Fake Unknown vs. Real Unknown
I was watching the chat when the words Fake Unknown pulled a laugh out of me. The sheer nerve of it.
Who in their right mind would run a match with nothing but a pistol and a single knife? Unless you were absurdly sure of your own skill, or you were some concept player copying someone else, it wasn't a loadout anyone would touch. Short as my gaming career was, I at least knew that much—nobody else was using the same kit I was.
They're not wrong about copying me, I guess.
The thought lingered as I played, and I found that streaming at the same time was more fun than I'd expected. Encounters like this were part of it.
The player I'd just killed came looking for me again. He'd long since given up on the match itself—he didn't even glance at other users passing by, even after landing a kill off an ambush.
Still, it seemed he'd taken my advice. The hand that had been holding a knife now held a ballistic shield instead.
He'd put some thought into it: a short shield that only covered the upper body. That kind of shield was actually a solid choice—it kept mobility as high as possible while still giving you something to hide behind.
With the weapon change, his playstyle had shifted a little too. He wasn't charging in blindly like before. He kept the shield forward and watched how I moved.
I looked at him and lifted the hand holding my knife, putting some force into it. Raised it level. Pointed it straight at him.
A kind of performance. The magic called streaming was shoving me from behind, making me do things I wouldn't normally bother with.
I gave a little flick of the knife toward the opponent watching me so warily.
A taunt. I looked at him with an arrogant set to my shoulders as I said it.
If I fought seriously, it might be over in an instant. But that would disappoint the viewers. And this was my first match anyway—I figured I'd ease off a little and loosen up.
Thud.
The opponent kicked off the ground hard, shield first, and came charging straight at me.
Thud... thud... thud-thud-thud!
Like a run-up, he accelerated with every step. Shield stretched as far forward as it would go—just big enough to cover his upper body—he came barreling in.
Too obvious.
Watching him, I could already predict what his next attack would be. A shield wasn't just for blocking, after all. One that covered the upper body could, depending on how you used it, hide your next move or set up something unexpected.
But he was a newbie, so every motion was painfully transparent. Knowing when it was coming, and what it would be, meant it would be easy to counter.
Just winning isn't that cool, though.
While I was thinking that, the enemy closed the distance and moved. He was blatantly hiding his right hand behind the shield—trying to keep me from noticing where he was aiming, no doubt.
The idea itself was sound. You just don't aim with your hands. You aim with your eyes. He kept glancing at one of my legs; it was obvious what he was going for. He wanted to take my mobility and seize the advantage.
I could have pinned him down with suppressive fire, but I had no intention of using the pistol this time. I just wanted to show him the gap in skill.
He finished his last run-up, shoved the shield aside, and thrust the weapon he'd been holding. There was no real need to get this close. Even as that thought crossed my mind, I didn't take my eyes off him.
From behind the shield covering his upper body, a knife appeared. Wait—a knife?
I'd assumed it would be a pistol. A knife? I couldn't make sense of the combination at all. In a world ruled by firearms, a shield and a knife was a strange pairing, but it was written all over him that this player was drunk on the romance of it.
Shhhhk—!
A bone-chilling sound, like it was tearing the air apart. The short knife carved through empty space, swinging at me with enough force to split me open. A black glow clung to the entire blade—I wondered, idly, if you bought those light effects from the shop too.
Even as that useless thought crossed my mind, I slowly tightened my grip on my own knife.
What he was aiming for was, as expected, my right leg. He lifted the shield high to block my vision and went for the lower body, the least defended part. Hiding his weapon on purpose, closing the distance, then landing an unexpected ambush. It was a decent choice—but only if the opponent actually fell for it.
It was a high-risk technique... and yet he'd recognized me and gone for it anyway. If I just kept him at range with harassment fire, he wouldn't even be able to close in, and even if it went to melee there was no guarantee he'd win. Risk and reward didn't match. Even among players at the same rank, only a handful would fall for it.
Srrrk.
At the same time, I stepped forward and met his strike, drawing a clean semicircle as if I were cutting down from above. Unknown's concise motion—a clean arc from top to bottom—caught the viewers' eyes as if she'd just used a skill.
And the very next instant.
CLANG!!
A harsh grinding sound that couldn't be dismissed as mere steel on steel painted the air in spectacular fashion. I didn't need to see his face to know the other player was stunned.
What I'd just used was a technique called parrying. An extremely difficult move where you deflect an enemy's attack and seize the opening for a fatal blow. The impact point and the timing had to line up perfectly, so even most veterans struggled to pull it off.
That didn't mean success was impossible, though. With a fast weapon like a dagger, the parry itself wasn't that high-difficulty. The reason he was so shocked was because LoQ was an FPS. In a world dominated by guns, a parry born from weapon clashing against weapon was a rare sight. Even when melee users collided, the difficulty of parrying itself was high. The situations barely ever came up, and it was hard to execute even when they did.
That was why parrying was treated as practically nonexistent even among veterans. There was even a joke that if you'd seen a successful parry, you'd used up a year's worth of luck.
And I'd just landed a technique that difficult and that rare. Of course the chat—and the opponent who'd been parried—had every reason to be shocked.
The recoil from the successful parry wrecked the other player's stance. His balance collapsed in an instant; he didn't even get a chance to recover before he was falling backward. That was why he'd dropped the knife, I supposed, but watching him lose his weapon was a little disappointing.
If he'd held onto the knife, it would have felt at least somewhat decent. Getting parried and dropping your weapon from the rebound? Huge letdown. If you pick a melee weapon, you cling to it with sheer spite and you never let go.
It really drove home that this rank was still the newbie bracket. The thought of teaching this newbie what he was lacking faded from my mind. Dragging it out would just feel like bullying a newbie, so finishing him quickly seemed like the right call.
I put force into the hand holding the knife and raised it toward him. Then, taking a thrusting stance, I kicked off the ground without hesitation.
Tak!
Thanks to the Sprint Trait I'd taken, the moment my foot left the ground I shot forward as if floating through the air.
He still hadn't given up the fight, covering himself with the shield as he tried to open distance. But his eyes already knew he'd lost. In that state, of course his real skill wasn't going to come out.
Pung!
I spun my body fast and kicked the shield guarding his upper body as hard as I could. Something burst from the tip of my foot, and his body lurched hard. He caught his balance a beat too late, but my blade was already sliding into the opening, going for his neck.
"W-wait!"
He threw up a hand and shouted in a panic, but I had no intention of stopping. Besides—back when my parry had succeeded and he'd been thrown back, hadn't he dropped his weapon from that hand?
With the knife still in my grip, I drove it through his hand with a heavy thrusting motion.
Puk!
A clean strike that punched through the hand flailing at empty air and went straight through his head. It didn't unfold into a scene so gruesome it crossed into cruelty. The instant the blade sank into his hand, a mosaic swallowed him, and he crumpled to the floor like a limp doll. Moments later he turned into light and vanished.
A fanfare-like celebration sound rang out as the victory message popped up. While I'd been dealing with that player, my team had apparently taken the advantage. Winning even when I wasn't paying much attention to the game... didn't feel bad.
"Fun."
I muttered that and, without thinking, glanced at the chat window I'd left open to the side. How had I looked just now? It had been pretty satisfying by my own standards, but I was curious what the viewers thought.