Second Preliminary Round (4)

On the spectator feed, Camellia's stamina gauge plummeted toward empty in an instant.

Yet the Warrior's assault never slowed.

As if determined to display every scrap of skill she had honed, a storm of spear blades kept crashing down without pause.

Only a few seconds remained until the Warrior's stamina would be completely spent.

Once she had unleashed that burst of firepower, she would surely shift back to a defensive stance.

Drag the fight out too long, or throw an attack that was too easy to counter, and the Warrior's spear would drink light again.

Which meant the moment her defense was at its weakest was right now—

the moment the Warrior believed it was her turn.

"Behind! Behind her! The counter lands before the Warrior's stamina is even fully gone!"

The instant that lofty spear tip stretched toward the sky, a single stealthy shadow lunged for Camellia's ankle.

The chain used a tree to reverse direction, slipping in from behind with perfect secrecy.

But the Warrior was not about to offer her body so easily.

As if she had been waiting for exactly this, her body spun half a turn.

The freely wielded spear changed course to bat the sickle aside.

Or rather—it tried to.

The chain that had seemed ready to close the distance without end stopped dead at a hair's breadth.

Barely a handspan of clearance. Because the weapons never touched, no counter-attack judgment triggered.

Faced with the unexpected, Camellia's thoughts tangled.

Not enough length? Under normal circumstances that would be a miscalculation. But…

The miserable defeat she had suffered the previous game.

The odds that an opponent who had shown that level of skill would make such a ridiculous mistake—versus the odds that something else was being cooked up.

To Camellia, the latter looked overwhelmingly more likely.

Her eyes, scanning every direction, suddenly lifted skyward as understanding struck.

Hidden among the dense canopy leaves, in the blind spot of her vision, several pitch-black shadow chains were already plunging straight down toward her.

Where the Warrior had stood, a savage crater remained.

Too close.

Had her judgment been even a single second slower, this match would have been handed over then and there.

Just as Camellia caught her breath, Sulbbang's voice exploded across the broadcast.

"It's not over yet! That exchange just now? Camellia handled it beautifully. But she lost track of Ga-wol's position."

"And this time the Warrior doesn't have the Spirit passive either, right?"

"Exactly. She can't rely on skills to block the ambush the way she did at the start. Pure skill is all she has left!"

No sooner had the words left his mouth than the Chain-Sickle came screaming in.

A ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠top-class Assassin's ambush. Even with thorough preparation, perfect defense was impossible.

For all her razor-sharp reactions, the sickle still scraped across her forearm as it passed.

Fine. It had grazed her once, but it wasn't a critical wound.

She thought she had weathered it well enough—until the attack refused to end at one strike.

Shadow chains forged by skills came slamming down.

Camellia successfully parried, yet the remaining skill twisted the chain's trajectory mid-flight.

The very weapon she had just dodged came flying at her again.

To make matters worse, a dreadful system message bloomed at the edge of her vision.

Sometimes it happened.

When users of a particular weapon type were simply too few—

or when the weapon's efficiency was so abysmal that the developers slapped on absurdly high effects to compensate.

The Chain-Sickle was exactly that case.

A weapon that never became mainstream anywhere in the world. No—a weapon that was never chosen at all.

Even when someone did pick it up, it was never used as a primary weapon. Precisely because it was so off-meta, the secondary effects had been cranked to a level no one could ignore.

The result was a sustained-damage curse packing a vicious debuff.

Time was not on Camellia's side.

"Looks like Camellia's calculations just got completely scrambled. The entire matchup has flipped."

"Because of the curse?"

"Yes—more precisely, because of the Chain-Sickle's attack range. The curse damage itself isn't that lethal once you factor in defense. But keep taking that damage and the story changes."

Sulbbang continued his calm analysis.

Originally this fight required Ga-wol, the Assassin, to close the distance.

A spear outranges a dagger, and the Warrior possesses excellent long-range poke tools.

When stamina filled, the Warrior would rain down heavy long-range firepower.

When stamina ran low, she would switch to defense and fish for parries.

Camellia's plan had clearly been to punish Ga-wol the moment the Assassin—disadvantaged in a prolonged fight—overextended.

Then the Chain-Sickle entered the equation and wrecked that entire framework.

An Assassin with longer reach than her own, stacking damage through a curse.

On top of that, the unfamiliar attack patterns made both dodging and blocking a nightmare.

Worst of all, the nature of chains meant there was no predicting which direction the next strike would come ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠from.

"The real question is… how the hell is she supposed to block all of that?!"

"That slow curse looks especially brutal to me. An Assassin's mobility is already hard enough for the player herself to keep up with—slow her down and can she even catch up?"

The Warrior's stamina had long since maxed out again.

Camellia's reaction speed was rated exceptional even by first-division standards.

Relying on pure animal instinct and dynamic vision alone, she had already landed several successful parries.

But PvP was never only about reaction speed.

If an attack got blocked, you simply threw the next one, right?

A defense that leaned solely on parries had clear limits.

Dodge the Chain-Sickle and a skill came flying next.

Parry the blade that used a tree to reverse direction—then the chain itself became a weapon and seized Camellia's arm.

Riding the shadows, Ga-wol's own dagger… no—only after she saw through the clone's feint did the real Ga-wol's ambush continue.

"W-what kind of combo was that just now?"

"I don't know!"

"Excuse me?"

"I said I don't know! Ga-wol is the only one who uses the Chain-Sickle—how am I supposed to know? It looks like several shadow skills mixed together, but I can't even begin to parse it!"

She was certain she had been fighting a one-on-one duel.

Yet every time she frantically swung her spear, an irrational sensation washed over her—as if she were facing multiple enemies alone.

The health bar shrank by the second.

The one-sided assault from the Assassin continued, the Warrior barely clinging to life, for what felt like an eternity.

In the end, Camellia played her final card.

A last-stand skill that burned every remaining scrap of life.

As the Warrior's spear scattered an ominous aura, every shadow surrounding her scattered and dissolved.

Then, just as that savage spear tip turned in search of its next prey—

from behind Camellia, soft as a whisper, the silver-haired Assassin approached without a sound.

Silence reclaimed the battlefield.

A gentle palm covered those battle-hungry eyes, and a blade parted the throat as smoothly as water.

Crimson blood flowed, and rest descended.