Group Stage (2)
The casters' voices cracked with pure disbelief.
Shocked voices kept erupting without pause. No matter which country's broadcast booth you checked, the reaction was the same. The tone varied, but every caster was shouting something to that effect.
The pro gamers watching the tournament were the opposite. An uneasy silence had settled over them, heavy and unwilling to leave. The LB players in particular — Lime's teammates — sat with their brows furrowed tight.
The match on screen refused to end quickly. Whenever the lance — stripped of its bombardment function — swung in roughly, the Assassin slipped aside with ease. The dagger that answered as a matter of course left a cut across solid muscle and withdrew.
On the surface, it looked as though the Assassin couldn't punch through a Spear Knight's defenses. But there was a reason the casters had gone so far as to call it brutal.
Gawol was deliberately holding back her big skills. Assassin-class abilities activated fast, yes — but at that range, you never knew. She was hunting the Spear Knight the way a drizzle soaks through clothes: slowly, steadily, bit by bit. From a certain angle, it almost looked like she was toying with him.
Before long, the chat started grumbling.
That mood spread quickly among the other pros. In the player viewing area set up at the edge of the stage, a kind of anger drifted like a ghost among the competitors waiting their turn. The ones the ghost left untouched were few.
A boy with deep dark circles under his eyes was one of them. Ripper sat watching the entire match with a pure, unguarded smile on his face.
No pro mindset? They don't know a damn thing.
Ripper refused to be swept up in their feelings. If anything, he believed the opposite: of everyone present, those two on stage were putting on the most professional match of all.
Gawol wasn't refusing to end the match. She couldn't. The odds were vanishingly small — but if the Spear Knight ever got a hand on her, the whole fight could flip. If Ripper were in the Spear Knight's position, that was exactly what he would try.
Take the long way around if you have to, so long as the path leads to a win. Chase victory even if the whole world curses you for it. No matter how deep the deficit, never give up until the end. That was what "professional" meant to Ripper.
A fanatical obsession with winning. A monster forged from hunger for glory and pure competitive fire. The kind of lunatic who acted like dying was preferable to losing — that was the ideal pro gamer.
And people wanted her to take risks just because the opponent might feel bad? Not worth listening to, as far as Ripper was concerned. A pro gamer's job was to please their fans, not their enemies. If Gawol had fans, they would be feeling incredible satisfaction right now. He was certain of it.
He liked her play that much.
Ripper had stumbled onto Gawol's matches by accident. During the first qualifiers, he'd had Silphy's stream running while he ate. A mysterious Assassin who took down Europe's representative witch — at the time, the name had barely registered as it scrolled past.
But the moment he checked the main-stage bracket, a small spark of interest caught. What truly hooked him on the player called Gawol was watching the footage against Haruka.
The first game, in particular — it had been beautiful. That right hand trembling as if writhing in pain. That smile of pure joy after collapsing into a sit, drunk on victory. He had never been so moved.
That was exactly it. That was why this match meant something.
Weapon Break only applied through this game. Even if Lime dropped this one, he still had another chance left. Next match, he would have to go right back to fighting on a knife's edge. So right now — with the advantage already gone — the correct play was to burn through his stamina and focus. Unlike a character's HP, a player's concentration didn't regenerate.
That amateur Assassin was boldly picking a war of attrition against a pro. By any normal standard, it was insane. But every pro who ever made it big was broken somewhere.
Tendons severed. Muscle torn. Desperate attacks were read a beat early, as if they were a joke, and answered with counters. The shrinking HP bar and the pain weren't the real problem. The most horrific part was the experience of failure that hovered just out of reach — every decision anticipated, every action a tempo too slow. It felt like standing before a wall he could never climb, and that feeling closed around his heart and refused to let go.
And when the Spear Knight's HP finally ran dry and he dropped to his knees, a collective sigh went up from the crowd.
His movement was clearly worse than the previous game. The aftereffects were still there — inevitable, if you were human. No matter how hard you tried to lock your mind down, some things simply wouldn't hold.
Once you'd been put in your place, the feeling of powerlessness cut even deeper. The failure from the last game. The baseline gap in reaction speed. The innate mobility difference between the classes. Even accounting for all of that, the helplessness of attacks that never landed seeped into the heart like poison.
I knew, because I'd been there.
When I first started kendo, I had talent. Kids my age never stood a chance from the start, and seniors who'd picked up the bamboo sword before me — I caught them soon enough. Until I met that person, I genuinely believed I was a once-in-a-generation genius.
So yes. I knew the pain of failure. And sometimes, I knew how to use it.
"Hah…"
A short, quiet sigh. As a competitor — no, as someone who had been a competitor — it was a feeling I could fully understand. But I didn't show mercy for it.
Crack— snap!
The dagger punched through shattered armor and buried itself in his throat. The flame-wreathed lance hit the floor, and the match was over.
With the game finished, the commentary I'd stopped hearing came back into focus.
The moment the match ended, I stepped back out onto the stage. From the opposite side, the Spear Knight reappeared looking more drained than before. We shook hands, exchanged the usual greetings. I headed for the viewing room where the other players were waiting; Lime left the stage immediately.
That night, Lime didn't sleep. He ran matchmaking for over ten hours straight.