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ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 152 Part 1

Translator: Kurehashi Aiko

Editor: ryunakama

Chapter 152: The Limits of Flashing In an Instant Part 1

「That’s dirty! That’s plain dirty and unfair, for fuck’s sake!」

「Oh, I’m so terribly sorry, I don’t really talk in Loserish, so I don’t really know what you are barking about over there!」

「Demon! Devil! Monster!」

At this point in time the number of civilians I managed to kill was probably going by hundreds if not thousands. Well, to spice things up a little bit I decided to throw cars around and play with them for a little bit, but……

「What the hell is this?」

「Playing Jenga, as you can see.」

「Are you really a demon or what……?」

Pencilgton smiles and then laughs as the building in the background gradually starts to collapse, accompanied with the frantic screams of the NPC, calling for help or the Hero to come and save them. The expression on her face was downright terrifying. How can someone take so much pleasure from doing something like this?

「I already asked Megu about it, but what is your impression of this game?」

My impression of this game so far? Hmm, let’s see……

「An Anti-Population Simulator (with Battle elements)!」

「So it’s like Tower Defense for Villains, is that it?」

「When you are given this much freedom it is only natural that you want to try out many different things…… Or is that too twisted of an opinion for you?」

「I can understand Megu, but in case of you two it goes without saying that there is something fundamentally wrong with your heads.」

「I-Is that so…… Well, whatever you say for now……」

「Say, whatever are we even supposed to do about them?」

「Maybe it’s okay to smile while giving them the middle finger at the same time?」

What the hell is wrong with that answer!? It sounds like some poor choice out of a mediocre Dating Sim! What the hell, Katsu!? Trying to show off? I know he doesn’t look like that, but still, what the hell!?

「For now I wanted to keep silent, but I see that I must also take some serious preparations for the upcoming match…… Say, Sanraku, would you like to play against me?」

「Huh? Sure, I don’t mind.」

「However, there’s a certain condition I would like to propose to you: I would like you to use “Meetias” as your character.」

「…… If you want to get accustomed to Silvia Goldberg’s playstyle, wouldn’t watching some videos of her matches be more than sufficient enough?」

「No, it wouldn’t. That’s because I’m sure that she already evolved since the last match she played.」

–– So please, come at me with everything you’ve got.

That was the request from Katsu.

Looking down at the panorama of Chaos City from the top of the rooftops, the Hero Meetias couldn’t shake off the feeling that this city was engulfed in fever.

「Now then, how do I actually fight against Katsu in a way that does not involve bugs exploitation and guarantees me a win?」

Considering the fact that I had a first look at the game already and that my experience with ShanFro was slightly bigger than Katsu’s, I should be in a favorable position here, but honestly if I were to estimate my chances of winning, I’d still place them in a 6:4 ratio. So it still puts me at disadvantage.

「Oh well, it shouldn’t really matter right now, so let’s just try to do what I usually do.」

In a nutshell, “Meetias” is a high-mobility character that can easily maneuver in every possible axis. He excels at wall jumps and mid-air dashes, but as a result he’s not all that great when it comes to sharp turns and curves. But considering how vast the maps here are, his mobility is the highest from amongst the entire character roster.

His attack power was also on the lower end of the spectrum, but that only means that I needed to compensate for that with hitting more attacks.

「I wonder if Katsu really is going to use this “Amdrava” character……」

He is a close-range character who’s one arm is made out of lava. He can use that arm to melt concrete below his feet and use it defensively and offensively, for example making a shield or reshaping concrete shrapnels into bullets. But bullets like that were slow in their trajectory and easy to avoid, unless they were fired from some impossible angle or when you least expected it. And you could be damn sure that Uomi Kei was going to do just that kind of thing.

「Fortunately Meetias beats him when it comes to mobility, so if I manage to take the initiative, I should be alright……」

Even a drunken monkey would be able to tell that this was nothing more than a mock battle against Silvia Goldberg, since our playstyles were supposed to be similar. So it was only natural that Katsu wanted to get used to Meetias’s playstyle and see how he could exploit his possible weaknesses.

And as long as it was a Hero VS Hero match, I could ignore Katsu completely and focus on filling my Heroic Gauge, since there was nothing in the rules that stated that we must fight one another.

「But that being said.」

As an individual, me against Katsu…… No, if I think of it like that, like the undefeated record of his, it won’t get me anywhere.

I jump from building to building and search my surroundings, and after a while I manage to find a bright glow in a small park surrounded by skyscrapers, different from the electrical light of the surrounding city.

「So the gong is already ringing, huh…… Gotta snatch that first blood in my favor!」

I jump off the building and then jump in mid-air. Then due to Meetias’s unique skill “Star Road” I slide through the air for about five seconds. Normally I would love to use some of my Heroic Gauge here to launch a surprise attack from above, but unfortunately the gauge was not filled enough. So I could only comfort myself with a maneuver that could only be described as “Superhero Landing”. Gosh, I wonder if I could do the same thing in ShanFro.

「You’re so noisy that you couldn’t make your arrival more obvious, you know!」

「I know…… But what can you do!?」

That  being said, Meetias is that kind of character that is surrounded by a myriad of particle effects all the time, even while standing still. He’s surprisingly flashy and incapable of stealth attacks, but that was not what I was currently aiming for. I wanted to try something out.

Falling from a certain height in this game does not punish you with fall damage, but instead locks you into a landing animation. However, if you try to do a plunging attack, it is way less restrictive than it would normally be.

In response to my plunging attack, Amdrava raised its arm to defend itself. There was a loud sound of metal clashing against metal and I lost some HP as a result of hitting boiling lava. Good thing that an attack from the top of a skyscraper was so mighty, because even Amdrava’s defenses weren’t able to completely negate that attack, as a result of which it took some damage as well.

Certainly, Amdrava’s biggest ace in the hole was its lava armor. Although it was only coating its arms, it could even damage its opponent while blocking. Not to mention that any bare fisted attacks would apply additional damage because of its elemental affinity.

「Good luck with being able to land a solid blow from that height……!」

「That much even someone like me is able to understand!」

Close-ranged combat against Amdrava is ill-advised for characters like Meetias. What I should focus on is to utilize my mobility and slip in a constant stream of weak but numerous damage.

The best solution here is hit and run strategy…… Dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee!