Chapter Three: Legendary
About a certain special reward...
Special rewards were items that took the main traits of a UBM and adjusted them to suit the MVP’s needs.
Ray’s first special reward, Miasmaflame Bracers, Gardranda, was no exception. The three skills it had were the UBM’s traits adjusted to suit Ray.
The first two skills were obvious.
The flame and miasma abilities wielded by Gardranda had been turned into the easy-to-use skills known as “Purgatorial Flames” and “Hellish Miasma.”
So this might lead you to the question of what kind of trait was adapted to create the third skill of Miasmaflame Princess: Gardranda.
The hobgoblin herself had explained it, in fact: “I’m manifesting like this because I was defeated before the conditions to unleash my true power were fulfilled and I could break the shell and be born... probably?”
As a UBM, Gardranda had been originally designed to be monster with multiple stages. The death of the parent body, the Great Miasmic Hobgoblin, should have brought about the true form: the Miasmaflame Princess.
That meant that the Great Miasmic Hobgoblin’s third trait was “birth.”
Thus, upon its defeat, the power to summon the Miasmaflame Princess had become a skill.
Needless to say, this skill was insanely powerful, as it allowed the wielder to call forth a creature as strong as — or, in Gardranda’s case, even stronger than — the original UBM. It wasn’t on the level of Superior items, but it was still powerful.
Too powerful, even.
No one man could be allowed to wield such power so easily, and that was why the skill came with three major limitations.
The first was the unlock condition, which Ray had already cleared.
Just like Paladin’s Grand Cross, powerful skills were often barred behind certain conditions, and for Miasmaflame Princess, that was becoming MVP against three UBMs.
Defeating UBMs was no easy task. Even Marie, a Superior Job who’d killed Ray once, had only beaten two, and even among Superiors, you had those who’d never won against a single one, such as “The Unknown” wannabe, Gerbera.
This skill had ended up with such a condition because it, too, was adjusted for Ray.
To the system, Ray’s primary trait in the fight against Gardranda was being a low-level entity who’d defeated a UBM and become MVP.
Thus, that was considered during the conversion, and the condition to unlock the third skill became “becoming MVP against three UBMs.”
It was set to that under the assumption that Ray could surely fulfill it. If the unlock condition had somehow ended up being different, it surely would’ve been just as difficult for him.
Regardless, he’d cleared this condition by defeating the Great Miasmic Hobgoblin, Gardranda; Revenant Ox-Horse, Gouz-Maise; and the recent Void of the Black Sky, Monochrome.
The second limitation was the MP cost.
To manifest and fight at full power, Miasmaflame Princess, Gardranda used 1,000 MP per second.
Even high-rank magic jobs couldn’t keep her up for more than 10 seconds, and even level 500 casters couldn’t break through 30. That was how severe the cost was.
This wasn’t adjusted to Ray or anything — it was just the natural cost of using something so powerful — but Ray was able to clear that, too.
Due to the recent Monochrome battle and the panic right here in Quartierlatin, his Grudge-Soaked Greaves had gathered enough negative energy to produce 400,000 MP — enough for the Miasmaflame Princess to be active for a whole 400 seconds.
And the third limitation, the post-use punishment, was something Ray was more than ready for.
With these conditions cleared, Gardranda was made manifest and faced Ray’s foe with all her might.
Prism Rider, Ray Starling
One Gigaknight exploded, and Gardranda targeted the other one.
The scene made the Hell General make a strained smile and force a laugh. “H-HA HA HA HA! I’ll praise you for one-hit-killing a hurt Gigaknight! B-But that flame has to be a one-time use skill!”
He was right.
Because she was a summon, Gardranda didn’t use a single point of minion capacity, but I still had access to her stat and detail screens. Three of the skills listed there — Purgatorial Flames, Purgatorial Fist, and Purgatorial Flames: Zero — had become unusable.
That had to be a side effect from the “Zero” skill. That made sense, as it seemed powerful enough to come with such a powerful negative. Gardranda wouldn’t be able to use the flames for the rest of the summon time.
“This goblin is the ace up your sleeve, right?!” Logan continued. “And now it’s lost its ultimate attack! That means my Gigaknight will win!”
He extended his hand to the remaining devil and named some skills.
“Boosted Devil Strength! Boosted Devil Endurance! Boosted Devil Agilityyyyy!”
Once he was done, the Gigaknight began glowing in three different colors and became way more menacing than before.
“HA! I used my Rumpelstiltskin to multiply these buffs by ten! The Gigaknight’s STR, END, and AGI are up by 200 percent! I’ll crush your goblin to dust!”
I had no words for this. Why hadn’t he used these buffs before? Was he unable to use them while he had his devil army? Was it unlocked when their numbers dropped?
“200 percent, eh?” Nemesis pondered. “That means its STR and END are over 30,000, and it can move faster than the speed of sound.”
I know what you’re getting at, I thought back. You’re wondering if Gardranda can win. And honestly, I’m not sure...
I switched to speaking aloud. “But you and I both know she’s not easy to beat, right?”
“...True.”
The first UBM I’d ever fought was fearsome, tough, and crazy strong.
I couldn’t even imagine how this Gardranda, who was even stronger than that one, could ever be defeated.
“By the way, Nemesis...” I began.
“Yes, I know.”
It wasn’t just Gardranda. We had to act, too.
But for that, we needed the Hell General to—
“HA HA HA! Gigaknight! Show this low-rank the power... of a Superior!”
“W o W o w o O o O o o o O o O O o o O o O O!”
The buffed Gigaknight followed its summoner’s orders, crushing the pavement beneath as it dashed straight towards me.
As if completely ignoring the goblin, it raised its blade and swung it down at me.
But Gardranda stopped it with a palm strike that blasted it away.
“I knew you looked like the type to do something... like that,” I said.
“W o O O o!” The attack tore open the dented armor and dug a hole in its flesh, but the Gigaknight didn’t seem to care, and just roared at her while moving the insect legs peeking from its helmet. Its END was now so high that even that didn’t mean much to it.
Still, since Gardranda was as relentless as her mother, the STR she’d delivered with her strike was immense enough to send it a whole eight meters back.
“If you want to beat Ray, you need to beat me... first,” said Gardranda.
“She sounds like some rival character who switched sides after you beat her,” commented Nemesis.
Well... that’s pretty much what she is, right?
“Also, Ray, heal up... okay? As you are, you’ll die even if you get the... good one.”
“Yeah,” I said in realization. I reached into my inventory, took out an HP Potion, and started downing it.
Gardranda moved right between me and the Gigaknight, posing in a way that basically screamed, “You’re not getting past me!” Man, was she reliable.
Also... with all his antagonism towards Gardranda, I really hadn’t expected Logan to launch a surprise attack on me. What a piece of work.
“Tch...!” The Hell General clicked his tongue. “All right, then I’ll crush you first! It’ll be easy! The Gigaknight has way better stats than you!”
“Way better stats?” Gardranda tilted her head. “Not anymore.”
No one else here — not even Nemesis and I — understood what she meant by that.
At least, until the Gigaknight moaned in pain and fell to its knees.
“WHA—?!” Logan exclaimed.
“It’s got half of what it had before... I guess?” said Gardranda, and I finally noticed that her right hand was covered in a dark purple miasma.
It was like the legendary Chinese martial art, poison fist. She was wielding the three debuffs like a weapon on her hand.
Seeing that made me remember the concept of punching with fists imbued with Gardranda’s flames or miasma. I’d done that by accident when finishing off Franklin.
I wanted to try and replicate that, but it was difficult with miasma, and it had been impossible with the flames because I’d lost my left arm.
Gardranda herself, though, was doing that as if it was natural.
Well, she does have Purgatorial Fist and Hellish Hand in her skill list, I thought.
“But Hellish Miasma didn’t work on them before, did it?” Nemesis asked, and I could see where she was coming from.
We’d tried it on the first Gigaknight, and it had done nothing. The second one couldn’t have weaker resistances, so there had to be some other reason.
“Umm, my miasma is stronger... and I compressed it... see?” Gardranda explained.
“Compressed? Ah...”
I was familiar with the concept of debuff compression. We’d seen Miss Eldritch do it in The Lunar Society’s headquarters. But I was surprised Gardranda had been able to learn it from inside the Miasmaflame Bracers.
“So she’s actually above her true power now,” I said.
Kasumi had told me that summoned monsters became stronger the more you used them, but right here, we had one who had learned new things before even the first summon. That was insane.
“Hellish Miasma,” she said as she released the purple mist upon the ground. It didn’t rise any higher than my waist.
It was both a debilitating miasma and a smokescreen that hid her when she lowered herself.
“W o O o O O, w O o o O o O o O O!” Still afflicted by the debuffs, the Gigaknight stood up, swung its blade, and tried to bash Gardranda away with its shield, but not a single one of its hits landed.
It wasn’t because it’d lost sight of her in the miasma.
It was like my one-on-one battle against Logan. She’d predicted its attacks, evaded them, then punched back.
It wasn’t like a fight between two Masters, where a single ultimate skill could end it all, but that made the gap between their abilities all the more obvious.
“This is odd,” said Nemesis. “She’s spread a smokescreen, yet she moves in such an erratic manner. Don’t you agree?”
I did. Gardranda had created a smokescreen, but instead of using it, she was just moving around at supersonic speeds, making a mess of it and making it easy to see where she was.
What’s the point...? I wondered, right before I noticed Gardranda looking at us.
It was a signal of some sort, and I understood exactly what she was getting at when she was out of Logan’s sight and pointed at the smoke below.
“I see,” Nemesis said. “So that’s the purpose of this miasma.”
“Yeah... We can actually pull it off now.”
As we agreed on what we had to do, I sunk Nemesis, still in her sword form, into the miasma.
“Impossible!” Logan roared, clearly irritated by what he was seeing. “Mine’s a Legendary devil! How can it lose against a low-rank goblin thing?!”
“That devil is Legendary... that’s true,” Gardranda nodded. “Its stats are about the same as mine... and I’m Legendary. But...” She made an extremely annoyed face. “We aren’t simple enough to be measured just by rank. Your ready-made devils... don’t have the ‘self’ to stand a chance against a real UBM... understand?”
It felt like this was a matter of pride to her.
She was original and one-of-a-kind, and thus she was confident that no mass-produced devil summoned by magic alone could match her, same tier or not.
“I was born out of a man-eating hobgoblin, and turned out as a human-goblin hybrid,” she added. “That’s why I can move, think, and learn like a human. Since becoming a special reward, I’ve watched the movements of many rankers, experienced knights... and even Superiors. By watching, I understood, and by understanding, I learned.”
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