Chapter 200: Best Estimates
Nara was not a complete idiot and made at least her own analysis of the EQ 3 that she would fight. She did not have John with her, but the Agency did at least have their own monster compendium, which was thorough in ways that Erras’ was not, mostly in what particular weapons were effective, focusing on what solutions were effective, rather than any weaknesses of the monster, although there were some. Certainly, on a wider scale, knowing whether an iron rank pistol could be expected to penetrate the armor or if something higher caliber or alternative would be needed, like a grenade, was more efficient than trying to have adventurers form their own individualized solutions. She could also admit that, in a moment of panic, it would probably save more Agent’s lives to know which weapon would immediately be effective. At least, it’d save more lives in the short term.
If the full, animated suit of medieval armor was not evidence enough, Nara could hear the jangling clack of metal on metal verify that her opponent was indeed, a Living Armor. It had even a jaunty red plume trail majestically from the top of the helm.
Hmm. According to the knowledge of the compendium that she could apply to her Erras-style training, living armors had high defenses, and little upfront weaknesses, although their movements were semi restricted by the rigidity of the armor. Cutting through the gaps could temporarily separate the limbs, although it would not destroy the monster, which required significant destruction of the actual metal armor.
It wasn’t the best opponent Nara could fight, although she supposed they couldn’t all be slow moving trolls with massive health pools. The high defense was a bit of a pain in the ass, and she’d have to fight with extreme risk until her afflictions started landing.
Still. Though, it was a suit of armor. Deep inside, her unscratched duelist’s core started to itch.
She approached the armor with a confident stride and stood in front of it, sword ready like the beginning of a duel.
“Engarde!” She exclaimed.
It was perhaps not the sanest of actions, but she just couldn’t help herself. It’s not like a surprise attack would have been very fruitful against a high defense silver rank monster anyway, so she may as well have fun with it.
She glanced at the sky; And, well, she may as well put on a show for her future audience.
Surprisingly, the suit of armor reciprocated, bowing slightly, and drawing his sword at the ready, holding it in place with its shield. With some sort of mutual swordsmen understanding, as much as one could have with a faceless entity behind a helmet, the two started moving at the exact same time.
A sword and shield—quite annoying. It was a secret to Encio, but the only thing Nara found harder to fight than a skilled sword master was a skilled sword and shield master. If he found out, he might learn it just to annoy her.
The living armor’s fighting style was classic—very human, if not for the rigidity of the armor. Still, even with the jank, its shield bashes and heavy swings were dangerous. Nara kept to its front, dueling it proper, although not without her own strategies, although she was not teleporting. In this specific case, teleportation was only useful for dodging, and not for progression of the fight. Since her opponent had high defenses, she needed to soften its resistances with Avatar of the Boundary, which had a guaranteed affliction reduction towards her affliction for every blow she avoided, negated, reduced, and parried. Which meant, conversely, that she needed to actually be attacked as much as possible and stand her ground.
Once resistance to afflictions was reduced enough, Nara could focus on inflicting Dimensional Instability, which was more or less a reduction in defense towards rending damage only. With enough boon sacrifices and abuse of Blood Rebound from Blood Moon, she could start actually dealing damage.
Despite the metal stiffness, the armor was still quick, and each blow had massive momentum. The scariest aspect was still its shield, which sought to snap in and crush her ribs at the slightest window of opportunity. At this point, fighting stronger and heavier opponents was more normal than fighting light and fast ones (Nara was afraid to see what a silver rank monster specialized in speed would be like), so while Nara was fully utilizing her entire defensive suite, nix teleportation, operating on the edge of crushing injury was old news. The physical strength increase from Blood Moon was a notable help; she’d miss it once she ranked up to silver and had to abandon the arm guards for something of her rank.
Since they could be spared from teleportation, her Dimension Nodes were stacked and detonated at key moments. Nara found, since their damage was disruptive force, that she could temporarily disable the animating force wherever the blast impacted the armor. It took at least a 6 to 7 stack to interrupt its movements, but it crucially knocked the armor about and disrupted its rhythm. The armor eventually learned to by wary of the nodes, possessing some amount of its own magical senses.
The learning aspect of the silver rank monster was a terrifying implication. That it could adapt to her as she adapted to it. It harkened to her mimic fight, battling intense blow for blow against a humanoid opponent, with the notable and important exception that the mimic couldn’t improve.
The node explosion and Chrome’s swords were the two components the Living Armor paid most attention to; Chrome’s Corrosion of Time affliction paired with resonating force damage was especially effective against the full suit of armor, and its shield was always positioned protectively between itself and the whirl of golden blades, some wielded by Chrome himself, who darted in an out at opportune moments to strike his own blows.
Sage was notably absent, although she had more important matters to attend to, serving as Nara’s communication across worlds and keeping an eye on a few troublesome persons in this one.
With Nara’s black blade alight with an underworld flame, she wondered who resembled the black knight of this duel. The once pristinely polished silver armor was now marred, small patches rusted brown and crumbling. The living armor had extremely high intelligence and skill, but it seemed that it had next to no recovery capability, all damage to its shell completely permanent.
The living armor held a polite hand up, signaling a stop. What could Nara do but oblige. It was just about the politest person—er, monster—she had met in the last few weeks and was happy to indulge in the interest of a mutually pleasant battle to the death.
The armor gestured upwards with a finger, then held its palm flat as if to ask for permission.
“Er, you want to take this battle to the sky?”
It nodded.
Suuuuure. Why not? “Go ahead, Sir Knight.”
It nodded, and with a rather cacophonous groaning of metal, new metal grew and extended into metal plated blade wings. It really shouldn’t have been able to fly with such things, but magic had never cared about such silly laws of physics like lift and propulsion. True to expectations, with a clash and grating shirk of metal, it launched itself into the air, a glorious gleaming flying knight. A terrifying, deadly whirl of death.
Nara followed up with node jumps, but she couldn’t quite fly herself, more ‘falling slowly repeatedly’ than actual flight.
The knight gestured.
“Yeah, this is perfectly fine. You will still lose.”
It regarded that as acceptance of its challenge and adjusted its stance once more.
An initial aerial field would have extended the length of the battle, but Sir Knight had made its decision too late to make any significant difference. Her loss of nodes as a disabling method was counteracted by her additional options of 3D movement. Sir Knight’s wings were weapons unto themselves, and she had to be careful attacking from behind it, but Nara had always handled better the precision of bladed strikes than the wide effect of crushing blows.
Boundary’s Scorn had done its job, allowing for the stacking and application of Dimensional Instability. The locations of corrosion were points of weakness, and Nara targeted them with impunity. Her stabs and slashes imbued with Thanatos’ Umbral Flame burned with heat and disruptive force damage, further impairing its movement, although not to the extent of her stacked node blast. The fire, incidentally, softened the metal, allowing Sir Knight additional flexibility, but it would not be enough to save the duel from its inevitable conclusion. Nara did appreciate the living armor’s ability to adapt to his condition, and Nara would remember that the enemy’s effects could potentially be used to her own advantage.
A shattering blow of Blood Rebound with Astral Return ripped the metal torso of Sir Knight, metal swirled and bent as if rent by the claws of a great dragon, rather than a comparatively small sword. Sir Knight unbalanced in the air, and another follow up attack sent it spiraling to the ground, limp wing unable to course correct nor sustain it. It didn’t quite crater, but its metal tore up the tranquil grasslands, green skin torn aside to reveal the brown wounds of the earth.
It struggled to its knees, but did not get up, bowing its head in surrender.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
“It was a good match, Sir Knight,” she pronounced. She was so into this. She fucking loved duels! “Go with pride.”
It dipped its head in acknowledgement and waited for her final blow.
She swung her blade down, every effect in combination—boons and boon sacrifice, Astral Return, World’s End—determined to give him an honorable, singular end. Her sword sliced cleanly through its neck plate, decapitating Sir Knight, and the resulting execute damage disintegrated the rest of the armor, swallowed and winked out of existence in a flash of transcendent light and the finality of a black hole.
-------
-[Living Armor] has been wholly annihilated and has been automatically looted.
<ul>
<li>1 silver rank monster core</li>
<li>10 silver spirit coins</li>
<li>100 bronze spirit coins</li>
<li>1000 iron spirit coins</li>
<li>100,000 lesser spirit coins</li>
<li>100 metal quintessence</li>
<li>1 Awakening Stone of the Knight</li>
<li>[Sir Lancelot’s Sword]</li>
<li>[Sir Lancelot’s Shield]</li>
</ul>
Loot has been added to your [Astral Domain].
-------
“No fucking way!” she exclaimed.
(It was ultimately just flavor text from her guide, but she still thought it was really really cool.)
*****
Diya and her team lined up—their heavy firepower out front, tearing through monsters with high calibers and burning them to a crisp. It burned through mana quickly, however, and before long, her strongest attackers were already half-empty and the silver rank monster stalked just out of range, bullets pinging ineffectually against magically super durable armor.
It, unfortunately, seemed disinclined to approach. It gauged them, finding them somehow lacking. When the team moved forward to engage, it moved back and equal distance. With its silver rank speed, decidedly un-stealthy as it was, as a running hunk of metal, the squad couldn’t close in while maintaining its defensive formation. Occasionally, small blades of metal flew towards them, as if attempting to separate the squad or pick a few off, and the squad was forcefully reminded that the monster was the higher EQ, and there was no sense in pushing forwards when the couldn’t defeat it.
“It wants to duel you, you know,” said Nora from behind her.
Diya wouldn’t admit that her voice had surprised her and suppressed the urge to jump on the spot.
Diya narrowed her eyes. “And you managed to defeat your target.”
“Yup,” she said, popping the ‘p’. Diya wanted to say she didn’t believe her, but a silver sword was stabbed into the ground as proof—one that resembled what their current target held. A brush over the handle was enough to tell Diya it was silver rank from rank rejection, quickly pulling her hand back as if burned. A side glance at Minato confirmed it—she had really managed to solo the EQ 3 monster?
“Do you want me to do it again?”
“You can do it again?”
“I specialize in endurance battles,” she said. “It will actually be easier now than it was before. You have to promise not to interfere though. It’s not a bad bloke, just looking for a fair fight.”
“It’s a higher EQ, it’s hardly a fair fight,” Diya rejected instinctively.
“It’s a monster,” Warthog quietly grumbled. “Who cares about fair?”
Nora shrugged. “On the other world, soloing a higher EQ monster was expected in the later half of an EQ rank. How else are you expected to improve?” Her glance skittered over the group. Diya felt the same sensation of being evaluated and found lacking that the monster had elicited. “Why do all of you use cores?”
“That’s impossible,” Minato overheard, drawing his own conclusions rapidly, “There’s only been minor success without using cores, not to mention the reduced speed—”
“All those combat focused don’t use cores, in the other world,” she said, casually. She paid them little attention, her attention more focused on the living armor, who waited, sword held vertically and proper, ever chivalrous. “There’s even EQ 5s there. I know a few personally. Is it…six? If I count Queen Tyranel? So?”
That was ridiculous. The highest theoretical EQ was 4, not 5. Their projections for how much power a EQ 4 possessed were already ludicrous. Weapons of mass destruction.
“So—what?”
She gestured to the waiting armor. “So? Shall I?”
Diya hadn’t seen anything like it. The civilian—perhaps that was undeserved, now, as she was clearly combat trained—danced with the EQ 3, black blade flashing against silver, gently redirecting it this way and that, blocking with her free hand as needed, as if it was all some elaborate choreography to put on a show. Any damage she did take, evidenced only by a brief line of red before it rapidly healed, or a tear on her robes (which Diya had to reevaluate the effectiveness of, as it clearly did something. More magically enhanced bullshit.), seemed entirely intentional. Very rarely did she teleport, and even then, it hardly disrupted her flow, one attack moving into the next as if she hadn’t just shifted her dimensional axis, as if the world had moved around her and she hadn’t moved at all.
Occasionally, metal spikes erupted from the ground, attempting to pierce her, but she easily slipped away, as if they had never intended to hit in the first place.
Diya had fought living armors before, usually of lower rank. It shouldn’t be possible—typically, they would try to engage them in an enclosed space, to force them into battle when they’d otherwise retreat. Diya knew that the living armor wasn’t going easy on Nora Ambrose; the gouges in the ground and the weight of the blade as it whistled through the air was evidence enough. Each blow was ferocious and sharp, marred only by the stiffness of the armor, and the shield aways savagely followed, shielding its body and snapping forward with devastating power. She had seen enough—heard enough—caved in rib cages from cornered charges to fear the shield.
It was an astounding melee defense, but Nora seemed entirely undeterred, her blade somehow slipping through to land attacks when it otherwise should not have, and the living armor’s own precision seemed inexplicably imprecise.
“Are you recording all this?” she whispered to Minato, as if her voice would disrupt Nora’s concentration.
“Yes. I recorded the other one as well. It seemed she noticed my drone.”
“Unsurprising,” Diya noted, although her opinion of Nora just 10 minutes previous would have been in opposition. She still didn’t like how insubordinate Nora was, but if Diya was in Nora’s position, being underutilized despite knowing her own capabilities, Diya would have also thought that she was a leader not worth listening to.
*****
“Report, Lieutenant Patel,” said Branch Director Graham.
They were in his office, where he sat imposingly in a plush leather chair and an appropriately stately mahogany desk, a luxury afforded to a Branch Director, rather than the cheap grey desks they all used. Which Diya rarely did as a Field Agent.
“Branch Director,” she saluted.
“At ease, Lieutenant.”
As a Field Agent, she was given a title to denote the forces she commanded, unlike the Special Agents, who handled other operations such as investigations, who worked with partnerships with less defined chains of command. This dual nature was occasionally confusing; in the confluence of a Special Agent and a Field Agent, who should obey who? But it was necessary, as the Agency handled both military-scale field operations and civilian matters.
“The…special contractor Ambrose was not as I expected,” she begun. “I had assumed that she was unskilled and unsuited for combat. A liability.”
“From her appearance?” he said, the question chastisement in itself.
“Yes, Director. My apologies.”
“I thought you’d have learned from your own experience.”
Diya’s mouth tightened, and she had to acknowledge that was true. “Yes, director.” A woman and a foreigner, although British-born. The prejudice in the Agency hardly compared to the actual military, thanks to the equality in power that essences granted, but here and there, there would always be those seeking to lift themselves up by putting others down, on the basis of whatever perceived disadvantage or quality.
“Your report says that special contractor Ambrose successfully defeated two EQ 3s, non-simultaneously, alone. We judge her to be around EQ 2.8, reliant on Agent Ito’s recordings.”
“What about the scans?”
“Our scans don’t work,” Graham said with a rare expression of exasperation. “This is all conjecture and best estimates. We did ask, and she said we had estimated too high. She claims to be around EQ 2.5.” Implied—that the Agency was unsure if she was telling the truth of her EQ level.
“She is abnormally skilled,” said Diya. “Her equipment is unconventional, as is her fighting style, but I cannot dispute the results. I want to say that she is insubordinate, but that would be inaccurate. She is cooperative when it is in her bests interest. Our best interests. She is not particularly combative or aggressive, and did try to cooperate, despite my lapse in judgement.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Graham said.
Nora strode through, looking assured and entirely unphased with Graham’s EQ 3 aura. Diya didn’t think she didn’t sense it, rather, just didn’t care for it.
“Nora. I’ve called you for some clarification on your report.”
“Yup, sure. What do you want to know?”
It was…unacceptably casual, but that was expected of a civilian in the end. Some things Diya wouldn’t fight.
“In your report, you commented that the Lieutenant Patel’s combat was ‘inefficient’, but ‘not an evaluation of her squad specifically’. If you would elaborate?”
“Right…have you had enough time to do your investigations on whether John and I are telling the truth about the whole ‘been to another world and back’?”
“We have,” Graham confirmed. “The material supplied is convincing. The crystal of the recordings does not exist on our planet.”
“You didn’t break them, I hope? I think those are priceless here.”
Graham’s lip twitched; Diya was unsure if it was to be a smile or a frown. If anyone could manage both simultaneously, it’d be Director Graham.
“No, they are undamaged.”
“Well, proceeding with the assumption that you believe us, the cultivation of essence users—EIs—on that world differs from this one. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using cores, but most combat-focused essence users will progress with a training-combat-meditation cycle. There are several advantages to this—and, I’ve actually asked John to do a bit of cost analysis—but currently progress of your EIs as a whole is bottlenecked by how many monster cores you possess: how much you dedicate to raising rank, split between combatants and non-combatants; and how much you reserve for other uses, like rituals. Is that correct?”
“That is an accurate summary of the situation,” Graham confirmed, a grey eyebrow raised in cursory interest.
“As I’ve said, the vast majority of combat-focused EIs instead don’t use cores.”
“We’ve tried non-core progress, and it’s a significant reduction in speed.”
“Sure, but how long does it take to get to silver with cores? John has looked a bit at your statistics, and most never make it to silver—sorry, EQ 3--there’s just not enough cores, isn’t that right? The easiest question, I suppose, is if you’re willing for progress to take longer at lower EQs in order to progress to a higher EQ for significantly reduced cost and an improvement in skill, no offense.”
“None taken,” Diya said, because it was true. She wasn’t going to argue that she wasn’t less skilled when she couldn’t solo engage an EQ 3, even though the truth of the statement rankled.
“The key to non-core progression is the full utilization of abilities. From what I’ve seen of Lieutenant Patel’s squad, they perhaps used throughout the full duration, at best 12 abilities? And estimating some special abilities in there. It’s well known that at early ranks, you must choose to fight less effectively in order to fully progress your abilities.
For me,” she said, tapping her chest, “I had to intentionally draw out fights, as I am an endurance fighter. Most iron rank enemies can die to a well-placed strike, but that doesn’t progress your combat abilities. You need to overkill. You need to overdo it. You need to handicap yourself. You need to fight in situations that draw out your full potential, fighting intentionally at a disadvantage and in unconventional circumstances. There are ways to safely do this.”
More common in the higher magic areas than Sanshi, of course, but a higher ranker often tagged along to make sure nobody died.
“Director Graham, how would you like to change training as you know it?”