by Sakon Kaidou
“Rook!” shouted Ray.
“...Is ‘McBlackJack’ supposed to be me?” asked Marie.
“He probably couldn’t call you by name with all these people here,” commented Nemesis.
At the western gate, there were twenty Masters, along with their summoned and tamed monsters. Standing at the front of the group were Rook, Kasumi, Io, and Fujinon, along with four other newbies that had gone different ways after the battle at the plaza and been able to survive long enough to make it here. The other twelve were the high-rank Masters that had been Frozen by La Porte de l’Enfer at the western gate.
Those Masters were very enthusiastic.
“Hell yeah! Let’s go, boys!”
“We can’t let the newbie kiddos get all the spotlight!”
“...I wonder if this will get on tomorrow’s MMO Journal Planter.”
“It’s simple. We kill the Franklin!”
Evidently, their reasons for joining the battle were varied, but they were all Masters bearing the powers of high-rank jobs and Embryos.
Though they’d lost to Hugo due to compatibility issues, they were experienced players that had this duel city as their main haunt.
Naturally, the group was far stronger than Ray, and them joining the battle had a great effect upon it.
“No way,” Franklin muttered, more surprised than anyone else there.
After all, this turn of events was impossible. Franklin knew better than most that the Frozen debuff caused by Cocytus’s La Porte de l’Enfer wasn’t easy to undo. It nullified items that removed status effects and could last at least an hour, even if Hugo himself was killed.
The only way to get around these rules... was to have Hugo — the user of the skill — willingly undo its effects.
“You canceled it, Yu...”
It couldn’t be done by simply Charming him, either — he had to do it by himself. That could only mean that Hugo willingly betrayed Franklin and canceled the skill.
Oh wait, I was the one who betrayed her first, Franklin thought in self-derision.
“Well, whatever,” he said in a murderous tone. “There are still only twenty-two of you. If you think you can stop this surge of magic beasts, go ahead and try.”
This was followed by the Suicide Series roaring and baring their fangs.
They had already been set into the wild, so it wasn’t like they actually followed Franklin’s will. The core of their beings... every cell in their bodies... was screaming for them to attack the newly-appeared enemy creatures before them.
“We’ve gotta buy time!” one of the high-level Masters cried. “Don’t let a single one of these into the city until the guys from the arena get here!”
“Try to keep the newbies alive! They’ve worked too hard to get the death penalty here!”
“...Will we be famous if we pull through?”
“KILL THE FRANKLIN!”
The high-rank Masters charged towards the monsters, marking the start of a 22 vs 5,000 battle. In terms of scale, this was the largest battle that happened tonight so far.
However, it certainly wasn’t the largest that would happen.
Gideon’s central arena, the stage
No one saw the scene.
Most of the audience in the central arena were watching the broadcast, either with despair or slight hope.
Thus, no one saw a certain man approach the barrier sealing the stage. He was tall and wore the pelt of a black bear.
With casual steps, he closed in on the barrier.
There were some other Masters nearby. Upon realizing that there was no danger of monsters being released inside the city, they’d moved to try and free the two Superiors stuck inside the stage — Figaro and Xunyu. However, that barrier was even tougher than the one surrounding the arena as a whole, and when they’d realized they couldn’t break it, they’d also started staring at the broadcast.
This man passed by them and stood right next to the barrier.
Suddenly, something attacked him.
It was a blue Slime — the remains of an Oxygen Slime that Franklin had released into this arena. Though most of them had been destroyed by the Masters here, one had been able to survive thanks to being hidden by some rubble.
Because it relied on things other than sight to perceive its surroundings, the Oxygen Slime was the only creature there that had noticed the man. And, since he’d happened to be right next to it, it had attacked him right after crawling out of the rubble.
The moment it came close to him, the man reduced it to dust with a casual backhand blow.
The hyper low temperature, ultra poisonous immortal Slime was destroyed by a mere fist.
“Eh?”
“Huh? Since when...?”
The sound of the battle — if you could call it that — caused by the Slime being pulverized made the Masters around the barrier notice the man. Right when they did, however, he swung his fist again and — just like the Slime — destroyed the barrier in one hit.
With it broken, the two Superiors inside were rendered free.
As the barrier’s destruction made everyone in the arena panic in confusion, the man spoke to one of the Superiors: Over Gladiator, Figaro.
“I’m leaving this place to you. If the thing below or the two in the audience look like they’re about to do something, you stop them, all right?”
After saying those words, the man made his way towards the exit.
“What will you do?” asked Figaro.
The man momentarily looked up at the broadcast and — with his back still turned — responded.
“I’ll bind the possibility he seized.”
Chapter Three: And His Name is...
■■■■ ■■ ■■■■■■■■■■■, ■■■ ■■■■■■■■
In this game of his, Franklin had made a total of three grave mistakes.
Of course, those were just the mistakes from my perspective. A third party might see more or fewer than me.
These were the mistakes, one by one.
His first mistake was separating his plot to destroy Gideon and kidnap the princess into Plan A, B, etc. and going through them one after the other.
Considering the fact that he wanted to break the country’s spirit by starting worse and worse plans the more the kingdom struggled, that might’ve been the right course of action, but in terms of the force he released, this design was highly ineffective. When unleashing your battle potential, you should always release everything all at once.
He should’ve released the monsters in the city and unleashed the 50,000 from Pandemonium right after using the barrier and starting the PK massacre. That way, the kingdom would have had next to no way of fighting back. The princess would have been kidnapped, and Gideon would have been severely damaged.
Since he’d chosen to do them all one by one, the plans had all been taken care of in that order, bringing us to our current situation.
What? “The result will be the same if his 50,000 monsters succeed,” you say? Well, true, the results would be the same if they succeeded. I’m fully aware of that.
His second mistake was mixing revenge against him into his plan.
You’re wondering why that was a mistake? Surely you’ve noticed that adding the whole thing with the RSK into the plan extended the time until monster release, right? So that must be what I mean.
Ohh, no no, you’ve got it all wrong. The revenge itself wasn’t a mistake.
The mistake was doing the revenge along with the plan, effectively putting something on the line into his battle.
You look like you don’t understand.
Normally, that RSK thing would’ve beaten Ray. But by creating a condition where he would lose something if he lost, Franklin had made Ray significantly more powerful. And if that wasn’t a mistake, I don’t know what is.
In fact, even Ray’s air bomb had only been possible to use because the city was thick with grudge that he could transform into MP.
If Franklin had
aimed for Ray alone, he could’ve crushed him like a bug, don’t you think? That was how the Superior Killer got him, after all. But Ray was really strong in cases like this, and that was why the RSK had lost.
It’s not like we get many cases when people’s lives are at stake on the other side, after all.
As for the third mistake... Ah, screw it.
Saying it is embarrassing.
Hey, even I can feel shame.
What? “A person who can feel shame would never walk around like that?” Oh, shut up. The reason why I have to walk around like that is because you messed with my character creation and...
Hm? “Just say the third mistake already?” All right, all right.
Franklin’s third and greatest mistake was...
◆◆◆
Jeand Grasslands
In Infinite Dendrogram, people had a tendency to use the terms “Demi-Dragon-tier” or “Pure-Dragon-tier” to denote a creature’s fighting ability.
A Demi-Dragon-tier creature was equivalent to a party of six low-rank battle jobs or a single high-rank job, while a Pure-Dragon-tier creature was equivalent to a party of six high-rank jobs. That meant that a Pure-Dragon was about six times stronger than a Demi-Dragon.
One had to keep in mind that the power of the owner of a high-rank job greatly varied depending on how well-leveled their six low-rank jobs and two high-rank jobs were. Thanks to their Embryo bonuses and unique abilities, many high-rank Masters were able to defeat Pure-Dragons all by themselves. Still, it was a decent way to indicate a creature’s strength.
Every single one of the 5,000 Suicide Series monsters released by Franklin were Demi-Dragon-tier, which made them equal to 5,000 high-rank jobs.
The ones fighting them were merely twenty-one Masters with low or high-rank jobs.
Even considering the sole Superior Job among them, their number was still only twenty-two.
By trying to add their Embryos into the equation, you could assume that they were all Pure-Dragon-tier, but even then, the difference in battle potential would be about 5,000 vs 132.
Naturally, those odds were ridiculous.
Despite that, however, even after three minutes had passed, not a single Master had died.
“...Well, they’re sure holding out well,” Franklin muttered, clearly unamused. Even the one who’d unleashed the monsters hadn’t expected this.
This result was due to all the Embryos there.
The Masters alone numbered twenty-two, and even if Franklin disregarded the Embryos he’d known about, there were still twenty Embryos. Some greatly enhanced their allies, some created walls, while some were just really good at keeping armies at bay.
Embryos were extremely vibrant in terms of variation, and by using their powers wisely, they were able to hold their own against the 5,000-strong monster army.
Of course, Franklin’s monsters had great variety, as well. However, the Suicide Series had been programmed to do nothing but charge forward and kill until they themselves died. Though varied, they didn’t have the mental capacity to be able to cooperate and make the best of their variety.
Due to that, despite having an overwhelming numerical advantage, they didn’t seem to be able to break through the twenty-two Masters.
“...Well, then,” Franklin muttered.
In all honesty, having his monsters held back like this wasn’t a problem for him. Pandemonium was already releasing the next batch of monsters. According to his calculations, even if these Masters bought enough time for the Masters from the central arena to gather, the city would still end up severely damaged.
The twenty-two Masters holding back the monsters were already doing it with lots of desperation. Though none of them had died yet, they had only taken care of a small percentage of the 5,000 monsters. And the Masters had used up lots of their MP and SP, making it more than obvious that they would soon be rendered unable to struggle and get overwhelmed.
Then there was the fact that Franklin had ten times that number of monsters, not to mention that he was protected by the likes of DGP and KOS, both monsters matching Superior Jobs in power.
Franklin recalled that the Masters in the central arena amounted to around 1,000, which was a number that he could certainly handle.
When it came to battle ability, Franklin was among the weakest Superiors. In a fair, 1v1 battle, he could even be defeated by a low-rank job.
However, he excelled at strategy.
After the war with the kingdom half a year ago by Infinite Dendrogram’s time standards, he’d spent enough time and resources to gather enough monsters to handle 1,000 Masters with little trouble.
“...Well well, then,” Franklin murmured.
The only real problem left was those two Superiors: Over Gladiator, Figaro and Master Jiangshi, Xunyu. By intervening in their Clash and sealing them using the barrier’s stopping function, Franklin had most likely made enemies out of them. If they intervened, Franklin would almost certainly be given the death penalty.
Figaro was exclusively a solo player, so there was a chance he wouldn’t get involved. Xunyu, on the other hand, could very possibly use her ultimate skill to claw his heart out at any given moment.
However, Franklin didn’t care about that.
Even if he were to die, the 10,000-strong monsters released so far would still attack Gideon, not to mention the fact that he had another ace up his sleeve.
While Franklin was the diamond, King of Orchestras was the club, and Hugo was the heart, the spade was a certain something placed underneath the arena that was patiently waiting to be activated.
That was exactly what would happen if Franklin were to get the death penalty. It was part of Plan D — the final plan he’d hinted at when talking to Elizabeth.
Still, Franklin assumed that it would all end before he would have to go through with it. Franklin’s monsters would soon overwhelm Gideon and completely ravage it. This group of people was nothing but a speed bump against his army.
If Gideon fell while being actively protected by Masters, the kingdom would finally break, and his goal would be achieved.
“...Well well well well, then,” Franklin murmured.
Franklin was going to win regardless of whether he chose to do anything more or not.
“All right, they piss me off. Let’s kill them.”
And that was exactly why he made his move.
Franklin looked at DGP, the dinosaur that was scattering the Royal Guard around Pandemonium. He’d used a Legendary UBM’s special reward in its creation. That gave it enough power to match such UBMs, and due to that, it was his strongest monster currently on the scene, not counting the spade.
When Ray had charged towards the Suicide Series, Franklin had assumed that it wouldn’t need to be used. But now, he ordered it to massacre all the Masters that’d gathered.
“DGP, be a darling and trample those eyesores.”
“VRGHAAAAAAHHHH!” It released an earth-shaking roar as it charged with ground-shattering power in its steps. It was heading straight towards the front lines of the battle between the 5,000 monsters and twenty-two Masters, and it got there in only a few moments.
First, the twenty-two Masters became twenty.
DGP, clad in a red aura, went straight for the two high-rank jobs right at the front, quickly crushing and turning them into dust. In addition, an Embryo that took damage in their stead reached its limit and shattered.
Then the twenty became nineteen.
The red aura canceled a spell from a high-rank magic job.
DGP responded by swinging its tail and splitting the person in half, instantly making them vanish.
Then the nineteen became sixteen.
Three Masters simultaneously attacked it using their ultimate skills, but before they could have an effect, DGP chomped them all with a speed so great it left afterimages.
In but a moment, the twenty-two that had held against 5,000 had become sixteen because of a single creature.
“Tch!”
Marie — the only Superior Job on the scene — clicked her tongue as she shot piercing bullets into DGP’s head.
Upon entering the red aura, the bullets lost their power and speed before being deflected by the monster’s shell.
“This is the defensive and offensive ‘Dragon King Aura!’” she realized. “This one must’ve been made using material from a Dragon King!”
Marie was completely right.
“Dragon Kings” were a type of UBM. They were basically Pure-Dragons with great enough power to be titled kings of their sub-species. Their Dragon King Aura could weaken all attacks coming their way, and since they were unique for every generation, all of them were recognized as UBMs.
Franklin had defeated a number of Dragon Kings, and DGP had been made using the special reward from one called “Fangdragon King, Drag-Phalanx.” Due to that, its power easily surpassed that of Pure-Dragons. It could easily have fought on par with the UBM used as its base, and it even had the Dragon King Aura symbolic of their kind.
“VGHAAAAAHHHHH!”
“Khh...!” Marie cried.
When in top shape, Superior Jobs such as Marie had only about a 50% chance of winning against Legendaries. However, using her ultimate skill against Veldorbell had rendered her incapable of using bursting and homing bullets, lowering her chances even further.
I could try to send “Ulbetia the Piercing Murder” at a vital spot where the aura is thin, but even then, it’s questionable if that would be enough, she thought.
Even though doing that would cost her the Green Piercing and Silver Flash bullets, Marie believed that it wouldn’t do the job on this creature.
Entities above Pure-Dragon-tier had great HP, and it was rare for them to die due to just a single ultimate skill from a Superior Job. Combined with the fact that DGP had powers matching that of the Fangdragon King that had been used in its creation, it was highly unlikely that Arc-en-Ciel would be enough to defeat it.
But then again, they were in no position to battle it for long. The more DGP ravaged the front lines and the longer Marie stalled, the more monsters would enter the city.
Marie readied herself and loaded Arc-en-Ciel with a special bullet meant for ultimate skills.