Bushido Online: Pacchi Festival: A LitRPG Saga

by Nikita Thorn

  Renkan East Base [Ronin]

  General features:

  >> Pigeon Perch (Basic)

  Post birds will perch here and wait to be collected, allowing you to manage and train your troops without interruption. [Next rank: Pigeon Perch (Standard). Allows the sending of messages from within the instance. Purchasable from your Field Officer for 25 War Coins]

  Troops features:

  (None) [Speak to your Field Officer to unlock]

  Travel features:

  (None) [Speak to your Field Officer to unlock]

  Seiki had not expected a complete menu with an official upgrade system. This was different from his City territories, where there was no other information except the location name, and upgrading only meant cramming more things into the space.

  “If you have Coins, try to get some troops features. Either a training dummy or a statue, or a drinks table,” said Ippei.

  Seiki had no idea what those were, but it was obvious they were not listed at the moment. He looked at the old man. “I don’t suppose you’d like to sell me some troops’ features right now?”

  The Field Officer looked at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Like a training dummy or a... uh, drinks table?”

  The old man smirked. “If you’re thirsty, why not jump off that cliff again and try to land in the ravine?”

  Seiki grunted. “Sometimes I have no idea if you’re just messing with me or if it’s a real conversation glitch. So, let’s get this straight. I give you twenty-five Coins and you’ll give me a better Pigeon Perch?”

  The man lifted his brow. “You don’t have twenty-five Coins.”

  “No,” Seiki admitted, as a quick check showed that he only had six at the moment. “But suppose I do?”

  The old man smiled. “Well, we’ll see then, won’t we?”

  “Right. What did I expect?” said Seiki. He hoped he did not have to be dying from a rare monster every time for a new feature to become available, but unlocking the menu was a major progress and he thought he should be content with it for now.

  Knowing it was unlikely he could coax any more information out of the old man, Seiki walked back across the ledge to Ippei, who had found a spot to sit down and was apparently checking something invisible in the air. “Okay, let’s see what you’ve done with your troops.”

  That was what they had been doing individually, to get their units ready for the Hitsu Temple. Seiki shared his troops’ information and Ippei looked over it for a few moments.

  “I see what you’re trying to do,” said the samurai.

  “You would have done it differently.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Ippei.

  “But…”

  “But you pretty much have two all-in slots here. That’s going to be good for one very specific moment tomorrow… if it comes. If you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know,” said Seiki with a solemn chuckle. “That was what I was going for. To be honest, beyond stunning unknown monsters, I really don’t know what else I’ll be able to do with the troops. After tomorrow, I’ll work on getting a more balanced build. I’m sure Rumi would really appreciate that.”

  Ippei looked at him for a moment, then he let out a long breath. “I’m rushing you, aren’t I? I keep forgetting this is still very new.”

  “New is good. And, allegedly, don’t I have some legendary Beta player to show me the proper way to do it?”

  Ippei’s troop abilities indeed looked sensible. He now had six Slots in total: four Formation Slots and two Consumable Slots. He had for Formations the first three abilities he shared with Seiki, plus one that immediately caught Seiki’s attention.

  [Formation Slot] – Mitigate: Level 2 Formation. Combination

  Base abilities: Battle Shout, Brace

  Energy cost: 2.

  Power: +15%.

  Range: +0%.

  “So you can get a combo?” asked Seiki. “I’ve been trying to teach my troops my burst combo, but it never triggers a save prompt.”

  A spark lit up in the samurai’s eyes. “That’s because the game doesn’t consider that a real combo.”

  “What?” cried Seiki.

  “They consider it more like you doing three things very quickly,” said Ippei. “Only combos that use the same pull of energy are considered real combos and can be added as a troops Formation.” He laughed when he saw Seiki’s eyes widen. “I was waiting for you to ask why some of your combos are stronger. I’m sure you were doing some of that when you fought the Kano ninja.”

  Seiki stared at him. Given the situation with the Fumiya encounter, he had not been really paying attention to how much damage he was inflicting in that fight, especially when his intention had not been to do damage in the first place. “All right, mind blown. Why isn’t this common knowledge?”

  Ippei grinned. “It is, but only among serious war players. And it’s only for troops formations. Back in Beta there was this guy I used to run with who had a powerful Brace for his troops. His unit could take a beating, even when they weren’t as leveled. And everyone thought it was because of a special troops’ Seal he put in one of his slots. But then I did some calculations and the numbers didn’t add up. So eventually a bunch of us tested out something. It was a Brace stacked on top of a Shout, but a bit more. At the time no one knew you could link them.”

  He drew a small circle on the grass with the tip of his woodcarving knife. “I don’t know how much you know about Shout, but it starts at the center of your chest, and you push energy outward in all directions.” He added lines pointing out and drew a bigger circle around the initial one. “If you just think about the contact points to activate the ability, it automatically takes the required amount of energy and… well, just does it for you. So what you do is you actively pull more than you need.”

  He then enforced the outer circle with another line. “The contact point for Brace is in the extremities of your body, so you use the same energy flow to activate Shout from the middle and then push it out to the Brace points.”

  “Wait a minute,” cried Seiki as he leapt to his feet and drew his sword. He had done the transformation from Focused Strike to Sweeping Blade a thousand times and now he was suddenly wondering how exactly he had been doing it. Striking out with both moves in succession, he flowed energy from the starting point in his chest, down his arm and out through the tip of his sword.

  “I’m already doing a single flow,” Seiki said in surprise as he realized he had instinctively drawn more than he needed from a single Focused Strike so he could instantly push it through to his sword through the whole outward sweep of the second move. This meant something else must still be missing.

  “Focused Strike into Sweep is a bit tricky,” said Ippei. “For every ability, there are energy contact points and physical contact points. When you activate it, the game does energy checks at every point. All conditions have to be met for the move to activate. With Sweep, there’s a physical contact point on your right foot as well.”

  Seiki tried again, this time aiming to split energy into two flows and forcing one of them downward. They both slipped out of his control and the abilities did not even activate.

  “Okay, don’t tell me,” said Seiki before Ippei could say anything. “Let me figure this out.”

  Closing his eyes, Seiki tried an automated Sweeping Blade again, taking note of all the contact points. Apart from the flow that started from the grip on his sword and flowed to the edge of the Hikari, there was another small burst of energy as his right foot touched the ground when he stepped to the side.

  Seiki’s eyes snapped open as he figured out what to do. Consciously activating two flows of energy from the starting point in his chest, he sent one through Focused Strike, while the other one went down his right leg to the ground, timing it so that the second one coincided with the start of the Sweeping Blade activation on his hand.

  A pleasant but very slight sensation travel
ed back through his body from the finish point of Sweeping Blade, and even without confirmation from his friend, he was sure that it indicated he had successfully linked the two abilities. Seiki was amazed that with pushing the flows of energy around all the time, he had probably come close to discovering it on more than one occasion, but never quite got it.

  Ippei was grinning. “I knew you’d get it pretty fast, since your ronin Blood Rush already trains you to do that, especially with Infinite that allows you to pull any amount of energy.”

  “So… this is manual mode.” Seiki looked down at the Hikari in his hand. “It… didn’t feel stronger, though.”

  “Yeah, there are reasons why some combos don’t really work as intended,” said Ippei. “Let’s say you hit something with Focused Strike, then you link-Sweep the remaining enemies around you. At the point you successfully get the combo, the move has already ended. Where is the extra damage gonna go?”

  Seiki thought about it. “Good point.”

  “What it does is give you an invisible buff for your next move by a tiny bit, but it might not be worth it, because, as you can see, it takes more energy to link. Basically, you’re spending the same amount of energy for the same amount of damage. Well, maybe you profit by a tiny bit from linking, but it just makes it extremely difficult.”

  “I see. But that’s different for troops Formations.” Seiki was starting to understand the design.

  Ippei nodded. “Yeah, that’s what these true combos are meant to do, because when you activate your unit’s combo, it’s considered one move. All you need is to successfully demonstrate it to them once, ever, and you’re good.” He chuckled. “Some combos are nearly impossible to pull off, like if you try to get Mounted Strike with Shout and straight into a Swerve Cut at point blank. It’s embarrassing when you have forty people watching you and you keep messing up the energy flows.”

  Seiki tried again with Focused Strike and Upslash, which was more difficult, considering multiple contact points on the latter move—one on the right-foot step forward, one on the two-handed grip, and three along the diagonal line upward. It was also much more complicated having to think about how much energy was going through each point. It took him a few tries. Finally, he managed to connect it, and the diagonal slash ended with a feedback that sent a clean, finished sensation through his body, as if he had just taken a deep breath of fresh mountain air.

  “It feels good, though,” he said, and Ippei laughed. “But I see what you mean. It’s a lot easier doing three things very quickly.”

  Seiki became aware that he had used much more energy than it was needed just to maintain different flows, and he decided to wait a while until he had a better hang of it before trying to teach it to his unit.

  “They intend it that way,” said Ippei. “No one actually expects you to do complicated energy choreography when you’re meant to be slaughtering demons and feeling good about it.”

  “Right.”

  Seiki’s hesitant tone earned him a look from his friend. “But knowing you, you’re gonna be spending the rest of the week practicing it.”

  “Yeah,” Seiki admitted.

  Ippei laughed. “Well, find a way to bribe your Field Officer, then. Once you get your training dummy, you can see your numbers on a real target, and that will make all the difference.”

  “That would be great.” Seiki turned towards the old man and shouted. “Can you sell me a training dummy right now?”

  The man looked up from his fire and shouted back. “No.”

  “Can you please sell me a training dummy right now?” Seiki tried again.

  “No.”

  “How about you extort some Coins off me and then give me a training dummy?”

  “Ha! Nice try, young man. Come back when I’m in a better mood,” said the Field Officer, waving his hand, his smile tinted with a bit of satisfied malice. “Nothing ruins my day more than seeing inexperienced troops slaughtered by their irresponsible Chief just to get himself some more battle experience.”

  Seiki winced. That one still caused a bit of unexpected injury.

  “He’s just giving you a hard time,” said Ippei. “I get my troops killed all the time in practice. That’s how you’re supposed to play.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Seiki began. The rare encounter had made it clear how little experience he had with thinking about both his own abilities and managing his troops at the same time. Replaying the fight in his head, he realized there were opportunities he could have utilized his unit better. He supposed if he were to slowly go through with the progression runs and gradually get used to more complicated encounters, he would eventually learn how to do it. Now, he was not sure what he had managed to learn from the crash course, except that he kept forgetting about his troops whenever he found himself in a tight spot. “I just figured I don’t have any idea what I’m doing.”

  “The trick is not to try to do everything yourself,” said Ippei. “I guess it’s hard at this stage when you’re not leveled up and you only have four guys, but ultimately War is more a strategy and management game than an action game, if you know what I mean.”

  Seiki nodded. “Big picture, then?” Somehow, he had never really thought of it that way.

  Ippei grinned. “Yeah, even more so when you’re the one calling the shots. But even if you’re just out there doing your part, it’s more feeling the overall flow of the battle. Your troops are designed to approximate tasks. Some people try to buy multiple Command Slots and micromanage. That’s a waste of Tokens. There are hundreds of other people’s troops on the field trying all sorts of crazy stuff, so there’s no way you can know exactly how things are gonna go. Ultimately, you have to think about what you’re trying to achieve and then keep making sure that all moving parts are moving in the same direction. There’s no need to be precise.”

  “Oh,” said Seiki, again wondering why that point had not crossed his mind either. His entire former career, he had always focused on absolute control. Once you controlled the space, you controlled the fight. It had always been about shutting off the rest of the world and going in with pinpoint focus, ready to react, and any split second could always lead to dramatic outcomes. The overall strategy, he had always trusted his coach to come up with. Once in the ring, it was his job to perform, to read every slightest movement and guess every intention and spot the right opportunity for a decisive strike. The universe had always hinged on that specific moment.

  The samurai casually drew a line in the grass with his carving knife. “Like, if there’s a Demon Captain in a group, what you usually try to do is to separate the captain from the trash demons. You send in your troops here to split them. Ryoushi rain fire from the side to keep half their attention and then you create an opening for your elite troops to burn down the miniboss. But, of course, the elites always push too far and forget to interrupt a Funnel, and so now you have a powered-up Demon Captain pounding on your lower-geared flanks.”

  Seiki had no idea what any of it meant, but a new thought was starting to take shape in his mind. Perhaps life was more a chaotic battlefield than a one-on-one fight, and there was no one right moment to act, no one right answer to find. What he was searching for was perhaps not a specific drop in an ocean of chaos, but a clearer view of the ocean itself, as a whole. For the first time, Seiki wondered if his instinct built from years of training had been ill-suited for making sense of the bigger reality he found himself in now.

  Ippei was still engrossed in the imaginary battle he had drawn on the grass. “Troops are dropping. For some inexplicable reason, your ryoushi friend doesn’t have Pull Shot in their slot. In this case, what do you do?”

  Seiki found himself smiling. “No idea, so, keep moving in the right direction?”

  Ippei chuckled. “Actually, you’re not wrong. That’s pretty much the gist of it. Sometimes it’s better to burn a reset Card to do it over properly than burn a power Card and hope you pull off a miracle with a single move.�
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  “In other words, don’t risk it?”

  “More like don’t put yourself in a situation where you have too much risk in the first place, since you don’t have control of the whole field. When people start taking risks, things can easily go wrong. And sometimes sacrificing troops is just a natural part of the strategy, especially when there are no consequences anyway,” Ippei added as he nodded toward the edge of the instance.

  At the respawn location for dead unit members, Ojisan was slowly fading back into existence, looking a little confused.

  “Sorry about the monster, Ojisan,” Seiki called out to him. “Don’t worry. We managed to kill it. My friend here came through just in time.”

  The old man blinked, stared at the unexpected guest for a moment, before sitting up straight on his leg and bowing deeply, both palms on the grass. “Thank you for your assistance to the Chief in a time of need.”

  Ippei’s eyes widened. “Whoa, whoa, okay, don’t do that.”

  Seiki stared, wondering what it meant if it was true that his troops’ actions were an amplification of his own mental state. “Oh, uh, thanks, Ojisan. Go take a break?”

  His troops had now learned that this meant the same thing as ‘dismissed’, and Ojisan gave a little bow, got up and disappeared into the woods. The other three unit members, once they respawned, would also remain dismissed until they were summoned again.

  Seiki let out a thoughtful sigh.

  “To be honest, you were using your troops for the wrong thing,” said Ippei. “They’re designed to tackle demon armies. Even the demon bosses dole out area damage that is spread around your troops and only ever directly targets players.”

  “Good to know,” said Seiki. “I feel like there were so many things wrong with that fight.”

  “You got pretty close,” said Ippei.

  “I guess now I understand why no one ever pulls a rare scroll unless you’re trying to sabotage other clans.” Seiki shook his head. He could not imagine what the Nozuchi would look like when powered up according to the cumulative levels of all clan members within a clan territory. “No wonder the Fuoka Army guy was so smug when he boasted about unleashing one in the Rogami territory, and Rieko had been…”