Capture Target

Hehehe… yes, this setup is perfect…

Okay!  Okay, good to continue!  But first, there is something absolutely critical we must talk about.

I need to tell you about how absolutely bullshit Takeo is.

So, as the protagonist, he, naturally, has a talent that seems rather weak when one first looks at it.  And, just as naturally, said talent is actually brokenly strong when one looks at it from the right angle.

He had one innate talent before the blessing ceremony:  [Stamina Enhancement] at rank C.

Now, at rank C, all that really does is let you ‘do more’ in every time slot.  It’s one of the talents that’s known to have effects on the laws of that world, albeit a minor one.  And that is pretty great, but it’s generally agreed that having a talent that lets you do something unique, or lets you be supernaturally skilled, is better.  For example, [Archmage] lets you use any element of magic, and there is a famous example of a character with [Sprinting] that can go anywhere on an entire continent in a single time slot.  [Stamina Enhancement] is nice, but the best thing it does is let you down more healing potions before you need to recover naturally.

…However in Alchemical Corruption 12, it’s obvious just how broken he is, because he gets extra actions every time slot.  And if you’ve ever played a game with an action economy, you know just how broken that is.

And that’s just what he started with.

For all that I love to complain that he was useless, he’d gone through this five-year-long land grab over one hundred times.  That’s over five hundred years of knowledge.  And while that wasn't as overwhelming an advantage as it seems for reasons too complicated to go over right now, it did come with excellent knowledge of how to apply himself.

The one thing that he could control each time loop, truly and completely control, was his own actions.  So he learned, early on, how to push his talent as much as possible, as reliably as possible.  All he needed was a potential-freeing elixir, and he could improve his talent to absurd degrees in just the first month.

A potential-freeing elixir… like the one he purchased from me over a year ago.

By the time of this fight, he didn’t have [Stamina Enhancement] at rank C.

He had [Stamina Enhancement] at rank S.

Given a week of time, if he pushed himself, he only had to sleep for a single time slot.  And if you remember how messed up I was after that massive, death march land grab push I did in a single time slot during the first year, you know that's utterly broken.

…I still get irritated at how perfect he is sometimes.

Now, let me just make sure the miniatures are set up properly, and…

---

Shimizu needed a moment to process.

…Actually, she needed quite a bit more than that, but a moment was what she had.  So she made do.  The parasite foe had used some very familiar flame magic.  

Takeo was now on the field, in adorable footie pajamas.

And the parasites that had previously been working to ‘distract’ Yuki and Sumiko suddenly redoubled their efforts as the giant nucleus seemed to almost groan, rising more and more to the surface.

They wouldn’t realize this at the time, but, initially, the nucleus was thinking… as much as it could think… that Shimizu and Yuki would both make excellent puppets, and it might as well grab Sumiko too.  The roper was similar enough to be recognized by it, and Shimizu had her extra pair of cum-producers.  So it was, initially, attempting to exhaust them, wear them down.

Until a parasite spotted Takeo rushing towards the battle.

At that point it shifted focus to ‘defeat the threat’, which was when puppet-me started using her fire.

Takeo started shouting, “I’ll take care of the Nucleus -”

But! His words were ignored by Shimizu, who shouted back, louder, “Takeo, distract Ambrosia!”

I had taught Shimizu well, and she had no issue with overriding his poor attempts at tactical decision-making when need be.

I have no proof nor evidence, but I am certain that, at being flatly overridden and ordered, that Takeo’s mouth dropped so far his jaw unhinged.

And it was the right call, too.  Takeo was fast, and skilled, and with his shield he could more easily deal with any fire magic that my puppeted self was throwing his way.  Technically he should be worried about getting hit… but practically, he had centuries worth of knowledge.

He didn’t have the muscle memory to go with it, but he had long since learned to compensate for that.  So long as he didn’t have to deal with extraneous issues, he could easily lock down a single foe.  And with his insane [Stamina Enhancement] talent, he wouldn’t even tire out while doing so!

Shimizu, on the other hand, was rushing straight for the nucleus core.  She downed a minor healing potion to help revitalize her, feeling it flush through her body.  Closing small cuts, healing bruises, and revitalizing her muscles.

And then she started slashing at the giant nucleus like a lumberjack whose family was murdered by trees.

She couldn’t cut deep into it, and her blade, a katana, was better used for slashing than for stabbing, but that didn’t matter when combined with her skill, strength and, most of all, her talent.  [Swordmistress] can be used for alchemy, but its primary advantage is, and always will be, combat.  Every ounce of force she exerted was doubled, and every instinct she had supernaturally refined.  The nucleus almost groaned in agony, the pulsing veins on it spurting out corruptive goop as its blood coagulated at a speed visible to the eye.

But she was still making progress.  Good progress, in fact.

However, not everything was going so smoothly.

Yuki was managing, but she was getting increasingly exhausted.  She didn’t do well in long-running fights like this, and while her oracle powers let her know of any potential death? Using that knowledge was another matter entirely.  She got a flash of insight and knowledge, then she had to figure out a counter, and then actually pull off, mid-fight… all without letting her momentary distraction make an opening for an enemy to hurt her. 

She had plenty of practice, so she could manage it for small spurts, but it required a lot of focus and mental energy to keep up.  And her stamina was starting to flag.

Her dress was getting rips and tears as she had to start blocking some attacks, instead of dodging or redirecting everything.  Still, with her thin saber and her tentacles, she was… more or less managing, so long as Takeo could keep my puppeted self away from her.

Sumiko, on the other hand, was having a more difficult time.  Her bovine body was not suited for battle; oh, she had much better stamina than Yuki, that was certainly the case.  She needed that stamina to produce all the milk she did every day.  But she wasn’t nearly as fast, or as quick, as any of the other combatants.  Even Takeo, with his massive tower shield, could dart around the battlefield like a hummingbird; Sumiko was slower than all of them, and the growing swarm of parasites knew it.

Her area of the battlefield quickly devolved into a post-war moonscape. 

Craters were forming everywhere as she used bomb after bomb to deal with the threats.  She was smart, but that intelligence wasn’t the sort used for battle; it was an intelligence used for analyzing facts and developing theories.  All the others were much better at this rapid, frenetic pace than her, so Sumiko was getting bruises all over her body, and more than a few parasites nearly attached themselves to her before she could rip them off.

It was just as she was trying to figure out a way to change the pace of battle that Yuki shouted out, alarm clear in her voice, “Get out of the clearing!”

She quickly followed her own advice.  Followed by the rest of them, as you don’t ignore the seer when she sounds that panicked.

It was a good thing, too, because the massive nucleus had finally ripped itself free from the ground -- and with a disturbingly high acceleration, rapidly rolled across the battlefield.  Crushing dozens of parasites that couldn’t, or didn't bother to, get away in time.

Takeo paused to orient himself, and looked at the rolling death orb.  "...Well, fuck."

Things got -- much more complicated, after that.  Fighting in the woods, while technically an option, was a bad idea.  The parasites could use the forested area to ambush all of them with much greater ease than they could in the clearing.  But if they fought in the clearing, they would have to deal with being the pins in bowling.  Which was not a fun idea.

And throughout all of that, ‘I’ was trying to burn or crush all of them to protect the nucleus.

Takeo was having trouble keeping up with me now that the battle had gotten more complicated, and Yuki was starting to flag as she had yet another dimension in her visions to look out for.  She had to ensure that any threat to one of us would be a threat to her, as well, or she might miss the nucleus rearing up for another attempt.

I should note that in the game, you aren’t really expected to fight this thing halfway through year two.  You’re expected to fight it towards the end of year two, or near the start of year three; it’s the hardest foe on the second landmass to deal with, and you want at least six people in your party to counter some of its more devastating moves.

They were dealing with it, and me, with only four of them.

I’m not sure if they would have succeeded if it wasn’t for Sumiko.

It wasn’t even a particularly clever idea, but it was one that she figured she could do.  She'd realized that once the massive nucleus started rolling, it wouldn’t stop until it reached the edge of the clearing.

Takeo and I knew that, of course; we had even discussed it occasionally with Shimizu.  But Sumiko was rarely part of the battle plan discussions, and running away from a giant gross pinball wasn't exactly the best time for a tactics debate. .

That wasn’t the key insight, however.

The key insight was that the crater it rose from was still there.

The nucleus used to be underground, and it was slowly rising towards the surface over time -- ‘conveniently’ only reaching it once somebody claimed the area it was buried in.  It would burrow through the earth, filling the area it left behind, until it reached the surface.

However, when it started to join the battle itself, it didn’t bother filling in the ditch it left behind.

A ditch that was, conveniently, just perfect for somebody to toss all of their bombs in.

The only issue then was how to get it to fall back into its previous home, which ultimately fell to Yuki.  she stood just far enough away from the crater that she’d have plenty of room to back up as needed.  Shimizu was still spinning around the giant parasite meatball, slashing into it, bleeding it out… and then…

Bang!

Yuki shot the Atlantean rifle right into a spot Shimizu had already cut into a dozen times.  The nucleus rocked back in pain and shock.

The Atlantean rifle is a fancy thing. It looks like a fancy noblewoman's showpiece, all swirly engravings and gold inlay on the frame of a cookie-cutter sci-fi blaster. It shows that combination in how it feels to hold and shoot:  Big, heavy kickback, shoots a big green laser blast, tons of damage.

Of course, laser guns shouldn't have recoil because they shoot light and not — eugh. Eugh!  Ignoring that, moving on!

Normally, because of its age and wear, the Atlantean rifle can only fire once a day.  There’s even a lore blurb about it in the game that ‘only a true genius would be able to recover some of its functionality’.  

Fortunately, we had a Sumiko.

And even better, we had a Takeo that knew just enough of how Sumiko had fixed it in other timelines to give her a big head start. 

So instead of a mere ‘bang’, we got:

Bang!  Bang!  Bang!

Despite the improvements, four times a day was our limit; any more could damage it in ways that would take a long time to repair.

But the massive flesh-orb of parasites didn’t know that.

All it knew was that something in that direction had hurt it.

Hurt it a lot.

So it charged.

Shimizu darted to grab Yuki, diving to one side with her so she wouldn't get squashed as the parasite nucleus rocketed through, rolling into the crater…

…And landing right on top of the massive fuck-load of bombs and poison that Sumiko had put at the bottom.

The detonation was so intense that it actually bounced.  There was the sound of something akin to a fleshy balloon being forced away as it rose up, which released a truly noxious combination of nucleus-blood and poisonous gas.  Not a lot, but everybody could see it rise up by a few inches, and then feel it when it landed again, hearing a disturbingly wet ‘splat’ noise echo through the woods.

The damage wasn’t the main goal, though it was certainly something they were happy about.  No, the main goal was to daze the nucleus.  They got it trapped in a ditch it would have a hard time escaping from, blasted it with enough explosions and poisons to stun it, and then everybody dogpiled it.

Takeo still had to distract ‘me’, of course, but with him keeping the puppet busy?  And with the nucleus finally stuck in place again?

The swarm of parasites surrounding them were little more than pests as they unloaded everything they could manage onto the evil meatball.

And it worked.

After what was, and I quote, “Far too long and far too short” of a time, something within it -- burst, like a popped water balloon.  It shuddered, then stopped moving except to slowly deflate with an odd noise and a deeply unpleasant smell. 

Every parasite around them suddenly collapsed.  Myself and my parasite-suit included.  While a few of the simpler ones recovered shortly and wriggled off, I would be out of it for a solid week.

A week during which they removed my parasites!