The Spark That Started My Life

It feels good.

It feels happy.

It feels thrilling.

It was almost pathetic that my pathetic brain could only come up with these three words to express ecstasy.

Yeah, fighting one-on-one is just incredibly fun.

My heart is pounding wildly. The boiling sense of elation proves my reason for existing. The sensation of being alive floods through my entire body.

—Ah.

That’s it.

This is exactly why I can’t quit Celt of Heroes.

—Heh.

A laugh slipped out on its own. A little hum rose in my throat without me even realizing.

Before the afterglow of victory could even fade, I opened the gallery and checked the next batch of applications.

While I’d been in the middle of that last match, countless new posts had already flooded the screen.

It was already past halfway through the page.

—Ah. I’m so happy. Yeah, I guess this is what people usually call happiness. I’m not entirely sure, but it must be.

If only this many people had shown up a few months ago. I should’ve tried this method sooner.

Swish— swish—

…Okay, this was the last one… so next is… this person?

Let’s check their tier, shall we?

Tap. Tap tap.

…Oh ho.

……Looks like I’m in for some real fun after a long time.

Celt of Heroes.

A game where you pick from various heroes, push the lanes, defeat enemies, and destroy the enemy nexus to win.

Because of that, it’s fundamentally a 5v5 team game.

And in games like this, pure one-on-one matches rarely happen outside the very early game.

In solo queue, you’re constantly interrupted by dungeon runners popping out of the dungeon on the solo lane, so you can never have a clean contest of pure strength.

Even so, I wanted to experience perfect, flawless 1v1s in Celt of Heroes.

That’s why I always set up 1v1s with some kind of stake on the line.

I’d post on the Celt In-game Gallery offering chicken or other prizes for 1v1 matches and just keep waiting.

After negotiating with the mods, I was allowed to post once every twenty minutes.

I didn’t want to cause another bloodbath either, so I agreed to those terms.

That month-long all-out war had been pretty exhausting even for me.

Well, posting more often didn’t necessarily mean more people would show up anyway, so it didn’t really matter.

Normally there were at most five people. Sometimes only one. Occasionally there were days when not a single person challenged me all day.

On days with no results, I would fall asleep feeling incredibly depressed. It was so sad that I once ate five whole chocolate bars in one night.

But today was different. I had already played against at least ninety people. A lot of them were rematches too, so the actual number of games was beyond imagination.

My happiness level had shot through the roof.

If I had to pick the starting point of my life, this moment might be it.

At a time like this, someone might say:

If you like 1v1 so much, why not just play a fighting game?

Why insist on 1v1 inside a 5v5 game?

My answer to that is… fighting games ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just aren’t my thing. I tried a few and got bored right away.

Sorry.