CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND TWELVE

In the end, Jason decided that he needed more information. It was a pretty tough thing to admit, and it actually hurt his ego. Castor had seen the trick behind the Top Mech in just one exchange, but Jason couldn't make head or tails of it. However, it was more important to get results than to stubbornly stay in denial.

The Top Mech tried boxing Jason out again. If he wanted to escape, he'd only have to take a sharp turn to dive around the corner.

However, Jason stepped forward to meet his opponent's attack. In fact, he even decided he was alright with taking damage since he still had his Overdrive boost remaining.

He swiftly calculated the gap between the Red Minerva and the enemy machine, then measured the distance between himself and the corner of the Combat Dungeon. If this went poorly, he needed a bit of room to retreat as he healed up and regenerated.

He took three swift steps forwards, then clapped his hands together, joining the blueprint computer in his left hand with the powerful generator in his right hand.

BLAZING AVARICE: VALOROUS JI

With two of his items already lost, he needed to stick with his most reliable item. Jason jabbed three times, but he didn't put his full strength into the attack. When the blades manifested on the top, Jason pulled back instead of making content. His rapid series of jabs and feints disoriented the other machine, eventually pushing them to retreat.

Interesting...

Jason feigned yet a third attack, then abruptly burst forward, using the thrusters on his arms to increase his speed.

At the last second, he struck from two angles at once. He jabbed with the lance, then summoned a shark Biological Beast to bite his opponent at close range.

The twin blades emerged to block both attacks. The shark exploded against his opponent's blades but he pulled back in time yet again to save the Ji.

This time, after so many exchanges, Jason finally saw his enemy's weakness.

Just like before, the blade in the center returned to the inside of the enemy machine as it summoned its new blades. There was a loud whir as a small thruster appeared. The jet re-oriented the top's position, switching its spin and momentum from side to side to a precise 30-degree angle. One blade emerged from the side of the enemy Mech. The blade was once again aimed precisely at the chain and it lopped off the portion held in Jason's left hand.

As the blade emerged, Jason's perceptive ears caught a faint but grinding whir. He hadn't noticed in the chaos of the battle, but now that he knew what he was looking for, he realized what it was.

Earlier, it'd seemed like the Top Mech was unbeatable. The machine had swapped its orientation instantly, blocking off Jason's attacks by summoning a new blade from inside the machine. However, Jason knew that simply wasn't possible. All Mechs in competitive play had to follow the game's Credit cap balancing system--machines like the Crusher or the Smolderhulk couldn't be used in the Tournament of Assassins.

All the pieces had gradually added up together--the AI, the unusual number of blades, his opponent's pinpoint reactions--to mean the same thing.

In reality, his opponent only had enough material for about one and a half blades. It was shuffling the blades around the machine through a complex system of internal treads, tricking the opponent so that the machine seemed unbeatable.

Jason instantly recalculated his opponent's Credit Cap with the new information.

The Broadsword of All used in The Selection had a 20,000 Credit Cost. This new blade probably used less material since Top Mech's blade wasn't a handheld weapon. It was a ring that surrounded the Guardian X's circumference. As a result, the full ring was probably a little bit cheaper. The combined cost of the full ring and the half blade was probably around 30,000.

The internal grooves and modifications were probably extremely cheap - no more than 5,000 Credits or so. If Jason had to guess, those grooves were probably also responsible for moving around the high-quality thrusters he'd seen.

It was a genius strategy, and Jason felt a spark of admiration. Placing a powerful Broadsword of All around a machine at every point - something like a blade hedgehog - was impossible. Instead, this Top Mech's crafter had cunningly designed a machine that could pass a sword around and ensure it faced his opponent at its most powerful at every time.

He would have to keep that technique in mind. There were plenty of intelligent tactics that crafters used to cut down on the game's restrictive Credit cap, and this was one of the most intelligent. Now that he was a good crafter, maybe he could even implement that strategy in one of his Armors or a future machine.

Jason couched his feet as the machine turned back towards him again. Then, he sprinted around the Dungeon, reorienting himself so that he and his opponent were facing the opposite direction. The Top Mech whirled after him, slightly confused as to why he'd run in a large circle, but Jason was planning past this fight.

Now that he knew the trick behind the moving blades, Jason realized what he had to do--strike the top Mech at several different points such that it wouldn't be able to move the blades around in time. Castor had done the same thing with his six arms. Though Jason didn't have that sheer number of arms, he could compensate with his Biological Beast.

He would use a high strike followed by a low strike to through off the machine's aerodynamic shape. Jason needed to push the machine to an awkward point where summoning the second internal half-blade would push the machine off balance.

However, it was possible for him to gain an even greater advantage. Based on his previous experiences with Castor's Combat Dungeon...

Jason nodded.

He probably wasn't good enough to beat Castor in a head-on fight, so he'd go for broke here and try to win with an extremely risky plan.

First, Jason activated his Overdrive bonus.

OVERDRIVE: MAJESTIC WILL

Using his full heal right now was an obvious risk. Both opponents had spent the fight dancing around and analyzing each other and Jason had taken hardly any damage. His only missing part was the Red Minerva's tail blade. However, Jason needed the flexible tail blade to fully enact his plan.

He dashed forward, twisting the tail and spinning it several times to gather increased momentum. Before striking with his tail, Jason lashed forward in a vicious kick directed precisely at the center of the machine. Against the Top Mech, very few opponents would ever directly attack the spinning blade in the center. It was obviously there to deter enemy strikes.

Indeed, the blade instantly sheared straight through the Red Minerva's leg. Scarlet blood gushed in the air.

Jason ignored the damage, striking with his tail in a vicious upward blow, targeting an exact point just beneath the center of the lower-left quadrant of the spear. Despite Jason's careful targeting, the strike was more or less an intuitive guess.

Fortunately, his measurement was correct. Jason's tail struck the spherical Mech, sending it falling uncontrollably to the other side of the room.

Ah!

That was an interesting bit of programming. The creator of the Top Mech had intelligently adjusted his machine's AI so that it would not jam the machine's spinning. After all, the Mech would be nothing more than a sitting duck if it lost its all-valuable momentum.

However, that had simply exposed another weakness - an attack that struck at the vulnerable point with a delay.

Even without his amputated leg, the Red Minerva was still far faster than the heavy Top Mech. Jason clapped his hands together, summoning the Valorous Ji again and accompanying it with yet a third shark. With his remaining leg, he leapt forwards.

Jason lifted his arm a slight amount upward, aiming at the precise point where the emerging blade would jam the enemy's momentum. To distract the AI, he lashed out with his tail, spinning the blade to target the disk in the center. Finally, he switched his summoned Biological Beast at the very last second, feigning like he would attack with the shark before sending the Hawk to dart around behind his enemy.

His triple attacks forced the AI into an impossible position, since it didn't have enough blades to stop the incoming attacks. In addition, Jason's desperate lunge was far more powerful than Castor's glancing blow.

The Valorous Ji instantly crumpled steel, punching through the Top Mech's frame like it'd never existed at all. The disintegrated computing system and obliterated blades jerked wildly across Jason's screen. Despite the sharpness of the blades, they were nothing compared to the sheer accumulated force of Jason's blow. The internal treads and thrusters exploded into a million pieces as Jason stepped over the defeated body of the Top Mech.

But that wasn't all.

The bricks behind the Top Mech began dissolving as the Combat Dungeon's timer ran out.

The razor-sharp pieces of the Top Mech flew backwards, surging straight towards Castor's Mech.