Infinite Dendrogram - Volume 19 - Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Remembering and Overlooking

Paladin, Ray Starling

My first battle in The Tournaments was done, and—however barely—I’d emerged victorious.

It was all thanks to the Wind Hoof Bomb. Against the God Hunter, I’d used it for just its knockback, but this time I had employed it more offensively. Not even the fastest enemies could avoid a huge explosion centered on you—essentially an omnidirectional attack.

Honestly, I felt like the cage being airtight made my explosion kind of overpowered, but both Halley and the duel barrier handled the force just fine, so it didn’t really matter—especially since the fight ended before the blast waves bounced off the walls and obliterated me as well.

Also, if Lang had charged at me while I was still compressing the air, I’d planned to cancel the charging right then. Doing that right as he touched my barrier would’ve basically guaranteed a hit. It would’ve been a bit of a gamble, though—Lang might’ve been incapacitated by the blow, or he might’ve kept charging through and ended up defeating me instead.

Regardless, the battle was over, and everything had worked out about as I’d expected.

Lang and I also got the opportunity to have a little chat after the match. Though we were both surprised by the cards we’d each played, we agreed that it was a pretty good and clean battle.

“...A ‘clean’ battle choked with miasma and poison gas,” said Nemesis. “I doubt it was good for the environment.”

“Kshoo. (Not...ecological.)”

Hey, don’t say that, I thought.

Anyway, looking back at the fight, the reason I’d won was that I had a lot of cards I could play. Lang was slightly stronger than me in terms of baseline power and he’d completely negated my miasma and counterattacks, but I could still beat him using Silver’s Wind Hoof Bomb.

This battle really drove home the fact that this versatility was my biggest strength.

I had Nemesis with her various counters, three MVP rewards, and Silver. My arsenal was so big that even if I was up against someone stronger than me, I had options that could give me the upper hand. This was even better in duels because even if I played every card I had in one match, they’d all be restored once it was over.

Winning my first fight had also given me more confidence. If I could keep this up in the second fight onward, I’d...

[Reiji, ya got a minute?]

“Hm?” Unexpectedly, I got a call over the Telepathy Cuffs from Shu.

[Yeah, sure. I just got out of my first match.]

[That so? Well, ya should know that uh...]

Shu seemed kinda panicked...or maybe troubled? Either way, he didn’t sound like he usually did. I figured he wanted to tell me something but was also hesitant about it.

[...Ya know what, forget it. I’ll tell ya after the preliminaries.]

[Huh? Uhh...okay?]

[Three more matches. Bear it, brother.] And with that, he ended the call, and I was left wondering what he wanted to tell me.

“What was that all about?” Nemesis wondered, just as confused as I was.

“...Beats me.” We looked at each other and tilted our heads in confusion.

When I came back to the waiting room, I instantly became the center of attention again. “He won. No surprises there,” I heard someone say, but honestly, I definitely didn’t feel like it was no surprise. The battle hadn’t been easy. I’d almost lost a bunch of times—hell, I could’ve lost the moment Lang created Halley. I hadn’t known what it did, so if he’d just charged at me instead of explaining it, I would’ve died easily.

“Indeed,” said Nemesis. She was out of the crest, but since there were people around, she spoke to me using telepathy. “I have always known this, but in Master-to-Master combat, one must always be wary of unknown abilities. Such ignorance might kill you in an instant.”

Yeah, I thought in response. With how varied Embryos can be, it’s scary to fight Masters who have powers you know nothing about.

“And that is why you need some means of avoiding such instant kills,” Nemesis continued via telepathy. “Duels do not allow Brooches or the Death Soldier’s skill, and my skills may lack the precision to fully protect you.”

I guess I should start every match by spreading Hellish Miasma.

That hadn’t done much against Lang because he was doing something similar, but it was pretty clear that it was an effective move in general. Whenever it actually worked, it would make my enemies slower. And if they lacked a means of attacking airborne opponents, I could use Silver to retreat to the sky. Then, I could spread the miasma throughout the area, switch to the flames if necessary, or even use Shining Despair—all while keeping a safe distance.

Though, that sounds kinda...

“If you do not mind me pointing it out... Would that not be...exceedingly villainous?”

...It would, I thought.

“What’s the point of looking good if it just ends up making you lose, though?” I asked out loud.

“Coming from a man who took a bite out of an undead and a devil, that is a truly convincing point...”

“I guess it is...whoa.”

I suddenly felt myself starting to doze off—the battle against Lang must’ve been more mentally demanding than I’d thought.

“We still have time until the second match. I will watch over you, so please do take a nap,” said Nemesis.

“You know what, I think I will. Thanks... Oh, and tell Smol Gar not to chew on me.”

“Very well.”

“Kshasha?”

I went ahead and closed my eyes. Soon enough, my mind drifted into sleep—not caused by a status effect, but simply from my own exhaustion.

◇◇◇

As I slept, I saw a dream—not like the one I’d had that morning, but a completely normal one.

“Mukudori, do you know the word ‘metagaming’?”

This dream was based around a memory I had from back when I was in a high school club. Still in my first year, I’d been sitting in front of a table and facing the person on the other side, who was the president. The club was called the Electronic Game Research Society, or EGRS for short.

“I...can’t say I’ve heard the word, no.”

“It’s a gaming term that refers to the battle over the information on the game’s current climate.” Prez had trading cards spread out on the table. She was organizing them based on their levels or types and putting them together into a single pile...building a deck, so to speak.

“The ‘climate’ or ‘meta’ of card games changes all the time. New expansions get released, different cards get banned, new limits are set, different decks become popular, and new combos get discovered. It’s very important to gather this information before you build your deck and go to tourneys. Do you know why?”

“Uh, I don’t play card games that much...”

“I see. Don’t worry—I’ll teach you.”

EGRS was a video game club, but the shelves here were full of hobby mags and manga. This was because the prez—Koyomi Hoshizora—was a fan of tabletop games, especially TCGs. Since I was a new club member, she invited me to join her on this path and gave me a starter deck, a playmat, and other few things for it, so I felt like I had to play along.

“Gathering information about the meta is important because it increases your chances of winning against more opponents. For example, if the current meta is centered around lots of effects that let you pick cards from your deck, you can turn the cards with those effects into so much scrap paper by using cards that prevent that. It’s things like that.”

“...I’m not sure about some of the terms you used, but I think I get the principle.”

“But if you use that deck against someone with a deck that doesn’t use those cards, it’s your cards that’ll end up being total scrap. Every tourney starts before the first match even begins, with contestants competing against each other by guessing what decks will be the most popular and how to counter them. You can sometimes use a side deck for changes and corrections, but that’s just more reason to really focus on building your deck.”

Despite saying that deck-building was serious business, she seemed to be having fun doing it.

“If being able to counter your opponent’s moves is so important, why not just have a deck with a whole bunch of different counters?” I asked.

“That’s not a bad idea exactly, but doing that comes at the cost of stability. Also...” she said before squinting. “There are decks that can’t be countered.”

“Huh?”

“I mentioned that new combos can be discovered, didn’t I? People sometimes take these unknown combos straight into the tourneys. Combos that remained beneath the notice of this information-based society are as powerful as they are obscure. Most of them are found by combining old, forgotten cards with brand-new ones. Overcoming the boundaries of time, these forgotten things—things you overlooked—return to bare their fangs at you.”

Silence ensued.

“Well, in a more general sense...” she said before pausing for a moment, closing her eyes, and continuing. “In games that involve RNG, you may sometimes encounter deviations in phenomena that thoroughly surpass all your preparations.”

She then opened her eyes and looked right at me. “Mukudori, that’s exactly what’s gonna happen to you in some game three years from now. Be careful,” she said.

Prophetic words that came outta nowhere.

“How do you know that...?” I asked, all tense.

In response, she said, “My deck-building fortune-telling says so.”

“Wait, this was all fortune-telling?! What the hell?!” I said in surprise.

“I’ll have you know it’s pretty accurate. When I did a reading for the vice prez, I got it so right I actually freaked him out. It was written all over his face. Get it? ‘Face’? Like a card face?”

“...I don’t know if you should be that proud of that one.”

“Well, anyway...be careful three years from now.”

As the prez said those words, my dream came to an end.

◇◇◇

I woke up to a feeling of someone shaking me.

“Ray, wake up. You were called.”

“All right...” I looked to the side and saw Nemesis placing her hand on my shoulder. She must’ve shaken me awake.

I checked the time and realized that only about half an hour had passed. Well, the barriers were accelerated and there were fewer contestants for this battle than the first one, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising.

“Hm...” I took a moment to think about the dream I’d just seen. Was it a sign? It couldn’t be, right? Man, what was up with the dreams I was having today?

“She said it would be in three years, huh...” Three years from the spring when I was a first-year in high school. Wouldn’t that be...now?

“Ray?”

“...Don’t worry about it.” I switched my focus and once again followed the worker to the stage.

No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream.

◇

When I came out to the stage, I once again passed the black barrier. It looked like I’d gotten here first, since I couldn’t see the other person yet.

Just like last time, I hopped on Silver and prepared myself. I was still kinda tense, but now I at least had an idea of what I had to do to give myself the best chance of winning. I had to establish dominance using my debuffs and flying, use that time to get a grasp of my opponent, then choose the most effective card I could play. And that’s how I...should win.

“Ray.”

“Yeah?”

“Your expression does not match your thoughts. And even your thoughts feel as though you are trying to convince yourself.”

Nemesis’s words made me realize that, yeah, my face was all stiff. My heart was uneasy too.

“I just...have a bad feeling about this,” I said. The dream of the past—the fortune that prez had given me—was coiling around me like some hint or a curse.

I felt like something bad was about to happen and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it.

“We are strong now,” said Nemesis. “No matter what sort of monster we face, we will not be powerless against it.”

Her words were encouraging and empowering, and they helped me relax at least a little bit.

“...Thanks.”

Soon after that, I saw my opponent on the other side.

“...Huh?”

The shock I received from seeing this person was incomparable to the one I’d gotten when I’d laid eyes on Lang. I could see her through the clear barrier, and that alone was enough for me to understand that the bad feeling I had was completely justified. The prez’s prediction was actually so right it was freaky.

Astonishment overtook both me and Nemesis as our opponent finally entered the stage.

We were now faced with a Scandinavian beauty in a Chinese dress.

“Wow! I haven’t seen you in so long!”

It was the fourth Superior of the kingdom—Lei-Lei the Prodigal of Feasts.

She was also known as a member of Death Period—our clan.

“...It’s been a while,” I said, still confused as to why she was here. “Umm...did you register ahead of time?”

“Nope! I just joined today! I got some unexpected time off work, logged in, got into the lottery to take someone’s slot and won! It’s pretty exciting, huh?! We may get to fight a UBM! I’m pretty excited that I get to fight you too!”

Lei-Lei answered my question with a smile on her face.

...Yeah, that was how it worked, wasn’t it? If a Tournament slot opened up, they’d hold a lottery to let someone take their place. A slot happened to open up, Lei-Lei happened to have some time off, and then she happened to win the resulting lottery.

It was all by chance—a deviation in phenomena.

I had no words. I’d completely overlooked the fact that this could happen.

Lei-Lei couldn’t log in regularly, rarely showed herself, and was generally hard to get ahold of. Shu had even told me that she was busy with work recently.

But even taking all that into consideration, the chance of her being in the Tournament was never zero.

This had to be what Shu’d wanted to tell me and then decided not to—that Lei-Lei got a spot in the Tournament.

He’d probably thought that there was no point in telling me because the ladder would be revealed anyway and it would only make me more tense.

But now we had this situation. It was just the second battle of the preliminaries, and I was up against Lei-Lei.

The randomized Tournament ladder led to us—members of the same clan—fighting each other.

This was the deviation in phenomena that thoroughly surpassed all my preparations.

Of all the people I could’ve fought, it had to be Lei-Lei, huh?

“...Ray,” said Nemesis. I could tell by her voice that she was shaken too.

Since both me and Lei-Lei were from the same clan, you could say that it was good for us no matter which one of us won...but on a personal level, she was no doubt my greatest obstacle in this Tournament.

“...We got the third one,” I said.

“...Indeed.”

This would be our third time fighting an Altarian Superior.

The first time was when we’d accidentally ran into Figaro in the Tomb Labyrinth.

The second time was when we’d faced Miss Eldritch after she’d kidnapped me.

And now this would be the third time—where we would fight Lei-Lei in an arena. It wasn’t an accident or a crime—it was a struggle to the end atop a duel stage.

This was only my second fight, but I felt like I’d already met The Tournaments’ final boss.

If something like this was enough to break us, though, we’d have already been broken long before this.

“I said that we would not be powerless no matter what sort of monster we faced, did I not?” said Nemesis.

“You did.”

“We now stand against something far more than a monster, but I have no intention of taking my words back.”

“I don’t plan on losing either. Let’s win this, Nemesis!”

“Certainly!”

Thus began yet another one of our fights against a Superior.

“Twenty seconds.” A referee began to count down the time.

Lei-Lei the Prodigal of Feasts. Though I’d met her on my very first day in Dendro, I still didn’t know much about her. The only time I’d seen her fight was the recording Marie’d shown me, where Lei-Lei had exterminated Goblin Street.

I couldn’t really tell what she was doing, though. She was somehow making Goblin Street’s Masters melt and explode by just touching them, but I had no idea about the mechanics behind that—neither Shu nor Figaro had ever told me.

“I suppose we can assume that we cannot let her draw close,” said Nemesis.

“Yeah...” It was pretty clear that even a single touch from her exposed hands could kill me.

I tried checking her stats using Reveal, but just like in the first battle, basically everything was hidden. I wasn’t allowed to know how much AGI or what job she had.

I couldn’t help but tense up and gulp.

“This is gonna be our first battle! I can’t wait!” Lei-Lei, on the other hand, looked completely relaxed. She was practically beaming.

“Ten seconds.” We were in completely different states of mind, but we both had the same amount of time until the duel began—and that moment was rapidly approaching.

“Five...four...three...two...one...zero!”

The moment the fight began, I spurred Silver into the sky. I didn’t know if Lei-Lei had any aerial combat abilities, but I knew that if I stayed on the surface, she’d get close and kill me instantly. It was best to go with my original plan and take to the air.

“Where is she now...?!” Would Lei-Lei follow after us now that we were in the air? That was the first thing I had to find out, and the result was...

“Wow! Your horse is flying! It’s one of those things that are all the rage these days, huh?” she said as she...began singing.

She wasn’t following after us. Hell, she wasn’t moving at all.

She was just looking up at us from the ground and, for some reason, singing a cheerful song.

An extremely pleasant voice began to fill the stage.

“...What the hell?” Was she that confident she’d win or was she just an airhead? I thought the song would give me some debuff, but when I checked my stats, I didn’t see any status effects on me.

Well, whatever it was, there was only one thing I had to do here. I had to fill the stage with miasma to create a better situation for myself and close the gap between Lei-Lei and me.

With that thought, I pointed my right hand down at her and activated my skill. “Hellish Miasma!”

“Fire!” Lei-Lei called out.

That was when my right hand disappeared.

“...What?” My right arm that was supposed to release the Hellish Miasma, as well as the right Miasmaflame Bracer equipped on it, had melted away.

Shock overcame me, and one particular memory rose up in my mind—my battle against Logan. After I’d summoned Gardranda, she’d used Hellish Miasma: Zero to completely melt an armored devil, bones and all.

What had just happened to me looked really similar to that, only I wasn’t the one using it.

The fact that even my Miasmaflame Bracer was destroyed made it clear that something was very wrong here.

“Is this...a power that buffs the enemy’s attack and sends it back to them before it happens?” I wondered. Powers centered around retribution might’ve been able to do something like that, but it didn’t feel right. After all, Lei-Lei wasn’t doing anything. She was just singing and looking up at me.

Or was this some kind of preemptive retribution power that only needed her to sing?

That also seemed wrong, simply because it was too absurd and unfair.

“What did she do to—” Before I could finish my sentence, I let out a cough.

“Ray...?!” Nemesis cried. I put my hand to my mouth, and it was instantly painted red.

That wasn’t all. While I was preoccupied with my right arm melting off, a disturbing amount of blood had pooled on the saddle.

It had all come from my own stomach. I had pain sensations turned off, so I’d failed to realize that my stomach had melted open.

“...What...the hell?” She wasn’t near me. She hadn’t touched me. I had no idea what she was doing to me.

Despite that, she’d already given me a fatal injury.

Lei-Lei was still doing nothing but singing—but at least I finally realized something.

Even though there were no debuffs on my status window, and even though I had no idea how this all worked, it was clear by now that this song was her attack.

I didn’t know how, but she was attacking me using sound as the intermediary.

And if I didn’t stop the song soon, I’d die.

“MONOCHROME!” As I raised my voice, my Black Warcoat began to move, taking the place of my right arm and forming into a jet-black cannon.

If I had to settle this as quickly as possible while keeping a distance from her, this was the only thing I could use. Shining Despair—one of my most powerful attacks, capable of delivering extreme heat at the speed of light. We were in an arena, but if I fired it downward I didn’t have to worry about it breaking through the barrier and damaging the city. It was just like the battle between Figaro and Miss Eldritch.

“Shining...” As I began to call out the skill, heat and light gathered in the dark cannon...and the Black Warcoat evaporated under the heat.

I had no words.

This was outrageous. Monochrome was not just the source of the Shining Despair attack—it also had Light Absorption that should’ve made it immune to lasers. How could its own laser have made it evaporate?

At the very least, this told me a lot more about exactly how this attack worked.

She wasn’t sending my attacks back to me before they even happened. If that were the case, Monochrome wouldn’t have vanished.

Instead, the phenomenon at play was...

“Resistance...negation!” I gasped.

She was dealing not with status effects, but something before the status effect had even been applied.

Resistance to status effects was a kind of hidden stat that was influenced by END and other things—and that was exactly what Lei-Lei’s Embryo affected. She completely erased resistances to status effects, as well as to the elements.

No, that wasn’t quite right—looking at what had happened, she didn’t just erase them. She brought resistances into the negatives.

She debuffed the resistances themselves, making it far easier for the target to receive status effects or be affected by changes in temperature. That was why my right Miasmaflame Bracer was melted by its own miasma, and why my Black Warcoat was evaporated by its own burning light despite being designed to absorb it.

It was like they were animals dying to their own poison.

“Such a fearsome power...!” said Nemesis. It was like Miss Eldritch’s Kaguya, except focused exclusively on debuffing resistances.

That meant that basically all attacks built around status effects and energy releases would just destroy me before they did anything to Lei-Lei. If I used my left Miasmaflame Bracer to fire Purgatorial Flames, they’d just burn along with my arm and become Charred.

I looked down at the hole in my stomach and realized that it had actually gotten bigger. And that wasn’t all—when I touched the wound with my left hand, the Miasmaflame Bracer released white smoke and began to melt.

“So that’s...how you’re doing this...”

Negative resistance explained the hole in my stomach too. You could call the wound a kind of ulcer—except in this case, it wasn’t just the gastric walls that were failing. My entire body had lost so much resistance to acid that even my own digestive fluids were harmful.

“Basically...she can kill any living creature without doing anything...” I said.

A wielder of a destructive song that made all nearby living beings die on their own—that was Lei-Lei, the Prodigal of Feasts.

To her, living beings were just pieces of meat that melted away and became like drink, completing the feast.

I had no idea who’d given her the name, but now that I knew its meaning, it just chilled me to the core.

“Ray... Well...? What should we do?” Nemesis asked.

This series of gruesome disasters seemed to have greatly disturbed her too.

That made me realize what I had to do, though.

“...Nemesis. The Halberd.”

“...Right away!” She transformed into a halberd with a black flag flying behind it and activated Like a Flag Flying the Reversal. I instantly felt the spread of the hole in my stomach begin to slow down.

“It’s not enough to cancel out the effect...but enough to make it less dire.” Reversal was also a resistance skill. Though it couldn’t flip my resistances back into the positives, it looked like it could make this more bearable, at least.

...It did the same with Miss Eldritch, so I guess it’s no surprise it kinda works here too, I thought.

“Nemesis...we’re gonna fight from up close.”

“...It does not seem that we have any other choice.” We’d lost all means of attacking from a distance, so we had to settle this in melee combat. “Why not use Silver to block out the sound?” Nemesis asked.

A dense enough compressed air barrier may have been able to block the flow of sound, but...

“We don’t know if it’ll stop the debuff that’s already on us...and we have no time to make it.” I was still losing HP to the hole in my stomach. Time wasn’t on my side anymore, so I couldn’t waste it by just waiting and seeing—or by making the Wind Hoof Bomb. “Also, we were watching out for her touch at first, but that probably doesn’t actually mean much.”

Lei-Lei’s hands must’ve had some sort of debuff on them.

Certain jobs in the boxer grouping had this skill called “Poison Hand.” By itself, it was just a debuff attack, but when delivered to a body with negative resistance, it became a skill that killed instantly.

Also, it could’ve been that her Embryo was activated by the sound the attack made when it touched the body. If Poison Hand actually had that kind of synergy with Lei-Lei’s Embryo, it really was a fearsome combo.

However, none of that meant anything if it didn’t touch me.

“I’ll flank her and try to attack her then.” Assuming that she was going all out in that recording I’d seen, I might be able to counter her—and I still had my Counter Absorption uses.

It was a shame my Reveal couldn’t see her stats, but I had no choice but to do this anyway.

“Though...I don’t think I have the attack power.”

“Indeed...the damage counter might as well be empty.”

My biggest problem now was that I had no means of finishing her off. The negative resistances made my Miasmaflame Bracers and Black Warcoat completely unusable, and all the damage I’d received so far technically came from me. Lei-Lei hadn’t actually damaged me—she’d only lowered my resistances—which meant that I couldn’t use Vengeance, Payback, or Chaser. And I doubted that I had enough power to defeat her with basic Flag Halberd attacks.

I thought that maybe Grand Cross would do the trick, but to use it, I had to descend to the surface and stand in place for a moment. She might have been able to take advantage of that, and if her level was high enough, it might’ve not been enough to kill her anyway.

I had few cards I could play, and my odds of winning were slim.

As things were, it looked like the only thing I had that could finish her off was...our new friend.

“You intend to gamble on that?” asked Nemesis. Well, we were already screwed. If we wanted to turn this around, this was our only chance.

“Yeah...let’s do it!”

“Very well!”

We rode Silver straight toward Lei-Lei.

Accelerated by gravity, we slightly shifted our trajectory as we approached. She was still singing, but she was paying close attention to our movements too.

“GRAAAHHH!” When I was close enough, I let out a roar and swung my Flag Halberd at her. However, she dodged it by merely throwing her upper body back.

The moment my blade passed her, she went back to her previous stance, then charged right at me. Silver was trying to get us away from her, but she was able to instantly close the distance anyway.

I had no idea if this was the result of some skill or if it was just her own stats. Regardless, I was now in range of her deadly hands.

Still singing her heart out, she thrust her poisonous claw toward me.

“Counter Absorption!”

But that was when Nemesis switched to her human form and created a barrier of light. It deflected the lethal hand and stopped Lei-Lei in place for a moment.

“NOW...!” I seized the opportunity, raised my left hand above my head, and used Instant Equip.

And thus, I took out the nameless axe covered in the black cloth.

I had a feeling that this weapon was powerful enough to defeat her. Even if merely swinging it once blew away my arm, it didn’t change the fact that I could still swing it.

Lei-Lei didn’t stop singing, but I could see her eyes slightly widen.

“HIYAAA...!” I began swinging the axe, and after it had only moved a few centimeters through the air, I felt something off.

It was as though something was flowing through me, with my left hand as its source.

After that, a change overcame my body so fast that I couldn’t even react to it.

It was just like what had happened to my right arm when I’d sparred against Rook, but with a far greater reach.

My entire body was turned to dust.

And as I felt myself shattering, my consciousness faded away.

◇

Next thing I knew, the stage’s barrier was undone.

In actual time, the battle had ended before even half a minute had passed.

I’d participated on the first day of The Tournaments...

...and was knocked out after my second battle.