Chapter 901: December 20th: When Cornered, Relax
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Dual-wielding Areadbhair and Antiares.
Both blades ran long, so they were slightly more weapon than I could comfortably handle, but boosted stats made up for it.
Rather than cutting, I was smashing…… no, it felt more like striking with the rebound already factored in, hammering attack after attack into Garunose. Like wearing out a drum by pounding on it until the damn thing broke!
"I'll smash that shield apart and grind you into mince!"
"……If you can break it, that is!"
Tower Shields are sluggish; they can't be swung around as lightly as a shield meant for one-handed use. Therefore, the standard method for breaking through this sort of tank build is to disrupt them with mobility and strike from behind.
But that theory doesn't work against Garunose. He knows exactly how much area a Tower Shield can cover, and more importantly, he understands how to "move" that area of coverage.
He puts his body behind the shield and moves the shield wherever it needs to be to block, and above all, because he understands the weaknesses of a tank build himself, he excels at dealing with exactly what he hates having done to him.
Come to think of it, that opening elbow parry was probably his answer to what he knew I was going for…… but knowing what was coming doesn't mean you can deflect it with your elbow unless you already have the technique to pull that off.
Therefore, the method for breaking through his defense was…… oddly enough, and quite literally, only one thing.
I had no choice but to bash my way through, to smash his defense apart head-on.
If he could tank my attacks, excellent, but I wasn't letting him dodge. In five minutes, I would cut every last one of his resources away!!
"Shine and shatter……"
"!"
Antiares shone brighter, and Garunose raised his shield against its light. If he wanted to take it head-on, then I would oblige.
"Radiant Sword of Devoured Blades!!"
The radiance detonated. The shield caught the impact, and Garunose was forced backward even as he arrested the force behind it.
The blade shattered apart; I fed Antiares another ingot and reloaded.
"Shine and shatter! Radiant Sword of Devoured Blades!!!"
Instantly, I let it rip.
The blade shattered at an almost laughable speed, the radiance swelled and burst once more, and another damage hitbox far too lethal to be called a mere follow-up slammed into the Tower Shield.
"……!"
Reload.
Truthfully, I couldn't afford to use Radiant Sword of Devoured Blades again. Since deploying the blade consumes durability, spamming it would eventually break Antiares itself.
Judging from its durability, I could still fire another two or three shots…… but I had the feeling he was starting to catch on to what I was after. If he shifted to weapon destruction and actually broke it, I would genuinely cry.
"But there's still enough left in it for one player's worth of damage!!"
While imbuing both blades with the skill "Rainbow-Light Slashing Flash," I took one step forward.
A stacked technique using the skills "Multiple Circular Motion" and "Ultimate Cloud Flash." Combine a skill that turns one step into an evasive planetary orbit with a skill that turns the first step into lightning-fast godspeed, and the result becomes human-powered teleportation.
Garunose must have sensed that I had slipped behind him, because by swinging his shield around and changing his own position simultaneously he achieved the fastest possible turn, and I brought Areadbhair down upon him.
"Not even close to done!"
Then came the second strike. Areadbhair followed again, and every time the hammering assault repeated, the number of impacts detonating with it increased.
"You're after the shield……!!"
"This PvP is irreversible, y'know……!"
Once equipment breaks, it doesn't come back, and while we're on the subject, if your HP hits zero and you lose, your equipment gets scattered all over the ground. Even if my opponent is a streamer, I won't hesitate to claim it for myself, you know?
This was my final warning, a message saying that if he backed down here, I would spare his gear. Yet somewhere in my heart, there was also a part of me that wanted him to reject this settlement outright───
"……I'll take you on."
As Garunose stepped forward, I made no attempt to hide my grin.
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───His opponent had come to settle this.
Garunose sensed it instinctively. He didn't know whether that was everything Sunraku had up his sleeve, but assuming Sunraku's words were true, then he had probably played whatever card could "settle this in five minutes."
（Weapon destruction…… now that's some damn PvP behavior.）
His movement was like a Boss Mob's, and so was the firepower with which he could punish an opening as tiny as a needle's eye, so, ‘Don't you dare start fighting this underhanded on top of that,’ Garunose cursed inwardly.
He could block it. He could knock it aside. But he couldn't dodge it, couldn't redirect it.
（A Tawashi's durability is far and away the highest of any weapon type; it doesn't break that easily…… but………）[*1]
One source of unease had lingered inside Garunose ever since the battle began: the existence of the "ultra-firepower fist" that repeatedly came up whenever he dug into the player known as Sunraku.
Though he held the record title for the fastest player, his crushing strike was rumored to perhaps be capable of reaching maximum firepower as well. Where its damage actually ranked among all players didn't matter right now; the important question was whether it could be defended against when aimed at a human being.
There were no combat logs of Sunraku fighting the player with the highest defense, 【Maximum Defense】, and above all, the fact that most of the "Legends of Sunraku" involved battles against monsters was another reason Garunose couldn't completely put the concern aside.
Would he use it? And if he did, could Garunose withstand it?
That concern remained like a thorn that refused to come loose no matter how aggressively he leaned into his tactics, and the reason Garunose had been unable to choose the option of attacking with his extra lives as a shield was precisely because he was wary of that strike, something that could potentially erase the entire advantage of those extra lives in a single blow.
But,
（Well, whatever happens, happens.）
One extra life left.
Even if the revival kept him alive, it was guaranteed to leave him powerless afterward.
At this point, he had already lost access to most of his skills and magic.
It was the kind of situation where, in private, he would have given up long ago, hell, even while streaming like this he would ordinarily have written it off as "a throwaway run"; yet he had no intention of admitting defeat, half resigned and half still struggling, exactly as he was now.
Precisely because of that, the just-right release of tension every gamer would recognize as "yeah, that happens," along with freedom from the tunnel vision that had closed in around him, came to Garunose like a reward for having fought well.
"You just won't quit……!"
"That's……!"
Was the hit count increasing? Every time he blocked, the impact grew.
When a single collision was producing five, then six separate impacts, from the receiving end it was hardly any different from being ganged up on.
"My……!"
But Sunraku was dual-wielding long swords. No matter how compactly he handled them, gaps were bound to open up, and striking through that single instant was the way Garunose had chosen to fight.
"Line!!"
If you've specialized that hard into speed, then please have skimped on HP—the mace, carrying every last ounce of that wish, caught Sunraku cleanly.
Author's Afterword
Volume 16 went on sale December 15th!
Translator's Notes
- [1] Tawashi: Japanese gamer shorthand formed by clipping "Tower Shield." It is also identical to the Japanese word for a scrubbing brush.
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