Chaos Mosaic
It was an incredibly narrow margin.
If the final magic blade hadn't struck first, she might have lost.
A truly miraculous victory.
The goddess of victory had smiled upon CloudySkies.
The decisive factor was successfully pulling off a mind game at the 4-level timing, inducing Lulu's whiffed parry.
She pretended to attack Lulu with the fast-casting magic blade, only to veer it off at the last moment into a trajectory that barely missed the parry judgment.
Normally, Ha Yunseo wouldn't have fallen for it, but this time she was completely fooled, and the empty parry came out.
Everything had gone exactly as planned.
CloudySkies wasn't just taking it lying down. She had analyzed Ha Yunseo's patterns in her own way.
And after exchanging a few blows, she realized that Ha Yunseo was predicting her every move as if she could see right through them.
It wasn't instinctive movement. It was thoroughly calculated, almost coldly rational judgment.
She probably picked it up naturally while watching her own YouTube videos, CloudySkies thought.
After all, she had once recognized CloudySkies just from her playstyle and sword-holding habits.
She could tell that the girl possessed an eerily sharp sense of observation.
A monstrous reaction speed paired with the observational power to catch even the smallest habits.
And then there was the memory to retain all that information, plus the boldness and decisiveness to apply untested knowledge directly in real combat.
'Just how absurd are her specs?'
CloudySkies could only let out a hollow laugh and shake her head.
Once she realized that, she began introducing irregularities into her own movements. She boldly tried plays she would never normally attempt.
She deliberately changed her movement patterns, the angles of her sword swings, and added far more variations to her mind games.
The magic blade swung so quickly that the moment the sword moved, it was extremely difficult to predict which trajectory it would take.
She used that to her advantage. At a perfect opening where the old CloudySkies would have gone straight for an attack on Lulu without any mind games,
she deliberately fired an attack that would barely miss.
It was an extremely gambling play—if it failed, she wouldn't deal any damage and might even eat a counterattack.
But Ha Yunseo fell for it.
Perhaps she never imagined that a cornered rat would throw out such a bold move.
And as a result, she was able to defeat the monster known as the Fur Wheel Slayer.
An overwhelming sense of catharsis surged through her entire body. The stress and pressure she'd felt just moments ago flipped into ecstasy in an instant, soaring as if it would pierce the heavens.
At the same time, however, she tasted a bitter aftertaste.
The suspicion that maybe she'd been deliberately allowed to win began to rise in her mind.
There was no evidence. It was purely a gut feeling.
It was because of a fleeting memory—of what seemed like an ever-so-slightly unnatural movement hidden behind a perfectly natural act.
But that doubt was gradually diluted by the electrifying thrill of victory her brain kept pumping out, and soon it was washed away completely.
“…Wow… I won, everyone.”
CloudySkies was so flooded with dopamine that she could barely think straight.
The chat window was exploding with cheers as well.
She let out a small snort.
“Thank you, everyone.”
She tried to act indifferent, but the corners of CloudySkies' mouth kept creeping upward.
Even though she wanted to react minimally and focus on the newly starting game, laughter kept threatening to burst out.
She bit her lip hard and stared at the loading screen.
And so the fourth game of the best-of-five began.
The result was…
Another victory for CloudySkies.
She thrust her right fist straight up.
“…I told you I’d win, didn’t I?”
This time it was a clean victory without the slightest bit of discomfort.
It was the result of perfectly altering the habits she'd slightly adjusted in the previous game in a completely different direction once again.
CloudySkies was fixing her own habits in real time.
She was scattering her behavioral patterns into random noise.
And as a result, the Fur Wheel Slayer seemed to be completely thrown into confusion.
A perfect skill-based advantage.
At least, that was how CloudySkies felt.
In a low voice, Ha Yunseo simply said,
<…I let my guard down a little.>
Considering her usual personality as a 1v1 demon, she should have been boiling with rage after two straight losses, but her voice was surprisingly calm.
It didn’t carry even a hint of frustration.
It felt a bit strange, but for now CloudySkies was simply enjoying the afterglow of victory.
Maybe she was the type whose emotions didn’t show easily on the surface?
That was all she thought.
-Dong.-Dong.-Dong.
-Thud!
The countdown ended and the loading screen appeared.
Then, after a few dozen seconds, the long-awaited final game.
The fifth game began.
For the third time, Lulu and the magic swordsman faced each other on the desolate battlefield of the Glen.
The early stage was dominated by the magic swordsman’s one-sided long-range harassment and Lulu dodging and blocking it.
Using the magic lightning with its eight-second cooldown, she persistently tormented Lulu every time she tried to last-hit minions.
Conscious of the range of Lulu’s basic dodge skill, she fired the spell at the very edge of its range in an infuriatingly precise way.
On top of that, her skill accuracy was extremely high, so every time the cooldown came back up, Lulu had to use her basic dodge or move out of range with razor-sharp movement.
This was because the magic swordsman’s 『Magic Lightning』 skill ignored parry judgments.
Lulu, who lacked any ‘guard’ judgment skills, had to scurry around like a mosquito dodging an incoming hand.
From the early stage, the magic swordsman held an overwhelmingly advantageous position.
…But something felt off.
No matter how many lightning bolts she hurled, Lulu was never hit even once.
In the previous game, Lulu had been hit twice at level one and started the lane at a health disadvantage.
But this time, she was moving to exactly the right spots as if measured with a ruler.
The magic swordsman raised her arm and slammed her palm down.
-CRACKLE!
But once again, Lulu simply moved and dodged it cleanly.
And every time the skill missed, countless question marks flooded the chat.
The Cloud Crew was teasing her as usual, having confirmed that her mood had lightened a bit from the consecutive wins.
“…I’ll focus a little more and try to land them.”
The level-up notification soon followed.
Lulu, who had been too focused on dodging to last-hit minions, was still level one.
The magic swordsman immediately began pressing the lane harder, while still carefully avoiding giving any angle for Lulu to close the distance.
Lulu was naturally pushed back.
She was forced all the way back to a position where she could barely scrape together experience.
And the harassment continued in that state.
But every attack missed.
It was around then that CloudySkies finally noticed something strange.
Every single timing for her skill casts was being read.
Even when she tried to mix up the rhythm with mind games, Lulu dodged as if she knew everything.
The magic swordsman’s 『Magic Lightning』 skill fell quite quickly.
And there was no projectile. It simply dropped from the sky without warning.
There was a preliminary motion of raising and lowering the arm, but even if you watched the casting animation, it was extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly where the lightning would strike.
If this were a normal third-person AOS, she could simply move to dodge it,
but this game was strictly first-person.
No matter how much the crackling effect on the ground warned you in advance,
in first-person it was hard to check your feet without concentrating, and looking behind you was practically impossible.
As a result, 『Magic Lightning』 usually felt almost like a guaranteed hit.
But right now.
At least six casts of magic lightning had all missed.
There was no explanation for this other than that she knew the drop location and timing from the very beginning.
…But how?
The skill came off cooldown again. After several large and small mind games, she cast 『Magic Lightning』 once more.
At a completely different timing. After completely different movements.
And CloudySkies watched Lulu’s movements very closely.
Finally, she realized.
‘Even though I changed the pattern, she knows exactly when I’m going to cast lightning and where I’m going to place it.
……Does that mean she’s predicting even the irregular movements I’m throwing out?’
No matter how random a movement pattern you tried to use, in the end, the ingrained ‘human nature’ built up like tree rings could not be defied.
Even if you thought you were moving randomly, when viewed from a larger perspective, a certain pattern was bound to emerge.
Order within chaos.
In other words—
Chaosmos.
This was an area of instinct that could not be defied.
That was what it meant to be human.
CloudySkies felt goosebumps all over her body.
“…Just how much of a monster are you?”
The moment she realized it, she naturally recalled her two previous losses.
The sight of herself being helplessly defeated.
The image of Lulu toying with her prey like an excited cat slowly, slowly suffocating it.
That arrogant gaze that looked down on people.
She felt a chill run down her spine.