Chapter 106: What Does It Mean When the Castlevania Landlord Is Away and I Get to Be the Sub-Landlord?
As the Spirit Wave Style's senior disciple, how could Ross not know the Spirit Gun? He simply hadn't used it before to avoid any overlap with Yusuke's role.
The Spirit Gun, a single-shot Nen energy blast that breaks targets in one hit, and the Spirit Light Bullets, a spread-shot wide-area Nen blast suited for dealing with multiple enemies, were both compulsory courses in the Spirit Wave Style's Attack branch.
Riehlvelt's Twin Snake whip net was adequate for pressuring ordinary fighters with no ranged options, but against Ross's large-caliber Nen energy blast, it simply couldn't hold.
Here, Ross had used the Mega Buster as the medium for releasing the Spirit Gun.
He could technically release it from his finger. But as a Conjuration-type talent holder, Ross's Emission compatibility was only 40%. This meant that even burning the same amount of Nen, his energy blasts would only carry 40% of the standard power.
And among the type affinities currently loaded on Ross, there was Enhancement, Transmutation, and Manipulation. No Emission. What face did this senior disciple have left?
To maintain some shred of senior disciple dignity, Ross had started calculating how to boost his Spirit Gun output. His attention naturally fell on the Mega Buster, which specialized in ranged emission.
This hand cannon, fundamentally descended from the original Mega Man game, had no charging function. But since it was a Nen tool, it could accept Nen reinforcement through injection. Ross began using it as the medium for releasing the Spirit Gun.
And it worked. The Spirit Gun's power genuinely increased. Compared to finger release, the boost was roughly 10%. Already quite meaningful.
As has been said before: Nen was an idealistic ability by nature. Because Ross genuinely believed in his heart that the Mega Buster could increase the Spirit Gun's output, it actually did.
A similar situation had occurred with a Phantom Troupe member named Franklin, an Emission-type ability user.
His ability was the Dual Machine Gun: one finger firing high-density continuous Nen blasts in the pattern of a Gatling gun. And precisely because during its development he had the thought that if all ten of his fingers were cut off, the blasts might be even more powerful, he actually did it. In practice, the blasts' power did increase.
As for Riehlvelt, it was purely a case of Ross overwhelming him with a volume of Nen he had no way to defend against, completing the one-shot KO.
The Navigation Arrow also worked as normal. After Ross was announced the winner and stepped off the ring, it had already completed its extraction and returned.
Ross estimated it would be either whip-related or vehicle-related. The actual result didn't exceed his prediction.
[Dirt Bike: Grade C Nen tool, Vehicle type. From Excitebike.
Can use conventional fuel, or Nen as an alternative propellant. Excellent off-road and shock-absorption performance.
When the player rides the dirt bike and uses the rear wheel to clip the front wheel of another vehicle, the target vehicle will inevitably flip. If the target vehicle has Nen enhancement, a Nen quantity contest must be resolved; passing the contest completes the clip-and-flip, failing causes the player's own vehicle to flip instead.
The dirt bike can be bound to the player's mount slot via Conjuration, requiring 5 units of maximum aura to carry on the person; the aura cost can be temporarily released during Conjuration.]
As a vehicle, the dirt bike's practical functions weren't especially distinctive. A real-world dirt bike could do most of the same things. What earned it Grade C was clearly the special clip-and-flip ability: rear wheel to front wheel, guaranteed flip.
In the original game, the player only needed to get half a bike's length ahead of a competitor, ease into their lane, and the rear wheel would firmly kiss the front wheel of the bike beside them. The kissed bike would immediately tip sideways. The rider would be thrown far off course, then get up from the ground and jog back to their overturned machine.
When it happened to the player, the same process applied. Holding the rapid-fire button sped up the rider's run back to the overturned bike.
Ross even thought that the Famicom Excitebike flip-and-find-your-bike mechanic might have been the prototype for Road Rash's recovery system on PC.
Looking at the vehicle-clip effect, it seemed like even large vehicles could be flipped. Could this thing flip an eighteen-wheeler?
That was the first thought that came to Ross when he read the clip description.
And actually, it seemed like a real possibility. The prerequisite would be that the eighteen-wheeler was an ordinary vehicle without any Nen enhancement.
Hunter world abilities were wildly varied, but people who applied their abilities specifically to vehicles were probably relatively few. The only example Ross could think of was Riehlvelt...
No, wait.
He suddenly remembered: someone from Sensui's faction could apparently use Nen injection to turn an entire large truck into a homing projectile.
The aura requirement for that was genuinely terrifying.
But that was probably about the full list. For Nen users, developing vehicle-specific abilities was indeed quite a waste of Nen memory capacity.
Having secured his first floor-200 win, Ross received another 90-day preparation period. He chose not to immediately return to the dojo, instead using the time to grind through the Tower of Druaga Secret Realm.
It was like playing a real-life TAS. If any single detail went wrong, several seconds or more were wasted on the spot. In speedrunning, that kind of loss was fatal. Memorizing every detail, every route, every action, precise down to the frame.
And Tower of Druaga's difficulty was different from the high-randomness Nekketsu New Record.
Every single floor of the Tower of Druaga was a maze. Sixty floors in total.
Previously, through a screen, Ross could look down on each floor from a god's-eye view. Routes were clear at a glance. Enemy positions were obvious. Where the stairs were, where the keys were, where the treasure chests were: all perfectly visible.
Inside the Secret Realm with his actual body, the god's-eye view was gone. He had to navigate sixty floors of mazes physically, each one with a different layout, filled with different enemy types. The demands on memory, spatial awareness, pattern recognition, and combat were all substantial.
That said, for all its requirements, Tower of Druaga fell within the realm of practice-makes-perfect. Unlike Nekketsu New Record with its high randomness and varying opponent lineups, Tower of Druaga could be systematically mastered. If he had to choose one to focus on for Creator Authority, Tower of Druaga was the higher-probability option.
But just as Ross was diligently grinding through the floors and building skill experience on the side, a series of notifications appeared in front of him.
[Detected: a Nen ability user classified as an "adventurer" in the real world is attempting to enter the Castlevania domain...]
[Detected: "Dracula Vlad Tepes" is temporarily absent and currently not inside Castlevania...]
[You may now temporarily take over Castlevania through Creator Authority via a Projection Entity descent.]
[You may configure the corresponding BOSS units in advance before the adventurer reaches each scene's BOSS room.
Current configurable BOSS units: Dracula, Genbu, Byakko, Seiryu, Suzaku. (All are projection entities)
If no configuration is made, the default original native BOSS units will be used.
After configuration is complete, you may remotely control Castlevania's standard unit, elite unit, and BOSS unit responses to intercept the adventurer by running the Little Tyrant console's Entertainment Mode.]
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