Szilard was winning. Keraunos was losing ground.
This wasn’t a matter of elemental weakness, either. The reason Szilard had the advantage, and the lightning hound was beginning to sweat, was simply a matter of power—there was no way for Keraunos to overcome Szilard in its current state.
After all, the spirit had been weakened considerably. Its Agility had dropped so much, it couldn’t even keep up with my paltry buffs. It couldn’t muster enough power to contend with Szilard’s basic skills, much less his more powerful ones.
Must be real annoying, eh, Keraunos? I know you can do better than this. You’re more than worthy of being a true-route miniboss. Well, you used to be anyway.
But we’re not here for a sparring match, you electric bastard. We’re here to mop the floor with you.
You thought we’d keep this aboveboard? That we’d play fair? I don’t even know the meaning of the word fair! Can you eat it?
This ain’t a sporting event. If poison would take you out, I’d use it. Hell, I’d even throw my own shit in your face if it meant beating your ass.
“To think a girl named after the god of thunder would be one of the soldiers hiding in the Trojan horse. Funny stuff, don’t you think?”
It was like giving the beast a virus. The dog had been infested by worms.
Never in a million years would this monster dad imagine its beloved daughter to debuff it and casually flip it the bird.
Unfortunately for you, your beloved little Jupiter was more than happy to screw you over.
“Damn…look at the conversion rate on this one. It might sacrifice output, but it boosts resistance like crazy. This thing’s way better than anything you can find on the regular market.”
My first visit to Lali-Lali played back in my mind.
I’d visited an accessory shop called Mother’s Milk. Its sign depicted a pair of lips meeting a heart, and the shop owner was an old guy who wore a baby bonnet.
The shop mainly sold accessories that boosted resistance to certain types of damage.
Among them was a set that worked at the cost of lowering some of your other stats, and they were the best of their kind on the market.
If you ignored the fact that everything was way too expensive and that those sorts of accessories were really unpopular, Mother’s Milk could’ve taken the world by storm. (And maybe some people would even find the old man’s baby bonnet charming.)
But people just weren’t that interested in such accessories, and the reason was simple: They were only useful in very specific situations.
There were exceptions, of course, like overpowered accessories that greatly increased resistance to all types of damage. But for the most part, type-specific resistance was only useful against particular enemies. You saw people pull them out in the metagame and almost never in casual play.
Essentially, it was hard to get your money’s worth with these sorts of accessories.
The old guy at Mother’s Milk complained to me, saying, “I just don’t get why no one ever buys my stuff.” But it seemed pretty obvious to me. Not only were these accessories already unpopular, but the ones the old guy sold actually lowered a user’s stats. There was no way something like that would ever catch on.
…That dude sure was a weirdo. And in more ways than one. But even the wares of a weirdo like that had a time and place. You just had to think outside the box.
Lowering your stats to raise resistance might seem like a big disadvantage, but what if lowering stats was exactly what you needed?
For example, what if you could use one of those accessories to nail a recently manifested spirit with a debuff it had no way of preventing?
The stats of a spirit user and the power of their spirit were by no means one-to-one, but lowering one meant lowering the other.
Albi and I were a good example. Despite having one of the strongest types of spirits on my side, I still had to resign myself to being a weak-ass loser because the vessel for that spirit’s power was Kyouichirou Shimizu, a tutorial-level miniboss.
The amount of power a spirit could exert in our world was inexorably tied to its master’s abilities. So it didn’t matter how powerful one’s contracted spirit was if the user was weak—in the end, their strength would level out to something in the middle.
The same logic applied if the user’s stats were altered after the fact or by some external force. The spirit’s power would also be affected. Whether that was a buff or debuff didn’t matter. Any changes to the user’s stats would affect both parties.
Even when a user brought out their spirit with a summoning skill, the spirit used their master’s body as a “gate” to manifest in this world, meaning they were once again subject to their master’s stats.
And that included a certain kibble-brained father figure that had just fused with its “daughter.”
So it was no surprise when the accessories I got for Jupiter at Mother’s Milk took effect. By the time Keraunos noticed, it was already too late. I was absolutely over the moon watching my clever little scheme work out.
When did I give her something like that, you ask? When I gave her the pouch, of course.
That thing was practically bursting with all sorts of stat-lowering accessories. But most of them were focused on decreasing power output.
And this was the result.
That was why I could overpower and outrun Keraunos using only my regular buffs and why he couldn’t contend with even a low-power blast from Szilard.
What’s the matter? You mad?
You must be pissed.
Look at you, throwing a pathetic tantrum. You look like a real tool.
Good. Good! That look on your face is perfect! It’s the look of a beefheaded moron with nothing but brute strength that just lost its only advantage thanks to its beloved daughter’s betrayal. I’ve been looking forward to seeing this for days now.
The agony, the humiliation, the doubt, the sheer rage… Seeing your butt-ugly face twisted with all those negative emotions is so freaking hilarious.
“Whoa, Kyou. You’re making one heck of a scary face right now.”
“Sorry ’bout that. I was just spacing out a bit. I’ll get my head back in the game.”
“No, no! If anything, I…—ke that face of yours.”
I couldn’t make out all her words over the noise of the battle, but I could hazard a guess based on the context—she was probably just reassuring me it was no big deal. I’d better thank her.
“Thanks, Haruka. I appreciate that. Seriously.”
“Whaaat?! Wh-wh-wh-what do you mean by that?!”
I had no idea why she was suddenly in a tizzy. It felt like her brain had been on the fritz lately.
“Nothing. I just meant, y’know, thanks for always having my back.”
“Oh! R-right. Your back. Yep, that’s right. You just leave that back of yours to me!”
“I’m counting on you, partner.”
I tightened my grip on Eckesachs and prepared to rush the beast.
“It’s almost time to end this. As soon as Szilard’s beam hits Keraunos, let’s rush in and start attacking again, just like we did earlier.”
“Okey-doke! …But, hey, Kyou… You think Jupi’s doing okay in there?”
“…I dunno.”
There wasn’t much I could say. What happened inside Keraunos was up to Jupiter.
We were doing everything we could to help her out, and it seemed to be going well so far. But the outcome of the battle would be decided by the beast’s pact holder. If Jupiter couldn’t defeat it, none of us could.
“Give that thing hell, Jupiter! We’re gonna be out here doing the same.”
My body was drenched in sweat. The surrounding air was hot, permeated by the gross smell of something burning.
All this information was overwhelming my senses. My eyes and ears were screaming for a break.
But I couldn’t start complaining now.
You’ve got this, Kyouichirou.
I wasn’t about to be the first one to crack under the pressure.