kscans

Chapter 80 - The Goddess and Sadaharu

A pure white space. The Goddess, watching a monitor that floated in midair unsupported by anything, raised her voice. Her expression was like that of a child who had found a new toy.

"Sadaharu, look at this! Hey, I said look!"

"…Honestly. What is it now?"

Okabe Sadaharu, who had been concentrating on the dungeon settings, glanced at the monitor the Goddess was pointing at, a hint of irritation in his voice.

'Fighting Spirit, Release!'

On the screen was a clip of Hayate, playing on a loop.

"See, see!? Isn't this so cool!?"

"Hayate-kun again. If I recall, that's a pose effect he's fond of using."

"He's the monster who utterly thrashed the Undine I was controlling, so I check in on him from time to time. And now it looks like he's powering up even more? What is this Fighting Spirit Release? I don't know about any skill or feature like that!? He's already impossibly strong, and he's going to get even stronger. Isn't that a cheat!!!?"

"No, his is just for show."

"…Huh?"

"It's an effect that appears when he strikes a specific pose. The aura-like thing he's cloaked in. A little while ago, you asked me to compile this system to be released once a Grade 4 dungeon was cleared, remember?"

Sadaharu built the systems, and the Goddess implemented them into the real world. As such, Sadaharu had explained the pose effect to the Goddess beforehand.

However, she had completely forgotten. Or rather, she hadn't even been listening to the explanation.

"What. So it doesn't do anything?"

"That's right. He probably just uses it to pump himself up. That was the original function, after all."

"…………How boring."

"Excuse me?"

"Boring, boring, so boooooring! If you're going to strike such a cool pose, you should get stronger! Just for show!? What's that, such a letdown! It's boring!!"

"You can say that, but you got thrashed by a normal-state Hayate-kun, you know? If he really did get a power-up, seriously, no one would be able to stop him."

Sadaharu had a vague, bad feeling. And that premonition was about to come true.

"I've got it! I'll just make this Fighting Spirit Release a custom setting of mine and make it usable in the real world!"

"Seriously?"

"I don't mind if he gets stronger! I have you, Sadaharu."

"…So you want me to make it possible to crush Hayate-kun, who will have become inhumanly strong, with an even more powered-up boss character?"

"Uh-huh. You really are a genius, Sadaharu. You understand what I want to do right away."

He thought she was just simpleminded and easy to read, but he didn't say it out loud.

"Well, if that's what you want, I'll build the system, but I can't say for sure if a human will be able to handle that kind of power. Even normal enhancement, or buff, skills require very precise adjustments."

In the game, there were physical enhancement skills that increased strength and speed upon use. But if a real human used them, the gap between the power their brain perceived and the power they could actually exert would make it impossible to act properly.

To prevent this, they had managed to cope by designing it so that when a physical enhancement skill was used, it would simultaneously assist with perception and brain processing.

"What would be the absolute coolest thing to happen when you use this Fighting Spirit Release?"

"So you're not going to listen to me. Well, that's nothing new."

With a look of resignation, Sadaharu began searching through past stream videos.

"Look at this. Hayate-kun is struggling."

"Whoa. The number of monsters is insane."

It was a swarm of monsters, enough to fill the entire area. Hayate swung his swords desperately, but the enemy numbers didn't decrease at all.

"This is just hopeless."

"Just watch. It starts from here."

'I guess I have no choice but to use it. Fighting Spirit, Release!!'

As Hayate struck the pose, a red aura swirled around him. It was just an effect. But then.

"Wha, huh. Hey!? What, that's insane!!"

Hayate, who until then had been barely fending off the monster onslaught, went on the offensive.

With a single swing of the swords held by his Manipulators, he slaughtered several enemies at once. He would parry an attack, deflecting it into another enemy. As if he had compound eyes, he perfectly grasped his surroundings and annihilated the monster horde with maximum efficiency.

"He liked to pull a move where he pretended to struggle, then went on an absolute rampage after using Fighting Spirit Release. I doubt he has the luxury to do something like that in the real world, though."

"What would the power-up ratio be?"

"If we say his combat power while struggling is a 10, after Fighting Spirit Release, it's about 20 to 22. I actually had an AI analyze it before out of curiosity."

"Then let's make it 30!"

"Are you sure? That means tripling a human's entire physical ability. An average high school boy can do a running long jump of about five meters. With Fighting Spirit Release, they'd jump fifteen meters. They'd be actual monsters. All of humanity that enters dungeons would become like that."

"But the dungeon monsters will get stronger from now on, right? Weapons, skills, and magic will become more powerful too, but if the humans using them are fragile, the game won't work. That's why I think we need a new enhancement system."

Back when FWO was a game, it was common for avatars enhanced by skills to fight as if they were dancing through the air. But now that dungeons had appeared for real, almost no explorers fought by jumping high into the air like Hayate.

"You've really thought about this, Goddess-sama."

"I'm great, aren't I. Praise me."

"Yes, yes. So, an ability increase of 300 percent is okay, then?"

"Okaaay!"

"By the way, when will you implement this?"

"Do it right now! I've actually slowed down the flow of time in this space to one ten-thousandth of the real world's."

"What."

"Look at this screen. See how that monster boy is still holding his pose? In the real world, only about 0.06 seconds have passed."

At the moment Hayate shouted Fighting Spirit Release and the aura began to swirl around him, the Goddess had altered the flow of time in their space.

"Let's go ahead and actually power this kid up."

"Don't you think arbitrarily tripling his strength while he's surrounded by monsters is a bit sadistic? If he can't control it, he'll die."

"He'll be fine. He'll manage somehow. And if he doesn't, I'll just provide a little Goddess Service and resurrect him."

"Well, under those conditions, I guess it's okay."

He still had his doubts. But it was Hayate. He would probably be fine.

With that thought, Sadaharu began building Fighting Spirit Release as a true physical enhancement system.

"Hee hee hee. This will make the world so much more interesting!"