PLEASE ENTER NAME : LEVEL 10
DAY 145 : A-DAY, THIRDWEEK, EOS, YEAR 1
ARENA 1 : ROUND 1 : OPENING SALVO
[ NEW S.T.A.T.S — STRENGTH: MAGICAL=30 - PHYSICAL=16 — TENACITY: DEFENSE=30 - SPEED=16 — APTITUDE: MANA=30 - STAMINA=16 — TILT: CONTROL=30 - LUCK=16 ]
[ NEW EPIC C.L.A.S.S. ACTION: DULLAHAN / SUMMON ARMOR 4 — EFFECT 1: SUMMON UP TO 11 ADDITIONAL ARMORS ONTO A TARGET AREA WITHIN 1 BODY LENGTH OF YOURSELF — EFFECT 2: BASE MAX SUMMONED ARMORS += 4 — COST: MAJOR MP — PREREQUISITE: SUMMON ARMOR 3 ]
[ NEW COMMON CORE PASSIVE: TARGETED HEARING — EFFECT: THE AUDITORY INPUT FOR ONE EAR BECOMES YOUR TARGET’S CENTER MASS — COST: TINY MANA DRAIN ]
At the top of the hour, a prerecorded voice sounds as disjointedly as I often do throughout the instantiated arena. “13,787,672,910, YEAR OF THE BEAR… THE TOURNAMENT OF ASCENSION… ROUND 1…”
The exuberant voice of someone else continues the segmented statement. “THE PUNDERFULS!!!”
It switches back to the first prerecorded voice. “VERSUS…”
A far more despondent, disgusted version of the second voice follows. “Seriously? The Anime Club? Jesus…”
Before finally switching back to the first again. “ASCENDER HOPEFULS… TAKE YOUR MARKS!!!”
[ 1:00 ]
At that, a white spot lights up, on the sandy arena floor. There are evidently random debris from ancient ruins of humanity littered throughout the Sand Sanctuary Zone.
[ 63 ]
Around the time I get the idea to walk over there, Tyrone slaps me on the shoulder while addressing the rest of the team. “This is it, folks. Since we don’t have Yuki with us, I wanted to start today on a high note. Our very own Please Enter Name accomplished something truly unique.” He winks at the six others here. “He reached Level Ten”
Everyone laughs except Kirito.
Tyrone smirks at the ‘mostly’ part of his mostly-successful mood-lightener. “And in doing so, he unlocked a new Skill.” He turns to me. “Tell everyone what you unlocked, PEN.”
I nod. “Targeted Hearing allows me to use an enemy as a Sonar SOURCE, increasing my effective range drastically.”
He sighs. “The other one.”
“You are referring to Summon Armor 4?”
“Quite. And what does it do?”
“It allows me to summon up to eleven armors at once.”
“What else?”
“My base summonable armor value has increased by four.”
“Okay, I can see where this is going, and we don’t have time to get there and back to my point.” Tyrone turns to David. “What is the current maximum unique entities for any summoner at a time?”
David’s eyes widen. “256. It’s a well known limit among summoners.”
With a smirk, Tyrone turns back to me. “PEN, what is the current maximum number of individual armors you can have summoned at a time?”
I nod. “352.”
The color drains from David’s face.
Everyone else seems taken aback.
Even Kirito, who is looking at me in a way I am entirely unfamiliar with.
But Tyrone has more. “And he’s about to obliterate The Punderfuls with less than a third of that number.”
Kirito scoffs. “Why not all of them if that’s an option.”
Simon rolls his eyes. “Grumpy Gus… He does not have the Mana for that.”
“Some accomplishment, then.”
Alex shakes his head. “Isn’t it though? Given time to generate enough MP, he can outnumber anyone, Ascender or no. It is, indeed, quite the accomplishment if you ask me.”
“Well, no one did.”
Tyrone cuts in. “ENOUGH, CHILDREN.” He clears his throat. “This was meant to be a morale boost, not yet another source of endless bickering.” He turns to Grumpy Gus himself. “Kirito, I know you miss Yuki. We all do. But I can’t have a member of my guild taking out the departure of one of my guild, on the rest of my guild. As much as I sympathize, empathize, and all that… You can see why I can’t tolerate your attitude, right?”
Without another word, Kirito walks over to his starting position.
Zack claps and cheers in what I’ve taken to understand is sarcastic enthusiasm. “GO TEAM!!!”
Everyone else clearly wants to say something. But they can’t seem to think of how to do so without directly contradicting Tyrone. Including Tyrone himself. So instead, they all go to their own starting positions as well.
But instead of moving to my spot, I first approach Simon. “Mentor?”
Simon doesn’t say anything.
“What is red and smells like blue paint?”
Simon doesn’t say anything.
“Red paint.”
Simon doesn’t say anything.
“I am to understand that all Earth paints smell the same.”
Simon stops not saying anything. “Yyyeah… Keep trying.”
With a nod, I walk to my starting position and briefly begin construction on another joke.
[ 3 ]
[ 2 ]
[ 1 ]
[ 0 ]
The same prerecorded voice sounds throughout the instantiated arena. “FFFIIIGHT!!!”
On our mark, Kirito and Alex start running to the left while Simon follows after getting in his large white robot with red and blue accents that is apparently named ‘Dann’.
To the right, David raises up several cards from his wrist, discards the rest, and summons a herd of chitinous armor-scaled creatures that I’ve been told are wingless dragons. The moment they appear, they’re already stampeding along with Joe who sprouts massive shimmering legs. He uses those to take off running far slower than Zack stepping through a portal to traverse the better part of a mile in an instant.
Tyrone starts walking straight down the middle.
As for me…
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 4 ]
[ EPIC ACTION: SUMMON ARMOR 1 ]
[ MOVEMENT BLESSING: GALE FORCE ]
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Using nearly all my MP on the summoning, I launch 100 of me up into the air in a focused gust.
After about ten seconds of flight, I finally manage to land what Simon refers to as a Battleship-esque blind guess at a target.
[ HERO TARGETED: UNDERWALTER ]
To my surprise, my new Sonar source reveals seven of our eight opponents running together as a pack.
[ TEAM / PLEASE ENTER NAME: ENEMY GROUP SPOTTED ]
I steering my personal jet stream, I fly up and over their position. Bombardment location established, I stagnate the air pressure of the Blessing just like Simon made me practice for the last month and separate my armors into eight mostly-equal groups.
[ TEAM / PLEASE ENTER NAME: COMMENCING BARRAGE ]
Each of my hundred armors has access to an allocation of mana equivalent to my current MP, divided by 100. At the moment, that leaves them all with between 0 and 1 each. Which, as one might expect, isn’t enough to do much of anything. But Blessings don’t take MP. So what little I have is enough to do one thing, exactly 100 times.
[ POWER BLESSING: GALE BALL ]
As the cloud of me roils with disparate blue wind energy, I send the first group down.
Right gauntlet outstretched, 14 armors land around the outside edge of the group of seven, two focused around each of the enemies in question. Slamming their Gale Balls into the ground, I work my armors in perfect unity to slingshot each Hero into their allies in the center, even while that armor is cushioned with the force blowback from my own attack.
They all crash together, taking hundreds of force damage each from colliding with four or five others in the clusterfuck I send them into. That’s a word Oneshot taught me, much to Civetta’s admonishment. I normally don’t use that language, as she suggested. But no other word besides ‘clusterfuck’ feels right for what I’m doing to our opponents.
Bouncing back, they don’t seem to realize what’s going on before the second group of 14 lands just outside their new positions, joining those initial armors to sprint away from the epicenter in all directions. This not only makes me harder to track, but scatters my Sonar coverage throughout the battlefield.
Then the third group lands.
At this point, two of the enemy team seem to think better of sticking around. One disappears through a portal on his way to hit the rest of the group for a third time. The other dodges my third salvo altogether, explodes upwards in a burst of flame, and aims straight for the body with my head and headshot-suppressing Mythic armor.
[ COMMON ACTION: RECALL HEAD ]
Helm now firmly nestled under my raised shadow cloak, I wince as my anti-headshot set practically vaporizes at a touch from the flier.
[ HP: 950/960 ]
As for that flier…
[ HERO TARGETED: INCINERNATE ]
While my still-running Bodies remain close enough to cover for my lack of a stable Sonar source below, I send the fourth, fifth, and sixth group of 14 Gale-Ball armors careening downward. I then devote my Gale Force Blessing and seventh armor group entirely to IncinerNate. Finally, the Shadow Cloak armor throws my head where I’d planned from the start.
While IncinerNate recovers his momentum from his own exploding tackle, he seems to have trouble aiming his worryingly glowing arm at my head. Probably because it’s speeding away from him, thereby providing a smaller and smaller target by the second.
Basic pattern recognition implies that I’m just in time when, empty plate arm outstretched, the first headless Armor from Group Seven slams its Gale Ball into him. The blessing’s ‘large wind damage’ is fairly negligible on its own. But its colossal force damage sends him careening off to the side, away from Group Seven’s previous position.
IncinerNate almost stabilizes from the inertia by rocketing himself the other way.
But that only makes the second armor hit him faster.
Around that time, my fifth group of 14 lands all around his teammates.
Lining his arm up to the incoming armor, IncinerNate shoots the third armor down as it jets towards him.
But he doesn’t stop the fourth from throwing him further in the same direction.
That’s when my sixth volley of 14 hits down below, slamming four of them into each other, and finally killing one.
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: ELECTRICK ]
Incinernate growls even as he shoots down another armor.
But another hits him at the same time as my head explodes right on top of the group.
[ UNCOMMON ACTION: HEADSPLOSION ]
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: KNEIL ]
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: UNDERWALTER ]
IncinerNate screams in rage as he shoots down two more armors while three others push him back.
Finally, Group Six comes down on the last two of his friends below.
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: ENERGEOFF ]
The twelfth armor of the sixth volley catches my MP-less head before they all run away from the last enemy standing in the group.
She looks around, totally bewildered and covered in blood, sand, and various other remnants of the fresh corpses that just died colliding with her. “Hey you… Don’t think you can just-”
Mid-word, she’s trampled in a pockmarked crater of red sand, the bodies of her friends, and other such debris, by a stampede of presumably dragons.
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: NIGHTMARGE ]
Meanwhile, the rest of my armors pummel IncinerNate.
Before he can recover and reverse direction from my spent gale balls, Simon helps him out.
From within his big Dann mech, he catches IncinerNate like whatever a baseball is. Also like a baseball, Simon then throws the flame sniper into Alex while my still-flying bodies land all around the area, smashing into paste on the now very wet sand.
I have just enough time to hear Alex, who swings for the fences with what is less a baseball bat, and more a self-sustaining sword of hyper-pressurized water.
Compounding effects from multiple Skills, the world around seems to become a negative of itself at the moment of impact.
But that’s all I can gather before my last armor in sonar range splatter-clatters across the dunes.
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: INCINERNATE ]
Now, there should only be two left-
[ TEAMMATE ELIMINATED: ZACK ]
Oh. Well, that’s certainly not ideal. But we’re still ahead-
[ TEAMMATE ELIMINATED: DAVID ]
We’re… Still ahead… Apparently, me thinking that doesn’t actually cause another death, as would be suggested by… Guess it’s not happening. Well, neither of them have been in my Sonar range since the match started. And presumably, our two remaining opponents are with them. I’ve been told there is a ‘kill cam’. But unlike other System Windows, these aren’t visible to my lack of sight. Which leaves the enemy that went through that portal after my third volley hit, and another that wasn’t with them.
[ DEBUFF GAINED: HELD ]
Cracking his neck, that very one appears before me. Right before me, as a matter of fact. With no one else nearby.
[ TEAM / PLEASE ENTER NAME: ENEMY AT MY LOCATION ]
[ HERO TARGETED: INVISABILL ]
[ TEAM / KIRITO: WHICH LOCATION? ]
[ TEAM / TYRONE: ROGER ]
Thanks to InvisaBill targeting my head for that debuff, I can’t move any of my 83 remaining bodies across the battlefield. Neither can I activate Recall Head. Nor would much else in the way of Skills help me right now, with my MP only barely recovered from having spent it all on what Simon has taken to calling my ‘orbital bombardment’. I’m not sure what an ‘orbit’ is, but it presumably means ‘really high up’. That tactic, like me right now, heavily abuses the fact that Blessings don’t cost MP.
[ POWER BLESSING: GALE BALL ]
Tracking the target with my right arm, the ball of condensed wind sinks into him, even as he tries to run my head through with a glowing purple dagger. So that makes it Attunement-based? I can ‘see’ those colors through my Sonar, even when things like summons are still colorless to me. Anyway, my target seems to resist the force somehow. But only for a moment before whatever Skills he has to keep himself stable are overpowered and he inherits the spent Gale Ball’s own rotation, spinning him like what Tyrone calls a ‘Beyblade’.
InvisaBill’s rotational acceleration is only topped by its translational counterpart as he’s blown back in a whirling gust of Rare Wind Blessing Energy. He doesn’t seem to figure out what’s going on or how to stop it before he slams into a remnant slab of one of the nearly eroded concrete buildings littering the battlefield.
[ POWER BLESSING: GALE BALL ]
With a snarl, the formerly invisible man extracates himself from the dent he made in the wall before running towards me again. This time, he’s dual-wielding daggers, one purple and one orange. He tries to reach me with at least one while sidestepping my Gale Ball.
Flying back from where that doesn't work, he skids to a stop this time before taking out a sniper rifle. “Takes longer this way… But not as long as I’ve already wasted trying to finish you quick.” With that, he fires right at my head.
[ HP: 694/960 ]
I’d hide my helm behind my other arm, but one shot would disintegrate the rest of this armor. Then he’d close in, having seen just how defenseless I really am right now.
But instead of that, he just waits patiently as what appears to be a single-shot rifle cools down. “Even if I have to hide and wait to corner every last one of your teammates alone, that’s what’ll happen.” Once his rifle stops venting heat, he fires again.
[ HP: 438/960 ]
“Maybe it’ll take an hour. Maybe a day. We have all week in here if that’s what it takes. And I’m very patient.”
[ HP: 182/960 ]
“This isn’t your year, you Saturday Morning Reject Shitheads.” Licking his lips to fire again, he doesn’t notice the large black hand that already has his entire skull gripped like yet another baseball before he realizes anything is happening. But then he does. And he looks up to the slick black arm now holding him bodily off the desert floor by that same skull.
The arm bubbling with a colorless, almost liquid energy, a separately colorless fiery glow, and attached to the less-black, less-slick torso roiling with all the same energy along with three waving, almost liquid-like tails. Up to the wide, bald head that corrects the man’s assertion. “Actually… That’s exactly what this is.”
At that point, InvisaBill seems to experience some sort of localized earthquake contained entirely within his own skull. This comes to a literal head as his literal head caves in on itself briefly before exploding in a blast of prismatic light, bathing Tyrone and everything nearby in the result.
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: INVISABILL ]
Afterwards, Tyrone turns to me. “You okay, PEN?”
I nod. “I am not dead thanks to my tooth skin.”
“What… ‘Tooth skin’?”
“Simon said that Earth culture views eating as the main function of the head. Therefore, the most important part of it must be the mouth. And the main feature of any mouth is its teeth. So, naturally, the skin in front of each tooth is a function of the tooth itself. And therefore, that membrane is of the utmost importance for long-term survival.”
“You don’t have skin.”
“Oh. Is skin necessary to tell the joke?”
Tyrone’s eyes widen. “OH. It was a joke? Yeah, I didn’t get that at all.”
“Should we not look for the remaining enemy?”
“No need. Well done today, by the way.”
“I… Don’t understand.”
[ OPPONENT ELIMINATED: SINGULARITONY ]
Ah. “I now understand.”
For the first time since the match started, the announcer’s pre-recorded voice booms out of the stadium. “AND THE WINNER IS…”
A far more despondent, disgusted sounding voice cuts into the recording. “Seriously? The Anime Club? Jesus…”