As a healer, she used to avoid direct participation in combat and stayed at the back with Sol, but the mobility offered by the Numbers armaments rendered the divvying up of positions moot. Even a set not specced for agility could fly so fast that no monster bound to the surface could keep up.
Understanding that there would be no need for her healing abilities during this fight, Julia had instead been filling the battlefield with countless feathers produced by her monoliths that would continue burning as long as she had mana. Within what she called Inverted Domain, not only were her allies buffed, but enemies could not restore their HP barriers or heal themselves. This applied to auto-regeneration too. If the enemy was significantly weaker than her, everything that was supposed to heal them would actually harm them instead, thereby allowing Julia to heal them to death.
No matter how much of Country Eater’s massive inner mana reserves remained or how incredibly efficient its organas were at taking in outer mana, it no longer had any means of recovery. This meant it was only a matter of time before it was ground down to nothing.
“It’s still as unexciting as ever, though.” Julia chuckled wryly.
Frederica had a conflicted look on her face. “Lady Julia, please do not forget that depending on how the situation develops, Eliza and I would have simply made an appearance for nothing.”
Purely as an instinctive reaction to hearing her name, Eliza squeaked, “I-I’m really nervous!” She was too tense to follow the conversation properly.
If nothing else happened, Reen’s sword would eventually kill Country Eater. It could be said that Julia had contributed by stopping the monster from healing itself, but the fight would be over without Frederica or Eliza having done anything of note. That would just be sad, especially considering how cool they had looked flying out. There was a part of Eliza that wished for that, but she was telling herself that she had to do better to become worthy of serving Sol. She focused on pushing down her nerves and readying herself for what was coming.
One of the tests that Sol wanted to get around to conducting was whether it was possible to harvest materials from a monster that had been completely obliterated, but the world’s most powerful taboo territory boss was hardly the right target for it. To make absolutely sure that he got everything it would drop, he had proposed the following: Reen, using her big move, would get rid of Country Eater’s HP barrier; Frederica, who was best at dealing physical damage, would bring down its health; and lastly, Eliza, who specialized in attacking with precision, would help finish the monster off.
“Sol, I’m nearly at my limit!”
“Don’t worry! The barrier will fall first!”
Right after this exchange, the pure-white light indicative of an HP barrier resisting damage died out. The sound of glass shattering rang out as Butter Knife’s enormous blade went through Country Eater like...well, a hot knife through butter.
Without its HP, the monster had no means of resisting Space Sundering. Reen’s sword flashed multiple times a second, slicing off a massive chunk of the slime’s body each time. Unfortunately, she failed to find its core, much less destroy it. Eventually, Butter Knife reached its overdrive limit and blinked out. Though it wasn’t completely broken, there would be no summoning its blade again until it was repaired.
As a result, Country Eater was still alive and kicking. The four-fifths that remained unleashed a roar—it was hard to tell where from—filled with rage and pain.
“Sorry, everyone!” Reen said, apologizing for failing to finish off the monster.
Right away, Sol said, “No. You did great. We expected this.” At the same time, he refilled Reen’s almost depleted inner mana.
“My turn!” said Frederica.
“Please and thank you!” Sol answered.
As Frederica shifted into action according to the plan, Reen fell back to play defense. She sent six shields, including Axis Nine, to protect Frederica and assigned the remaining three to Julia, Eliza, and herself.
Ever since the start of the engagement, Luna had taken over the duty of protecting the surrounding floating islands, the airship, and the invisible but still present Floating Continent. Honestly, Sol would have preferred having Axis Nine still visibly protecting his airship, but considering what Frederica was planning on doing, he understood Reen wanting to focus entirely on the fight. It would take a lot more than a few dings to significantly damage the Numbers armaments, much less take them out of commission, but this was a demonstration, not a battle to the death. They wanted a crushing victory.
“Requesting restraining program release for unique armament Number Five: Type Hecatoncheires!”
“Approved.”
“Commencing overdrive!”
The sequence of events was the same with Frederica as it had been with Reen. A decision had been made that the most powerful of Gawain’s creations, from the Numbers armaments to even Reen’s personal weapon, Butter Knife, were not to be used without Sol’s express permission. Sol couldn’t really see the point in setting up this extra hoop to leap through when he would never actually say no, but all the girls, Steve, and even Gawain had insisted, so he’d caved.
The intention wasn’t so much to concentrate all authority with Sol as it was to show consideration toward the monsters serving him. They needed his permission and the support of Player to unleash their full strength, and though the scale of the comparison was drastically different, it seemed inappropriate that the girls did not.
The All Dragon, Sol’s greatest fighter, loved it when her liege was shown respect. This could be seen in her reaction to the attitude displayed by the other people in the room when he had dropped by Emelia’s royal palace to pick up Reen, Julia, and Frederica the other day, as well as how pleased she was with the system of bells that announced his arrival. It didn’t take a genius to deduce the turn her mood would take when she felt someone was taking him lightly. She wasn’t so unreasonable as to actually take issue with the matter of permissions, but it never hurt to be safe.
Unlike the common citizenry, those of the ruling class were quick to pick up on such subtleties. The frustratingly elaborate etiquette they had to follow was, at the end of the day, for the purpose of showing respect to their peers and, most importantly, their liege...though there was no denying some rules were just weird traditions overstaying bygone eras.
With the boost from Sol’s biocomputer, Player was powerful enough to keep tabs on and control all the magical weapons being lent out beyond Emelia. Setting up a system where usage of these weapons all had to be run by him would make it easy to avoid a lot of misuse. Of course, there was no meaning in weapons that couldn’t be used in emergencies, so some prudence would be needed in deciding how much to regulate everything. At the moment, there were up to three levels of the restraining program. Sol had released all of them for Number Five, allowing completely unfettered usage.
The arms that Frederica had used up before as warheads had been replaced using the mountain of materials Sol had harvested from the battle against the Floating Continent. In fact, those materials, and therefore the arms that Gawain had made from them, were so much higher in quality that the existing arms were now considered consumables. Frederica wanted to get rid of them, though they were still powerful enough to erase half the continent if fired all at once.
“Transforming into overdrive form! Summoning all arms. Assuming Type 100 Mode!”
Since the base of her Numbers armament was Hecatoncheires, she could only summon a maximum of a hundred arms at a time. Regardless of how many extras she possessed, there was no getting around this limit, as it would go against the nature of the monster the armament was derived from. If she really wanted the ability to summon more, she could only hold out hope that there would be a monster with, say, a thousand hands deep inside a dungeon or at the top of the Tower.
For now, the ninety-eight magic formations appearing behind her were more than enough to carry out the task at hand. The sight of giant mechanical arms coming through them was a spectacle. All of them were linked to her mind, such that she could unleash ninety-nine extra punches by throwing a single one. The burst damage that would inflict was insane.