Defensive Turret
He no longer had to start the stage while surrounded. That alone made Ho-yeong feel considerably lighter.
"Then all that's left is figuring out how to deal with the charging Foghogs. We have to stop that rush no matter what."
The objective this stage was to defend the watchtower.
But Ho-yeong had no intention of fighting around the tower itself. If he allowed even a single body slam from a Foghog, the thing would come crashing down for sure.
Besides, the enemy's attacks were not the only thing he had to worry about.
The tower's durability could also be reduced by our own side. In other words, I need to watch out for friendly fire. So I have to fight with the tower behind us as much as possible. If I get hit by a Fireball or something, it'll probably collapse in no time. And there’s the Foghog skill, Nostril Mist, too. That makes it even more impossible to fight with the tower at our backs.
The Foghogs that appeared in the game burned stamina when attacked and snorted out a burst of hot breath. That Nostril Mist granted buffs to nearby Foghogs and debuffs to every other monster and player in the area.
Buffs
- Greatly increased attack speed and life recovery speed
- Increased resistance to status ailments
Debuffs
- Reduced vision and accuracy (applies to both melee and ranged attacks)
- Reduced stamina recovery speed (framed as heat fatigue caused by hot steam)
The vicious part was that the buffs and debuffs from the Foghog's Nostril Mist could stack. Which meant the more Foghogs there were, the harder they became to handle.
"I'll finish this before those big-nosed pigs can even touch the tower!"
They could say there was a sixty-minute time limit or whatever, but dragging things out had never really been an option in the first place. Once the stage began, the tower couldn't be moved.
No, maybe it actually could be? I do have the Minotaur Centaur.
Another ingenious idea flashed through his mind.
While the Minotaur Centaur hauled the tower along with all his strength, the rest of the force could buy time. It was worth trying. The Foghogs were fixated on the tower, after all, so interfering with them wouldn't be easy. Still, the Stage 1 boss had been the same way.
The Hobgoblin had focused only on reaching its target point, the eastern district office, and instead of actively trying to kill the troops that obstructed it, it had simply thrown them aside.
"Which means it'll probably be passive about dealing with blockers, namely us. That lets us keep casualties to a minimum."
Because of the Hobgoblin's pattern of charging straight for the objective, they had nearly failed to clear the stage, but thanks to that, they had not lost any troops. A blessing in disguise, perhaps.
There had to be some way to interfere. He didn't necessarily need to kill them; he only had to neutralize them.
And if the Minotaur Centaur got carried away by all that brute strength and smashed the tower himself in some kind of friendly fire disaster, that would be a problem too, so he had to account for that as well.
When there was one minute left until the timeline resumed, the status window blared.
"What now, another achievement? Probably some praise about a brilliant idea or whatever. I'm focusing on higher-rank achievements lately, so normal achievements don't exactly get the dopamine flowing anymore. Still, I might as well see what it is."
He had expected a routine achievement alert by now.
An urgent notification has arrived from the System.
Ho-yeong flinched at the words System and urgent.
"No way... no way... that's not it, right? Tell me it's not! Please. Right, it's probably just praising my cleverness. That's it, isn't it?"
But even he knew it. The System he had dealt with so far was not the sort of thing that did that.
Daliha, perhaps feeling sorry for him, took a long time before sending the next message.
Variable difficulty will be applied to the bonus stage.
A liquid he could not tell was sweat or blood leaked through his clenched fist. In a world halted by the paused timeline and washed gray, there was no way to tell the difference in color.
"Aaaagh! Again?! That's the one thing I've hated most since I got dumped into this godforsaken game! Variable difficulty! Screw that! May you die choking on pine nuts while picking them from a pine tree! Gahhhh!"
Ho-yeong screamed and clapped his hands over his ears as though he could not bear to hear it. But that did not mean he could mute the status window, and the message kept drilling straight into his skull.
The spawn coordinates for the Foghog have been changed from "fixed coordinates" to "variable coordinates."
He had once heard that goblins got headaches from the totem's commands and never really understood it. Now, at last, he understood it deep in his bones.
If the tower is moved before the stage begins, the Foghog spawn location will also shift accordingly. More precisely, it will appear within 200 meters of the tower's x-axis.
Ho-yeong dropped to the ground with a thud. He was on muddy muck, but not even a splat was audible.
"...If that's the rule, why not say so from the start? What am I supposed to do if you tell me now?"
Frustration rose like a snake from the pit of his emptiness.
"Or should I be grateful that you told me before I finished moving everything? Fine, thanks a lot. Really thoughtful of you to let me know so early."
A metallic scrape leaked through his gritted teeth.
"Variable difficulty means it adapts to the player's situation, doesn't it... System, look at me right now. I'm not the kind of guy who usually goes around telling people he's tired or struggling."
Daliha kept silent instead of saying, "The Guardian has spent the last three years saying 'Damn, this is hard,' 'This is seriously brutal,' and 'Honey, I'm so tired' more than anything else at work and at home."
"But lately, I'm exhausted. I'm already busy doing everything I can to develop the territory and prepare for defense, and now they want me to go to the capital, or clear away that black fog or whatever it is. There's too much on my plate. Fine, whatever. But how am I supposed to handle it when they just toss a stage at me like this? I'm not even ready to fight."
That was because the word tired had come out of his mouth. He had not said it once since becoming a high school student, even while working every part-time job he could find to help his sick parents.
"Just look at them."
Ho-yeong pointed at the characters, all of whom had stiffened to ash-gray as if coated in volcanic dust.
"The mages are one thing, but we don't have a single fighter I can trust. Shrakhim? Sure, his stats are a little better, but is he even a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of what Lilian can do? The Rainpa guards? Their combat stats are lower than Peach's, and that's saying something. Should I send Peach into battle, then? Since she awakened and can handle aura now?"
Even the words he spat seemed to be coated in gray.
"Shouldn't this so-called variable difficulty actually tilt in my favor this time? Huh?! It's called variable difficulty, but if it's nothing more than a penalty, then what kind of variable is that? That's not variable, that's a setup!"
Ho-yeong did not realize it, but even after the minute had long passed, time still had not resumed.
"And another thing, a bonus stage? How is this a bonus? A bonus is supposed to be extra, just a little something on top. Something you can skip if you don't feel like it, something nice to clear, but no big deal if you lose!"
In games, a bonus stage was close to what Ho-yeong described as a little extra, a breather event. It was usually low difficulty, and failing it carried no penalty.
"But what is this now? If I lose, the allied forces I've painstakingly put together fall apart in one shot? Are you kidding me? This is forcing me to clear it! Haa..."
Beyond the silent status window, he could see a distant mountain.
"We have a saying back home: 'Just when you climb one mountain, there's another behind it.' But at least mountains give you a view when you get to the top. Know what this feels like to me? It's like 'wall after wall.' I claw my way over one wall and there's another one blocking the path. I can't see a damn thing."
Now that he had sat down, his body felt at least a little easier.
"System, whose side are you on, anyway? Judging by the situation, I figured you were something separate from the bastard sending out monsters. But now I'm starting to think you're all in cahoots. Or maybe you are that bastard."
If only he could hear an answer, maybe his mind would settle too.
"I've put up with all kinds of hell because the rewards were good. But when I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere, you pile on some absurd unfairness? At this point I honestly don't know anymore. Do you want me to clear this game, or do you want me dead in it?"
Do you remember what I said about myself last time?
Breaking the silence, Daliha spoke to him.
"Of course. What was it again? Something like, 'The tissue pulled evenly from the pushpins neatly laid out on the other side'?"
I said I was the will that could uniquely help the Guardian amid the malice deeply spread through the continent's underside.
"I was just shooting the breeze. The meaning gets across, more or less, so let's leave it there. I'm joking, though, I do remember it clearly."
Ho-yeong slowly got to his feet.
"If Daliha is on my side and the one summoning monsters is the enemy, then what is the System? Neutral? Neither side?"
That was roughly how things went in the stories he had read.
The System is an existence that sometimes stands on the Guardian's side, and sometimes does not.
"...What? Are we some sort of awkward, not-quite-close relationship like that girl in the neighborhood and me? These days you're like my side, but not my side, kind of thing?"
Let me explain it with a concept familiar to the Guardian.
Daliha kindly explained it by comparing it to game terminology.
The malice laid across the world's warped fissures can be called a bug. It is an element that obstructs proper game progression. The bug itself is merely a mass of condensed intent and does not possess a physical body, but it can multiply or be erased.
"A multiplying bug. Kind of like an expansion bug?"
Ho-yeong nodded.
The one who summons monsters is an hostile NPC, in other words, an enemy. These entities possess physical reality as characters.
"So, an enemy I have to defeat."
NPC stood for Non Player Character. A non-playable character, and specifically one that interacted with game progression.
The bug spreads and comes into contact with the characters. In the process, enemies may become stronger, and neutral or allied characters may be corrupted by the malicious will and turn hostile. However, the bug itself does not directly control or assist the enemy. Do you understand?
"Hmm... so it's kind of like corrupting Command Center and getting a self-destruct trooper out of it? No, the self-destruct trooper moves according to the will of the Transcendent, so maybe that's a little different. Anyway, I think I get the gist."
Daliha looked doubtful that Ho-yeong truly understood, but decided to let it go.
The Guardian is the player. What task is given to a player in a defense game?
"Stop the enemy."
The answer came without even a second of hesitation.
That is correct. Then what obligation is given to a player? Recall the terms and conditions.
"Hmm. Something like 'play fairly,' maybe? No hacking, no account theft, that sort of thing."
Yes. Among them, there is no clause that says "find bugs" or "eliminate bugs," is there? Why not? Because that is the developer's job. In the western continent where you reside, the Creator God Aia is the developer.
"Creator God Aia... that's a name I've heard a lot in the setting. So the System itself is the developer! You're saying you're Creator God Aia, right?"
No.
"Huh?"
Ho-yeong blanked at the unexpected answer.
The System is a collective of administrators. Angels who assist the gods in managing this world, specifically the group made up of the lower-ranking staff.
"Angels'? So there are several of them."
Exactly. The angels who manage the System have immense authority in their respective fields. But an administrator can only modify the game; unlike a developer, they cannot create or rewrite the structure itself.
"Then who's the one handling variable difficulty?"
Ho-yeong asked the question he was most curious about.
The angel Solid. In game terms, his role would be balance management.
"So the unfair garbage I went through was a product of balance patching."
He barely managed to swallow the curse he was about to hurl, That patch was fucking awful! and asked something else instead.
"Then what about Daliha? Is she also an administrator?"
A soft, but strangely embarrassed voice answered.
I am simply on Ho-yeong's side.