Then All the Better
"Then all the better."
Yena suggested they take a break for about an hour, and I logged out briefly to get some food.
Truthfully, there was nothing to prepare. I'd ordered dinner ahead around five o'clock in case of exactly this kind of situation, so I just popped it in the microwave and ate.
Thirty minutes later, dinner was done. I brushed my teeth and logged straight back into Deoen.
Yena hadn't come back yet, so the moment I opened donations, they came flooding in as if viewers had been waiting.
"Thank you, Apple Flavor. I had sweet and spicy fried chicken."
Delivery food these days is so good that even reheated, it tasted great. Or maybe that's just because it's chicken.
"Ah, there's actually something I want to talk about."
A horizon of deep blue sea stretched out before me. I gazed at it for a moment, then turned back toward the camera. Unlike the dark night of the real world, bright sunlight washed over my face.
"From now on, please don't donate so much. So many people have been giving that I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to repay all of it properly."
No matter how many times Yena told me to just take the money and not worry about it, I knew better.
If people kept handing over cash because I was a saint, because I was pretty, because I'd saved them once—
'Someday, they would come to exercise that right.'
A donation that began as simple gratitude would inevitably twist into a means of taking something back. And if what they wanted wasn't material, but a certain 'action' from me, all the more so.
"I set the minimum that way because smaller amounts make running the stream difficult. The maximum is capped at a million won as well. That said, there's really no need to send a million—"
Bam-ba-ra-bam bam-bam—!
Right on cue, a million-won donation rolled in complete with fanfare BGM.
I felt this every single day, but my viewers really were a pack of contrary little gremlins.
"Ah... thank you for the million, LilyLily. That is not what I meant. If you have money to spare, ten thousand is more than enough..."
Bam-ba-ra-bam bam-bam—!
"......"
"You're here, Yena."
"Yes! Looks like you beat me here, Lily?"
About twenty minutes later, Yena greeted me with a far better expression than before. Did something fun happen while she was away?
"Let's go! To the Duel Stadium!"
Yena led the way, and we soon arrived at the Duel Stadium. It was smaller than the ones on the continent we'd crossed, but the building still carried plenty of presence.
"So there's more than one Duel Stadium?"
"Yeah. You can assume every decent-sized city has one. It's all part of the game system anyway, so there's no reason for them to be clustered in any particular region. Besides, Deoen isn't exactly easy to travel around."
Hm, the interior is exactly the same.
Duo mode? As in, fighting as a pair?
I asked Yena, who was talking to Moco the battle fairy at the desk.
"What's Duo Mode?"
"Ah, normal matches have several modes, and that's the one where you fight 2v2. Unlike the old format where you just fought in a plain square room, you battle inside specific terrain."
"Oho..."
Fighting as a pair, huh...
When was the last time I'd fought alongside someone? Most of my life had been spent in battle, yet I'd rarely fought back-to-back with anyone. Apart from fighting alongside armies or borrowing the aid of spirits, the number of times I'd stood on equal footing with a partner could be counted on one hand.
By the time I noticed, Yena had already received two coins from Moco. She held one out to me—a blue coin.
"Duo Mode. You're okay with it, right?"
"Of course."
This might turn out to be a fresh kind of experience.
Normal match will begin shortly.
Format — Best of 3 · Duo · Partial stat adjustment · Partial equipment adjustment
The moment I gripped the coin, my vision flipped upside down.
"...A coastline?"
I opened my eyes to the crisp sound of waves and a stretch of sandy beach. Beyond the sea, a translucent barrier walled off the far edge of the map.
Yena drew her dagger, its power heavily dulled by the match adjustments.
"It's an island map. We spawn at opposite ends of the island, and the enemy's on the other side."
"So we just go find them and take them down?"
"Basically, yeah. But first I want to see what you can do."
Yena activated the Blessing of Nerindia.
Blessing of Nerindia — Wind rises beneath the caster's feet, granting the freedom of the open sky.
As the enchantment took hold, Yena's body lifted high into the air. She scanned the sky for a moment, then before long floated back down to the ground.
"Oof, my stamina drains crazy fast."
"Did you see anything?"
"Nope. Looks like they're hiding. Their stamina and mana bars are tiny, so the enemy's level must be a lot lower than ours. In a normal match it wouldn't normally drop this far."
It was true for me as well—my strength and physical abilities had fallen off considerably compared to before. At this level, the enemy had to be level 10 or below...
No, perhaps even lower than that.
I spread my ki sense wide. A forest with only a handful of trees. Something stirred within it—or maybe I'd caught nothing at all.
"...Let's search separately for now, and call out if we find them."
"Huh, what? We should stick together or we'll get ganged up on."
Yena drifted over toward me with a puzzled look. I drew my spear.
"Then all the better."
Being set upon by many was something I knew all too well.
And besides—it was more fun that way.
"Found them. Two targets, northwest."
Perched atop a tall tree, a gray-haired man with eyes gifted with primal sight marked his prey. One was an absurdly beautiful woman with blue hair and blue eyes. The other, a woman with black hair and crimson eyes.
A spearmaster and an assassin—a textbook melee combo. The spear was a mild annoyance, but as long as they never closed the distance, it wouldn't matter.
"Those two women—that's them, right?"
"Yeah, the streamer girls. Damn, she really is gorgeous."
How was her character customization even that good? He'd wondered the same thing every time he saw her online, staring at her screen captures more times than he cared to admit. He'd wanted to shake her down for her settings once, but her stream had grown so big that he'd never dared touch her.
"I should ask her how she did it sometime. Kids' customization these days all looks the same."
"Aren't they streaming right now? They'll never tell you."
The other man of their duo, carrying a shield half again the size of his own torso, looked up at the archer in the tree. The archer smirked.
"Who knows. Keep firing arrows so they can't close in, and they'll wear themselves out scurrying around. It's open ground—an assassin won't get much done out there."
Not that surrendering was an option; that would wound a ranker's pride. They were in a sparse forest now, but once the battle began, they'd fall back to the coastline. Out in the open, he could cook a spearmaster and an assassin just fine.
The Legendary Tier bow etched into his hand glinted.
An account he'd raised without ever leveling it—for one purpose alone: slaughter. No matter how ranker-grade a player's skill might be, the gap of 'composition and matchup' could never be overcome.
The leader of the bandit group known as 'Terror'—seventeenth on the Plunderer rankings—trained his bow on the distance, dreaming of the future to come.