I Like a Satisfying Hit
The question of whether she wanted to learn the game carried no hidden meaning.
I was asking, quite literally, whether she had the will to learn.
It had been an impulsive call, admittedly. I had been planning an educational stream, but that was all it had ever been—a plan. They say a plan is perfect only while it still lives in your head, and my coaching broadcast was no different: a prediction of how things might go, and nothing more. Once I actually tried it, there was no telling what would break.
Which meant I needed a dry run. I needed to see what problems cropped up when I tried to teach on stream. And not everyone would be like Jump, so I would have to think through different methods for different people. Those were things you only learned by trial and error.
That was when this player had appeared.
Judging by the chat scrolling past, she seemed to be a streamer who even ran a Newtube channel. That was the biggest reason I had decided to try teaching with her. Bringing in a regular player would have been fine, but someone I could actually deal with on a broadcast level felt like the better call. A collab stream was supposed to benefit both sides, so I figured this would be a good opportunity.
I watched her sink into thought. Silence settled over the space, and in the end I was the one who spoke first.
"Amber? So you're not going to spar with me?"
"All of a sudden... a-a spar?"
Yanked out of her reverie by my voice, she blinked at me with a vacant look, as if she had no idea what I was talking about.
"All of a sudden? You were the one who requested the duel in the first place, Amber. You even told me to run if I was scared."
"Th-that's true, but... that was just to pull aggro on you, Unknown..."
"You have to take responsibility for the words you throw out. And I'll teach you the game while we're at it."
"...Okay."
She nodded blankly. I looked at her and felt the weapon in my hand—familiar, and yet still a little strange.
The Kolibri. The gun with the reputation of being the smallest firearm in the world. Even knowing I was holding a gun, it felt like I was clutching a toy. Did they really need to implement this much realism in a game? I had never actually fired a Kolibri in real life, but I doubted it would feel much different from what I was holding now. Given how pathologically obsessed the developers were with realism, the real thing was probably just like this.
While I was thinking that, Amber finished her preparations and signaled she was ready. I looked at her with indifferent eyes, the look that said she could start whenever she wanted.
"Um... aren't you going to change your weapon?"
"I'm using it to get used to it, so don't worry about it."
The Kolibri was an extremely difficult gun to handle, thanks to that distinctive tiny size. Fighting with a firearm you could barely pinch between your fingers in the middle of a frantic firefight was, practically speaking, impossible. It took practice to use it at even a decent level, and a player who held Silver would make an excellent sparring partner for that.
Of course, I also intended to teach her the game. If anything, changing my loadout was essential just to bring our skill levels somewhat in line. Kill her in a single instant and there would be no teaching at all.
And one-on-one, I was confident I could win with any weapon. All I had to do was focus entirely on a single enemy. There were no other distractions. I didn't have to spend my limited senses anywhere else. I just had to concentrate on the one person in front of me—and then I could catch even the breath she exhaled.
I didn't bother laying out a bunch of rules. As far as I was concerned, standing ready was the signal to start.
Our breathing aligned. I moved.
Amber, for her part, seemed to be feeling me out—shouldering her gun and firing in a continuous stream.
Clang! Cla-cla-clang!
I simply swung the tactical knife in one hand and flicked the bullets aside. She hadn't expected them to be blocked. Confusion flickered in her eyes.
Wearing your emotions on your face was a bad habit in a fight. If I could read her feelings, I could predict her next move. Someone startled by the unexpected didn't have many options. She would open the distance for safety. That much was certain.
Thinking that, I took a step forward and, in the same motion, threw the knife at her as she tried to back away.
"Huh?"
She let out a sound of genuine surprise and swung her gun to knock the incoming knife aside. Watching her, I closed the distance in a rush. I caught the right arm of the woman who, having grasped the situation, was trying to pull back, and yanked. When she belatedly tried to wrench her arm free, I kicked off the ground and leapt backward with force.
"Ah—?!"
Her captured arm was dragged along with me, and Amber tumbled to the floor. As she flushed and tried to scramble back to her feet, I raised the tiny Kolibri in my other hand and fired.
Even though it was a firearm, the sound that rang out was too pathetic to even call a gunshot.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I emptied the entire magazine. We were close enough that I still had hold of one of her hands. I had even aimed at her head—what I considered the most vulnerable point—and she still didn't die.
That wasn't unexpected. Given every Kolibri I had fired so far, I had fully expected her not to die. Getting used to the little gun was part of the point, but the bigger goal was to teach this player named Amber about the game. So I hadn't been fighting with the kind of intensity that would actually kill her.
The empty gun clicked on spent casings. Reloading a firearm that small—ejecting the spent magazine and seating a new one—was a chore in itself. No matter how much weaker she was, she wasn't going to sit there and watch me reload right in front of her face. I was at my most exposed, which meant her next move was more or less decided.
I reached for the knife that had fallen after being blocked by Amber's gun. It had landed relatively close, so grabbing it wasn't a problem. But she hadn't been sitting idle either. In a split second she shoved herself up off the ground and opened fire as suppression.
She clearly hadn't aimed; the grouping was a mess. Honestly, it looked like nothing but a waste of ammo. It didn't even suppress. If anything, it was the equivalent of announcing that she had used up every last bullet.
"Eek—ah?! W-wait a second! Unknown!!?"
I ignored the streamer's voice completely and swung the knife indiscriminately at the woman holding an empty gun. If I had wanted to, I could have carved through those completely exposed weak points in a single stroke. But if I killed her like that, she would never understand what she had done wrong. If she kept blocking or dodging a barrage of vicious attacks, she would naturally come to see her own shortcomings.
So I attacked infinitely slowly. I kept a tight rein on a body that unconsciously wanted to go for vital points, and I continued the savage assault as if pointing out every opening.
"Wait!! Stop!! Please stop!! Aah—ah? I'm actually scared, okay!!"
I was moving to exploit her openings when a scream-like sound made me freeze. Had I gotten too focused without realizing it? Only then did I look at Amber again.
"...Amber?"
The woman named Amber was slumped on the spot with a half-dazed expression, and I thought, this isn't right.
I didn't mean to put that kind of terror on her face.
She stared at me as if she were looking at something she should never have faced, and started babbling.
"...Wh-what is this, wh-what even is this? I... I've never felt like I was actually going to die playing a game before!! U-Unknown!! I-I lost. So please just stop, seriously... it's too scary!!"
Had I gone too far because I got focused? Or maybe Amber had simply never experienced a situation where her life was being hunted. Death in a game, after all, usually meant a bullet punching through your body before you even registered it. A razor-edged blade hunting your openings, radiating murderous intent like that just now—she might never have felt the sensation of I'm going to die. On top of that, I had deliberately stopped my attacks mid-swing so I wouldn't kill her. To someone who still didn't understand combat, that killing intent must have been unbearable.
When I checked the chat, the mood had already swung toward the consensus that I had gone too far. Most of the messages were worrying over Amber's state. The next biggest pile was an argument over whether I was a psychopath or a sociopath.
I don't think the chat used to fly this fast...
The messages were scrolling so quickly I could barely even read them.
Should I... try to comfort her, at least?