The Arena Showdown
After finishing my school classes the next day, I returned home and immediately turned on the broadcast.
Real Man TV Animal Kingdom Arena, come get your chicken.
“Zero-ssi, hi.”
“Jiyoung.”
“Haha, not late.”
Choi Shin: “Today, luckily, didn't come late.”
“Everyone, hello. Shinye unni, thanks yesterday.”
Choi Shin donated 100,000 won.
“But why not ‘noona’?”
“Is it because she's the chairman?”
“Then if I take the chairman's seat, you'll call me oppa?”
Choi Shin: “Do you think you can beat me with money?^^”
Choi Shin: “I’ll definitely keep my chairman position, so feel free to challenge me anytime.”
“Unni, you said you’d stop using honorifics, right? Speak casually.”
Choi Shin: “Yeah, got it. Then Mina, you can speak casually too. And Jiyoung, you said it was okay to call me noona on stream. The concept has to stay.”
“Yes. Shinye noona. You said to call you noona. I just forgot.”
“Today I’ll do the Arena content I couldn’t finish yesterday.”
Mina created a friendly room, and I was still sitting between Mina’s legs.
Yesterday was exactly the same.
Animal Kingdom is a game played on a smartphone, so the controls are simple, which means the opponent has to be good at controlling too.
I saw Mina’s tier was Gold.
The ranks went from weakest to strongest: Unranked → Bronze → Silver → Gold → Platinum → Diamond → Master → Grandmaster → Challenger.
Arena isn’t a game where you just press buttons on character colors, so skill is the most important factor.
Matchups favor mammals over amphibians and reptiles, birds over mammals, with the same advantage in hunting at 30% but amplified to 90% vs 110% in Arena, making it possible to overcome even with a disadvantage through skill.
If it had been 130% vs 70% like in hunting, overcoming the matchup with similar skill would have been impossible.
The reason for matchups was probably to prevent one-sided dominance, so they added a bit of balance.
Still, since skill makes up almost everything, matchups are meaningless unless the skill levels are very different.
“Then come on in. Room name is Real Man Arena Battle. Password is the date of the day Jiyoung first started streaming.”
Before Mina’s hint even finished, one person entered instantly.
Since the stream started yesterday, input the four digits of yesterday’s date.
“Welcome. Introduce yourself.”
“I’m Anonymous. Nice to meet you.”
“I’ll choose my animal first, so pick what you want.”
“Then I’ll go with the ostrich.”
Animal Kingdom Arena is a psychological battle using guard, counter, and dodge skills.
Guard blocks all attacks except grab attacks, and counter reflects all attacks except area attacks.
Getting close to a guarded opponent can lead to getting knocked around, and counters return damage, so you have to be careful.
You can freely move the map with arrow keys, but you can set it so that when you get within a certain distance of the nearest opponent, it auto-targets.
Because of the game’s nature, if you play on PC and disable auto-targeting to use the mouse, you’d have a huge advantage, so they blocked it on PC to keep it fair.
Slow attacks are running, fast attacks use dash for mammals or flight for birds, or dodge to avoid opponent skills.
But if you disable targeting, you can predict the opponent’s movement direction and fire skills.
Plus, you can fire prediction shots for ranged attacks, so to become a high-level player, you must disable targeting.
Animals’ attacks are close-range, ranged, and area attacks, each with cooldowns.
There are three skills to avoid opponent skills, but each has cooldowns so you have to use them carefully.
“Then let’s start.”
Mina pressed the game start button, and after the 3, 2, 1 countdown, I expected the opponent to attack and retreated backward.
The opponent used flight to circle around me, and I used dash to harass the opponent.
The scene that unfolded while watching the game was quite funny.
Clearly ostriches can’t fly in reality, but in the Animal Kingdom game, all birds can fly.
However, bats are mammals but don’t appear in the game.
They put ostriches in as birds even though they can’t fly in reality...
Well, putting a mammal that flies alone would break fairness, and jumping around on the ground would look quite odd.
But ostriches can fly...
I decided not to overthink it.
The opponent circled in the air and used an aerial dash skill toward me, and I quickly used a counter skill to return the damage.
When you hit a counter skill, you immediately fall to the ground with a down judgment, and during the time it takes to get up, you’re in invincible state.
So I could have immediately run away or counter-attacked with attack skills, dodge, guard, or counter, but the opponent didn’t react to me dashing and instead got hit by my rush attack.
When hit by a rush attack, the opponent flew far away.
The opponent ran toward me to escape, but since birds have flight instead of dash, I couldn’t be outrun by the dashing me.
When my rush skill’s cooldown came back, I immediately used it, and the opponent, thinking I’d catch up, used a counter skill right away.
The opponent really pulled off a perfect counter skill, but since I had predicted it, I immediately canceled my rush and, the moment the opponent’s counter ended, used a claw skill.
Hitting the opponent with a skill other than rush or counter causes a short stun, during which you can keep attacking.
After the stun ends, you enter super armor for a very short time, so you have to hit and retreat appropriately.
The opponent kept spamming skills, but I pulled away at the right timing, and the opponent ended up only shooting skills in vain.
The opponent, who had taken the beating without a plan, attacked me to counter, but I easily dodged.
With the determination to land even one hit, I fired a range skill at Mina, but I had predicted it and used guard to block the skill.
The opponent, whose mental state had broken, flew back into the air to escape, and I used dash to eat an auxiliary item.
Auxiliary items that give advantage to animal characters can turn the tide in one shot, so psychological warfare is possible to eat them.
Of course, in the current situation it would be difficult.
The opponent, assuming I was aiming for the auxiliary item, used a rush skill from the air again, but I lightly dodged and used an uppercut skill that can knock opponents out of the air.
The opponent fell to the ground and was hit with continuous attacks, eventually losing without landing even one hit.
“You’re really good?”
Choi Shin: “Mina is really good. She won’t lose to top-rank players.”
“Same Gold and they didn’t land even one hit.”
“If they kept matching like this, they would have become a top-rank player.”
“But I understand because you have to play with Zero-ssi a lot.”
“If I were you, I’d quit playing.”
Mina won without landing even one hit, toying with the opponent.
The opponent, whose mental state had broken, left the room without saying a word.