Ursula Belzebute (2)

To take down the opponent without letting them bring out their strengths.

Put plainly, Garumon Battle was a contest of whether or not you could do that.

In the Aldis match, if I'd been careful not to use Black Matrix and had noticed that Immortality Barrier was an at-will Endure-grant skill…

At the moment of dealing the finishing blow, combined with Black Matrix, I could've insta-killed Lava.

If that had happened, Colette and Yuria could've conserved energy to face the 2nd party; we'd have started from a state with HP already whittled down by Yuria's Black Hole, and fought from a more advantageous position.

Ideally, both sides exerted their max strength and you still went beyond and won — that, made into a story, was the most exciting.

That was why in pro wrestling both sides landed their techniques on each other without dodging.

The Aldis match seemed to have gotten good reviews from those who saw it.

From our side, doing it, it was nothing but a hard fight; we'd been on edge the whole time.

Of course, in my heart of hearts I'd have loved to win after seeing all of my opponent's techniques, if it were possible.

But unfortunately, in this world there were techniques that were already lethal once let out, and for those techniques there was no choice but to make it a struggle of "don't let it come out!" versus "I'll bring it out!"

… Divine Art - Raphaela fell under this category.

As far as I knew, it was the single most "if it comes out, you're done" technique.

A tornado whirled up, and from it… emerged Raphaela Cellas, her beautiful six wings spread.

Divine…

This was the figure of Cellas with Divine Art - Raphaela activated.

Beautiful… but viewed as an enemy, it inspired only despair.

The buff statuses of both sides were as follows.

Cellas: Attack 700% Defense 500% Speed 500% Skill 200% Complete evasion 5 turns, acts twice

Mira: Attack 200% Defense 250% Acts twice

Suzanne: Attack 950%, Defense 800%, Speed 200% Skill 200% Buff-dispel/debuff 180% blocking

Colette: Buff-dispel/debuff 80% blocking

Patty: Attack 650%, Defense 500% Buff-dispel/debuff 80% blocking

Colette, sorry for not paying you any attention.

But this Colette, with no buffs and no debuffs at all, was our defensive linchpin.

"Ohh! Cellas seems to have activated a skill. This much I can say now.

"The strongest skill that bears the Seraph's name — Divine Art - Raphaela has been activated!

"Her combat power seems to have risen by a clear margin."

"Fufufu, Divine Art - Raphaela has restrictions on its use, so in exchange it's extremely powerful. It's getting interesting. The offense and defense from here on is the real start."

The commentator-emcee duo were subject to information-concealment effects, so normally they could only give vague commentary.

But for skills they knew, they could imagine what had been used.

The two of them, no doubt veterans with abundant combat experience, probably knew almost all the skills we were using.

"… Divine Art - Gungnir."

Gogogogogo…

Cellas made a beautiful spear appear. Cellas… was finally beginning her attack.

God-element physical super-large damage, 2-hit, piercing, Speed 30% UP per attack.

I couldn't help mentally copy-pasting, but what was this insane effect.

Gungnir was 2-hit, Raphaela made 2 actions. 4 attacks.

And currently, against the fastest Suzanne, Cellas's speed exceeded by 2x.

So attacking Suzanne meant 8 attacks.

Attacking Colette or Patty, since speed exceeded by 4x, meant 12 attacks.

If Speed went up 12 times, exceeding 8x, that became 16 attacks.

… Only a dry laugh would come out.

If used, you were done. That kind of technique, was now in play.

… What I could do now: somehow stall 5 turns, and at the moment Divine Art Raphaela expired, hand off to the 2nd party… no, that wasn't it.

Doing that would just result in being trampled by Cellas's super stats.

No matter what, no matter how battered we got, we had to win with this lineup.

That was the absolute condition for winning this match.

… I'd tried to assemble members who could do it.

It was just that the conditions were brutally harsh.

The number of turns we had to block attacks for was 6.

Turn 6. When Divine Art - Raphaela expired, Suzanne could finally counterattack.

At that moment, Cellas's overwhelmingly faster attack would activate first.

Because Suzanne didn't have preemptive.

I'd worked at it for a month, but in the end she hadn't acquired it as conveniently as I'd hoped.

I'd considered switching plans by bringing in Lyuka or someone like her, but doing that would mean we couldn't break through Mira's barrier. I had to give up on preemptive.

In other words, on turn 6, Colette had to defend, and we'd have to take her down with Suzanne's attack.

• Save Colette's 5-use-only Ultimate Art - Conqueror's Shield for 1 turn and weather 5 turns.

• During that time, Suzanne and Patty would do the following:

• Protect Colette for 1 turn.

• Stack Divine Art - Michaela one more time.

• Take down Mira with Testament.

That was the procedure needed.

Patty had already destroyed Mira's shield. On top of that, by taking down Mikoto, she'd already fulfilled her role.

After that, she just had to do her best protecting Colette and Suzanne.

"Let's go! Colette, Hero's Sword on Suzanne, Hero's Armor on Patty! Patty, Bull King's Blessing!

"Suzanne, Divine Art - Michaela! Use Patty and yourself as shields, protect Colette!"

Now, this was the moment of truth!

While Cellas's Speed was at its lowest, conserve Colette's Conqueror's Shield and weather the assault!

"Divine Art - Gungnir!"

Dogogogogo…!

1st strike, 2nd strike, 3rd strike… 4 divine spears appeared, and then…

Do!

They came flying in one by one.

"You shall not pass～!"

Patty stood firm with feet planted, with Suzanne and Colette hidden at her back.

"Colette!"

"Hero's Armor! Hero's Sword!"

At-will skills weren't related to Speed. Instant activation.

Zugaaan!

"Au!"

Patty took one hit.

Patty taking the attack was ideal. Spirit was a special attribute strong against God and Demon. God-element attacks were halved.

In other words, even against an attack of this magnitude, one strike was about 35 damage. With Hero's Armor on top, 17 damage.

Against a sloppier opponent we could have aimed for further halving, but against Cellas that was impossible.

Just enduring without a critical was the best we could do.

Having taken big damage from 3 turns of Ogrification, Patty's HP was 111.

She could endure 7 hits. With Endure, she could survive an 8th. But she couldn't endure 16 attacks.

But… I had no intention of letting that many attacks land! 4th strike, here!

"Suzanne! Please!"

"Leave it to me, Divine Art - Michaela!"

Ka!

Dogooooooo!

Flames erupted alongside the wings. Suzanne had succeeded in activating Divine Art - Michaela.

Suzanne's stats had become even more absurd.

Suzanne: Attack 2050%, Defense 1600%, Speed 400%, Skill 400%, Buff-dispel/debuff 280% blocking

Action order within a turn depended on Speed.

Of course, since this wasn't a game, you'd wait for allies' buffs before attacking, time defensive skills against the opponent's attacks, and try to out-react each other — it didn't always go strictly by Speed.

But for this Cellas attack and Suzanne's Michaela, the faster the better, so it ended up Speed-dependent after all.

So preemptive went to Cellas. That hadn't changed.

… But the order of re-action — which was prioritized? — that too, originally, was Speed-dependent.

No matter how fast Cellas moved, throwing 16 spears — even at one per second — would take 16 seconds.

So even if Cellas was fastest to throw the first one, before throwing the second, couldn't everyone else act?

Normally thinking, that was how it should be.

But here, there was something like a law of accumulating power that made this world's turn system function.

While a continuous attack was active, the accumulation of power for other members was hindered, making continuous action easier.

So if Cellas's continuous action was perfect and no one interfered, after Cellas spent 16 seconds making 16 actions, everyone else would slowly start moving.

Of course, only if HP remained and they could still move.

But "next, I'll use a skill!" — if you appealed with good timing, you could steal that action right and insert your own.

It was a hazy way of putting it, but this kind of technique was unique to this world, so it was hard to explain.

Well, in game terms, an out-of-skill skill that intercepted the action order, or some such explanation might do.

So it wasn't Cellas's fault. Suzanne's interception was just truly splendid.

I patted myself on the back for the good timing in my instruction too.

Continuing on, Suzanne sprang out ahead of Patty.

"Haaaaa!"

Kaan!

And Suzanne, with the Flamberge in her hand, sliced through Cellas's Gungnir in one strike.

"Wha…!"

With that, Cellas had attacked Suzanne.

Speed-based re-attack was determined, after the last attack of one action was delivered, by the Speed difference with the attacked opponent.

So from Speed 1x, activating Divine Art - Accel Mirage and attacking 4 times to reach Speed 2.2x triggered re-action.

4 more attacks reaching Speed 3.6x, with opponent at 0.9x or below, would trigger 3 actions, and so on — re-actions would continuously cascade.

Suzanne's Speed was 4x. Cellas's Speed at the 4th hit was 6.2x, not even reaching 2x.

Therefore, Cellas's re-action stopped here.

The damage Suzanne took was only 13 pt.

Looked like she'd succeeded in halving the damage. Probably thanks to acting beyond Cellas's predictions.

All right, the first turn of Raphaela's activation was weathered with the best result.

"Oh… Suzanne also activated Divine Art - Michaela! Both sides have used their strongest skills!"

"That interception just now was magnificent. When a sloppy fighter just continues using a skill effect blindly, even without doing anything, the chain breaks and the opponent slips in… but there was no mistake at all in Cellas's movement. Beautiful continuous action.

"But more perfect than that, Suzanne timed it perfectly to slip in.

"Watching offense and defense at this level gets me excited."

… The level of the commentary and emcee work was high.

After that, Patty and Mira mutually stacked buffs, and the turn ended.

Divine Art - Raphaela, activation turn 2.

Cellas: Attack 750% Defense 550% Speed 620% Skill 200% Complete evasion 5 turns, acts twice

Mira: Attack 250% Defense 300% Acts twice

Suzanne: Attack 2050%, Defense 1600%, Speed 400% Skill 400% Buff-dispel/debuff 280% blocking

Colette: Buff-dispel/debuff 80% blocking

Patty: Attack 750%, Defense 600% Buff-dispel/debuff 80% blocking

Each side's buffs were ultra-important, so I'd re-list them as many times as needed.

"All right, this is it, Colette. Last Hero's Sword goes to Suzanne.

"Then, Ultimate Art - Conqueror's Shield. Above all… protect Suzanne.

"Suzanne, if there's anything Colette misses defending, dodge.

"Patty, if there's anything Colette misses, cover Suzanne.

"Hang in there, everyone!"

"Yes!"

"… I won't be careless again! Divine Art - Gungnir!"

Cellas's attack. While flying at high speed within the battle field, she rained down a shower of divine spears from on high.

"… Ultimate Art - Conqueror's Shield!"

Kakiin!

Colette hoisted the shield to the heavens and accurately blocked them.

… Skilled. She was solidly stopping them. Perfect.

This past month, as a virtual Cellas, we'd had a maxed-acceleration Leone launch a fierce assault from every direction, and trained Colette to catch all of it.

Leone could do more shape-shifting attacks, but as virtual Cellas she'd repeated the more linear attacks.

That was a good thing.

Cellas's spear trajectories were very similar to Leone's linear movements.

No matter how fast, if linear, you could place the shield on that trajectory and defend, so blocking was perfectly possible.

The throwing starting point rotated around, but that too was similar to Leone running around the indoor walls.

The interval from rotating to throwing a spear was even longer than Leone's.

With Colette's ability, having finally come to be able to defend even against Leone's attacks…

Kin…!

Magnificently, she blocked the 16-hit barrage perfectly!

"Such… it can't be…!"

Cellas stood dumbfounded.

Cellas got attacked 16 times, so her Speed shot up to 1100%, though.

But since we'd practiced against a fiercely accelerating Leone, we were still fine.

Cellas's attacks were monotonous, after all.

She'd used Divine Art - Raphaela, saw she had an overwhelming advantage, and rolled out monotonous attacks.

Bad habit. I'd have to punish her later.

"Oh…! Cellas's torrent of consecutive attacks magnificently blocked by Colette! Splendid defensive technique!"

"This is something to praise Colette for, isn't it. Cellas's attacks are certainly linear, but consecutive attacks fired from here and there while flying — normally, you can't stop those.

"… She must have trained meticulously, anticipating exactly this kind of attack.

"Even when Colette was about to lose track, Naoto's accurate instructions enabled defense. Naoto has a reputation for defense technique, but he's polished it even further.

"Breaking through this is a chore."

Silvana evaluated.

"… Splendid."

From Ursula too, words of praise came.

Now, finally our turn.

In order not to get in Colette's way, Suzanne, who'd been crouching in the center of the field protected by Patty, stood up gracefully.

"Hero's Sword!"

Colette's buff. With that, attack power 2125%. Hard to calculate, but I was fine.

I instantly calculated.

I wanted to dispose of Mira early. I couldn't stand any more buffs piling onto Cellas.

But annoyingly, Mira's Metal-element was strong against God-element — damage halved. Further with Demon Art - Protective Curse 1/4-ing it, about 88 damage. Mira's magic defense wasn't that high, so about 10% more — around 96 damage.

She could be taken down in 2 turns… but the longer it took, the more buffs Cellas would stack.

If possible I wanted to take her down this turn.

There was a way.

"Suzanne. Aim at Mira, Divine Art - Testament!"

Aim only at Mira and fire Divine Art - Testament. That way, the Speed 4x continuous action would activate, and Mira could be taken down in 2 hits.

In a system where Speed re-action existed, targeting a single opponent with an area attack was quite an outrageous feat.

If you fired an area attack at a party with both fast and slow members, hitting both, the Speed re-action would be calculated based on the fastest one.

Well, of course.

It wasn't as if you could be excluded just because you had complete evasion.

Because in this system, attacks would miss if they shielded an ally and then evaded.

If you dodged from a shielding-an-ally state, normally the attack would hit the ally behind you.

Physically that was the case in this world too, but the moment evasion occurred, the built-up magic power dissipated.

So even if a missed attack hit, it'd do no damage.

That was the system where shielding-then-evading nullified attacks.

Kanan had used this all the time to shield allies, so I couldn't complain.

But Suzanne and I had used Divine Art - Testament exhaustively.

And… we'd come to be able to precisely control the effect range of Testament.

Divine Art - Testament: when activated, the center of force appeared at a point about 10 m forward and 20 m above the point Suzanne consciously targeted, and 0.01 second to 1 second after that, a shockwave covering a radius of several dozen meters from that center released downward.

The damage effect range didn't extend beyond the battlefield.

But used normally, it was an attack that completely covered the entire battlefield.

For some reason, allies wouldn't be hit.

Then could Cellas, now essentially almost an ally, be excluded? That, naturally, was impossible.

Even if it could be done, Cellas could just deliberately take the hit.

So how to hit only Mira with such an attack… it depended on the current positional relationship between Cellas and Mira.

Cellas, who'd thrown 16 Gungnirs from on high, was still floating, and Mira was on the ground.

Given that positional relationship, if Suzanne accurately aimed at Mira's feet — a point 19 m underground — and fired Divine Art - Testament…

"Divine Art - Testament!"

Ka!

Dogoon!

"Kyaaaaaa!"

Magnificently, only Mira was precisely caught up.

The surroundings suddenly enveloped in shockwave light, Mira got blown back as if bursting outward.

"Wh…! Mira!"

Cellas frantically swooped down from above to shield Mira, but Mira's HP kept dropping rapidly.

Exceeding 96 damage, and more.

… Yes, by being able to grasp the center of force, we could now also aim for critical hits by precisely landing that force center!

And Mira's HP was about to hit 0… but didn't — she Endured.

Endure gear was, well, standard. Ursula seemed to be wearing the Endure items she'd already owned.

The fact that she didn't wear the Spirit Garb I'd given her was… well, probably a matter of pride — to fight as an independent Master without relying on me.

But because Cellas wasn't caught up in it, Suzanne's Speed 4x re-action activated.

Cellas tried to shield Mira… but it was too late.

"Divine Art - Testament!"

A finishing blow. This time, Cellas being caught up didn't matter.

… Normal Endure, when activated once, had its probability drop to 1/10. Activating twice consecutively was rare.

"… Aa…"

Mira, as expected, didn't have Endure activate again… she fell.

Magnificently, in one strike, Suzanne defeated Mira — whose attribute she was weak against. Wonderful.

"… As expected of Suzanne. Taking down Mira in one turn…"

… Suta.

Cellas, who had somehow evaded — I didn't know how — landed on the ground.

But truly, Cellas's evasive ability was beyond comprehension.

… I had no idea where or how she'd moved.

In the face of guaranteed-hit light that completely covered the entire battlefield, "evade" — physically, absolutely impossible. There was no way to evade no matter how you moved.

… But she could evade, so what could you do.

Absurd. For 5 turns, she absolutely couldn't be taken down.

Patty had nothing she could do, so all that was left was to cheer.

Turn ended.

"Oh…! Did she just fire an area attack twice in a row?"

"She did. That was… amazing too. That girl narrowed the area attack's range, and hit only Mira without hitting Cellas.

"It probably just happened to be an area attack whose effect range allowed that, but both the idea of executing it and the technique are amazing.

"Firing a technique aimed at the ground depths — the destination isn't visible, so it's extremely difficult.

"Splendid.

"In raw power Cellas should still be overwhelming, but in skill, Naoto actually looks to be pushing.

"… Well, I don't think Ursula will stay silent after this."

Silvana said, laughing.

Divine Art - Raphaela, activation turn 3.

The battle was still in the middle stages.