I still had a couple of summons left, but after a Four Star, I mean, sure, better to have than not to have, but my expectations were nil.
And met. Barely a WoooWooaaaoooaiii in the “heavenly” music for the summoning. Just a big oof. Like, oh yeah, someone has to be a follow up act to The Pillows. Someone’s got to open for Hakui Koyori. Yeah, let's all applaud politely for-
“Pomoroi ready to deploy.”
A goddamn level one artillery?! HOZZANA! PACHINKO BE PRAISED! I will never sneer at more artillery. In fact, I wouldn’t mind ten more!
Pomoroi was a rather starched looking lady. She looked like she curved her spine once, hated it, and never did it a second time. I had the uncanny sense that if her brain wasn’t scrambled by the game, she would remember every round she ever fired.
I mean, still cute as hell in a Napoleonic Military sort of way. Shiny, shiny boots… Cough.
She was wheeling along a case like the one Radz had. Hers just happened to be royal blue and stamped with a pair of crossed cannons.
Walking alongside the marching Pomoroi was what can only be called Moe-blob #2.
”I… I can make the pain go away. Maria is just trying to help!”
I had to take another long look at her and control my reaction before I said anything. Pammy had that “Middle Schooler helping the school nurse” thing going, and Maria was in much the same vein.
The difference was, where Pammy had an eye patch and overwhelmingly white clothes, Maria was badly scarred and her “nurse” clothes were edged with black. The scar looked like a burn that covered part of her neck and extended under her clothes.
The look in her eye… If Radz had converted to a love of obliteration, Maria looked like she had been on the receiving end of the barrage, and ordered to pick up the pieces afterward.
”Oh! That’s lucky.” Versai said.
”Err, yes, overall some fantastic additions to the squad. Can’t go wrong with more leather boots. Artillery! Can’t go wrong with more artillery!”
”Well, yes, but I was talking about Maria.” Versai was sliding me some side eye that I was desperately pretending not to see.
”She looks like Pammy’s depressed cousin.”
”Kind of, actually. They are part of a set.”
”Wait, what?”
”Like the Blue Roses?” Versai waved vaguely. “Put the two of them together, you will see what I mean.”
I nodded slowly. “Alright. Is there some kind of… special thing that is unlocked with the two of them together?”
”No, not with just the two of them. Maybe if you collected the whole set?” Versai shrugged. “I have seen a few set effects, and other than whatever you managed to trigger in the Mikas, none of the One Star set effects amount to much.”
”So why is it lucky?” I asked.
”Who needs pain relief? Maria is here. Pain, pain, fly away.” She did a little swooping gesture with her hand.
”She provides anesthetics?”
”Yeah, but more importantly, suicide capsules!”
I face planted into a wall.
”Suicide capsules?!”
”’Cyanide and sweet dreamlessness,’ that’s what she always says as she administers the dose.” Versai nodded dreamily. “Easily my favorite medic.”
”Are you kidding me? If she can reach you to dose you, why not just heal you?”
”Because by that point, the monsters are tearing everyone apart. She kind of flicks this black pill directly into your screaming mouth, and as far as I can tell, she never misses. Crazy range on her too, like twenty paces or something.”
Ah. Right.
”She is a painless way to check out and wait for the next round.”
Versai’s cheek twitched. “It’s more-or-less instant. I’m either being shredded by a monster, dosed by Maria, the monsters got around me and just…”
She shuddered, hard enough to shake her plate armor.
“Well. One Tower Master dies… eventually dies… and then it’s on to the next one.” She smiled with brittle brightness.
“Ah. Can she dose a Tower Master by any chance?”
“I really don’t know. If it worked, I would be in front of the next Tower Master before I saw it work, if you follow me. Also, I would almost certainly already be dead.”
Gosh what a fun game this is. Already losing that one punch deduction, Black Robe. Adding two punches if you try to promote it as a player welfare thing.
”How is she as a non-terminal medic?”
”So-so. Worse than Pammy, who is on the upper side of mediocre for a One Star medic, but not the absolute bottom of the barrel. As far as I can tell, she heals less damage per activation than Pammy. Well, I guess you can see all of that in the Hall of Records, but I’m not allowed in there.”
That brought me up with a jolt.
”You aren’t allowed in there?”
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Nope. I just bounce right off the empty air. It feels gross to even try. The Tower Master who passed Wave Three knew he wouldn’t be passing Wave Four. He just… didn’t use his orders for a long, long time. I don’t know how long.”
I nodded. I had guessed that would happen.
”So I had a lot of time to experiment. Other Tower Masters had done the same thing, of course, but since he had progressed the furthest, there was more to explore.”
”Makes sense.”
I hesitated. Did I want to go into the Hall of Records? On the one hand, yes, I absolutely did. On the other hand, no I absolutely did not. Both for the same reason- the goddamn character sheets.
I had what I can only describe as a PTSD flashback to the endless fields of incomprehensible stats, sometimes accompanied by one or two lines of flavor text, often not. It wasn’t like the stats didn’t matter. It’s just that there was usually a meta pick and once you drew them, you could grind for the end-game content.
Many a happy hour had been spent assembling squads based on my favorite costumes. And then finding the Doujinshi about them. Ordering them from Japan if possible, printing them out if not, and in either case, adding them to Doujinshi Valley. Once they had been suitably venerated, of course.
How can I have a valley in a tiny duplex? Why, by lining the stairs with bookshelves, of course. Not like there was ever going to be someone over to judge me.
Bottom line- I needed to know those stats. Not just know them, understand them. It sounded like a miserable job. I sighed, and got to it.
The Hall of Records managed to instantly become my favorite room in the entire tower. What made it massively, obviously, superior to all other rooms?
Furniture. The Hall of Records had a wide mahogany desk, and joy of joys, a chair. Now, it wasn’t all perfect. The chair was straight backed and also made of a hard, dark wood. It was, in my considered opinion, neither ergonomic nor breathable. There was a complete absence of foam in the seat. I like a chair with a deep foam cushion. Not too firm, but not so soft that I sink all the way to the plastic.
I will say it plainly- this was not a chair for marathon sessions of anything. Useless for the appreciation of even the most refined cultural imports. It would be a little better for assembling and painting models, but still not good.
It was regrettable. Bitterly regrettable.
I’d joyfully take it anyway.
The wooden filing cabinet only had five drawers. Interesting. I looked around a little more, and spotted what I thought had been an empty bookcase. There was, to my infinite joy, a high quality figure on top of it. I mean HIGH quality. Even from the desk I could tell it was a resin figure- the level of detail was unreal. It looked like…
Versai.
I walked over to the bookcase. The full plate armor on her shone, the round shield raised boldly, the long sword pulled back for the thrust. The hammered gold of her blond hair fluttered behind her.
I gently picked it up. Not resin. It was heavier. Porcelain or some other, rarer, material. A screen popped up in front of me-
Versai- Vanguard, Six Stars
HP: 700
Attack: 350
Defense: 200
Block: 350
Speed: 150
Resistance: 100
Level: 1
Relationship Level: 0
Weapon: Enlisted, 4/5
Armor: Enlisted, 0/5
Special Abilities: ????
Friends: ????
Rivals: ????
Elemental Alignment, Earth
Part of the Palace Defenders Set.
Ever since she was a little girl in Gradden March, Versai knew that she would grow up to be a knight, defending Queen and Country. Who could have guessed that a Marquess' second daughter could become the Queen’s personal Bodyguard?! And if rumors are to be believed, maybe something more…
Likes cool jelly desserts and comfortable socks, dislikes rowdy crowds.
I blinked, then looked again. Apparently I had read it right the first time.
I could remember, vividly, Versai on the battlefield last night. The ordinary monsters couldn’t touch her. She passed through them like a storm of razor blades, leaving a trail of mutilated gore behind her. I had set her up for success, of course, but I wasn’t going to take anything away from her. Versai was as lethal as she was beautiful.
Versai was hard as a coffin nail.
There was a tinge of horror to that memory. Versai’s inhuman beauty contrasted with the gore of the destroyed monsters. She looked focused. Utterly competent. Untouchable. Quick on her feet as that long sword of hers flashed and dove through tough flesh.
And, apparently, she liked comfy socks.
Fair enough, really. I like them too. These little footie leggings weren’t at all the same thing, though they were wonderfully silky. Maybe comfy socks were rare, wherever she came from. Was it a cultural point of pride to have the least comfortable socks possible? Or was it the reverse- seamed stockings or you were peasant scum?
I put the figure back on the shelf gently, walked over to the desk and slammed my fist into it so hard that either it or my hand should have broken.
WHAT KIND OF NONSENSE IS THIS!?
Now… where on this character sheet was “attack speed?” The weapon was apparently “much sharper.” How much sharper? “Enlisted?” What was that? What was with all these blanks?
I walked over to the filing cabinet and pulled out Kim’s sheet. Her stats were equally opaque.
HP: 300
Attack: 10
Defense: 90
Resistance: 250
Block: 10
Speed: 20
I remembered how Kim got into a close quarters combat dance-off. Now would that be under defense, or block? Why was her primary stat resistance? Was resistance a defensive stat, or could it also be used to determine how much buffing they could do?
I forced my breathing to calm down. Some of this was explicable by the looseness of mechanics here. While this was a literal Tower Defense game, there was a lot of mechanical freedom to it. Versai could attack many times in a single minute, or only once. She wasn’t required to attack at a certain cadance. Likewise, there were multiple ways to interpret the word “defense.” A sort of active defense might, hypothetically, fit.
I looked briefly at the “bio” for Kim.
Kim served her National Service with distinction, impressing her sergeants with her positive, cheerful attitude. In civilian life, she joined the idol group Call to Arms with her old army buddies- Park, Lee and Choi. When war broke out, the group re-enlisted and put on shows to improve troop morale.
Likes dancing and singing, dislikes negative people and venue promoters.
Kim wore a uniform. Looked like a real uniform, not a costume. Kim’s uniform had an empty sleeve, and a chest full of ribbons. She didn’t lose the one and earn the others by “raising troop morale.” Cute as a button, though. There was something endlessly charismatic about that smile. About her refusal to be downtrodden. Her refusal to be a victim.
It was a backstory. It was character design, made by committee members who specialized in weaponizing the human desire for connection against a terminally lonely populace. It had to be. It. Just. Had to be.
I couldn’t humanize them. I couldn’t care. Not if I was going to get out of this alive.
I collapsed into the chair and stared blankly at her sheet on the desk. I didn’t move for a long time.