Second Preliminaries (1)

The moment I heard Luce's story, I opened my friends list.

I could've sworn I'd cleaned this out not that long ago. And it was already this bad.

A thousand-plus. That dizzying number was exactly why I never checked my friend requests.

No matter how many I deleted, they never went down — so the only option left was to ignore them entirely.

Especially lately, with my name getting tossed around so much.

There was that whole video incident… and just today, I'd killed a pile of streamers just to blow off steam.

Plenty of people would be furious that their favorite streamer got killed. Sure, a lot of viewers enjoyed the show — but not everyone did.

But hey. What was I supposed to do about it?

Field PK was a playstyle I took on with full knowledge of the system's risks. There was a reason even the biggest-name guilds preferred open war over PK.

That was also why they clung so hard to justifications, and why they needed me even while running their own codes of conduct.

Every now and then, the karma came due… but so far, I'd managed to handle it.

While I was at it, I decided to wipe out every useless friend request I had.

I hammered the decline button on autopilot for a while — then a request from someone I actually had good memories of popped up.

A halfling I'd met during a previous party hunt. In my memory, she was still filed under "Fan #1" — a bard from a peaceful herbivore guild.

So she'd sent a friend request. Would've been nice if she'd said something.

No — maybe she wanted to, but couldn't?

After MountainBird died that day, we'd never run into each other again.

The people who could actually fight me in the field were limited. But anyone could send a friend request. That was probably why so many people sent them out of sheer curiosity.

Or maybe a shallow little taste of revenge.

Naturally, the same applied to whispers. If I didn't keep people blocked, the whisper function itself became unusable — so I'd set ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it so that only party members and people on my friends list could message me.

Next time, I should just go find them and kill them. This is starting to get inconvenient.

Until now, it had been fine. The friend adds I actually needed happened the moment I met someone, so grabbing only the most recent requests was enough.

But now that something like this had happened once, I couldn't just sit on it.

If I tracked down a few of them and killed them, maybe it'd die down? And if it didn't, well — nothing I could do about that.

Anyway, as I kept hitting decline, a few names caught my eye.

Elderin was the streamer I'd killed today. And Traveler — that was definitely the Traveler I knew. The asterisk next to a nickname was the game company's authentication mark.

Traveler had said he'd send one, so that checked out. But Elderin? What was her deal? I couldn't imagine she had any warm feelings toward me.

After a brief moment of thought, I made my decision.

Though, accepting them was one thing. The requests had probably been sent a while ago — there was no guarantee either of them was even online right now.

Sure enough, MountainBird and Traveler were both offline. The only one online was Elderin — the one whose motives I still couldn't figure out.

She must have logged back in the second her access restriction lifted.

This felt a little weird. I wasn't sure I wanted to be the one to start a conversation.

If she found me later, she'd ask on her own, right?

With that thought, I closed the friends window — and whispers started pouring in like she was possessed.

She had the energy of a credit card sales rep. I calmly adjusted my voice channel.

"Go ahead. You're not streaming right now, are you?"

I searched the streaming platforms, but Elderin's broadcast wasn't up. I should have checked before accepting. It had been so long since anything like this happened that the thought hadn't even crossed my mind.

She still seemed to be hurting. Good thing I hadn't queued into a match.

Ah. So this was what streamers were like.

How much did she have to say? The second I engaged, the chat just kept coming with no end in sight. Strangely enough, it put me a little at ease.

At least she didn't seem to hold a grudge against me. Not that I particularly cared about her stories themselves.

"So, I'd like to hear what you actually wanted from me. Our first meeting wasn't exactly pleasant, as I recall."

It didn't feel bad?

Well… I supposed that was possible. The world was full of all kinds of people.

I opened the friends window and wrote "person with weird tastes" in Elderin's memo field. I should be careful not to get too close.

The Final Phase ran on a basic single-elimination format — the system better known as a tournament. But coordinating match times for over a thousand players one by one was impossible. So matches were run through random matchmaking against opponents with the same win count. When matchmaking alone couldn't get a fight scheduled, the game company stepped in and set the times.

In the end, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠you needed five consecutive wins to advance to the main stage.

Spectating was allowed, sure — but there was no way to know when or how many people would be fighting. Without arranging things in advance, casting a specific player's matches was basically impossible.

Elderin's request was really just asking me to tell her my match times. She wasn't a major corporate streamer, but she wasn't so small that nobody paid attention either. For someone like me who couldn't stream herself, it was a welcome offer.

"I, uh — I appreciate the offer, of course. I'm just not sure if it's a good idea."

There was a reason I couldn't accept right away.

I couldn't stream. But that didn't mean I couldn't appear on someone else's broadcast. I'd actually tried to set something like that up before… and it never happened.

The reason was simple: I had too many enemies.

"No. This is the first offer I've gotten."

"It's not that either. Honestly, anyone can spectate, so it's not like you even need my permission."

To come after me, you needed to bring a whole pack of high-spec players. I was just one person — so if a guild kept picking fights with me, they had to eat the losses. But not everyone connected to me could afford that.

That was also why I operated without even a basic guild. If people couldn't get to me, they'd naturally start going after the people around me. And if you needed to make money, you couldn't just stop working — so I had no choice but to operate alone.

Teaming up with a powerful guild or streamer wouldn't solve it either. Those types always had ties to specific factions, which meant I'd lose access to jobs from the other side. The losses would outweigh the gains.

"It's not me I'm worried about — it's you, Elderin. As you know, I've made a lot of enemies. They can't kill me, so a fair number of them will come after you instead."

Saying it out loud made me look pretty ridiculous. I was the one who'd killed Elderin most recently, after all. Who was I to be worrying about whom?

Still, lying to people wasn't my style. And that whole "I didn't lie — technically" way of talking wasn't my style either.

"Yeah, I figured it'd be hard— wait, what?"

Elderin's answer left my brain blank.

Now that I thought about it — she was right.

In this game, lifestyle content — especially decorating mains — barely overlapped with PvP mains at all. Other lifestyle activities were one thing, but decorating was pure time-wasting as far as PvP players were concerned.

If going out into the field got hard, you just didn't go. If you couldn't gear up, you just spent your time decorating. And yet she could still cast my PvP matches.

Elderin was the missing puzzle piece. The only one.

"Uh… uhh? Yeah…"