Vengeance and Compensation, Absolute
PVP in Deoen follows the combat style of a fighting game.
Which is to say, unlike other games, you won't see colossal sword auras tearing across the field or dozens—hundreds—of meteors raining from the sky.
Even where such things exist, they're mostly ultimate-tier skills with feeble damage, long cooldowns, and punishing mana costs.
Perhaps because of these design traits, Deoen has no truly untouchable powerhouses. If two players are anywhere near the same level, either one can deal meaningful damage to the other—and a critical strike to the heart or the head means a high probability of death.
The same went for that man.
A throwing dagger of fairly decent quality. I flung the goblin-fire stick I'd caught along its attack path to knock it off course.
The dagger shot forward at blistering speed, found the hooded man instead—and, its strength spent, pierced his heart before dissolving into blue particles.
[PVP! You have killed user 'Jack Cross'.]
[You were attacked first. No PK points awarded.]
[You were attacked first. The 'Plunderer' title will not be applied.]
[Plundered 2 gold coins and 5 silver coins.]
[Low-probability drop: Turtle Sword seized.]
"...?"
Well, that's a strange thing to walk away with.
Little lines of text flickered at the edge of my vision. I skimmed over them briefly, then immediately broke into a run toward my next target.
The next target was the man who'd recovered his spear.
"...This is why I said we shouldn't do this!"
The man with the middle-aged voice bellowed at the woman behind him even as he thrust his spear forward.
His methods were those of a bandit, yet he handled the spear with surprising skill. The green spearhead grazed past my head, and in a follow-up strike the shaft hammered into my waist.
CLANG! With the ringing crash of impact, the middle-aged man was thrown backward.
A broad-bladed greatsword whose face resembled a turtle's shell.
If I had to be precise, you'd call it a claymore. No—slightly small for a greatsword, so maybe a "mid-sword" was the better term.
Anyway. I laid the blade flat and swatted away the spear tip coming for my waist.
The man lost his balance and toppled over, and the moment he tried to rise, the mid-sword's blade had already long since sunk into his heart.
"Ah, seriously, what is wrong with you—"
[PVP! You have killed user 'Kim Jinrok'.]
[Plundered 3 gold coins and 11 silver coins.]
[Alas! Nothing else could be seized.]
Nothing this time, huh.
They'd said "low probability" earlier, so I suppose item drops are a matter of luck too. Makes sense—lose everything every time you die and the game stops being fun.
Not that losing everything on death isn't the natural order of things.
I picked up the spear. As I thought, a spear suits my hands better than a sword.
After twirling the spear once in a smooth arc—whoosh—I hurled the mid-sword at the woman who was steadily putting distance between us.
The blade grazed precisely past her cheek, and her invisibility peeled away to reveal her figure.
Only her eyes were visible, but I could tell she was paralyzed with terror.
Pfft.
I laughed at the chat window.
It felt, in some ways, exactly like the days when I lived up to people's expectations—and yet completely, utterly different.
How should I put it? Back then, people relied on me and placed their hopes on me. Now it was the exact opposite. They hoped, but they didn't lean on me.
They didn't ask much of me, didn't demand anything enormous. Simply showing them who I was made them delighted, made them happy.
How strange.
The odd feeling caught me, and I stood there blankly for a moment, leaving the frozen woman where she was. And in that brief moment of reflection, she raised both hands.
"If I surrender, will you let me live?"
"Doesn't really matter either way, does it? It's not like dying here kills you for real."
This was a virtual reality game. Unlike that world, where you only had one life, dying here was of little consequence.
You'd lose a bit of money and gear, sure.
...Now that I think about it, the demonkin and angels didn't have just one life either.
They'd babble nonsense about the blessing of resurrection and how their souls were kept safe inside a Life Vessel, and come back from the dead after killing each other. Watching from a distance, all I could think was, what even is that?
...Let's skip that line of thought. It's putting a damper on my mood.
The woman shook her head rapidly.
"Spare me just this once, pretty unnie. Please."
"...?"
That's your angle?
Her desperation to survive was so glaring that a question nagged at me, and I glanced at the chat window.
Ah, I see.
More or less understood now. I closed my eyes for a moment.
How did the old me deal with people who ambushed me, again? I drifted through my memories, searching for myself.
Hm... there were far more non-humans than humans. Absolute lunatics, every one of them.
Among them was a high-orc who swung a double-bladed axe twice the size of my body at me out of nowhere while I was simply walking down a road—so I broke both his arms and asked him why, and when he went "KRAHAHAHA! I merely wished to test the blood of the Heaven-Scented!" spouting that garbage, I smashed his head in...
And there were the 108 troll assassins who ambushed me. I cut off one arm from each, and when I asked why they'd attacked, they sobbed and sniffled and swore they'd mistaken me for the witch who'd raided their village.
Did I not kill them, though?
I can't quite recall. I've killed plenty, and spared far more.
It goes without saying that you shouldn't make too many enemies in this world, but as far as I remember, I didn't kill unless someone came for my life or carried genuine 'malice' toward me.
And how do you tell malice from not? Instinct, really.
Heaven-Scented Humans have good instincts.
"...Hmm. So why did you attack me? For the money?"
But right now my instincts are in a slightly muddled state, so I might as well just ask. If my instincts had been sharper, I wouldn't have eaten the Gaze three times over.
The woman scratched her head, looked at me, and muttered, wow...
"You're seriously gorgeous..."
"Sorry?"
"...So, why again?"
"The ring."
The woman pointed at my hand.
Ah, this thing.
"You were after this?"
"That, and some money too."
"...You're awfully upfront about it, aren't you?"
"Well, even if I claimed I just wanted to look at it, you wouldn't believe me anyway, unnie."
She shrugged.
Unnie, huh. Such an accurate word, and yet somehow not.
Gender, current age, real age, the difference in voice... Hm. Headache. Moving on.
"Why do you go around PKing—killing people?"
"You—no, unnie, with that face you can make easy money streaming, but people like me can't."
The woman, apparently watching the stream too, glanced sideways at the chat and clicked her tongue.
"Ugh. That's seriously messed up, for real."
"Then would you hand over that weapon?"
"...What?"
"That dagger."
The woman flinched.
At some point the dagger was back in her hand. I had no idea how good it was, but it had produced an ambush like the earlier one, deflected cleanly off a block—and driven straight through a heart in a single strike. Decent gear, presumably.
"No thanks."
"Then you die and I take it. Simple, right?"
"...Are you always like this?"
"Yes."
Well.
I am a Heaven-Scented Human, after all. Heaven-Scented are a race that takes their vengeance and their compensation—absolutely, down to the last coin.
So, if you don't want to die...
"Hand it over."