My Death Flag Shows No Sign Of Ending

Chapter 13

Due to Juno's interruption, Kazuki had finished his training faster than planned and since it had come to this, he had spare time.
Recently, whenever he had even a little bit of free time, he was putting effort in sword training. He should have started it because he was driven by the necessity when looking at the future, but he had become addicted to the process of acquiring skills by copying the movements in the game.
Maybe due to its adverse effects, other than swinging the sword he didn't have any other means of wasting time. He found this body hateful since he couldn't lightly head out to the town.

Since it was like that, he made up his mind to quietly do some reading once in a while, and picking up a few of the books which were kept in the bookshelf, he started flipping through the books.
Among the large number of books similar to children's books, the one that caught Kazuki's eyes was a book related to magic.

Although, the contents weren't technical. The origin of a magic and its progress, a person who had mastered and represented it and also anecdotes related to it- it was a book where all these were written in detail.
The ones which were taken up were grand moves, where each and every one of them were classified as advanced level magic inside the game. While being convinced that it was something like sure-kill techniques popular with children, he continued reading it.

Inside it, he found a name which he had seen before.

Vincent Von Westerfort.
In the original work, he was a heroic figure who at a young age, served as the captain of the chivalric order of the Saint King. He naturally excelled in sword skills, but he also excelled in magic enough to be introduced on par with historical figures like this.
(TL- Changed knight order to chivalric order of the Saint King)

If he had to be expressed in few words, then it was "ultra firepower".
Making use of his abnormally high defense where one wouldn't think he got it just from the armor he wore, he would break through from the front, and having the highest attacking power among all the characters in the story, to speak of it, suppressing the enemy with pure force was his combat style.
And sadly, in the final stages of the story, Vincent was an enemy character who fights with the protagonist party. Although he wasn't the last boss, his strength was authentic and when the party composition had a weak vanguard or when the healing of the person who played the role of the shield was late, the amount of times they were instantly killed wasn't less.

And unlike Harold, he had gained a high popularity from the players. Thinking over the reason for Vincent standing in front of the party's way and his feelings, 「Even this guy was suffering huh」- almost all the players sympathized with him.
Even Kazuki didn't hate Vincent.

But maybe it was because he had possessed Harold now. Kazuki suddenly imagined a Harold vs. Vincent battle which was impossible in the original work, and he started turning his mind thinking what Harold could do to win.
One had the story's highest firepower, the other was the story's fastest.
If he clashed directly from the front, it would be disadvantageous for Harold. If he directly received Vincent's attacks, he wouldn't last for long.

But just by depending on moving around, if it was Harold who had excellent attack speed and variations, Kazuki thought that he could contend with Vincent.
During the days when it was released, at those times the concept of depth or 3D movement hadn't been used like how it was now and the combat system of 『Brave Hearts』 only had 2D movement like in fighting games. And with that, one not only had to control the main character, but also had to give detailed orders to the party members and importance was placed on how high the combo count one could earn was.
Including Kazuki, if it were the experts, it was possible for them to stably connect 80 combos.

But that was naturally because it would be done by a party composed of 4 people. Even though the abilities of the enemy character would be set to a high value since it would be a single enemy, Kazuki could easily connect more than 30 combos in hero fights. Especially, once he had launched the enemy into air, as long as the combo wasn't interrupted by the other party members, he would make the enemy into a sandbag until the enemy's life ran out.