3 bar menu

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 279 Part 1

Translator: Kurehashi Aiko

Editor: ryunakama

ShangriLa Frontier Chapter 279: Sword Wolf Turns Out to Be a Thunderfire Beast Part 9 Part 1

In any case, does offsetting the curse in my current state makes me invincible? Doe it fix all of my problems? Sadly, no, that is not the case. It alleviates them a little bit, but because I am still basically half-naked, it makes me into something of an oversized ant. Squishy, but a little bit harder to kill.

Not to mention my weapons. Can you possibly imagine the sadness that Meiki must have been feeling when it was looking at Kinsho, being used almost non stop and to its full potential? All the while Meiki was getting the cold shoulder and was treated like nothing more but a big pile of useless industrial waste? And it is fine if you cannot imagine that. I am going to tell you all about it, anyways!

「What’s wrong, what’s wrong!? Out of breath already!? Getting tired!? If you really want to, we can have a little breather right here right now!」

「The fuck did you just……!? How dare you……!」

It would not be an overstatement to say that every single attack of Saiga-100 was like a meteor falling out of the sky and hitting the ground. Each attack was crazy powerful and perfect, a culmination of skill and technique of combining auto attacks with manual controls. So how am I to tackle that colossus of an opponent? For starters, I have emptied two cans of Riot Blood just for this fight…… which would honestly elevate Saiga-100 to the level of a human monster that was Silvia Goldberg on that day. And my strategy here would be about the same.

Furthermore, I was not playing a “Cursed Prison” that I was somewhat unfamiliar with. Right now I was just myself, just Sanraku, who I have built from scratch and I had full understanding of how my mechanics work.

「So as long as I am able to see something, I can respond to it in a proper way!」

This is where the Arcana of “Fool” is really going to shine. I shall use it immediately once its recast time is over, and after that I am going to make sure that it is going to stay active all the time, recasting it if it accidentally stops.

Stepping through the air. Using the swords like stepping stones. Unexpectedely using short distance teleportatiot to throw my opponent off guard. I was launching a literal onslaught against her, but Saiga-100 would not yield here so easily. All because of that one year’s worth of playtime and experience in between us.

When it comes to player skill alone, Saiga-100 could not be compared to Silvia Goldberg. But she was not the average player either. She was a demi-monster that would face me at my strongest, resist my attacks and hardly even break a sweat while doing that. Just like the Rankers from the Bakumatsu period, she seems to be someone who was “born to do this thing specifically. But still, if it was just about the sheer player skill, I would have no need to be afraid of losing here.

But no, the strength of the player known as Saiga-100 does not lie there. It lies somewhere else. If this was all that it took for player to grow strong and powerful, anyone would be able to do it and there would be little to no variety in this world.

「Interesting……! Does that mean that you need such abilities in order to be able to compete with Nightprowler Luukan on equal ground!? If you truly believe that you have what it takes to defeat that thing, then come on and go all out against me! Show me that you are determined to do this!」

Now, here is the question for all of you: what is the most important trait for any gamer to have?

Is it pure player skill? No, it’s not that. Almost any game can be started and enjoyed with little to no amount of player skill. Are those rare items? That may partially be true, but no. You can have fun and enjoy your games even all the way until the last boss without obtaining a single rare item, if you are devoted enough to see the game through to the very end.

The correct answer here is: motivation. Motivation is the most important thing for all gamers out there to have. Even if the difficulty may seem unfair, even if the RNG keeps on screwing you over, and no matter how bad things may seem…… As long as you have the motivation to live through those hardships and keep on pushing forward, you are always going to have fun and enjoy the overall experience.

In that regard, Saiga-100 truly is the best there can ever be in terms of motivation. She wanted to defeat Nightprowler Luukan so much that the flames of passion and motivation would never burn, only fueling her even more after a year of playing this game and trying over and over again. You could call each of her weapons a crystallization of her enthusiasm and motivation, and each swing of those weapons would show the amount of time, effort and enthusiasm she was projecting onto her ultimate goal here.

Hardcore player. Ahh, yeah, that’s right. I honestly think that no other word would fit here better than a Hardcore Player. And there is no possibly better opponent for me to face under those particular circumstances.

That is also why I am fired up. No –– right about now I feel that I am literally on fire with excitement! There is no greater joy to be felt from playing a game than to go toe to toe with someone who is so equally passionate about the game that you are! Things like that are what attracts people towards player versus player type of battles. This is also the reason why Player Killing is never going to disappear and is here to stay. I may be wrong about this, but I do believe that the root of Player Killing is the seeking of thrill. Not the kind of thrill that you get from fighting against the mob enemies controlled by the AI, but a thrill of fighting against ‘living’ and ‘breathing’ people of the same skills as you are.

That being said, ShangriLa Frontier’s AI s really exceptional, and even if someone did not wanted to admit it, you had to give credit where the credit is due. After all, the AI in this game was so advanced that you could easily mistake them for living and breathing creatures. But this is this, and that is that…… You cannot deny the amount of fun that can be found from player versus player battles even if you really wanted to.