Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 17 - Chapter 4

Chapter Four: Another Team Up

Event Area, Southeast, Plains

An hour had passed since the event’s beginning. The surviving participants were now enacting their plans to come out on top.

Some were focusing on hunting monsters and searching for clues to the puzzle, while others found advantageous positions and lay in wait to ambush other participants.

And then, there were some who attacked monsters and people without care or restraint.

“All right. Time to get this rodeo started,” said King of Cowboys, Jamie Crescent. He was among those who chose to fight indiscriminately. “C’mere, Matanga,” he said, making his crest glow and release his Embryo.

“PHOOO!” The creature made a loud noise as it manifested its form—a seven-trunked white elephant named “Elephantine Cloudscape, Abhra-Matanga.” It was based on an entity from Hinduism that went by many names, among which were “Airavata” and “Elephant of the Clouds.”

“Pale-Clouded Field of Unsight—Abhra-Matanga,” Jamie said, unleashing his ultimate. True to its name, Matanga began releasing dense clouds from its seven trunks. So white they blocked sight of the land below, the clouds spread until they engulfed Jamie himself. They soon reached as far as four hundred metels in every direction.

And then, those same clouds assumed a form similar to that creature that had created them—a massive, seven-trunked elephant.

“There we go. That’s a good size,” Jamie said as he sat down on the heart of the gigantic cloud-elephant—Abhra-Matanga’s actual body.

Having activated his ultimate skill, he then began enacting his plan for victory—crushing everyone else.

“All right, Matanga. Move,” he said. Obeying his command, the Embryo began to push forwards, causing the cloud-elephant to move at the same time.

Like a thunderhead that had fallen from the sky, the giant cloud-creature walked on the surface of the ground. However, it was nothing but vapor, so it lacked the weight to do much harm to the land below.

Still, its majesty was enough to invoke terror in the other participants.

“An enemy! Disintegrating Bow of Divine Lightning—INDRAAAAA!” a Master ahead of the cloud-elephant roared, unleashing his Embryo’s ultimate skill.

A bolt of lighting that rivaled a Superior Job’s ult in power struck the massive being, despite the fact that it was made entirely of clouds.

“That’s one helluva skill, partner. Man, 500,000 damage sure is somethin’,” Jamie said, showing no surprise that his elephant had been hit.

This was simply how Abhra-Matanga functioned—the cloud-elephant that echoed its true form was now part of its body.

“It took a whole 1% of HP outta my boy. Got a few tough guys here, huh?” he added—implying that his Embryo had 50,000,000 HP. “Trample ’im.”

With those words, the clouds moved to crush the Master who had exposed his location. Each step made far less noise than its size would indicate, but it was still enough to crush trees and monsters below.

And, perhaps most importantly, the cloud-elephant would never stop.

Attacks on it had almost no effect, so it was easily able to approach its target and begin stomping on him over and over again. For something as big as it was, Abhra-Matanga didn’t seem to do much damage. However, since it did not respond to retaliation, it could just repeat its weak attacks until its enemies were dead.

Unable to escape or withstand it, Indra’s Master soon fell.

King of Cowboys, Jamie Crescent was a member of the top clan in Huang He, Huili Yuminjun, and his role there could be summed up with the word “tank.” His cloud-elephant had the immense HP to weather any attack and carve open the path for his teammates.

This was made possible by his Embryo and job combo.

Abhra-Matanga’s base stats were on the level of a Pure-Dragon. It had 100,000 HP; 5,000 END; and an AGI score that didn’t even reach four digits.

However, the clouds it released with its ult allowed it to grow in size, increasing its HP by a factor of 50.

This ult was essentially a skill that gave it HP in exchange for increasing its size. It did nothing to Abhra-Matanga’s other stats, so its attack and speed remained the same. However, it greatly increased its hitbox, making it difficult to dodge any attacks—opponents had difficulty evading the giant creature’s strikes, and in turn it struggled to avoid anything aimed its way.

On its own, the skill would lead to Matanga being pelted with attacks and dying in spite of its vast HP.

That was where Jamie’s skills as King of Cowboys came in.

Found in the eastern parts of the continent, King of Cowboys was a hybrid Superior Job mixing the rider and tamer groupings, and was somewhat like the polar opposite of King of Chariots.

Whereas King of Chariots enhanced machines and other similar devices, King of Cowboys enhanced living creatures. One of the job’s skills, Cattle Lifeforce Enhancement, multiplied the HP of King of Cowboy’s tamed monsters by 10.

This skill was originally meant to help with stock-farming or subsidize a job’s ultimate skill, but when combined with Abhra-Matanga’s own skill, its HP went above and beyond.

Despite being a Sentinel—a high-rank Guardian—in its sixth form, it could achieve HP totals that surpassed those of Mythical UBMs.

With the addition of Lifelink diverting all damage suffered by the tamer to his monsters, you couldn’t even kill it by targeting Jamie himself.

Few tanks were as potent as a fully enhanced Abhra-Matanga.

“If only I could do this at duels. I sure wouldn’t be stuck at seventh anymore.” Indeed—Matanga’s ultimate could only be fully utilized in open fields. The confines of the duel barriers made it impossible for the combo to work as it did now, so the other duelists could overcome the limited buff to its HP.

In fact, Matanga had once been burned away completely by the second in the duel rankings, Xunyu.

“This here’s my pasture, though. I’ll crush the rest, win this little shindig and go git my praise from Lady Huili,” he said with a smile even as his cloud-elephant was being continually pelted with attacks. Everyone nearby had immediately decided he was the greatest threat and had focused their spells, arrows, and thrown weapons on Matanga, who didn’t seem to care all that much.

“These folks here are all hat, no cattle. They’re showin’ me exactly where we gotta go to crush ’em,” Jamie said, directing Matanga towards the source of all the attacks.

Crushing his enemies one after the other, he advanced to the north of the southeastern plains area until he came upon a river.

Beyond the river stood a dense forest. The river was by no means small, but the cloud-elephant could traverse it in a single step, and the trees of the forest were little more than blades of grass to its massive legs.

Jamie considered moving forwards and crushing any enemies that might be hiding inside...

“...Stop.”

...but then he ordered Matanga to freeze in place.

Seated on the massive elephant, he looked down into the forest, where he spotted a particular element of scenery.

“...I saw that in a picture,” he said. “Heard of it too. Seems like we really do have Masters from all over the world here. All righty, then...”

He hesitated a moment, wondering whether he should change course or press on...

“Matanga...we’ll go on a Rodeo Drive.”

...and decided to charge ahead.

“BHOOOHHH!”

“Rodeo Drive” was the name of King of Cowboys’ final ultimate job skill. It multiplied all of his mount’s stats aside from HP by 10 in exchange for draining HP at the appalling rate of 10,000 per second.

This HP drain would kill most mounts, but with fully enhanced Abhra-Matanga boasting a whole 50,000,000 HP, it was merely a drop in the bucket.

It was difficult to use in duels due to the aforementioned limitations the dueling rules put on Matanga’s ult, but there were no such restrictions holding them back now. Jamie prepared to unleash it while charging into the forest...

“If they want a rodeo, then I’ll give ’em one! Rodeo—”

...only for Matanga to vanish before he could do so.

“...Dri— Huh?”

The cloud-elephant vanished as Matanga’s true form became bits of light.

Left hundreds of metels above the surface, Jamie began to fall.

“What in tarnation...?” he cried, moments before he hit the ground and died instantly.

◇◆

Upon witnessing the disappearance of the massive elephant and the death of its Master, another Master—a beautiful woman clad all in black—puffed out her chest.

“Oh ho ho ho! And just like that, it is done!” She was thirteenth in every ranking in Altar—Dark Princess, Shion Manjushage.

“...This feels like a bit much. You actually made me feel bad for Jamie,” another person replied, in a pitying tone of voice. This other voice was Max.

“That big thing was an Embryo, and my Judas is an Embryo too!” Shion replied. “That makes us even and this battle was fair!”

“Judas” was the name of Shion’s Embryo, and it was exactly what had caused the cloud-elephant to vanish—or rather to instantly die. It was a Type Rule which gave all of her attacks a high chance to apply status effects. Normally, the status effect applied was randomly picked from a pool of thirteen, but her ultimate skill guaranteed that the target would receive a Death Sentence.

Shion’s build combined her spells as the Dark Princess—a dark magic Superior Job—with the high-probability debuffs from her Embryo, Judas.

“That thing was so huge and tough that he probably didn’t even notice the Death Sentence debuff,” said a third person—Chelsea—with a wry grin on her face. “Funny, since there was a countdown right above it.”

She’d been watching Jamie’s defeat alongside Shion and Max. The three of them had met up some time before the cloud-elephant appeared, and as a result, they’d agreed to team up for the time being.

Chelsea was in fact the one who’d told Shion to attack the elephant. The Dark Princess had then used her Embryo’s ult, Kiss of Death—Judas, and fired a controllable dark magic projectile. Using that projectile, she had been able to land a hit on the creature that appeared to come from a different direction.

While using that tactic to misdirect Jamie, they waited for the curse’s countdown to reach 0 and kill the elephant.

It’s not like it’d have helped him if he knew where we were, Chelsea thought. Once it hits, Shion’s ult can only be canceled by convincing her to do it herself.

It was widely believed that Judas’s Death Sentence could only be undone by Shion’s own will.

Is that really the only way, though? Does she really have to just land it like that? Honestly, it’s so broken that it makes me kind of uneasy. Well, even a dummy like Shion wouldn’t answer an incriminating question like that...and she probably hasn’t consulted anyone else even if she doesn’t get it herself.

Regardless, nobody in a battle royale would want to deal with an unavoidable one-hit-kill ability like Judas had.

It’s a reliable thing to have on your side, though, Chelsea thought. This had been why she’d chosen to convince Shion to try clearing the event as a group of three.

I’ll have to pass on Ray and his friend. I’m not gonna make an enemy out of Shion. And Maxie has info on eastern rankers we don’t know anything about.

Max had started out in Tenchi and had even become a duel ranker there, so she knew about rankers from the east—Jamie included.

If I’m gonna fight Julie, these guys are my best bet in terms of reliability and power... It’s the best way to clear this event and have an all-out fight with Julie.

Being a duel ranker and ex-leader of a ranking clan, Chelsea calmly and thoroughly analyzed the situation.

Though, maybe we should’ve kept that elephant alive a bit longer. Shion would win against it ten times outta ten just ’cause of the compatibility... Wait, that aside...

“...I wonder why that elephant stopped moving,” she said, thinking back to the massive cloud-creature stopping before a river.

“Perhaps it was in preparation for a skill?” Shion said.

“If that’s the case, there must’ve been somethin’ there that made him think to use it.”

“Well, it ain’t like we can figure out what’s goin’ on in the forest from here,” Max said.

“...True.” Jamie could see far and wide from his Matanga, but Chelsea’s group had no means of finding out what was beyond the dense trees.

If Julie were here, we could’ve had her fly up and look around, but that’s not somethin’ we can count on this time, huh? They had little info on the forested area, but if the giant elephant had stopped and tried to charge into it with a skill, it was probably best to avoid it.

“Let’s go to the opposite side of the forest. We still got no hints or plates,” Chelsea said.

“Huh? What about the plates Mr. Elephant dropped?” Shion asked.

“Leave ’em. Everyone could see ’em drop, so there’s probably tons of Masters fightin’ there now.”

“Well, that makes me a sad panda...” Shion was disappointed, but she understood the risk and did as she was told.

And so, the group went away from the northeast forest and headed southwest instead.

...I wonder where Julie’s fightin’ now. Chelsea’s thoughts wandered to the friend she had promised to face with all her strength.

◇◆

Juliet, meanwhile, was near the center of the forest Chelsea’s group were currently avoiding, in a space surrounded by trees that had been cut down in a strange manner.

“Ugh...!” she let out. Her expression showed how tense she was better than any words could.

“This woman...!” Nemesis said.

“...This reminds me of when I first met Figaro. I wonder why,” said Ray.

“Wh-Wh-Wha?! Wh-Wh-Wh-Wha?!” Alto replied, if something like that could even be called “replying.”

“Oh, it appears I have stumbled upon quite an exciting group,” said the fourth person here—their opponent.

Both a woman and an asura, she wielded different weapons in both of her hands as well as the two extra pairs of prosthetic arms sticking out of her shoulders. On top of that, a whole six more weapons floated around her.

She was like a many-armed deity depicted in some eastern religions.

“A-Ahhhhhhhh... Th... Asu—?!” Alto had been trembling in fear from the moment she’d seen her.

However, she was somehow able to weave together a few specific words.

“King of Asuras...Jubei Kaga?!”

This was the woman’s job, as well as her nickname. Fourth in Tenchi’s duel rankings, she was King of Asura, Jubei Kaga the “Multi-Asura,” and she was no doubt one of the strongest participants in this event.