~~~ Two Years Later ~~~
The new region, the Lunar Realm, gave Natsuko vertigo. She had no idea how Koyon could look down/up so easily. Even knowing there was no chance of ever taking fall damage after snagging Boulanger’s Black Fire ability, the drop was still freaky as hell. The Po-Lin end of the enormous vertical elevator to the city of Selenia was several miles below them right now. It turned her stomach just to look at. Around them, jadeite platforms were ascending and descending, conveying people and things to and from the moon.
Natsuko watched the Lunar Dragon with her arms folded. Her ponytail and obi knot fluttered wildly in the dragon’s wake. The Lunar Dragon roared in a warbling, high-pitched tone that made her eardrums quiver. Dumbass Yishang. They could’ve at least made an Entropic Evil Boss Monster or whatever that didn’t hurt her ears.
“It’s coming back around,” Ailing said, swishing her hands to conjure her magical conduit: A platinum butterfly orbited by rainbow halos.
Out of the butterfly came a beam of scorching yellow light that tracked the Lunar Dragon, singing its glittering, reflective scales and causing it to screech again. Natsuko plugged her ears.
“Hit its vocal cords first for me, wouldja?” Natsuko said to Boulanger.
Both she and Boulanger took that as the cue to launch off the platform, firing off towards the dragon like two monochromatic missiles. Boulanger’s fire plumes were tar black while Natsuko’s were bone white and both were powerful enough to annihilate more than half the Use-Rankings chart just by accidentally passing too close. As they came within a few hundred yards, Boulanger blinked to the Lunar Dragon’s side and carved into it with his musket’s obsidian bayonet. In response, the Lunar Dragon heaved back, ready to throw a Lunar Maria Beam back at them.
Right before it hit, Koyon threw up his Prismatic Haven. Miniature explosions erupted along the half-kilometer-long rainbow shield while Natsuko zipped around Koyon like an orbiting electron, waiting for the beam to be over. Once he dropped the shield, Natsuko shot for the dragon, shutting her eyes so she didn’t have to look at Po-Lin some miles below, and blasted it with Megaton.
The fight went smoothly. Ailing kept them topped off on health, Koyon blocked the special attacks, and Boulanger and Natsuko whittled down the Lunar Dragon’s unreasonably-large health pool. Eventually, the dragon dissolved into twinkling stars and they had to all stand around while a Chaos General of the Entropic Axis monologued at them for the purposes of the quest story. Natsuko wasn’t even paying attention, it was for the Celestials anyway.
Chaos General Vidorgia clapped her smartly-gloved hands. “Very impressive, Heroes. You must feel so proud of yourselves defeating our distraction so handily. But why don’t you take a look at the City of Selenia?”
“Koyon. Flask,” Natsuko said.
The rabbit boy hurried to fish Natsuko’s steel flask out of his coat. Once she hit the top of the Use-Rankings, she had solved her new outfit’s pocket problem. Now she ordered her teammates to carry shit for her. While Vidorkia or whoever was rambling on about the imminent destruction of Selenia if they didn’t go save it, Natsuko drank. Moonwater was crazy stuff. Twice the ABV of Cascadian Whiskey, it was damn near the only thing that kept up with her tolerance. Whiskey might as well have been her palate cleanser.
“Hey, what’d’ya’ll want for dinner?” Natsuko said.
“We have plenty of leftovers from cooking practice,” Boulanger replied.
“I don’t like moon food. I prefer Tianzhounese,” Ailing said, “something light.”
“I really don’t care, just make it sweet,” Koyon said.
Chaos General Vidorgia started to sweat a little. She knew all the lines to the monologue she was supposed to give, but it was hard to keep up the energy when the Heroes she was monologuing at didn’t care at all. Unfortunately, the Yishang were grading her on her performance. Too many slip-ups and she would receive a “re-formatting,” something which no Non-Hero wanted.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
“You can try to scurry back if you want, fellish—” Vidorgia shook her head. “Foolish Heroes!”
Natsuko and Koyon snorted at that. Ailing suppressed a giggle in the sleeves of her dress. Boulanger just frowned. This was only Vidorgia’s third major quest scene, but the Heroes she was supposed to be playing off of had existed for years and years before she was even summoned and had probably sat through hundreds of these scenes. But dammit, that didn’t give them the right to talk over her! She would’ve told them off, except going off-script would get her re-formatted, so she could only power through with a growing blush on her face.
“—this shall be the culmination of the Entropic Axis’ plans, you worms! Your p-power isn’t anywhere close to matching— cannot hope to match ours!”
Even taunts would’ve been preferable to the irritated silence the Heroes were radiating. She felt like such an idiot even though she was performing exactly to the script. Not that the script was fantastic. Even she could tell it was heinously generic, and she’d only been alive for three months.
“See you in the Chaos Beyond, weaklings!” Vidorgia said, breathing a sigh of relief as her part was finished.
With a wave of her hand, she opened an entropic portal and left the Heroes alone.
Natsuko rubbed her cheeks and tried to slap herself awake. “Okay, we have leftover mooncakes, that’ll suit Boulanger and Koyon, and then I’ll make some crab fried rice for me and Ailing, how’s’about that? That work for everyone?”
The rest of them agreed and they made their way back up the elevator to the city of Selenia. Despite the boring villainess’ threats, Selenia wasn’t in any danger until they started up the next part of the quest, which none of them felt like doing. Natsuko and her teammates passed between the geodesic domes and crystal shard-buildings towards the Selenian Capitol—a crystalline palace with an enormous glass dome in the center of four off-shooting wings in an X-shape, each wing the width of Vermögenburgh and the height of a Deco Imperian skyscraper.
“I wish they’d stop making the monsters gods-damned HP soaks,” Natsuko said, leaning against the railing of the moving walkway that led to the entrance of the Capitol.
“It’s preferable to them being a challenge,” Boulanger said. “Less of a hassle to get our rewards and XP.”
“Frick that noise,” Natsuko said. “I had way more fun when the monsters were a threat. I’m too overpowered, man. I’ve gotta start gimping myself on purpose. Like not using any food, or trying to beat the monsters in a certain time frame.”
“Or you could not be a deliberate burden on those of us taking this seriously,” Boulanger replied in his usual softly authoritarian tone.
Natsuko shoved forward off the railing and marched up to Boulanger, grabbing the collar of his cloak and lifting him onto his toes.
“I am taking this seriously. I’m taking this Use-Ranking competition seriously enough to keep your moody, brooding ass around because you’re good. It’s certainly not for your lovely personality and I’m sure the feeling’s mutual. But what you’re not gonna do is get sassy with me, got it?” Natsuko said.
Boulanger looked away and snorted. She tightened her grip and lifted him a little further off the ground. “Got it?”
“Yes,” Boulanger said.
He was scared of Natsuko and she knew that. Zhidao had taken the bottle back, but even so, Natsuko was the only Hero in Po-Lin—or, well, the moon—who could kill Boulanger and steal stats from him at her leisure. She could do that to anyone if she wanted, not that she was inclined to. For her teammates' part, Ailing was busy checking her white lacquered and jewelry-laden fingers as though it were possible for something to be out of place and Koyon was yawning and pretending to read a light novel. Both knew better than to exacerbate Natsuko’s foul moods.
It wasn’t even Boulanger’s implication that she was annoying that pissed her off, Natsuko thought. It was the implication that this punch-in, punch-out shit was somehow preferable. When she accepted her new role as the new overpowered Hero, she'd expected at least some of the sense of adventure and marvel and challenge that she felt when she was at the top way back in the Shikijima days. But, rather than magical, the world now felt tacky and small.
It wasn’t a new world to explore, it was a grid of probabilities for where the Yishang might put dungeons, loot, and XP-farmable monsters. New regions being de-Misted meant nothing because the Non-Heroes followed the same patterns and by the time they grew into unique individuals, she was moving on again. The fights were mash fests that she could've slept through. But if she stopped to smell the roses, three other competitively-viable teams were right behind her. Team Natsuko had to be the first to find the optimal experience-farming routes to stay on top and that meant no screwing around.
Obviously, Natsuko didn’t believe in any of it. She knew the true nature of this world. But that didn’t mean she was allowed to stop playing the game.