Sni?ing
Sky Sword was a sword style that detonated every scrap of mana stored within in a single burst, unleashing an overwhelming slash.
Defense never entered into it — an art tilted to the extreme toward pure offense. Put simply, it was the art of cutting really fucking hard.
"Which is why the basics matter even more for Sky Sword users. Every strike is heavy enough that one slip turns into a disaster."
"It'll probably be the same even inside a VR game. Once you fully drill the fundamentals into your body, the power just has to go up — that's how the structure works."
As I spoke, I wiped the sweat running down my sleeve with the cuff of my training uniform. With every assist disabled, the stamina drain was brutal — I was already out of breath, and I hadn't even swung half of the total yet.
It wasn't a bad feeling.
It was proof I was moving that hard.
"Nngh... I think I've rested enough. Shall we start swinging again?"
I stretched lightly, then took up the wooden sword once more.
The straw dummy that had already taken more than five hundred hits was split nearly in half. The precise crack carved by those five hundred cuts held not a single millimeter of error.
I glanced at chat once, then settled back into stance. Eyes closed, mind emptied, sword held straight.
This was a sword art that, with a single cut, could split a mountain, part the sea, cleave the sky. With that kind of overwhelming force, even the slightest error could be fatal.
And I would have to use this art in the chaos of real combat. To handle a sword on the desperate front lines where everything was aiming for my life, I could not afford to half-ass a single moment of practice.
Which was why practice had to be like the real thing.
When I swung the sword, I gave it everything. Like carving a work of art, I poured my full focus into every single cut, and I had to swing five hundred times.
But...
"Alright, that should be enough."
Around the six-hundred-seventieth swing, I let go of the sword.
The heavy wooden blade dissolved into particles just before it hit the floor, and that became the cue for everything around me to start rewriting itself.
The world slowly broke down into white particles. Alongside the spatial transition effect unique to virtual reality, the clothes I was wearing began to change as well.
From the training uniform that had been wrapped so tightly it refused to allow even a hint of skin — back into my original outfit.
Which is to say... it's embarrassing to put this into my own mouth, but—
A loose T-shirt that hung down to my thighs, and short dolphin shorts that only barely showed their edges whenever the shirt rode up.
"Ta-da, how do I look?"
I lifted both arms, tilted my head a little, and smiled. Smiling with an avatar that had no dark circles produced a bright, refreshing expression.
"Heheh, right?"
I curled my hands into little fists, laughed, and checked the viewer count.
Current remaining viewers: 152.
The numbers that had briefly climbed around the five-hundredth swing — peaking at 230 — had been falling again. One-seventy through the six-hundreds, and by the six-fifties even those had given up, down to one-fifty.
Six months of refined chaos-sense told me only the real ones were left.
So I decided to stop here.
Watching my precious viewers suffer wasn't exactly a comfortable sight. Even I wasn't someone who only enjoyed their pain.
"Well... I originally wanted to keep only our sword gallery kids, but anyone who sat through two hours of this, even if they're new, deserves recognition."
Before I knew it, stream time had passed five hours. Even accounting for it being a weekend morning, it was astonishing that this many people had kept watching me the whole time.
These were kids who had sat still and watched me do the exact same posture, the exact same motion, for two straight hours. If they'd stuck around through that, they'd probably show up to my stream no matter what happened.
That thought made me happy enough to forget I was exhausted.
"Alright then — shall we start the stream for real?"
"First... 219.55, come out."
219.55 donated 500 won!
"I just know. I'm your Ju-ttak, aren't I?"
Like recognized like. You know how they say birds of a feather? Same idea.
This was already the second time I'd started a stream at three in the morning. Guessing the sleep patterns of users whose usual active hours started around two a.m. — the ones who jumped into a stream the second it went live — wasn't exactly hard.
"Ah, it's a compliment, so don't worry! I even gave you something nice, right?"
219.55 donated 500 won!
The viewers fretting was funny. Sure, the Par-ttak initiation rite had been pretty intense, but weren't they overreacting a little?
"Ah, but this time it's actually something good."
Saying that, I granted 219.55 manager permissions.
"Honestly, I've been thinking about it for a few days. It felt like you were only suffering as Par-ttak, so I was wondering if I should switch you over to stream manager, which is a bit more comfortable."
Weirdly enough, a lot of people didn't want the gallery Par-ttak role but were eager for the stream manager seat.
Maybe because it put them a little closer to the streamer than regular viewers? Both jobs were about rooting out the worst offenders and erasing high-intensity comments — same eraser work — yet the treatment felt completely different.
Even so, the reason I'd left the stream manager seat empty until now was simple.
If I elevated someone to manager with no particular reason — and as the only manager, no less — it would look like I was playing favorites way too hard.
"So I left it empty, but now there's already one manager, and something good happened this time too."
Thankfully there wasn't any major backlash. Only after the second manager had been appointed could I finally talk about the stream itself in earnest.
I spread my fingers at a right angle and checked the match I'd been queuing in secret. The moment the player count flipped to 100, the space around me began to collapse.
"Ah, it's not because I was worried about getting sniped."
The moment I thought I wanted to flip the screen, the display between my fingers switched to the broadcast feed. Ara's stream, just gone live, popped up.
Ara's broadcast layout looked a lot like mine. Of course it did. We were both playing the same game.
"The game we're doing today is Survival Mode, you see."
The PVP content added to the PVE game Front Line: Survival Mode.
If Front Line was a capture-point war, then Survival Mode was a battle royale.
A combat mode where you cooperated and turned on one another against hostile NPCs and magical beasts, winnowing one hundred players down to a final survivor — that was Survival Mode.
"But this time, I'm the one doing the sniping."
Watching the viewers look genuinely rattled, I asked in a confident voice,
"You guys know the story of the magpie that repaid a kindness?"
I raised the hand holding the screen, and Ara's broadcast feed settled into a corner of my own stream. By the time the viewers had more or less grasped the situation, I wrapped the broadcast up.
There was a certain amount of overlap between Ara's audience and mine. Which meant that if I left my stream running while sniping her, I worried I might steal her viewers.
"Alright then, I'm off."
"If someone watches my stream and snipes me, that wouldn't work, would it?"
"Alright then, bye!"
I flashed a bright, playful smile and cut the stream.