Chapter 699: Echo Upon the Mirror's Surface, Roar From the Skyscrapers - Part 17
『………!!』
"Drop dead, koraa!!"
The two halberds clashed, and after a brief struggle, my body was blown backward. However, it wasn't a fatal knockback; although I stumbled back a few steps, I didn't fall off the massive fleet of Decotoras.
"I knew it...... I can still fight."
The Exile Cloth charges magical energy when bathed in moonlight. Strictly speaking, we were supposed to be indoors, and on top of that, the time outside should probably be past nightfall...... Yet, this golden best-clothes set was still absorbing moonlight and continuing to accumulate magic.
Which meant that regardless of the outside world, the environment within this world was fixed as "Night"...... Inferior in pure output? Who gives a damn! You made the wrong move, "Me"! Here comes my thirty seconds! By the way, have you met your quotaaaa??!!?!
『………! …………!!!』
"So you threw away your humanity, huh...... I've never experienced exactly what that feels like firsthand, so please, show me."
Begyoh. With the casual ease of piercing styrofoam, "Sunraku" slammed the halberd into the ground. Did he throw away his weapon? No, that wasn't it.
『Goooaaaaaaaawww………!!』
Hypertrophied front legs. Hind legs twisted down to the very skeletal structure to resemble a beast's. It wasn't a human crawling on all fours, but the natural posture of a beast being a beast.
It could no longer be called PvP; it was a confrontation between a human and a beast...... and the one to make the first move was "Sunraku."
Shrouded in the light of skills, even a simple charge from the red beast was enough to be an instant kill. Given the nature of the upper and lower jaws formed to cover his head, he shouldn't even need to eat, nor possess the ability to do so, but the charging beast looked fully intent on crushing me in those massive jaws.
"Come on!!"
I had put the distance of two Decotoras between us while he was transforming, but the very moment I registered his hind legs bending, "Sunraku" closed the gap in an instant, his claws slashing toward me.
Defend? I'd die even with armor. Evade? If I jumped carelessly, I'd fall off the Decotoras. Then what? Catch and deflect!!
I planted the butt of the Centipede Type into the ground and aimed the tip of the halberd straight at the enemy. And the moment the beast and the spearhead collided...... I yanked it up with all my might and threw him backward! This was a spear-style tomoe-nage utilizing the principle of leverage and the opponent's own momentum!!
"Not yet!!"
Because he had reduced himself to a beast, eighty percent of the combat flowchart I'd built up for fighting "Sunraku" had to be scrapped. While hurriedly salvaging the scarce movement patterns from when using the Violent Blood Crimson-Clad Skull Crown out from the sea of my memories, I freed up one hand to operate the window. Glancing briefly at the item menu...... Oh, this! I still had the Goblin's Stone Axe left over! This is the best!!
【Library】 had also prepared that Haniwa thing...... rather, items resembling hand-thrown bombs, but anticipating that he would use them as well, I hadn't brought them in.
Therefore, for me to use the tactic of throwing items, I had to force him into a pattern where he wouldn't use the same method, creating a scenario of "You can throw things, but using them normally, or rather not using them at all, gives you the advantage."
"Fun and time are proportional!!"
Even if there was fun to be had in shortening the time, fun and time are absolutely never inversely proportional! Love inefficiency! Even if the fun memories last only an instant, the total playtime is the only truth! Uooooh, I don't even know what I'm thinking anymore! I'll just use these burned-out ashes as fuel and keep charging ahead!!
I chucked the stone axe with all my might, but naturally, something like this wasn't going to deal any real damage. Well, against my usual half-naked self, it might do chip damage, but between my armored self and the berserk "me," it was doubtful if it would even deal 1 damage to either of us.
But the stone axe's role wasn't to be a damage source. An opponent engaged in a fierce battle couldn't completely ignore "something" suddenly thrown at them; I only needed one second.
"Stitching the recasts together......!!"
Two accessories born from two pieces of amber. One Black Lightning, the other Annihilating Storm.
These two accessories are activated by an active ON/OFF trigger. But once turned off, a slight recast time occurs before they can be activated again. Well, without that, the Levin Trigger would be practically risk-free. Or perhaps, this was their intended use all along......?
Therefore, I use one while the other is on cooldown. My bodily movements will change constantly, so the risk of becoming a bloodstain on a wall increases, but it's worth swallowing the risk......! Here we go, Swift Thunder!!
"Alriiiiiight!!"
In the mere second "Sunraku" deflected the stone axe with his beast claws, I struck my chest, cloaked myself in black lightning, and sprinted across the top of the Decotoras in a single burst. Orbit Movement and Hermes Boots activated—an instantaneous switch of information to further scramble his visual data! His attention, which had been drawn to the stone axe, snapped toward me as I closed in from the front, but my figure vanished behind him via circular motion!!
"And more, and more, and mooooooore!!"
The moment I got behind him, I activated 【Fading Mirror】! Leaving behind an illusion and my presence in that spot, I continued the circular motion and slipped around to his front once again.
A back-and-forth slap of information, as if every frame of a flipbook belonged to a completely different scene—his movements were completely frozen right now. This is great. Next time I have a First-to-10 set with Katzo, I'll try this. I feel like I might finally be able to win four rounds.
"Tch!!!"
The present and the future were muddled into a chaotic mess inside my head. What were my eyes seeing right now? The present, ongoing image of the target? Or the expected scene that would occur a few seconds from now? I don't know, and wasting thought on that was a waste of time.
At the very least, by the time my body initiated the multiple circular motion, I had already completed my window operations and physical positioning. Skills could be activated with just a thought; I only needed to dedicate my fingertips strictly to operating my weapons and windows.
A once-in-a-lifetime timing and positioning. The three seconds it took for the Centipede Type I had thrown straight up to fall back down. The Brilliant Scorpion Gauntlets covering both my arms had been conserved facedown for this very instant; now, I revealed my trump card faceup.
"【Overload Mechanism】.........!!"
Faster than he could even process the incoming punch, the lethal stinger hidden within the gauntlet pierced into his lower jaw.
"Re!!!"
What was poured in was the crystal's poison, a cruel beauty that turns all creation into magnificent ores.
"je!!!"
Impact. No need to shatter him, just enough impact to knock him off the Decotoras───
"cttttt!!!!"
Detonation. The impact of the uppercut, driven in while pulverizing the red beast's lower jaw, easily launched the total mass of "Sunraku's" tall adult male frame plus the red viscosity coating his surface into the air.
Only now did my understanding of what I had actually done catch up.
It wasn't a brute-force strike born of Overflow, but a spiral punch delivered by the Mobius of the Annihilating Storm. Taking an uppercut packed with rotational force, "Sunraku" lightly spun in a tailspin as he was launched off the field formed by the Decotora fleet, falling toward the road being constructed mid-air... meaning, right onto the very road the massive Decotoras were about to trample over.
"Just turn into minced meat like th........................"
At the end of my line of sight, the Decotora leading the pack suddenly accelerated.
Just that simple change, just that simple movement... caught "Sunraku," who had been about to fall onto the road, squarely on its cargo bed.
"Haaaaaaah............"
The reason the strength drained from my body wasn't just because the Centipede Type's buff had worn off. When the plot armor interventions reached this extreme, it killed my hype so much that even my vibrant emotions just withered away.
"Alright, alright, I lose."
"Oh boy, they nerfed it for me, yay"—that's not how this works.
When someone tells a gamer, "We'll lower the difficulty," it just makes them stubbornly want to clear it before the patch hits out of pure pride. That's why...... yeah, that's why I wanted to win all on my own.
ShanFro's AI becomes completely unreasonable sometimes, and it's especially prominent in Unique Scenarios. It's like they rewrite the rules after the fact... or rather, what is it... it's close to the feeling of the game itself urging you, "Give it everything you've got."
Maybe it's a glimpse of a trash game, or maybe it's just a reality that can't be confined within the framework of a mere "game." But even so, this result was frustrating......
"As you wish. I'll show you my heart and soul, you shitty AI."
From here on out was what I had been looking forward to the most throughout the entire Orchestra battle.
Author's Afterword
SS6: "It's not that it's absolutely mandatory, but having borrowed it, conserving it is completely out of the question!!"
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