"So, that's how it works…"
I didn't like the smile that formed on Nathan's, or Tristan's, face as I finished explaining Lancer's final Noble Phantasm. Still, if he could ever help me find a solution, it was true that he would need to know what he was working with.
History showed the potential results when he went about creating plans without full information…
"Man, if I could only see the priest's face when I-" Tristan stopped short of finishing the thought as he looked towards the stars above. "Ah well, shame he's already dead."
"Yes, it's a shame" I rolled my eyes. "Now, answers."
"Well, give me a moment" he sighed. "I need to process all of this. That, and, well…"
"Well, what?"
"Well, there is a… video game equivalent to what I'm thinking of called over healing, I'm not sure how applicable it is in the context of Heroic Spirits. They're… well, weird, to put it simply."
"Of course, your ideas come from your stupid games…"
"Hey, what did you expect when you came to me for help?"
I remained silent at his pointed question, knowing full well he was right, that I had indeed expected it, and that I hated myself even more for feeling the need to turn to him for something like this.
This was such a mistake…
"What do you need to know about Heroic Spirits" I eventually sighed.
"How they work, basically. Or rather, how… just how human are they?"
"What is that even supposed to mean?"
"Well, as their title suggest, they're spirits. Ghosts, basically. But they're ghosts that bleed. I've seen them bleed. Ghosts don't bleed. …Well, they shouldn't, at least, in my mind. So, if they bleed, what other… human aspects… do they have? Biologically. Like vitals, or weak points, or-"
"You take forever to get to the point, you know that" I huffed, cutting him off.
"What can I say? I'm a bit of a mess" he gave a slight grin.
"But to answer your question" I continued, "there's their head, and then there's their heart, which, considering they're spirits, isn't really a heart, but rather a spiritual core."
"…But this spiritual core holds the same functions as a heart?"
"...More or less."
"…I see…"
He went silent at this, turning his gaze again to the stars. Why he was so fixated with them, I had no idea. It didn't even seem like he was really thinking when I looked at his face; more that he was zoned out, focusing instead on whatever it was he could see up there that I seemingly couldn't.
"Well" I huffed, waving a hand in front of his face.
"Hm" he turned his head to face me.
"Do you have an idea, or-" at this point I was exhausted and exasperated.
"…Potentially."
"What is that even supposed to mean?!"
"It means it depends on… two factors that I can't answer myself. Likely, only you and, more likely, Lancer can answer."
"But what is it?!"
"Over healing at a crucial point to tank the hit. Specifically, Saber's Noble Phantasm. …Assuming it's one that does damage, but I'd be surprised if Saber didn't have one that dealt damage, knowing what I know about him."
"That- I-" I was just about ready to explode, but I took a deep breath and regained some sense of composure before continuing. "That doesn't make sense to me. I'm not Johnathan. I don't understand these… gaming concepts."
"Ok, well… you're aware of the concept of a shield, or shielding, in a sci-fi setting, yes?"
"Yes, I understand what a sci-fi shield is…"
"Well, over healing is similar in nature to that. The only difference is the resource is health, rather than, well... shield."
"That's a difference, how?"
"Well, it depends on the game. Sometimes-"
"Not talking about in your games. Talking about right now, for this."
"Well, magical energy could be considered a Heroic Spirit's health, right? They run out of magical energy, they die. …So to speak."
"Right."
"And Noble Phantasm's require a ton of magical energy to power up and fire, right?"
"Yes."
"So, for Lancer or Saber to use their Noble Phantasm's, they, in theory, have to spend a shit ton of their own health to do so. In other worse, they do some damage to themselves in order to attempt to deal a shit ton more damage to their opponent, ideally taking them out in one shot."
"…In theory, that's not… wrong… But command spells exist, so-"
"So someone like Saber can use less of his health to fire off his Noble Phantasm if his master is willing to expend another resource, a command spell, to provide an alternative source of power for it. Yes, I'm aware. Just like I'm aware you don't have that option."
Yeah, I wonder why…
"But it is for that precise reason that the difference between shielding and healing matters."
"…"
"…"
"…Explain."
"Say Lancer's Noble Phantasm, or NP for short, is a shield. Lancer is already very low on magical energy, or health. Lancer must then expend more of his health to block Saber's NP with his shield NP. Even if Lancer's shield NP and fully absorb the hit, he's now so low on health that-"
"It doesn't really matter, because Saber will still win afterwards…"
"Exactly. Thus, if Lancer had a shielding NP, it won't really save him in this case; just delay the inevitable end."
"So how does a healing Noble Phantasm change things?"
"…If it's just a healing NP, it doesn't. NPs are supposed to end things, so work off the assumption that all NPs can one shot other Heroic Spirits. Take out all their health. Reduce them from one hundred percent to zero percent."
"I get the picture."
"Ok, then you should now see why just healing doesn't change things."
"Because going back up to one hundred doesn't help when you then go down to zero anyways."
"Exactly! So now we get to over healing. Over healing is typically depicted in games as extra, temporary health that rapidly drains back to the one hundred percent mark, rather than linger around like a shield would."
"Ok, but if it rapidly drains back to one hundred, how does it help?"
"Because you get hit by the enemy before it drains away on its own."
He went silent at this, and I knew by now that it was his signal for me to think about it myself for a moment. Now that he'd finally explained things properly, it didn't take very long to get the picture of what he was thinking.
"This is the key difference between shielding and over healing" he smiled when he continued, seemingly satisfied with… whatever he was seeing on my face as an expression. "Let's say Saber is at seventy-five percent health, and Lancer is at fifty percent. Now, for both of them to fire off their NPs, it costs them twenty five percent of their health. Let's then also say that a command spell can cover… say it can only cover ten percent of the health costs. First round of NPs goes off, Saber is now down to sixty percent health, because Johnathan uses a command spell. As you can't, Lancer goes down to twenty-five percent. The moment Saber fires off a second NP, it's over for Lancer, as-"
"As even though he could use his own Noble Phantasm to block it again, it would kill him in the process."
"Exactly. Now, let's say instead of shielding for one hundred percent damage, it heals Lancer for one hundred percent health, and this specific form of healing allows you to go over your one hundred percent max health cap. Aka, over healing. First round of NPs goes off, Saber is back to sixty percent, but this time, rather than Lancer being down to twenty-five percent-"
"He's still at fifty percent, because before the over healing could drain itself-"
"It absorbed the blow from Saber's NP."
"…"
"…"
"…But by that reasoning-"
"He could absorb all the NPs from Saber he needs, and never actually take damage. Yes, in an ideal world."
"In an ideal world?"
"Well, let's be real here: Lancer is nowhere near half his health. It's more like… ten percent, right?"
"…"
"…Right?"
"…Right…"
"Right. So… well, really there's more than two factors you need to figure out. First factor: are Heroic Spirits capable of some semblance of over healing? Second factor: does Lancer's NP allow for some semblance of over healing? Third factor: assuming Lancer requires all his remaining health to fire off his third NP on himself, will he end up killing himself before anything happens? Fourth factor-"
"There's still more?!"
"Fourth factor: how quickly does the healing take effect assuming it does work. After all, this has to be timed perfectly, and if it doesn't heal fast enough, Lancer dies trying this approach to countering Saber's NP. Fifth factor: if it can only preserve his core, and he loses everything else, can the spike of health to the core cause a regenerative effect and bring back the rest of Lancer's body? If it can't, and Lancer is reduced to nothing more than a core, he still loses. Sixth factor: If a Heroic Spirit saves their core, but loses their head, what happens? As you say, both are vitals: do both have to remain intact for a Heroic Spirit to live, or is the core on a higher… priority level… than the head?"
"Wait" a sudden thought came to me. "If this over healing thing only drains back to one hundred, then couldn't Lancer just do this now and get himself to full energy before the fight even starts?"
"Hm? Oh, yeah, sure. In theory. Thing is, if it worked like that, why hasn't he been doing it himself already between all the previous fights?"
"…"
"See, considering he hasn't done that himself, either none of this works in the first place, or max health isn't one hard set value."
"Just get on with it" I sighed.
"Heroic Spirits are summoned with a starting amount of magical energy, yes?"
"Correct."
"So max health can either be three things: infinite, a set value, or a varying value. In some games, max health can be burned away, so as the fight goes on, you heal for less and less, because your max health is less and less. What I suspect, is that max health for any Heroic Spirit is the starting amount they are summoned with, and as they lose that, they lose their max health along with it. So, in Lancer's current case, he can be healed and maintained up to this ten percent of what the original value was, but it can't go beyond that, because his current max health is that ten percent value as well. As such, and over healing will quickly drain back down to this ten percent. Which now leads me to factor seven."
"There's a seventh factor?"
"Yes, there is. Factor seven: if the other six factors can be resolved and cleared, then can Lancer deal the finishing blow, against a slightly weakened Saber, as he is now? This trick will catch them off guard, of that I'm certain. But it will only catch them off guard once. If Lancer can't beat Saber within that brief moment he is caught flat footed by Lancer's survival of his NP, this changes nothing, and Lancer still loses."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…"
"…That's a lot- I just… It feels like there's a lot of holes to this" I sighed after trying to wrap my head around it all.
"Well, duh" Tristan laughed. "Of course there are. It is making so many assumptions on how things work! But I'm not a mage. I don't know all the intricacies to how Heroic Spirits and their magical energy systems, costs and reserves work. Also, you telling me that Lancer's third NP 'heals people using the blood of Christ infused with both the magical energy of the lance, as well as Lancer's own' doesn't actually tell me how that shit works systematically, which is what I really needed here! So yeah, the entirety of this, as a plan, likely doesn't work."
"Then what the hell was the point-"
"But! …But the core idea remains, no?"
"What core idea?"
"That healing can be used to take otherwise lethal damage without killing yourself in the process to activate said healing. Don't focus too much on the smaller details here; was more to show you how you should be trying to think about things like this. All you really need to figure out with Lancer is the following: can he use this NP without killing himself in the process? Can it heal him for more than the cost to both activate it and the damage Saber's NP will deal? Can he protect both vitals doing this? If he can't, does protecting one vital work? If protecting one vital works, which one needs to survive? If the important vital lives, but he loses everything else in the process, can he regenerate his body back? If he can, how quickly can it happen? If it happens fast enough that you two think this is a viable option to pursue, can Lancer deal the finishing blow to Saber, before Saber realizes what has happened, and without killing himself in the process? That's it. Simple, really."
"Yeah, simple… Sure as shit doesn't sound so simple from where I'm sitting" I grumbled.
"Then count your blessings, because you haven't had to think through actual complex problems on your own before" Tristan laughed. "But in all seriousness, that's the best I can do for you with what I know."
"Got it" I sighed as I stood up and he turned his focus yet again back to the starry sky above. "Well… thanks."
"No need to thank me; I put you in this predicament, so least I could do was try to help you out of it."
"Right..."
As I started to walk back inside, Tristan called out to me.
"Hey, Sortiara?"
"What?"
"Well, two things."
"…"
"…"
"…Make it quick."
"You and Lancer were the ones to fight Archer, yeah? Who was Archer, really? Did you ever find out?"
"We did. He said his name was Hereward. Hereward the Wake."
"Hereward the Wake, huh…"
"You know of him?"
"Not a clue" Tristan sighed. "Suppose I should look him up. Wouldn't do to remain ignorant as to who my opponent really was."
"And the second thing?"
"…What's your real name?"
"My real name?"
"Yeah, your real name. Sortiara sounds cool and all, and fits the image of a powerful mage, but there's no way that's your real name."
"…"
"…"
"…Amy. It's Amy."
"Amy… You know, it's not what I expected."
"You got a problem with my name?"
"Not at all."
"You think I should be using my real name instead?"
"Heavens, no" Tristan laughed. "How disgustingly hypocritical would it be if I told you that? No, use whatever name you wish. Just… just make sure you never forget who you really are."
A/N
Welp, leave it to my dumb ass to say I should be back to 'normal', only to forget I had midterms the very next week. I am so not used to having classes in the summer, I tell ya. Midterms are done now, but at this point I think I'ma just stop saying shit will be back to this non-existent 'normal'; shit comes out when shit comes out at this point!
…Well, that and I started up my yearly summer traditions. Sorta, kinda, maybe a couple of times I could have worked on it to do that, so... my bad xD
Anyways, hope you all enjoy, and I'll see you in the next post o7
