Chương 3: [P-2] Table Time

Do you know what this is dude? Do you? Hague knew: a map. An honest to god map.

"Fuck yes," he said. Plunked down in a brand new world? No idea what, when, where, or why? Seven spears aimed at your face? Who gives a shit bro. It's Fire Emblem. We're playing fucking Fire Emblem. Okay. But how did he play? Usually you moved a cursor to select units and order them around. Hague didn't see a cursor, or a controller either. Voice commands? He once did a stream like that. If he said "war crime" five Paladins ambush spawned on him. The YouTube vid had 700k views, one of his all timers.

"Adelheid to E1," he said. Nothing happened.

"Hague to E1. Menu. Options. Status. Guide." Nope. That left him with only one other idea. He reached out and tried to touch the map. He didn't expect much. Not because touch controls didn't make sense, but because he wasn't sure if he still had hands. When his shades blacked out, it was like he lost the ability to sense himself. In limbo, with no air, no sense of touch, it was hard to be sure you were really there. He saw a map, but everything beyond remained pitch black.

If he did have a hand, he certainly had no clue where the fuck it was. The moment he tried to reach out, though, his hand appeared. It was gigantic. Like the hand of God descending from on high, at least compared to the people posed below. To hype himself up before a stream, to get himself in the right mindset, to stop being someone else and start being the Hague, he would put on his shades in the mirror and say to himself: "I'm God." Now, he really felt it.

He extended a finger and gingerly tapped the head of the Hague on the map. A screen popped up, hovering in midair. The Hague Class: Streamer Age: 31 Height: 183 cm Affiliation: Unknown At least it had the decency not to doxx him, but it for sure lowballed him on height. LVL EXP HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 1 0 22 3 2 3 3 8 3 2 7 2 Now here was the real shit. These were the stats he knew from Fire Emblem. Not exactly—DEX was usually SKL—but close enough.

Strength, Magic, Dexterity, Speed, Luck, Defense, Resistance, Constitution, and of course the most important stat of all, Movement. Wait. You know, that goddess is a real fuck. It'd be right up her alley to give him stats that looked like Fire Emblem, but were actually completely different. Like maybe, instead of attacking twice if you were X amount faster than your opponent, SPD did something ass backward like determine hit chance, which was usually what DEX did. Good thought.

Can't get trolled by asinine crap like that. She said if he died in the game, he died in real life (lol), so he had to stay sharp. No assumptions. That was only issue one, though. More important: Why were his numbers so ass? Why were half of them red? Was he taking a penalty? Maybe the rest of the sheet would tell him. INVENTORY Eyes of the Ideal — — — —"Eyes of the Ideal" didn't remind him of anything in Fire Emblem. He stuck out his big god-finger and tapped the name.

A tooltip appeared: Lenses blessed by the benevolent Goddess. They allow one to see the world as it ought to be. Not the clearest explanation, but it seemed to mean his shades.

"As it ought to be" was oddly loaded (let alone "benevolent Goddess"), but it must mean this top-down map zone. Nothing else to go off of, at least. SKILLS Fame Eater — — — — The description of this one was even worse: Grants a Famespirit, its power tied to one's fame. And what, pray tell, is a Famespirit? Who knew. Nothing on the screen explained. Looked like he'd have to figure it out the old fashioned way, trial and error. Fun thing to do when you've got seven guys stabbing you with spears.

The other sections were empty except one at the bottom: STATUS Encumbered He tapped the word Encumbered and received clarification: Carrying Truth. STR, DEX, SPD, DEF, MOV halved. Fuck. Of course. In most Fire Emblems, if you picked someone up, you reasonably no longer fought so good. Solved the mystery of his dogshit red stats at least, but jesus. That girl—Truth, he guessed her name was—fainted into his arms frame 1. Now he was being punished for it.

The goddess said the game would be hard, but starting him with a debuff was a dick move. He closed out his own stat screen and tapped the enemy soldiers. Unfortunately, his god-finger did not squash them like bugs. LVL HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 5 20 This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. 10 4 10 8 0 4 9 5 5 Oh cool, they had over three times his STR and twice his SPD. Awesome. Saving grace was they weren't too tanky.

Made sense, given they wore no armor besides their helmets. None had any skills, either, and just one basic spear weapon apiece. Literally, it was called Base Spear. Weapon Type Rank Range WT MT HIT CRIT Uses Base Spear SPR E 1 8 7 80 0 45 Weapon stats seemed par for the course. MT (Might) was the one to look for, since it combined with your STR to determine how hard you hit (before factoring in enemy DEF). Hague ran the calcs: 10 STR + 7 MT was 17, minus Hague's 3 DEF was 14.

Even if there were other factors like weapon advantage or whatever (not that he had a weapon, unless his magic glasses also shot lasers), he died in two hits. And there were seven enemies. At least the spears had high WT (Weight). Since the girls had low CON, they'd take a penalty to their attack speed. Should be enough to prevent them from double attacking him, at least. Small favors. For shits and giggles, he also checked out the boss, Marpasia.

LVL HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 1 27 12 10 12 10 1 6 14 7 5 Yeah, fuck him, she was even stronger. With a stronger weapon to boot, though heavier. (Called the Heavy Spear of course, really getting creative here.) Her level was lower than her goons, though that was because her class was Pegasus Master while theirs was Pegasus Rider. She was promoted. A tier 2 enemy in the tutorial. None of them actually rode pegasi, despite their class names. Dismounted because they were indoors?

Otherwise he'd be really fucked.

"Alright. Alrightalrightalright," Hague said to himself. Time to quit dooming. The situation was bad, sure. Impossible to win by brute force. He lacked the stat advantage, he died in two hits. So what? Strategy games shouldn't be about stat checking. Boring as hell if they were. Even outnumbered, even outstatted, he'd win. All he needed was tactics. Priority 1: Drop loli pope like the plague. As long as he ate that debuff he was fucked. Problem was, he'd waste his first turn action offloading her.

That limited what he could do. Most of the debuff didn't matter, because by the time any enemies reached him he'd have dropped Truth and removed it. The true Hitler was the MOV penalty. First thing you learned when you picked up Fire Emblem, first thing Hague's mentor drilled into his head: Movement is the most important stat. People who move more squares per turn are just better, 9 times out of 10, because moving more means more ground covered, more maneuverability, more options.

Case in point: with his debuffed 2 MOV, Hague could go basically nowhere this turn. He couldn't reach the walls of the room, or even the pillars in the corners, all of which might protect him from being surrounded and stabbed to death. He was stuck in no man's land.

"Okay, so what do we do here?" He pretended he was talking to chat. That kept him calm, kept him level. He imagined chat spamming messages: it's impossible, there's no way, you're doomed. That kept him motivated.

"Maybe we burn someone else's turn to get Truth off me." He had two other units at his disposal. The princess, Adelheid, and the big armor guy. He quickly glimpsed their stat screens to make sure they didn't have godly fuckoff stats for whatever reason. They didn't. Adelheid Mathema Peñaranda y Salzbach-Goemoto Class: Princess Age: 18 Height: 168 cm Affiliation: Kingdom of Ulrica LVL EXP HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 1 0 20 8 1 8 8 5 6 1 6 5 Weak ass spread on the princess.

She died in two hits too, so great, another thing to worry about. Gaspar Silverschmidt Class: Armor Master Age: 56 Height: 180 cm Affiliation: Kingdom of Ulrica LVL EXP HP STR MAG DEX SPD LCK DEF RES CON MOV 1 0 34 10 0 12 5 4 11 4 14 5 Now this was more like it. Old dude could tank a few hits with that thick 11 DEF. (Plus: shorter than Hague!) So obviously what Hague needed to do was bait the enemies into attacking Gaspar and not himself or Adelheid. Easier said than done.

Enemy AI was programmed to target the weakest units in range.

"These guys don't have AI, though," he said.

"They're real people." He scrapped that thought before it got weird. It didn't matter, since Marpasia made it obvious their main target was Hague, and he was also the weakest, so either way they'd prioritize him. They wouldn't attack Gaspar unless they had no other choice. How did he give them no other choice?

"Instead of dropping the pope on the floor," he said, "I hand her off to him." Let Gaspar take the debuff. Halve his stats. Turn him into a weaker unit. A more tantalizing prospect to stab with a spear. (Sorry dude.) It wasn't enough. Even if Gaspar burned his own turn taking the pope off Hague's hands, freeing up Hague for a non-debuffed full MOV jog, there was nowhere on the map Hague could reach out of range of fewer than two enemies. And two was all they needed to ice him. Alright new idea.

Hague drops the pope, then Gaspar picks up Hague. If you're picked up, you're safe from harm, as long as the person picking you up doesn't die. That left Adelheid exposed, and she'd die, but Adelheid wasn't Hague, so RIP but we take those.

"Nope. No good either." He'd survive one turn, sure. But a debuffed Gaspar would get pounded on all sides by spears, again and again. He'd die sooner or later, and then what? Hague's turn to get shafted.

"Fuck." With only three units to play with, it wasn't like he had unlimited possibility space. Did he go on offense, eliminate enough enemies before they got a chance to attack? Impossible, with his action economy he could kill three at absolute best (assuming lucky crits) and then the other four killed him. Maybe he prayed for a lucky dodge. Much more workable. By his calcs (assuming stats did what he thought, which btw remember when you said you weren't going to make assumptions Hague? So much for that), they probably each had around a 70-80% chance to actually land a hit. Not impossible odds. He survived one time out of five. Yeah fuck that! Jesus! One time out of five? Holy shit.

"Just leave one chamber empty Hague! Just spin the cylinder and put the gun to your head!" But what did he do? Smug ass goddess. Oh don't worry Hague I won't make you land a million lucky crits in a row. Just survive one 20ish% chance! That's good odds, relatively! Bitch. Where the hell was she? Laughing her ass off he bet. He'd show her. He'd show her. If only she didn't saddle him with this little girl.

This fucking little girl who looked just like her, like it was her own personal joke, this completely useless dead weight! Wait. Wait. Not completely useless. Hague got an idea. A real idea. An idea that might actually work. All he had to do was commit a little war crime.