Master Tier and the Tournament

The girl's greatsword cleaved mercilessly through the old man's throat.

The veteran warrior crumpled, blood spraying, and as I glanced to the right the kill counter ticked upward—proof the job was done.

One down, for starters.

Cutting down an opponent who charged out with a gaping opening took almost no effort at all.

This was Deathmatch. A simple mode where all you had to do was rack up kills.

It had a different kind of charm from modes like Capture or Siege, where you ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠were forced to face the enemy head-on.

I just liked that I didn't have to think. Mindlessly lopping off heads was the whole job.

The other team knew it too, so the second the match started they all swarmed the center. All I had to do was pick them off one by one, the way you pick dishes at a buffet.

…Saying it like that makes me sound like a cannibal. Anyway.

Deathmatch was a mode where the first team to hit the target kill count won—literally just a mode for slaughtering people.

In other words, a mode that required zero brainpower.

Which meant I suddenly had a lot more room to breathe.

Room for what? Well… room to chat a little with the viewers?

So I turned the stream on. Right now I was streaming while I played.

The reason? I was just bored.

…You're allowed to turn a stream on just because you're bored, okay? Stop looking at me like that.

When you focus hard on the game, talking to chat gets difficult.

Which is why the plan of turning the stream off, grinding ranks, and then revealing it later as a surprise got quietly scrapped.

I ran a few games like this and, well—turns out I could still chat with viewers just fine with the stream on.

Probably only possible because my rank wasn't that high yet. And when Deathmatch popped up like this, I could even squeeze in little conversations between fights.

"Has everyone had breakfast?"

I spoke while lightly deflecting a sword strike that came straight down the middle. At higher tiers the response would have been different, but down here this was correct.

People rarely mixed in fakes to begin with. Whether they blindly trusted their own mechanics, assumed the opponent was worse than them, or had just gotten into the habit of half-assing trades—I couldn't say.

Whatever the reason, it worked in my favor.

Oh—that one just ran a two-option mind game.

Every so often someone like that showed up, so this bracket never felt completely boring. You couldn't just yawn your way through every match, I guess.

When it came down to pure mechanics, most of them I could still see and react to—so the psychological pressure was actually a little more of a challenge for me.

"I mixed rice with soy sauce and put a fried egg on top. In technical terms, soy sauce egg rice. You all like it too? Mm-hmm, soy egg rice is delicious. Can't cook. Disqualified as a bride candidate… ah, yes. I see."

That was a joke… right? I'd always heard that drips this ambiguous counted as failed jokes.

Taking chat that I couldn't tell was joking or serious, I dove back into the fight.

A great warrior charging with a massive shield. Shield Charge. The heavy thudding of his footsteps was almost oppressive.

I was curious how much damage it would do if it landed. Probably pulverize every bone in your body.

I did not want our fragile Camilla ending up like that.

Honestly, at close range maybe, but from this distance it was hard even to get hit by on purpose. The problem was the sniper trailing behind him. The red laser sight from Sniper Alpha was locked dead on me.

If I dodged the Shield Charge carelessly, I might eat the sniper shot instead. For paper-thin Camilla, even a single sniper hit was lethal.

So they weren't coming one by one—they were running a combo. For something slapped together on the fly, it was a pretty threatening pair. If I'd run into it clueless, I would have been genuinely flustered.

Calling it a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠"counter" felt a little grand, but my response was fast.

This was a battlefield where a second of judgment meant life or death.

Even thinking this much only took a fraction of a moment. From the instant that massive shield started thudding toward me—from the moment I confirmed the sniper behind him—my body was already moving.

Thought and action happened almost simultaneously, no gap between them. Like gears spinning tight in my head, spitting out a result that my body executed on the spot.

If I dodge, I might eat the sniper shot… so then I just don't dodge.

I started running straight at the charging great shield myself. I felt the opposing player panic as I drove right into the inside of his path.

Then I twisted my body just slightly.

Kaga-ga-gak—!

Like that.

The shriek of steel scraping steel rang out.

By a hair's breadth, I successfully deflected the Shield Charge off the face of my blade.

The result of using the sword characters' trait in Abyss: Parry.

Skills with big wind-ups always carried huge risk when they got broken like this. The warrior with the great shield lost his balance for a moment.

Camilla never let that opening go.

The great warrior's HP melted at terrifying speed, but Alpha behind him still couldn't land a shot on Camilla.

Why? Because Camilla's small frame was completely hidden behind the warrior's massive bulk. He knew it too and twisted, trying to get free of me—

But it was already too late.

In that amount of time I could have stuffed in a full combo and still had room left over.

The hulking great warrior crashed down with a heavy thud, and Alpha, finally reading the situation, bolted toward his teammates.

Excellent call. Camilla's health hadn't even dropped halfway, and her dance was only just beginning.

A backline marksman with no frontline—and not even a strong duelist to begin with—had zero chance of beating Camilla.

At this point I'd done everything I needed to do.

Not finishing the sniper was a shame, but as the team's ace I'd successfully dribbled a 2v1 and taken one of them out.

The rest was on my teammates. They weren't top of the ladder, but they were still high-tier Diamond and Master players.

If someone gave the snowball a push, they could roll it the rest of the way to a win on their own.

Waaaaah—!

Sure enough, a victory roar went up from the other side almost immediately. That much was the least they could do. Good.

I finished my fight and linked up with them right away.

On screen, Camilla began her dance of death all over again.

The enemy citadel shattered, and a blue notification bloomed across the screen—the kind that just looking at it made you feel good.

Normally the detailed post-match stats screen would have come up next, but this time was different.

On a briefly lagging screen, a crest made of diamond cracked apart.

Then a new metal, gleaming with a luminous sheen, rose into view and reassembled itself into a different crest.

Something that felt like a valiant knight's helm.

The crest that meant the tier above Diamond: Master.

"Ah… thank you, everyone. Thanks to all of you watching. Yeah. I think that's how I was able to hit it."

Honestly, for someone who used to hit Challenger like it was a daily meal, Master was nothing more than a transfer station I was just passing through.

Even so, having people celebrate like this made a corner of my chest tingle. I couldn't help it.

Watching chat fly by, I could feel the viewer count climbing again. For just one finished game, the afterglow was lasting pretty long.

"A tournament?"

Now that was a fresh suggestion.