Chapter 17: SS Clear Rewards... Part of Them
With Netero's implicit sign-off, the Association staff had the good sense to register the empty cabin to badge 406. But not long after Netero left, the two kids between them only stayed for about another hour before heading out as well.
Sonic 3 was entertaining, no question — but with the incomplete cartridge limiting content to Zone 1 alone, the total available material was small and replayability was low. Two or three runs was enough to cover the entire map.
Since the game's difficulty wasn't particularly demanding, and Killua and Gon were both running on high-spec hardware in the form of fresh brains and fresh reflexes, the gap between picking it up and mastering it was short. Once they had both hit simulated S-rank scores, the visible drop in interest was immediate.
Killua got bored first, to be precise. Feline nature. What can you do.
"Ross-bro, when the later zones come out, definitely let me play first!"
Killua said it while leaving, already more interested in what came next than in running Zone 1 again.
"Deal. First thing I get Zone 2 working, I'll come find you."
Ross smiled easily as he said it — he had a natural gift for bringing people into the fold.
"Thank you for having us."
Gon gave a proper bow before leaving. You could see Aunt Mito had raised him well. You could also see the distance between him and Ross — not nearly as comfortable as his familiarity with the early-to-mature Leorio.
"Don't mention it."
A normal, easy response from Ross.
The room was his again shortly after, and he finally had the chance to switch power sources.
Ross unplugged the Little Tyrant's power cable, held the materialized plug up against his body and moved it around a bit, and ultimately settled on a method that was slightly undignified but physically harmless:
He wedged the two prongs of the plug between his toes and clamped them there.
The instant he pressed the power button again, a strong, insistent drawing sensation surged up from his foot.
"Holy — that's got some pull!"
Realizing the aura drain was more aggressive than expected, Ross rapidly hammered Start to skip the opening and get directly into the game.
Togashi... wait, no — the fully rehabilitated Ross snapped back into the zone, worked through every adjustment point his mental breakdown had flagged, and successfully cut Zone 1's clear time into the eight-minute range.
He knew from memory that even a TAS run — frame-perfect, tool-assisted optimization at the theoretical limit — barely clipped into the seven-minute range for this zone.
With two large S letters appearing on the screen, Ross finally let the tension out of his shoulders.
SSS, then, would mean pushing toward TAS-level execution.
A different era of himself would have called that a non-starter. Players who could match a TAS existed, but he had always known he wasn't at that level. Now, though, he was a Nen user. Once the exam was done and he had time to properly build up his fundamentals, reaching human-TAS territory might not be entirely off the table.
As for his aura: estimating by feel, he had approximately just over a minute's worth remaining.
In other words, at current capacity, he could run the Little Tyrant console for about ten minutes total.
From a stamina standpoint, even a major title would be out of reach at this point. Short, speedrunnable games, or incomplete ones like this, were actually better fits for his current situation.
Given that, Ross filed away a working measurement for his own reference — one only he would ever need: ten bars of aura. One minute of console operation equaled approximately one bar. Once he learned Ten properly, he'd be able to cross-reference this and get a rough read on where his actual aura capacity sat.
At the same time, the two S's on screen finished their materialization and spread out in front of him like a small hand of playing cards: SS, S, A, B, C, D, E.
But just as Ross expected seven Nen tool rewards to come pouring out in sequence, the symbols folded back together and began using the aura drawn from him during the clear as raw material — starting to materialize items.
Ross clapped his hands together, the picture suddenly clear.
An incomplete cartridge meant incomplete rewards. The Little Tyrant was, at this moment, working hard to do the best it could with the eight and a half meager bars of aura it had to work with.
Shortly after, two objects appeared in front of Ross. Their form was a near-match for the old chunky CRT monitors from a desktop computer setup, except for what was displayed on the screens inside: the left one showed a golden ring, and the right one showed a large bubble.
[Staged SS Rating Reward: Ring Set x1, Bubble Shield x1]
[Ring Set: Grade E Nen tool, valuables, consumable. Breaking it immediately yields 10 Gold Rings.
Gold Rings can be used for "Golden Ring Lifeline," can be traded with certain Secret Realm NPCs, and can serve as casting materials for certain special abilities.]
[Bubble Shield: Grade C Nen tool, consumable. Breaking it forms a protective layer of bubbles around the user's body.
The Bubble Shield grants the player three temporary enhancements: "Projectile Deflection," "Underwater Breathing," and "Bounce Jump."
All shield-type Nen tools can absorb one valid hit. All shield-type Nen tools cannot coexist with each other. All shield-type Nen tools have unlimited duration.]
Ross pinched his chin, eyes moving quickly.
The Ring Set could wait — he still had fifteen hundred jenny for absorbing hits anyway. But the Bubble Shield was worth thinking about.
Based on several things: the airship's old CRT television sets throughout, the ancient machines being used by the Association's black-suited staff, and Tonpa not having tried to hand him juice spiked with laxatives — Ross could reasonably conclude that the broad framework of this Hunter world was running on the old TV version's canon, not the 2011 remake.
Which meant this exam might include the Battleship Island arc, the arc that existed only in the TV original.
Ross remembered clearly: when he first watched it, he hadn't been able to tell at all that Battleship Island was a completely original anime-only arc rather than something from the source manga.
If that held, the Bubble Shield's underwater breathing effect had a real chance of coming in useful.
He must have frozen for a few seconds without touching anything, because the two items dissolved into streams of light and flowed back into the game cartridge. Correspondingly, in the Sonic save file he had selected, two new background icons appeared: Ring Set and Bubble Shield.
Those two, though, were just the opening act. The main event had arrived.
The Sonic 3 cartridge itself glowed faintly. And then, directly beneath "Secret Realm Mode" on the Little Tyrant's interface, a new expandable sub-option appeared:
Secret Realm Stage — Sonic 3.