The Bandit's Veil
Bandit
"By the way, they really won't match with me."
I'd queued up for ranked matches today and had already run into Serek, then Leo, then even Pharaoh for a chat — but no match had ever come through. Even Rasty, who'd wandered out after Pharaoh left and lingered only long enough to sip a cup of tea, hadn't matched with me either.
At this point, it felt like an established fact that the Masters and Challengers were simply refusing to queue whenever they saw me online.
"Well, obviously! Anyone who matches with you, Lily, is going to lose. Heehee."
"...Haah. Leo, what's your score, exactly?"
"Me? ...1501! And you said you're at 1212 right now, right?"
"That's right."
Leo, ranked 2nd in the entire ranked ladder, sat at 1501 points. Meanwhile I, ranked 15th, had a mere 1212.
We were both Challengers, our ranks close enough that the gap in placement was small — and yet our scores differed by a full 300 points. In terms of score brackets, that was more than an entire tier apart.
Considering that from Challenger onward, a win only nets you one or two points, Leo was effectively some 200 victories ahead of me without a single loss on her record.
Two hundred wins. And I doubted I'd even played two hundred ranked matches in my life.
Leo shook her head vigorously.
"Nooo, I'm just a special case. Most rankers inside the top 10 sit at 1300 points at most. Michael at 3rd is maybe in the late 1300s?"
"What about Sword God?"
"Hmm... he's insanely high... he used to be called the Rank Slayer, you know."
Sword God had held the #1 spot for a staggering four years. The ranker who had rightfully earned his place at the very top vanished from the scene one day, then made a flashy comeback — only to vanish again, this time because of me.
And even though he clearly hadn't touched ranked play for a year or two, he still held 1st place.
"If he's kept the #1 spot this whole time, he's got to be way, way above me. There's a dormant-account penalty to consider, too."
"He's ahead by at least a few hundred points?"
"Probably, yeah!"
"......"
I could work around almost anything, but ranked play was the one thing I couldn't touch. It was a system run directly by Deoen itself — a proving ground that served as the measure of true strength.
Reluctantly, all I could do was keep waiting.
"Believe me, if it were up to me, I'd match with you myself... but boosting is one of the very few things Deoen cracks down on hard—"
"Nothing to be done about it."
"But if you just wait, it'll happen eventually! Even if people are dodging you now, it's not like they'll dodge forever... wait. Online?"
Boing!
"Oh, right, there IS that thing!"
"?"
Leo shot up from her seat as if an exclamation mark had popped over her head, and produced a genuinely brilliant idea. Well — less an idea, properly speaking, than one of Deoen's many systems. A single item.
"The Secret System?"
"Yes! You become an unlisted ranker. All your information — your rank, your ranked match record, everything — switches over to private."
The strong of Deoen weren't only rankers. Among them were hidden masters who possessed power rivaling or surpassing any given ranker yet quietly played the game without fanfare — and they were classified as unlisted rankers.
Beriad, who attended my lectures, was one example.
Become an unlisted ranker and your information exposure naturally shrinks, which means far fewer weaknesses revealed whenever something like a PK incident hits the public eye. Rankers inside the top 100 are guaranteed to draw attention, and whether the fans or the antis come digging, plenty of their data gets sold.
Leo sitting right in front of me probably had a mountain of information floating around the internet already.
"But I'm going to be playing ranked matches. Wouldn't that make it pointless?"
All of this, of course, rested on the assumption that I would become an unlisted ranker. The moment an unlisted ranker enters a ranked match, the Secret System unlocks itself — so someone queuing for ranked play like me couldn't make use of it.
I'd end up unable to play ranked matches for the sake of playing ranked matches.
Leo grinned like a little imp.
"True, you can't do that."
"Then why..."
"But what if it were temporary? What if you could turn it on only while the matchmaking search is running, and switch it off the instant you get matched?"
"...That's actually possible?"
"There's exactly one thing that can. Well — one thing, maybe?"
Those who could hide and reveal their information entirely as they pleased.
Bandits.
Bandit, plunderer, red player, dark gamer... The descriptors varied, but they all shared one thing in common: they killed players and took their belongings.
The act commonly known as PK.
During my very first broadcast, I'd run into three bandits who had set their sights on me — and instead turned the tables, stripping them of their weapons. Attacks on me had been almost nonexistent since, but that was because they weren't coming for me; bandits as a whole had racked up plenty of incidents.
Deoen actively encouraged both PvP and PK like this, so a considerable number of player-plunderers were active at any given time. The bandit guilds they gathered into were said to carry quite an infamous reputation as well.
Reaper, the one who'd had the Masterpiece of Drak — the Yellow Marauder — seized from him by yours truly, had been the guildmaster of the #1 bandit guild. Reaper had been an unlisted ranker, but he'd been so active as a bandit that his notoriety exceeded that of most rankers.
"Once you become a plunderer, you gain access to all sorts of items ordinary players can't use — and one of them is the Veil of Blockade."
"Veil of Blockade?"
"Simply put, it blocks your information. Your level, whether you're online, that kind of thing."
"Oh ho?"
The Veil of Blockade was a tool that let plunderers operate from the shadows. The more a bandit's information was laid bare, the harder their work became, after all.
Beyond that, plenty of other systems and items existed to aid plunderers — but the drawbacks were real too.
"Buuut, become a plunderer and the NPCs all start hating you. Quests get hard to pick up, too. Making up for that takes a stupid amount of effort."
"That would be a problem if it showed up on my guild record."
"Exactly."
The moment you became a plunderer, a bounty naturally went up on your head, and you earned the enmity of the large guilds that despised bandits. Even Reaper — whom I'd met before — had carried a staggering bounty around his neck. He hadn't collected it, since he hadn't taken any commission or quest for his deeds, but if he'd ever walked into a bounty office, he'd have walked out with a fortune in gold.
"And plunderers have been running rampant lately, especially. They strip the gold and gear off newbies and weak players every chance they get. Truly nasty people."
"And you're telling ME to become one?"
"Yes!"
"......."/p>
Me?
"...That might be a bit difficult."
I was not the sort of person who took what belonged to others on a whim. Everything I'd ever plundered had been fair payment for what those people had tried to do to me. I hadn't fallen so far as to rob just anyone who crossed my path.
I'm a former sworn saint, after all.
"You seemed to enjoy taking things well enough."
"That was compensation. I don't rob people indiscriminately."
What exactly did she take me for? I shot Leo a sideways glare, and she just giggled.
"Knew you'd say that."
"Is there another way? Some way to get it without becoming a bandit...?"
"Nope. The Veil is an item only bandits can obtain. Trading it is systemically impossible too. So you have to become a bandit, Lily."
"...Then I'll have to approach this a different way."
I had no intention of plundering ordinary players. If I truly had to take something from someone, it would be from fellow bandits, or from those who owed me a debt. Deoen had more than a few dark factions in league with the bandits — I'd focus on them first...
But as I was brainstorming my own approach, another problem surfaced.
"...Wait, isn't there a fundamental issue here?"
"An issue? Oh. Right, there is."
Leo tilted her head, then nodded.
I was the king of the Elbrit Principality, a name known across the continent. My reputation had soared high enough to pierce the heavens when I held back the Empire — but if I became a plunderer, it would come crashing down exactly as fast as it had climbed.
That was how much the world despised bandits. I had no intention of erasing the countless quests and reputation still owed to me, all for the sake of climbing the ranked ladder a little faster.
As if she'd been waiting for exactly this moment, Leo held out a black card.
On its inner face, two figures were drawn in golden lines, and the name field was blank.
"This is..."
"Yup~ It dropped when I did a quest to wipe out a bandit gang that had kidnapped a nymph. I never had any use for it. Not like I want to live a double life or anything."
"You're telling me to become a plunderer with this?"
"Yep! Use that, and the plunderer penalty won't touch you at all."
It was true — treated as an entirely separate account, there could be no consequences to speak of.
There was a reason Leo had made this offer even knowing my situation perfectly well.
"That said — it literally swaps your account, so you should assume your titles, honors, and unique traits are all unusable while it's active."
"The description says there's no change in abilities, though?"
"That's the account's abilities. In exchange, your class, level, and equipment all carry over as-is."
"Ah, I see."
Honors and titles weren't things accumulated in the flesh — they were registered entries in the 'System.' Levels and classes, on the other hand, were tied directly to me, so they would remain untouched.
"So I can't pick up a different class on the alternate account, then."
"This one's for bandits! Like I said — strictly for hiding!"
According to her, it was merely a device to make living a double life a little more comfortable — not anything like a second account. Fair enough. If a single body could freely juggle two full accounts, this thing wouldn't be Semi-Legendary; it'd be Mythic-grade.
"Still, this alone seems plenty precious. If you ever need something down the line, just say the word. I'll help."
"Yup! Go on, try it! It's super handy, I promise."
Urged on by Leo, I tapped the name field of the card twice.
[Use the Alternate Account?]
[Please choose a name for your Alternate Account. This name will be permanently fixed as the account's nickname and cannot be changed.]
...A name, huh.
The name I would carry as a bandit...