One-on-One
Sometimes you run into opponents like this.
The kind who attack with the attitude of if I just swing, they'll take the hit, or please just get hit already.
Clang!
Another successful parry—and this time, I decided not to go easy.
Waaaaah—!
I climbed up over Arhan's corpse and soaked in the roar of the spectators ringing the Rune Warrior's Arena.
It didn't actually do anything. Just a special gimmick the developers threw in to make the player feel good.
"…Holy crap, you solo-killed Arhan?"
"I just react to the stealth, so it was easy."
"Uh… that is the hard part, though… but I guess you can do it, Noona."
Glancing over at Neo's stream chat, the hack-crying parrots were still squawking away.
In unranked matches—where neither side has a rank, basically the smurf-village tier—games often ended up completely one-sided. But this one, surprisingly, the 4v4 skirmishes just wouldn't resolve cleanly.
If there was a deciding variable, it was the Arhan who failed to stop the Monk that kept pushing through to the end.
From now on, dream of being a Monk pro instead of an Arhan pro.
"The Arena map makes it even more so, but… playing with you makes winning easy, Noona."
"You're too kind."
With the Monk—whose greatest strength was mobility—solo-killing one person over and over and then storming unopposed all the way to the Rune Heart, nothing could be more disorienting for the enemy team. In the end, you could say we won on the Monk's carry, but I wasn't satisfied.
Never got to use Steadfast Resolve.
It was a trait that only activated when you took a hit, and because the Arhan kept retrying the same stealth attack that had already been dismantled—getting parried every single time—I never got touched. On top of that, seeing me push through alone, my team held the front line properly, which also played a part.
Hmm… tank Monk is on hold.
I decided to save trying it for when I got into ranked games and ran into skilled players, and was about to queue for the next match. Thanks to the fast-paced Arena map coming up, we still had enough time left for one more comfortable game.
"Ah, hyung-nim, that might be a bit difficult… or not, actually—"
While I was chewing on a strawberry muffin, Neo cleared his throat and called out to me.
"Noona, could you stop matchmaking and do a 1v1 with me?"
"…Huh?"
Wondering why all of a sudden, I looked at the stream screen.
So a mission like that had been put up.
I believe no profession is inherently superior or inferior. Even if it looks like they're just sitting comfortably playing games, streamers clearly have their own hardships.
So it makes money.
Still, when you witness easy money being made right in front of you, having your heart swayed is only human, I think. Anyway, for Neo's sake I could do a 1v1 or even throw the match for him… but it would be a waste of time. I'd rather just play another game.
Unless something like the PC bang's power getting cut happened, based on Neo's Rune Breaker skills I'd seen so far, I couldn't picture myself losing.
"Do we really have to?"
The people who'd been screaming that Delent was a hacker had already been purged, so the reaction wasn't bad.
"Ahem…"
That said, the fact that he couldn't really argue with any of it was a little sad. He couldn't force a 1v1 anyway, and even if they did one, he had zero expectation of winning. The physicals Delent had shown were that overwhelming.
So he was just going to let it go…
"What are you doing not accepting the invite?"
"…Huh?"
Delent saw the donation message and casually accepted.
Three times, huh…
A person's mental fortitude has its limits. If he set the respawn timer to zero and just kept charging in, surely he could land a hit at least once.
Neo accepted Delent's invite.
Whoosh!
He found a squirrel roaming the endless blue prairie.
Coldly speaking, Neo's overall Rune Breaker skill wasn't great. But if you narrowed it down to pure 1v1 combat, he could confidently say he was solid. When two characters faced each other head-on, it wasn't game knowledge that decided the outcome—it was split-second judgment and raw reflexes.
"A bit late to ask, but Delent-nim, where's your main account?"
"This is my main."
Legend was a rank you could only earn by placing in the top 500 of the entire server. A realm only the absolute best players could reach.
Nah, no way.
Which was why Neo estimated Delent to be somewhere in the upper Grandmaster range—the tier just below. He felt a little ridiculous talking about high tiers when he was a newbie himself, but that was just how massive Legend's prestige was.
Money is important.
There are people who are unhappy because they don't have money. There are no people who are unhappy because they have too much.
Someone stressed out by financial abundance? Please. That's the kind of thing you only understand when you're like me—treasuring every single minute of PC bang time because you can't afford not to.
50,000 won… 54 hours of PC bang time!
Charging 50,000 won all at once even gave you an extra four hours free. In other words, if I won, I could live in relative luxury for a while!
Stepping into the Blue Prairie—the unofficial standard map for private 1v1s—I took a deep breath. Excess excitement led to mistakes.
I win. I absolutely win.
I'd heard that the right amount of tension sharpens focus and helps improve your skill. On top of that, the enormous reward was more than enough to set my fighting spirit ablaze.
"Shall we start?"
"Yeah."
Garland—a sword-and-shield warrior character popular for its solid bulk and decent skill kit. According to the stats sites, it was classified as one of the Monk's primary counters. A dirty little thing.
Well, counter or not, you still have to land the hits for it to count as a counter.
Whoosh!
For Neo, who was timidly poking with the tip of his greatsword from max range, I decided to go in first.
Whoosh!
Mist Charge. Not straight on—angled slightly diagonal.
"Ah—!"
The sword came down. Toward the grass of the prairie.
"Oh dear."
If it had been on trajectory to hit, I'd been planning to cancel mid-animation and dodge—but unfortunately for him, it wasn't. The result was already decided. A Garland who'd allowed the Monk's approach that carelessly was lying in the grass before long.
"No, is this actually real…?"
Having lost three times in a row without landing a single hit, Neo muttered under his breath. After that first timid death, the way he started charging in like a madman was honestly harder to deal with.
When he tried to bull-rush straight through Mist Charge, determined to land at least one hit no matter what, even I nearly had a heart attack thinking the 50,000 won was about to fly away. Good thing I canceled the animation immediately and swatted him with a parry.
If I had to give an assessment—he was so impatient that he was easy to deal with, but his reaction speed was better than expected, which made poking at him kind of fun.
"So everything except reaction speed is mid, then…"
"Ah, I said that out loud by accident."
Teasing him was pretty fun too.
"…Ah! Thank you for the 50,000 won, OurVillage-nim. Of course, I'll transfer it to Delent-nim separately."
50,000 won… I'd earned 50,000 won in less than ten minutes. At the current minimum wage, that was at least five hours of work.
I sent my account number over Discord, and Neo deposited 70,000 won. In the transfer memo, he'd written that the extra was an apology for the previous incident.
As far as I knew, kids weren't supposed to be able to freely deposit and transfer money from bank accounts… but this place had a few things that didn't quite match the common sense I was used to. There was also the possibility that my own knowledge was simply wrong, so I decided to let that part slide.
Looking at my newly plump account balance, I felt a sense of abundance. At the same time, having earned it so easily, a surreal, dazed feeling washed over me.
…Is it okay to make money this easily?
I'd raked in a fortune. Strictly speaking it was too small to call a fortune, but considering my age, it was more than enough. Money-related problems were something I'd been fretting over continuously.
Barring another natural disaster, I was going to have to live in Han A-yeon's body, and money was an indispensable element of life in South Korea. That said, there was no way any part-time job would hire a ten-year-old brat, and trying to grind games for cash wasn't viable either—I didn't have enough PC bang time.
"……Delent-nim?"
"Ah, yes."
Neo's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. Either way, 70,000 won would be a huge help. And on top of that, I'd learned that Neo was a decent person in more ways than one.
"You confirmed the deposit, right?"
"No."
"……What?"
I briefly imagined what would happen if I just turned off the computer and left—but that would be far too mean, so right as the chat started getting spammed with hell-bound messages, I corrected myself.