ShangriLa Frontier ~ Shitty Games Hunter Challenges Godly Game ~

While yours truly and the other “me” were busy duking it out with everything we had in the one corner of the theatre created by the Orchestra, at the same time the battle between the two “Divas”, Sigma and Elise Jitter Doll for the position of the best songstress in this enclosed space was also as fierce as our own battle, and it just continued to heat up more and more as the time went on.

Now, even though the guard seemed to be successful here and it managed to bring me to safety for the time being, I make a dash to the side in order to avoid any possible counterattack that might be coming my way right after that. Or to put it another way, I would be really surprised if there was not a counterattack already on its way towards me. This is starting to become annoying really fast, I am not going to lie here. No seriously, just how dedicated are you to stay on my ass and harass me with those attacks of yours, the other “me”, huh!? No, I mean seriously! Really now!! I would certainly appreciate it if you could give me some breathing room, even just a little bit and for a short moment!

But in all seriousness, as with everything else in this life, there are good things to everything as well as the bad things. And determining what kind any given thing is depends solely on the number of those good and bad things, and which side is greater in number. This battle right here was no exception from that rule.

First of all, and that is probably the most important factor right here, the presence of a Conquest Doll is much advantageous when it comes to the Orchestra battle than if I were to do it without one fighting by my side. That’s without a shred of a doubt. I mean, this whole area was most probably created solely through the power of music and song, a sort of world of melody, if you were to put a name on it. And just as I could see before, inside of this space the Orchestra can even conjure parts of music instruments to use as weapons the very moment it feel threatened even a little bit. And I surely don’t need to experience another pipe organs coming from the ground to reaffirm that theory. But even so, there is a catch to that ability, something that I only happened to pick up on quire recently through observation: those weaponized instruments cannot come out from just about any random place inside of this theatre! There is only a limited area where such a feat is possible! What is that area, you ask? Well, it’s that red carpet that is laid on the ground across the theatre, of course! But the carpet cannot possibly cover the entirety of the floor, and oddly enough the places where there is no carpet, only raw concrete floor, is free from any such interference and annoying gimmicks! So now that I am aware of that fact, it only leaves the matter of how can I possibly utilize that knowledge to my advantage here?

Now, the bad thing here is that aside from the power to create weaponized parts of musical instruments, I have no idea if that red carpet possesses some other strange powers. Which might actually end up biting me in the ass in a long run, but at the current moment there is literally nothing that I can do about that fact, so I’m afraid that I have to just roll with it for the time being.

「Hey, Sigma! I would really appreciate it if you could ramp that voice of your up an octave or two, you know!?」

「–––––– Press your cheek against the ground, listen to the voice of the earth. Dream of peaceful sleep, not ever to be disturbed. I do not wish to swim amongst the stars, I want to lie down and gaze at the stars from down below in blissful admiration!」

Sigma did not bother to give a reply in here, but truth to be told she did not have to do that at all. Because her song was more than enough of an answer to my sudden and desperate plea for help. After all, the battle between yours truly and the other “me” is pretty much a fully blown Player Versus Player kind of battle, and the environmental changes can either make or break it for one of us. And if I can rig the environment to be more in my favor and deny the Orchestra any additional support here, you bet that I am going to do just that. Right now I need to use every possible trick in my book to give myself as much of an advantage as I possibly can.

As the words of Sigma’s song start to reverberate throughout the theatre, the asphalt beneath our feet starts to become gooier and more plastic, spreading about like mud or freshly erupted lava. As it spreads about the place, the asphalt started swallowing the red carpet and lo and behold! As it was doing just that, there was a loud and unpleasant sound that could be heard, as if someone was mercilessly crushing a whole lot of brass musical instruments all at once. But that was not all. In response to the asphalt’s spreading, the remnants of the red carpet started to run away towards the walls, trying to install themselves there when their previous dwelling was denied to them in such a brutal and gruesome fashion. Then, a whole lot of trumpets started to emerge from the shreds of the red carpet, their sounds blasting waves towards the asphalt, as if it was trying to fight it and force it back from the territory that used to belong to the carpet in the first place.

Truly, it was as if the two entirely different worlds were fighting one another right about now, and each one wanted to swallow its opponent whole. The two melodies were constantly overlapping, but never to the point where you could not actually make a distinction which was which. I know that my Player Versus Player battle was the main battle here, and that World Versus the World was only a supporting battle, but I can assure you all that this support was well worth it here.

However, neither yours truly nor the other “Sanraku” are able to influence our respective Divas in any way. In this very moment, they are in their own world, “Sigma” battling against the “Diva” for the supremacy in the world of the music. However, every time one of us seems to be getting the advantage on the field, the respective songstress would go and aid their “champion” right away, restoring the delicate balance of power. So in a sense, we each fight our separate battles here, but we are all connected to one another.

「And if that is indeed the case in here, then that means that I’ll just have to do this over and over again until it is finally done!」