PLEASE ENTER NAME : LEVEL 11
DAY 177 : A-DAY, THIRDWEEK, FULGORA, YEAR 1
ARENA 5 : ROUND 5 : RISKY BUSINESS
Tyrone glances around the team in our starting positions. “It’s ‘do or die’ time, kids. If you thought that last round was hard, then this one will be downright hyperbolic.”
Zack smirks. “Like a time chamber?”
Tyrone throws him a blank look. “No. Like an enemy team leader with a score to settle. Against me. We went over this last week. They’ll be throwing everything at us right out the gate, Zack. I need you to be ready for that.”
“I know… It was just a joke.”
“Oh.”
“I thought you’d get it since you have Super Saiyan powers.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
Simon groans. “Madrè dèFÜCK…”
In classic Alex fashion whenever Simon swears in Spanish instead of Russian, he just wants to move past it. “Why does the Quake Kingdom have your number so hard again? I remember going up against them a few times before I left for Swchool, but I didn’t know there was any particular backstory there.”
Tyrone shakes his head. “It was Quake Kingdom’s turn to win five or six years back. You’ve gone up against them because they like to place us in the bracket with The Shichibukai-”
Simon coughs. “KINGDOMS.”
Tyrone glares at Simon. After a moment, he looks back at Alex. “And the 4 Yonko-”
Another cough. “BIG FOUR GUI-”
The instant Simon starts talking, Tyrone pivots and makes his way over to him.
Simon nearly gets the 2nd word out before Tyrone warningly envelopes his entire head with a hand.
Calling Tyrone’s bluff, Simon nonetheless finishes the intended word with an accusatory seethe. “-LDS…”
Tyrone tightens his grip. “I warned you what’d happen the next time you interrupted my dissemination of prudent information to correct my chosen terminology. You’re just lucky I’d be penalized for activating my Power Blessing now. Instead, I’ll just have to do it later.”
Simon gulps.
Turning back to Alex, Tyrone continues exactly where he left off. “The current Ascension Tournament Team leader has a particular… Distaste where I’m concerned.”
Alex nods. “Sounds familiar. Is this one an ‘anime’ thing? Or a ‘you’ thing?”
Tyrone smirks. “Yes.”
“You wanna elaborate?”
“Of course. Sorry, it’s just… How often do you get to pull that line? Anyway, the hilariously-named ‘Rocky’ takes issue with my being not only a prophet of Gaia, but sitting firmly at the pinnacle of Quake energy, despite leading an effort they deem ‘unworthy’ for one such as me.”
I don’t have eyebrows to raise. “‘Pinnacle’?”
Tyrone nods. “You’ve noticed the prismatic color of my Attunement energy, yes? I know I’ve used my Power Blessing in front of you. Several times in the last match, at that. And you may have also noticed a particular… Potency of my Quake Grip. At Mythic Rarity, all Blessings manifest as that color… Or lack thereof… Or all of the above. Whatever you like. Which The Quake Kingdom doesn’t. Especially Rocky.”
“I see. As a prophet of Horus, should I be worried about similar treatment from The Gale Kingdom?”
“What? I mean no. I mean… Yes. I mean… WHAT???”
[ 3 ]
Tyrone groans. “You had to wait-”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
[ 2 ]
“-until right now to-”
[ 1 ]
“-drop that on me?”
[ 0 ]
“FFFIIIGHT!!!”
Smacking the back of my head, Tyrone shakes his own. “Later… I don’t use this much in combat for reasons we’ve covered. But here’s a sneak preview of the Gale energy at the end of your path. This one’s called ‘Quake Leap’.”
The ground underneath Tyrone shatters into a fissure of prismatic light before coalescing into a spire. For the briefest of moments, he’s perched on the tip. But then he’s gone. All that’s left is the cooling, ruined ground where he once stood.
One round of MP-draining self-duplication later, I take flight after him in a jet stream of blue wind energy
Flanking me on either side are Simon in his Nirvash Type Zero, Alex on David’s red-eyed black dragon, and David himself on his blue-eyed white one.
When we were going over this aerial superiority strategy, David explained the logic in terms of his favorite game. Yu-gi-oh is like Go, he said. Apparently resembling an instruction to begin moving, the concept is very simple. But the number of available moves is overwhelming. So one must strategize. Must wager. Must risk the loss in order to win.
Simon contended that this was a symptom of a bad plan. He said that any wagers he took part in, if they could even be called that, were only utilized for the sake of mind games. As a distraction while he made other preparations.
David argued that while he might not know what those preparations would entail, he could almost always fall back on his deck’s overall versatility to best what he called ‘specialized bullshit’. His strategy was based more around overwhelming the opponent with an optimized balance of the best magic, monster, and trap cards he could field for any given situation. But with the right wager, he could handily beat decks with individually better cards than his own.
Even Simon had to admit this strategy was powerful. But it would never work in Go.
For one, that game features no cards to draw, all the little black or white tiles being the same throughout an abstract demand for forward movement that I still don’t understand how tiles come into. But I do at least comprehend his main point that random chance is unreliable in a game of strategy. Not that my comprehension stretches to what that strategy might entail.
So while Simon could come up with any number of high-risk-high-reward decks, a minimal-Risk-guaranteed-reward playstyle is what suits him best.
This debate over risk versus reward and the two veterans on either side are what comes to mind when I notice the fist-sized rocks materializing above each of my bodies, seeming to bend and veer with the wind even as I direct it.
As well as the cannonball-sized one above my head and three more the size of buildings over each of my airborne companions.
[ COMMON ACTION: RECALL HEAD ]
Teleporting to another airborne body with a softball-sized rock falling towards its chestplate, the cannonball-sized one is still above my head, apparently having teleported along with it. This seems to inspire a distinct pulling in the back of my lack of a stomach as I notice that every last one of these stones has a prismatic glow.
With a purple flash of his drawn water sword, Alex slices horizontally upward through the space between him and the meteor crashing down. Despite him clearly missing, a clean seam appears in a matching line across the prismatic rock.
[ REVERSE POLARITY: RARE BLACK KNIGHT CUIRASS ]
Doing the same for every last piece of airborne armor I crafted with that Skill, every heavy metal armor piece I have equipped, magnetically repels each other. It turns out, when you reverse polarity on something with no magnetic charge, it reverses that total lack of polarity.
Oneshot informed me that this is not how magnets work and there is no such thing as an ‘omni-polarity’. And if there were, then magnetically inert metal should be attracted to it, along with simply repelling each other as they do.
Civetta said that there was a ticket to solve the incongruity, but offered no clarification.
As none of the armor I have blueprints for has a polarity of any sort, this has led to a great deal of wasted Armor Effect slots. Along with a CRAFT Skill that would’ve been the same if not for it unlocking my ability to smith Uncommon armor. It has simply never been useful. Not until exactly, right, now.
Except not really now either as the descending rocks proceed to follow precisely the chest piece of each set, unaffected by where it, or anything nearby is headed. Or at what speed. And 10 HP is 10 HP, no matter which piece of a set gets hit.
Pivoting his body in an almost dance-like arc, Alex continues his same swing, only vertical this time to make an even cross with the first seam.
With a burst of water from between the cracks, his glowing meteor flies apart at the seams, falling diagonally past the black dragon’s four cardinal sides.
David is less lucky, having only just used the white one’s rechargeable Barrel Roll attack to get to his current elevation faster. Which, along with removing his only method of escape or defense at that angle, only brought him closer to his end.
Simon is less quick than Alex, beginning his mecha’s single-shot Seventh Swell ability both far earlier than planned, and far too late to stop the biggest rock of all.
I am both of these things, as I fail to even remotely outrun any of what I must assume is another Quake Prophet’s Mythic Power Blessing in the hardest I’ve ever been countered outside of that purple flood from last match. Perhaps even including that, as a Gale Attunement is supposed to be evenly matched against a Quake one.
[ TEAMMATE ELIMINATED: DAVID ]
[ TEAMMATE ELIMINATED: SIMON ]
[ YOU DIED — XP DEBT: TOURNAMENT EXCEPTION — RESPAWN DELAY: 8 HOURS ]