The Desire to Win
Bunny glanced sideways at Unknown walking across the far side of the plain, and a hollow laugh kept slipping out of her.
That she'd lost was a fact. It wasn't particularly surprising. Losing was just how the game went, even in Diamond. Just because she'd climbed this far with relative ease didn't mean she'd never been beaten.
But this wasn't about losing to some random nobody. Losing to an opponent she'd been looking down on left a strange taste in her mouth.
"That just... drained me."
A single duel, and she already felt worn out. There was no physical pain, and nothing was wrong with the way she moved. And yet her mind was strangely exhausted—a bizarre sensation, as if the common sense she knew had been torn apart.
Ten minutes at most, that one round. There had been several moments she'd been certain of victory. The way that player Unknown had dodged her fire in ways she couldn't even process, or how she'd closed the distance without a shred of hesitation, punching straight through the bullets. Looking back, every last bit of it had been anything but ordinary.
There had surely been moments where, if she'd handled it differently, she could have seized the upper hand. In the end, though, she gave a small shake of her head and wiped the thought away.
What she'd felt in that fight was that this still wasn't someone she couldn't beat. She'd simply lost because she'd gotten careless. If she didn't let her guard down, she could take the win without much trouble.
Besides, throwing a round to a beginner was basic game manners. If you crushed a new player too thoroughly, they'd just look pitiful, wouldn't they? Thinking that, Bunny dazedly pulled up the chat window.
She was live, after all. She still had to keep checking chat and talking to her viewers. And honestly, she was curious about the reaction right now.
Chat had split into two camps. One side insisted Unknown's skill was overwhelmingly superior. The other insisted Bunny had gone easy, and that was why she'd lost so cleanly. They were going at it fiercely.
Most of the comments said Unknown was simply better. Even Bunny herself, watching Unknown close the distance while dodging bullets, had found it hard to believe. Was it even possible to close in while dodging rounds the eye could barely track? She was someone who fought on mechanics herself, but that kind of play was honestly impossible.
How had that even looked on stream? She'd check the VOD later, but she couldn't help wondering if the duel had been so fast it hadn't broadcast properly.
Bunny was still gathering her thoughts on how to answer chat when Unknown's voice cut in without warning.
"You'd be better off watching some footage of proper shooting form, if you can."
Watch shooting form footage? Come to think of it, chat had pointed out her stance was sloppy too. Until now she hadn't felt anything was particularly wrong—she'd been hitting her targets without issue. Sometimes rounds kicked off in weird directions, but she'd just assumed that was a gun problem.
But if people kept pointing out the same thing, maybe there really was something wrong.
Sitting dazed on the floor, Bunny shook her head. She had more confidence in her skill than anyone. She'd hit Diamond in less than half a year of playing, hadn't she? For someone like her, taking feedback was the same as admitting she was worse than the person giving it.
Even if Unknown had beaten her once, it was just luck. If she fought properly without letting her guard down, there was no way she'd lose. Dodging the bullets had just been her own aim miss. It had simply happened to look like dodging.
She hadn't lost yet. Throwing the first round had been nothing more than a light handicap.
The chat window she'd left open in the corner of her vision was pure chaos. Split into two camps, the viewers had the chat on fire. Now it had gone beyond "she went easy on purpose" to claims that she'd thrown the match to hype up Unknown.
Bunny stared at the chat and let out only a single line, her voice gone cold.
"Anyone who gets banned today is getting an IP ban. Just so you know."
She didn't feel like rambling on right now. Just thinking about how to show Unknown the gap in their skill was enough to make her head feel like it might split.
The throw-match conspiracy chat vanished in an instant. Bunny watched it go, then closed the window.
She tried to force herself to pay attention to the stream, but she couldn't focus at all. The tangle in her head wouldn't sort itself out. Maybe it was the feeling that Unknown—and the viewers along with her—were looking down on her.
Bunny bit her lip and slowly rose to her feet.
"It's about time. Let's start."
She tightened her grip on her MPX and turned her head. Watching Unknown push herself up from where she'd been sitting at ease on the floor, Bunny slowly forced her thoughts to settle.
A player who'd appeared out of nowhere like a comet. Bunny knew she'd blown up in the communities and become famous in a very short time. She'd figured Unknown was just a decent-control player who'd gotten lucky and caught a wave—that people were making a fuss over nothing.
Hacker. Someone who could hit Challenger if she just had the time. Compared to rumors like that, actually fighting Unknown had been disappointing. Bunny would admit she had fundamentals. She was absolutely not above her.
They say rumors get exaggerated.
Some people claimed luck was part of skill. But skill meant actual power, actual ability you possessed. Could you really call getting lucky and succeeding once or twice "skill"?
As Bunny prepared for the duel, her gaze caught the weapon in Unknown's hands. Did it matter what the opponent used? Even so, she couldn't help looking. Unknown was holding the most basic issued M16.
"You switched weapons."
"Yeah. If I'm going to show you shooting form, I figured a shooting contest would work better."
She'd been pointing that out this whole time. Bunny decided to just tune out whatever Unknown was saying. She'd only used a pistol and a knife earlier, so switching to a primary now wasn't that strange. Maybe after lucking into a win last fight, she'd realized something—that if it went to a close-range mechanics fight, she'd lose.
Thinking about it, the idea that you wouldn't lose while playing games was close to arrogance. There were clearly people better than you out there, and she'd run into plenty who seemed gifted. This was the first game she'd ever fallen into this easily—Last of Quantum.
When she'd first started, she'd accepted losing as natural. Losing was fine. It was still fun. So at first there had been countless losses. She'd definitely spent time in the so-called trench of Bronze. She'd swapped weapons, messed with traits, tried every kind of research. Adapting to virtual reality for the first time had been a challenge of its own.
Then, all of a sudden, something clicked in her hands. She grabbed onto that feeling and played, and her rank started climbing like a rocket. Enlightenment. A word that didn't belong in games—but that was the first time she learned something like that actually existed.
The weapon and traits that could perfectly bring out her mechanics. Her steeply climbing rank eventually reached Diamond, a tier people actually respected. Time taken: barely half a year. And even in this tier, she wasn't feeling any particular difficulty. If she just invested a little more time, she could surely reach Master—even Challenger.
Was that why? Before she knew it, she was hung up on losing. She hated losing. She hated losing to someone with a maddening intensity. Whether it was because she knew she had talent, or because she was that obsessed with LoQ—she just hated someone being above her. Especially a player who was worse than her, pointing out that her play was wrong.
This time, I win.