by Mamare Touno
—he was a cartoon hero.
Don’t make me say totally obvious stuff.
“What hero?! Due to this curse, I can’t even save the people who call for me. I watched my comrades die! Even the Words of Death—their echo binds me. All the Ancients are bound by their spell. If it’s to tear these chains apart…”
Yes, if it’s to tear these chains apart, I believe I would do anything.
Elias’s expression was tight and warped. He’d probably drained his MP dry by using all those big techniques. He drew several wheezing breaths, and since his face was dripping wet, it was impossible to tell whether he was crying. That was how much regret he held inside.
His pain got through to Leonardo.
Elias Hackblade, a legendary hero who was this powerful, renowned, and proud. After fighting this great man—who, if he’d been able to fight properly, would never have had anything but easy victories—Leonardo’s HP was down to a mere 25 percent.
But it didn’t fall below 25 percent.
It wouldn’t.
This Ancient hero, who was at level 100, couldn’t even beat a single Assassin. This was why Kanami hadn’t fought Elias seriously and in fact hadn’t been able to. She’d avoided shoving this result in his face, and their match had turned into a repetitious draw.
“In order to tear these chains apart, I would undertake any hardship. To keep from having anything stolen, to protect the world, I, Elias Hackblade, would discard even the blood of the fairies!”
“That’s fine! Go on and try it, Elias! I’ll be the villain for you. —A wannabe, as wussy as a frog. C’mon and throttle me to death!”
Strangely enough, both Elias’s and Leonardo’s remaining HP was around 25 percent. Putting all of that on the line, the two of them clashed. The technique Elias chose was Aqua Thousand Rain, which intermittently released countless ice daggers. Leonardo went with Deadly Dance, which he’d improved over and over again.
The shards of ice were harder than shoddy metal, and Leonardo brandished actual steel, shattering them. The pulverized ice reflected the light in the limestone cavern like diamond dust, turning their surroundings into a world of silver.
Leonardo commended his friend, who’d been born from ink and paper, from modeling tools and code.
He’d idolized the one he’d entrusted his dreams to and had fantasized about one day becoming someone to whom others entrusted theirs.
If he’d said that, as a student, he hadn’t dreamed of being a game programmer just a little bit, he would have been lying.
It might have been coercion, and he might have been forcing a role onto him.
However, even so, it was true he wouldn’t be able to connect if he didn’t step forward.
Traveling companions were only a little closer than strangers.
…But who’d decided that that distance was further than friends?
He’d been invited to a Toon Town party. Leonardo had resolved to become Elias’s friend. As far as he was concerned, that wasn’t something that would be given to him; it was something to win.
Countless attacks traced complicated tracks of cold and flame in midair.
Their exchange was a symphony of shrill echoes and iridescent light.
It was the melody of a new world that Elias and Leonardo needed to learn, and it shaved away just a little of their HP.
1
“Urrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrahh!!”
“Nice, good one! That’s an all-in bet times two!”
“The girl’s a smooth talker, huh, Chun Lu?!”
“I believe her skills are solid, though.”
Naturally, although Enchantress Youren had vanished from the combat arena, the battle hadn’t gotten easy. They were up against a Nue, a half-raid-rank magical beast. With Krusty keeping Enchantress Youren occupied and Leonardo dropping out for a showdown with Elias, Kanami and Coppélia had been left all on their own. There was no way they could match it.
However, the light of mana from the ferocious battle and the destruction of the landscape had summoned reinforcements to them.
“Faithful Blade!!”
“Never mind, just close on in, cover ’em!”
Chun Lu and a man who had the air of a seasoned warrior had appeared, and they launched a surprise strike on the flank of the Nue, which had gone on the offensive.
Kanami was a Warrior class, and Coppélia was a Recovery class. Even if the two of them had managed to buy time, they didn’t have enough attack power to take down the Nue. However, now Chun Lu and her companion, both level 90, had joined in. At this point, they probably wouldn’t lose.
“By the way, who’s this?”
“He’s Zhu Huan, the master of my guild, the Lelang Wolf Cavalry. We met up over there.”
“The Red King faction got taken out by a raid monster. As we tracked them, strange monsters like Eternal Moths and Moon Rabbits showed up, and things got real noisy. We thought this was a guild war, but it’s even nastier.”
“No eating stuff off the ground!”
Kanami landed a spin kick with a heavy thunk. She probably wasn’t thinking anything, but Coppélia attempted to support her based on a conjecture. Apparently, the Nue they were fighting now had fought outside as well, and the subjugation unit had gotten here by following the scars it had left. The leader of that unit was Chun Lu’s boss, Zhu Huan.
That had been lucky.
When it came to getting information here on the continent of Eured, Coppélia’s party, led by Master Kanami, had extremely few connections. To continue journeying through a social situation that changed from moment to moment, they’d been shown that they needed simple combat power—naturally—but that it was also vital to have the protection of information and to be affiliated with an influential group.
Kanami and the others (including Coppélia) and Chun Lu’s guild were mutually independent, so there was no guarantee their interests would always match up, but even so, it should be possible for them to cooperate on a certain level.
However, Zhu Huan had mentioned “the Red King faction,” and that warranted caution. If Coppélia’s memories were reliable (which they were), the word faction referred to a political community. From Zhu Huan’s tone, it was very likely they were either in opposition to or actively hostile toward the Lelang Wolf Cavalry, to which Chun Lu belonged.
In a case like this, according to Coppélia’s forecast, Kanami could get pulled into that conflict as well.
However, for the moment, there shouldn’t be any problem with putting the issue on hold.
She couldn’t deny it was possible they would bring some sort of future disadvantage on themselves by forming a common front with the Lelang Wolf Cavalry here, but it was clear that, at present, their direct combat power fell short by more than 80 percent. Coppélia’s calculating side thought they should accept support during this fight, at least.
Meanwhile, the side that had budded and grown during this journey felt, with something that wasn’t quite resignation or determination, that Kanami would get pulled into some sort of trouble whether they fought alongside the Lelang or not, and so she simply had to support her.
She certainly couldn’t say she had a lot of samples, but in the first place, according to the cases she’d accumulated in the course of their travels, the possibility of Kanami coming into contact with trouble was proportional to time, more than any other parameter. In other words, trouble occurred a set number of times per chronological unit, and there were no prior cases of being able to avoid said trouble through their own efforts.
The fighting grew fiercer.
On a raid where the teamwork between members wasn’t good enough, the most important thing was the main tank, who would take all the enemy’s attacks. The next most important thing was a Recovery class to support the tank. If they could absorb attacks from the target they were trying to capture, the possibility of sudden destruction was off the table, which gave them the leeway to think about the next stage of the battle: how much damage the a
ttackers could inflict in the meantime.
In that sense, due to the participation of the Lelang Wolf Cavalry members Chun Lu had called in, the fight against the Nue grew more balanced.
In particular, Chun Lu and Coppélia were high-level dedicated healers, and their frontline support abilities were good enough to use even on raids.
At this point, even against the Nue’s tremendous electrical attacks, they weren’t using a strategy of desperate evasions that risked their resources. Instead, they’d very nearly built an organized defense system based on each class’s defense spells.
“Master. Enemy reinforcements sighted. Sixteen monsters approaching. Twenty-four seconds to encounter.”
“That’s close!”
“Reinforcements incoming! Keep your guards up!”
“They got all the way in here…!”
However, without giving them time to catch their breaths, new monsters began appearing in the large space. They were Moon Rabbits, vanguard physical-attack types, and Eternal Moths, flying monsters with status-corrupting attacks.
On asking, they learned that these monsters had abruptly flooded out of the foothills with enough force to blanket the land.
“The topography is complicated, and search parameters cannot be established. Requesting lenience.”
“That’s better than our bunch of tactless rubes!”
It was a total melee.
Due to the collapse, several limestone caverns had opened into the big cave. It was possible several underground tunnels had intersected, and a whole area that had grown fragile had collapsed, connecting neighboring caverns to create this massive subterranean area.
The angles and sizes of the limestone caves that made this one up were all different, and they really couldn’t keep an eye on all of them as they went.
“Second wave, enemies intercepted. Add nine.”
“Pain in the butt!”
At that very moment, like a wad of backed-up muck expelled from a sewer, a swarm of Eternal Moths appeared.
As Master had said, they were troublesome opponents.
If you approached them and breathed in their powdery scales, they stole your MP. Possibly because they were referencing parameters of some sort, the amounts of lost MP varied, and at this point, it wasn’t fatal. However, if it accumulated, it would become a resource shortage they couldn’t ignore.
Currently, the most efficient way to fight them was for the Monk Kanami—whose resistance was strong—to charge in and intercept them.
However, in a way, that meant she was held back in this cave, and when she thought about managing her master’s HP and the raid against the Nue, Coppélia wasn’t able to leave, either.
In a raid like this one, where the enemy came in repeated wave attacks, unlike in common examples, the Weapon Attack and Magic Attack classes became important. After all, if they didn’t inflict damage and cut down the enemy’s numbers, at some point, the tanks would be unable to hold up.
The battle grew hotter and more complicated.
In addition, from somewhere in the distance, she could hear the heavy bass sounds of something massive colliding. From what Coppélia knew, there were another two showdowns being conducted in the foothills.
From the speed and attenuation of the echoes, she could tell that those fights were distant enough that they wouldn’t influence them here, but a cluster error of anxiety had formed in her heart.
The enemy was appearing one after another.
It was almost as if Mount Lang Jun had been invaded by demons and had conceived a horde of monsters.
Coppélia had no knowledge about the youth her master called Krus-Krus, but the woman-shaped monster Leonardo kited was Papus, the Genius of Healing. He’d changed his shape, but from his tag stream, the possibility was nearly great enough for certainty. His output seemed to have risen, and even if it had been what it was before, his combat power would have nearly equaled Coppélia’s, Master’s, and Elias’s combined.
Coppélia was also worried about Elias, who had refused her treatment. She hadn’t observed a reduction in combat power, but from his condition, he’d clearly been under the influence of a bad status. She didn’t know whether her Cure could heal him, but it wasn’t all right to just leave him that way.
She was a Cleric. As a recovery magic specialist, she had a responsibility to maintain her companions’ health and status. As a matter of fact, you could say it went beyond “responsibility” to become her reason for existing.
“Master. Lord Elias’s status was abnormal.”
“Uh-huh.”
“We must go to support him.”
“Yeah, but—”
Coppélia held her two Holy Shields in front of her, launching a Punisher attack. This special skill, which fired a light-attribute spell from shields in which the sun’s radiance dwelled, was the closest thing to a maximum-force attack that she had. However, sadly, it was only a healer’s maximum force. She seemed to have managed to dazzle several Moon Rabbits, but she hadn’t even come close to creating a way to break through.
This gap in the enemy forces, which she’d expended precious MP to pry open, was filled back up by the sixth wave of reinforcements. Coppélia relaxed her molars, which she’d been gritting calmly, and slammed her enormous steel shields into the enemy.
Her prediction function warned her that Leonardo was headed for a crisis.
According to her rough calculations, Elias’s comprehensive combat abilities—his attack power, endurance, and defense—were 140 percent of Leonardo’s…and that was a low estimate. If he fought Elias, who had lost his physical control and was rampaging, Leonardo would probably lose his life in the blink of an eye.
Elias was a bit special, but even taking that into consideration, both of them had abilities that put them in the “melee attacker” category. One feature of battles between melee attackers was that, as they struggled, they pushed and shoved at each other, and when this fell apart or approached the critical threshold, both parties expended HP all at once, bringing the match to a conclusion.
Pebbles rattled down from the ceiling.
Near the surface, about six hundred meters to the north, Elias and Leonardo were fighting. She knew that, but at this distance, she couldn’t check their statuses or HP.
Calculating backward from the length of the battle, it wouldn’t have been at all odd for Leonardo to lose his life at this very moment.
“Master.”
“It’s okay,” Kanami told her without turning around.
“Croak-Croak said, ‘Stay back—this guy’s mine!’”
Coppélia wanted to point out that no such thing had happened, but strangely, her looping thoughts seemed to have decreased her arithmetic abilities.
“Just a little longer, and we’ll be able to steamroll these guys, too. First we’ll beat the Nue. Then let’s go pick up Croak-Croak and Eli-Eli, and Krus-Krus while we’re at it.”
“Yes, Master.”
However, that moment came faster than they’d expected.
All at once, as if it had been cut off, the roar of battle receded, and there was an interruption in the enemy reinforcements, which had been surging toward them in swarms.
The pressure eased. It was most definitely a chance to take the offensive.
The silence that had fallen informed them that the distant fighting had ended. Coppélia and Kanami looked at each other, then charged, intending to take the Nue down in one rush.
2
In a subterranean cave where the presence of death hung thickly, Krusty and the Enchantress were continuing their battle, moving slowly and warily.
If she’d stayed near the Nue, its big body would have been used against her as an obstacle, and so, in order to secure a line of fire toward Krusty, the Enchantress had attempted to move their fight. Since it would let him create a one-on-one situation, Krusty had obliged.
“Accursed one—you are holding out well.”
“I fear my unworthiness prevents me f
rom fighting you with everything I have.”
Krusty was smiling thinly.
He’d meant what he said.
Even now, in this very instant, he was nearing the abyss of death moment by moment. In the first place, Guardians had excellent defense, but they didn’t have the HP recovery abilities of a healer.
Obviously, there were exceptions to this, including Krusty’s selected build of Scarlet Knight. Instead of a shield, he used a two-handed weapon with an HP absorption effect—the Fresh Blood Demon Ax—and built his fights around its special skills, realizing HP recovery that was normally impossible for warrior classes.
In order to gain even greater HP recovery abilities, it was necessary to increase the damage on which the ratio was based. To that end, people with this build often chose two-handed weapons, and by necessity, they ended up losing their shields. In other words, the essential condition for creating this build was that the increase in artificial endurance that resulted from the HP recovery had to surpass the decreased defense caused by the loss of the shield.
At present, due to the effect of Krusty’s curse—“HP may not be recovered through recovery spells, or through facilities or items”—he wasn’t allowed to perform his main trick. In other words, not only was his Scarlet Knight build currently unable to recover HP, it couldn’t use the defensive power of a shield, either; it was good for nothing, with no advantages whatsoever.
Of course he was able to use the high attack power of his two-handed weapon, but that was all it was. Even if he boosted that attack power, it would fall far below that of an Assassin or other specialist.
“Scarlet Thrust!”
Shining deep crimson, the attack Krusty paid out slashed through three of the snakelike tentacles Enchantress Youren had unleashed. Ordinarily, that red aura would have robbed Krusty’s opponent of her HP and given it to him. However, that effect hadn’t activated for a while.
“And another!”
A tentacle Krusty had failed to slap down stretched up from his feet, punching at the armor around his waist. The blow wasn’t hard enough to pierce it, but the impact was still there, and he lost a little more HP. Seventeen percent remaining.