-san! It's time to swap out!!"
"You've got some bad luck〜. Something incredibly funny happened just a second ago."
"You recorded it anyway, didn't you?"
"Ding ding ding! Well then, shall we head off to the New Continent soon too... or rather, to where Orchestra is, Remy-chan〜?"
"Acknowledgement : Make it ASAP, please."
"Sticking a lazy persona onto a min-maxing efficiency freak really makes me admire the character creation process〜... If we're going to the New Continent anyway, wanna go on a date first, Remy-chan? Let's go eat parfaits! Parfaits!"
"Give me a break, Mirei-san... Deep Slaughter-san is going to go home, you know?"
"There's no problem if we just get takeout, boom, logically defeated."
"Approval:"
"What kind of obsession does this person have......"
Author's Afterword
Of course there's a strategy testing squad in Library too.
Now then, only Cynthia-san is left... I wonder if she should just stay on the single route...
Translator's Notes
- [1] Morning-rush squad (Asakatsu): Refers to "Morning Activity," commonly used in Granblue Fantasy's Guild Wars (Unite and Fight) where players wake up extremely early to score massive points and demoralize the enemy team right out of the gate.
- [2] The final Ancient Battlefield of the Heisei era is still a pain in the Reiwa...: A Japanese internet pun combining "tsurai wa" (it's painful/tough) with the "Reiwa" era name, referencing the transition from the Heisei to the Reiwa era while complaining about a grueling event.
- [3] Centipede cannon: could be referring directly to the V-3 cannon (Hochdruckpumpe), a real-world World War II German supergun that used multiple sequential propellant charges along the barrel to accelerate a projectile.
- [4] Plancha Suicida: A professional wrestling move where a wrestler jumps over the top rope onto an opponent outside the ring.
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