Chapter 793: December 15th: Cruelly Carving Slashing Marks
Roughly thirty minutes have passed.
Thermal fatigue is when metal loses its flexibility and breaks after being subjected to the repeated stress of heat... or it should be. But that's something that happens after heating and cooling it over and over again... like, thousands or tens of thousands of times. Otherwise, frying pans all over the world would be higher-cost consumables than paper plates.
But since magic is a supernatural physical phenomenon in a game like ShanFro, I thought maybe there was a chance it could work? That was why I launched "Operation: Heat and Cool" against Tomahawk, whose entire body is covered in a metallic carapace... but heating metal until it's red-hot, cooling it, and then heating it again. This sequence of actions is called by a different name in a certain "line of work."
Namely, in blacksmithing, it's called "quenching."
"Daaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!?"
Vwoosh!! Tomahawk's tail draws an arc, literally slicing through the wind. Basking in the moonlight and letting off a cold gleam that looks like it could freeze even the plants and trees, it shows an even greater clarity and sharpness, completely unyielding to the heating, cooling, and blunt impacts. [*1]
Naturally, taking a direct hit from something like that would turn me into Sun/raku. Or maybe Su/nraku, but that doesn't matter. The one thing I can say for sure is that Operation Burn-to-Freeze was a complete blunder.
"Dammit! Why the hell was everyone so full of confidence!?"
On top of that, it seems like that razor-blade dragon has its own quenching motions on standby. Or rather, I get the feeling it's been heating up on its own midway through even without us hitting it with fire magic. The knee joints, which shouldn't have been heated, are letting off a crimson heat and glow, and on top of that, it skillfully used them to deliver a knee strike to Ur Idim-shi... That's a move you can only pull off if "your knees glowing white-hot" is part of your intended calculations.
But with this, I'm gradually starting to figure out Tomahawk's abilities.
First of all, the super-vibration of its flesh. The shuddering that unleashes shockwaves from its entire body, and the super-vibrating blades that increase the power of its arm-blades and tail—they're highly versatile precisely because they're simple. Fortunately, sensing the preparatory motions via sound and sight is easy, so as long as we don't mess up, we can deal with them.
Secondly, the heating of its flesh and the accompanying self-quenching enhancement.
This is also simple, which makes it a massive pain. It heats its carapace up to a temperature that could burn you if you carelessly touch it, and then when it's exposed to the outside air and cools, the flesh instantly hardens. As for how hard it gets, it's at a level where even Ur Idim-shi's attacks can't make a dent.
But, if you change your perspective, those are also opportunities that can help our strategy.
"Deep Slaughter! Heat it up even more!"
"Okaaay... Overwerke-kun, mind giving me a little cooperation? Here, 【Heat Illuminating Mirror】."
"Got it, 【Swirling Flame of the Hellfire Sea】!!"
The vortex of flames unleashed from the Ritual Sword Overwerke is holding gets sucked into the hole of light manifested in the air. And in the next instant, a strike like a laser, with the fiery heat condensed into a single point, is unleashed upon Tomahawk.
In response to the blazing light whose power was increased by "focusing" the focal point of the fire magic, Tomahawk crosses both of its arms to defend. Receiving the blazing light that looks like it could easily pierce through something like iron plating, its sharp and sturdy carapace still manages to endure, but it is heated to a degree that simply touching the outside air can't cure, and the silvery-white outer shell takes on a crimson heat.
"Let's settle this with burning blades, Tomahawk!"
The pine resin burns out, leaving the dragon-slaying flames shining in silver. Gripping the sword of silver flames—the third flame of Flame Sharpen—I accelerate. Right now, I've surpassed even the final boundary in character building. Only those who have stepped over that line can catch up to this speed!!
◆
Character building in ShanFro. Naturally, it involves facing the proposition of how to train your skills and magic, on top of your stat parameters.
From melee combat at the top to production at the bottom, a massive variety of skills and magic exist in Shangri-La Frontier, but you can't learn them endlessly.
There is a limit to the number of skills and magic you can acquire. It's not a fixed number and depends on the player's level and the performance of the skills, but... it has at least been verified by the player base that there is a certain threshold where a player can no longer acquire any more skills or magic.
Well, in short, it's probably like a point system. The player has 100 points; learning this skill costs 20 points, learning that one costs 15 points, and once you use up all your held points, you can't learn any more—something like that.
However, this acquisition limit... is actually shared between magic and skills. If you use 50 out of 100 points, that means you can only acquire magic within the remaining 50 points. In other words, someone who has dedicated their potential solely to skills or solely to magic in the truest sense refers to someone who has completely skewed everything within this acquisition limit to one side.
"I've graduated from being a pure physical attacker..."
Right now, I am a brand-spanking-new pure skill attacker. What I obtained by crushing the possibility of learning magic in exchange... was the re-acquisition of past skills that I had once learned but lost due to enhancement or evolution!!
"You haven't cooled down yet! There's no way Areadbhair will lose to such a soft blade!!"
And re-acquiring skills brings about even more unexpected possibilities.
The evolutionary potential of a skill is intimately tied to a player's actions, just as two players starting with the exact same skill will see it branch into different skills based on their separate playstyles, so even if the past me and the current me possess the same skill, it doesn't mean it'll follow the same path!!
"Drop dead, Newton! I'm completely denying your existence!!"
"Grace of Weightlessness"... I activate the re-acquired skill, whose effect—changing the direction of gravity at the player's will—is so simple that anything more would seem superfluous, and invert the grand principle of all things: "falling from top to bottom." With this, I am now in a state where I am falling from bottom to top... Now, let me show you, this is new move number one!! A newly evolved skill from the similarly re-acquired "Shana-oh Possession" that followed a different path than the Kurama Tengu Secret Tradition!! Its name is "Black Shadow Reverse Drop"! [*2]
Accelerating the falling speed—an effect that seems like nothing more than a handy suicide promotion device—becomes a limitless acceleration if the destination you are falling towards is the endless sky! Space Charge allows you to change the direction of gravity as many times as you want during its active duration, so I won't just keep falling straight into space... and in the worst-case scenario, I can manage by escaping into Inventoria.
And then!! The sturdy arm swung down to strike me out of the sky as I fall from the earth to the heavens... that is the final piece to activate the other new move. A slashing version of a cross-counter that I learned from Aramis-kun's highly recommended secret manual in Catzeria, a slash-type skill whose power increases by heading straight into the enemy's attack. It's an attack skill, so I might as well use voice authentication.
"Intersecting Interception Flash!!"
Two hot blades clash. But while one is merely a heating phenomenon... I'm packing a dragon slayer, unfortunately for you!!
The blade of silver flame sinks into Tomahawk's arm-blade. This isn't some brute-force hack; Areadbhair's slash, specialized in burning and severing dragon flesh due to its nature as a "flaming blade that hunts dragons," fulfills its true purpose as a sword while melting through Tomahawk's outer shell, which had lost its hardness as the price for taking on heat.
Along with the sensation of slicing through highly sticky clay transmitted from Areadbhair, which was enhanced by Flame Explosion due to the critical hit, a tremendous floating sensation washes over my whole body. As I continue to fall upwards into the sky, I look at the receding earth and see Tomahawk's melted arm-blade tearing off and flying away......... All right, part destroyed. Wonder if it'll drop materials?
Author's Afterword
・Skill Acquisition Limit
In reality, this limit is only ever maxed out if you learn skills and magic with absolute reckless abandon.
That's because, gameplay-wise, the capacity is set to hold around "a minimum of two main and two sub-jobs, totaling four jobs' worth," so there are actually more players who never hit the skill/magic acquisition limit.
However, the moment you dabble in High Connection, you are forced to deal with this skill acquisition limit whether you like it or not... after all, if connecting excellent skills together creates an even more powerful skill, you have to learn a massive amount of resource-heavy skills.
Eh? Are you asking if there's nothing like High Connection for magic?
There is.
Translator's Notes
- [1] freeze even the plants and trees: Appears to be a play on the set phrase 草木も眠る (lit. "even plants and trees sleep," i.e. dead of night), here substituting 凍る ("freeze") to fit the cold/heat theme.
- [2] Black Shadow Reverse Drop (Ichinotani Tayuuguro): A cluster of references to the legendary samurai Minamoto no Yoshitsune. "Shana-oh" was his childhood name, and "Kurama" refers to the mythical tengu who trained him. At the Battle of Ichi-no-Tani, Yoshitsune famously ambushed his enemies by riding his horse, Tayuuguro, straight down a sheer cliff (a maneuver known as a saka-otoshi, or "reverse drop").
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