A Man's VS Game 5
A ten-meter ogre clad in armor of holy power crossed the threshold of death and went on another rampage. Not all ten of them rose again — it wasn't as if she were resurrecting the already dead — but the ones that did were more than threatening enough.
The viewers cackled and flooded chat with mockery at the black mage's frothing, apoplectic rage. Only Han Se-ah stopped laughing mid-chuckle and stared blankly into empty air. If the people around her hadn't been so fixed on Irene's holy magic, someone would have asked if she was feeling all right — her gaze was that blatant.
The camera that had been locked on the holy-powered ogres swung back without a word and framed the quest window she was staring at.
In other words: the window announcing that Irene's character quest was complete.
"…Looks like Irene unnie's quest condition wasn't hunting a boss monster at all. It was more like hatching from an egg — a change of heart, a shift in mindset. Normally you'd be fighting a mid-boss or a boss and have some kind of epiphany mid-fight, but Oleg and Alissa just… heh, heheheh…"
She was a woman who had refined her holy magic out of guilt — guilt that the healing arts she practiced could not mend the wounded adventurers who came to the temple — and who had finally chosen the path of pilgrimage into the Tower. Born a natural 5★, she had spent more than a decade honing herself, and the single holy art born of that labor had been recognized by the System as a miracle.
A nun who wrought miracles in the Goddess's name was, of course, called a Saint.
"So the skill is… Voluntary Conscription? What is this, some kind of K-Army skill?"
Han Se-ah slowly read through Irene's skill alongside her howling viewers.
Conscripts enemy units with the lowest HP ratio as Legionnaires.
Conscripted Legionnaires prioritize hostility toward the Demon King's army.
When a Legionnaire slays an enemy, Doctrine stacks increase.
Slaying a black mage or a Tower monster doubles Doctrine stack gains.
At 20 Doctrine stacks, Legionnaires are healed.
At 50 Doctrine stacks, Legionnaires are empowered.
At 100 Doctrine stacks, all stacks are consumed to conscript additional Legionnaires.
"So basically… holy-power zombies? Get kills and they heal up like a holy hamster wheel, get even more and it spreads like a zombie infection — more enemies convert into Holy Chunshiks. And right now those ten-meter Holy Chunshiks are going absolutely berserk over there."
Just as Han Se-ah described, a glance past the quietly collapsed section of the fortress wall revealed a spectacle beyond spectacle.
Ogres forcibly mutated into Legionnaires — no, ogres who had been moved by Irene's holy magic and voluntarily conscripted — were smashing the 60th Floor's army to pieces in the Goddess's name.
Sensing that the empowered ogres were nothing to laugh at, the black mage frantically poured elite troops out of the fortress. The orc grenadiers and centaurs outside had clearly been mere fodder; what came pouring out now looked vicious even at a glance.
Three-meter heavily armored halberdiers, rag-golem constructs stitched together from orc and human corpses, zombie ogres with siege ballistae mounted in place of arms, and a black magic corps of spirit-type undead — wraiths, banshees, and the like.
A terrifying undead army that, even when cut down, would rise again through violet crystals forged from human souls harvested by the mid-boss—
"Wh-what? Are the undead being purified?"
"Whatever it is, they're not attacking us! Target the ones that aren't wrapped in holy power!"
"Never thought I'd live to see the day undead actually help us!"
—and those very undead began to be "voluntarily" conscripted by Irene's holy power.
"What— what is the meaning of this?! My masterpieces, my works—!!!"
In an industry where your colleagues could evolve overnight from Schrödinger's mercenaries into Schrödinger's bandits, the sellswords had sharp instincts if nothing else. They scrambled to join the Holy Chunshiks in cutting down the enemy, and the black mage's undead army began to fall one by one.
The rotting corpses didn't lumber about with old-fashioned groans; they advanced like a modernized, fully equipped army, bristling with magical tools and siege weapons. The matchup, however, was catastrophically bad for them.
As the enemy ranks crumbled unit by unit, the ogres would occasionally flash with light — stacks building, apparently. Then, when the stacks finally maxed out, holy power condensed in midair, transformed into another suit of armor, and wrapped itself around a rag golem that had been getting thoroughly pummeled by an ogre.
Prioritizes enemies with the lowest HP ratio… a vicious skill that steals the tanks first.
The enemy's strategy had been simple: a massive rag golem holding the front line while zombie ogres in the rear, backed by ghostly black mages, fired ballistae. But once the trash mobs camped in the outer barracks were cleaned up instead of the fortress elites, and the rag golem itself got conscripted, that strategy collapsed in an instant. When your tank doesn't even buy time before going down — when it suddenly puts on holy armor and flips to the enemy tank role — what exactly are the backline DPS supposed to do?
What a garbage game.
Having slowly finished reading Irene's skill description, Han Se-ah muttered it under her breath while watching the fortress devolve into pure chaos, and the viewers agreed in chat that she had a point.
The first wave of conscripted berserk ogres had rampaged so thoroughly that an entire undead legion now stood armed in holy-power plate. A few Holy Chunshiks had died without healing — adventurers and mercenaries sniping kills and interrupting the stack buildup — but strictly speaking, the allied side had taken zero losses.
The only "penalties" on our end were Irene standing still and concentrating to maintain the holy art, plus us and the Ice Cross Knights staying out of the fight to guard her. Frame that as conserving stamina for the boss fight, and it was closer to a merit than a penalty.
"Ghk— how dare you, how dare you, hrrraaagh—"
The result was a mid-boss thrashing so hard you'd think he was about to die of high blood pressure rather than HP loss, watching the works of his own hands trample his grand design into the dirt.
His pattern, as far as I could tell, was to build fortresses and barracks, then keep resurrecting troops through the souls of kidnapped people — and the longer you took, the more resurrection stacks piled up. A guy like that had sealed the Gate and fled all the way from the 55th Floor to the 60th; if you'd walked in blind, you would have had a miserable time of it.
An undead army that kept reviving and blocking the path. Annoyingly tossed suicide bombers and stealth units as stalling tactics. And once those self-destructs, stealth units, and regenerating meat shields had you pinned, alchemical bombardment pouring out of the fortress.
Every last piece of it had been cleanly countered by two things: Han Se-ah's ultra-fast free-clear strategy, and Irene's 6★ awakening. Looking at it that way, I could almost understand how the mid-boss felt, about to keel over from sheer hypertension.
I used to feel the same way back when I'd sunk about three hundred into building a top-tier sustained-DPS arena deck, only for the next pickup banner to drop a sustained-heal purification Saint who single-handedly countered the entire composition.
"Man… at this point Oleg and Alissa are more of a luck totem than Lucky Lucius ever was. How do you clear a quest just by having a little chat with the mid-boss? I figured Irene unnie would only awaken after we killed the mid-boss, right before the actual boss fight."
We stood in a ring around Irene, who remained planted on the grassland maintaining her holy art. Our party held the line in front of her like a living barricade across the collapsed wall, while the Ice Cross Knights formed a rigid circle around us, faces set hard as stone.
Still, thanks to the miracle of Irene evolving from 5★ to 6★, we had nearly fully dismantled the mid-boss's entire pattern with zero human casualties — only a handful of Chunshik losses.
No more black magic crystals left to use. No more alchemical shells for the bombardment. Every troop he could raise was either already down or converted into Legionnaires, and no more undead were pouring from the fortress. All that remained was the mid-boss himself — a scrawny frame with nothing left but the veins bulging in his neck.
He was tall to the point of being lanky, but so emaciated he looked frail, and watching him get surrounded by ogres and rag golems in full holy-power plate was genuinely a sight to behold.
"Fine. Fine. You miserable bastards. Heh… heheheh—"
"Oh? Is he about to try something?"
"Enough. That will do."
In front of him: berserk ogres in holy armor. Behind him: a heap of rag golems smaller than the ogres but still a good four meters tall. And reinforcing that ragged encirclement: adventurers and mercenaries.
The black mage, laughing like a man who'd lost his mind, gripped his staff in both hands and prepared to show some final pattern — only for a voice thick with overwhelming presence to boom out from the suddenly wide-open fortress gates, cutting his last thrash short.
The black mage whipped his head toward the fortress in shock. A rag golem that had carelessly turned its back to the entrance was carved apart on the spot. And from inside the fortress, the boss monster itself came bursting out—
The moment I saw it, I too jolted in alarm, vaulted the collapsed wall in a single bound, and charged straight at him.
"Where the hell do you think you're going, stealing someone else's kill?!"
Even so — a boss monster sniping the mid-boss's last hit? That was just too much, wasn't it?