You're Already Caught
The fifteen-minute break drew to a close, and with it came the time once more to choose the event for Round 2.
This time, the right to choose belonged to WoW.
WoW had to pick one of the four remaining events — everything except the flag capture they had just played.
And as always, the safest pick was the team brawl.
They may have lost the flag capture, but having already been burned by a hidden card, they weren't about to fall to the same trick twice.
"And we're back! It's time to make the Round 2 selection! Captain Baekseol of Team WoW — please choose your event!"
"......"
Baekseol kept both eyes heavily shut, toying with the microphone as she deliberated.
Before long, she seemed to reach her decision, and her eyes opened.
"I choose the team brawl."
"The team brawl! Team WoW has chosen the team brawl!"
"No upsets this time."
"Hardly surprising after losing Round 1. Taking a gamble would weigh too heavily on them now."
CO had seized victory even on ground the opponent had chosen for its own advantage, and their momentum was now soaring toward the heavens.
WoW, meanwhile, had lost a match that should have favored them.
If they gambled recklessly trying to claw back that momentum and lost, a second defeat would be tacked on at once — and they'd be driven straight to the edge of the cliff.
One loss is a crisis. Two means the meaning changes entirely.
"Now then! Players of both teams, please prepare for the team brawl!"
The team brawl was a far simpler event than the previous round's flag capture.
Both teams spawn onto the designated map and annihilate the other side.
Each player has a single life. Revival through special items or skills is possible, but as a general rule, once you died, you were done.
"We can't use that one, then."
"Can't be helped. It blew up bigger than we expected."
At Team CO's designated gathering spot, Choco ran her fingers along her golden spear as she answered Rater.
The Mirror Cube that Rater had learned upon reaching Level 80 had originally been meant to make its grand debut in this very team brawl.
A technique that teleported the designated person to another cube laid down in advance the moment they shattered the first.
As a support player, Rater had always struggled to climb levels, which left him below the pros.
But recently, stepping into world boss raids had finally carried him to Level 80.
"That's all thanks to Lily, you know. If it weren't for her, I'd have been in real trouble."
"Yeah, yeah, you're so special. I'll sing your praises when you're lifting the championship trophy — now think about something else."
The plan — thin out one or two enemies quickly, then slip away with the Mirror Cube the moment Baekseol began winding up something big — had already been exposed.
Now that the enemy knew the Mirror Cube existed, a different approach was required.
Pros weren't fools. They wouldn't be caught by the same method twice.
Five minutes remained.
Every variable and contingency had already been drafted; all that was left was to choose the most 'reasonable' plan among them.
"...Maybe D, the one that melts Baekseol down fast—"
"Why are you even deliberating?"
"?"
Just then, wreathed in blue energy, Haneul appeared.
Rising up behind him were arrows of an otherworldly blue mana.
"This time you've got me, remember?"
Haneul nodded with utter confidence; the four stared blankly at him, then turned their heads away again.
"Choco's right, D does sound more solid."
"No, the way I see it, F—"
"Let's just go with E. Killing Baekseol won't do anything anyway."
"......Excuse me?"
Round 2 had begun.
The map: an ancient castle, crumbled in every corner, long past the point of sheltering the living.
The castle walls had collapsed so utterly that hardly a trace of them remained, and the towering royal keep swayed precariously overhead.
"And Round 2 is underway! The team brawl battlefield is an ancient castle."
"The map is chosen purely at random. With this much cover, WoW holds a slight edge — though of course, obstacles aren't really obstacles here, are they?"
"Precisely. Any pro worth the name can shatter a ruined castle like that like it was paper. In effect, you'd have to call it a mountain of stone."
The battlefield itself was not especially large.
Compared to the expansive flag-capture map, it was perhaps a tenth the size.
Small enough that from the very first moment, they could sense one another's presence through ki sense alone.
BANG!!
The instant it began, Gunner fired once more.
Again, she meant to shatter the barrier laid across WoW's field —
KRRRUNCH!!
"Baekseol creates an ice wall!"
Massive walls of ice rose up on three sides of the barrier — every face but the rear, which was braced against the edge of the map.
Walls that stood at least fifty meters tall.
Tzing~ Tzing~
These were no ordinary ice walls; even Gunner's rounds struck them and ricocheted away without effect.
"Then I suppose we'll have to go in."
WoW had adopted a passive posture — they had been burned once for leaving their position, after all.
A mage is one who prepares.
If Baekseol and her three mages were devoting themselves entirely to defense, Choco couldn't pierce through no matter how she hurled her spear.
Choco's technique was powerful, but it was not a completed art.
It was no technique that wielded divinity, and above all, Baekseol was no ignoramus.
'She can, at the very least, handle mana with genuine proficiency.'
She was at the level of the students learning under me.
"That ice wall is remarkably solid. It won't give way easily, I'd say."
"Certainly not — Gunner's fire and even Haneul's mana arrows aren't leaving so much as a scratch. It doesn't look as though WoW intends to come out at all."
"Well, the team brawl has no time limit. In a word, they're casting 'you come to us.' WoW has to win this match, after all."
Some viewers might well find it uncomfortable to watch.
They had watched a match worthy of the big screen last round and returned with their expectations high — only for the next round to devolve into both sides hanging back, trading desultory long-range pokes.
I wasn't running my stream, so I couldn't say for certain, but if there had been a chat window, it would surely have been in an uproar.
Flooded, no doubt, with the usual stop camping and fight spam.
But WoW's hunger for victory was desperate.
And CO, for its part, felt the weight of punching through that fortress of a wall.
It was a choice that couldn't be helped — not if you wanted to win.
Haah.
In the end, it was CO who moved first.
Team CO advanced slowly toward the front of WoW's field.
Even as they came, Gunner and Haneul kept up their covering fire while Rater swept for the trap spells strewn across the ground.
Choco kept her big technique primed to fly at any moment, and Asa held the van before her.
Thud. Thud.
At last they drew close enough to enter ordinary human sight, yet that colossal wall went on silently barring the field.
It sealed off all three sides; there was no crossing it without breaking through.
Which left only one road—
"Haneul's a sitting duck out there…"
"A fine target for bombardment, I'd say. Frozen, then torched — it'll be an absolute mess."
Yena's murmur, and I nodded along.
Crossing that wall at all, with the field sown like it was, was already a mistake.
The ground within brimmed with dozens of spells, and unless you grew yourself a pair of wings, you'd make a fine meal for the mages waiting inside.
—......Hoo.
But there was no other way.
If they threw everything they had into shattering that wall, a counterattack was certain to follow.
A chaotic melee would send CO's chances of defeat climbing very high indeed.
In the end, there was only one road.
"Choco! She's going over the wall!"
"With breaking through a poor option either way, it looks like a choice born of necessity."
Gunner and Rater remained on the ground to hold the line against a melee, while the remaining three went over the wall.
To rankers, even a fifty-meter wall with nary a handhold was well within reach.
The moment she crested it, Choco loosed her twin spears.
The barrier that had been hidden along the inner side by the storm shattered, and through the cracks a searing heat came gushing out.
"Rater!"
The violet cubes hovering at their sides held back the pouring heat.
And through it, dimly visible below — Baekseol, quietly opening her book, lifted her snow-white eyes upward.
Choco hastily crushed the cube waiting within — but it was already too late.
'The cube's already frozen.'
"Frost Formation."
Everyone but Choco froze solid.
A casting time of fifteen seconds.
An ultimate that burned through half her mana to unleash.
Its effect: to freeze 'everyone' around the caster.
A technique that nullified even most forms of cold resistance — Baekseol had once beaten Choco with Frost Formation in her debut match.
A nightmare of a spell, the kind that had shaken the very seat of Choco back when she was riding a wave of overwhelming popularity.
"Ugh…"
Choco swept her gaze around her, golden mana cloaking her body.
Every last one of them — frozen solid.
"You held out, huh, Hana? I did brace myself before using it."
Even WoW's own team, Baekseol excepted, had frozen outright.
Frost Formation was every bit as menacing as Choco's own 'Roar,' and they had spent ages studying a counter — and in truth, they had found one.
At the last scrim three months ago — the last time Frost Formation had been used — everyone but Gunner had held out without freezing.
The worst they'd suffered was a slow or frostbite-grade status ailment.
They had even planned for failure, factoring in a Mirror Cube escape as the fallback.
'And now everyone's frozen solid.'
It wasn't that her teammates had fallen short.
They were far stronger than back then; their play had sharpened.
They even held the first win already — no psychological deficit there, either.
If anyone was strained, it was Baekseol, closing her book with hands that had gone stiff.
Hiding her trembling fingers, Baekseol raised a spear of ice with her free hand — the one not gripping the book.
Certain, now.
'What changed was Baekseol — the one who had crossed the "wall" right alongside her.'
Baekseol was now wielding power beyond her limits — power enough to leave its mark on 'reality' itself.
"That power of yours… if you keep using it, something really bad is going to happen."
"......"
"I know better than anyone — it's not something to swing around carelessly. And if you're already pushing it this far, then next round—"
"Hana. Scared, are you? How sweet of you, going so far as to worry about me."
Was she afraid of a repeat of the debut match?
"......"
"Just lie down and die quietly, and we'll meet again in Round 3. You've always loved relay matches, haven't you, Hana?"
"Bullshit. You think a spear can beat me?"
Things had turned out this way, but losing was never on the table.
The bait had been laid on thick — overdone, even — and still she'd foolishly reached for her spear.
She surely meant to pin her down decisively and reclaim the momentum. But if it came to a clash of spear against spear…!
Thunk.
"Huh?"
"Yeah. You're already caught."
Choco was already half-frozen.
"You're not Lily. How did you even think you'd block it?"