Well, I Won
(Pic of Lily looking baffled while holding gold coins)
She dropped a whopping 500 gold coins to make this stream happen lmaoooo
Thought she was a guy, but her voice is crazy good — pretty sure she's a girl?
Even her flustered face is adorable lololol
(Pic of Lily sitting in a chair, staring blankly up at the sky)
Says she took down the boars with the garbage starter sword they give you. Yep.
So apparently she skipped Combat Assist entirely and cleared the tutorial straight away.
Wasn't there someone once — Cross, was it? — who did that? After him I don't think there's been anyone except reroll-luck lucky pulls.
A duel, huh.
I'd fought plenty of duels.
To many races, the angels were objects of reverence — and, at the same time, objects of challenge. Of course, that challenge never applied to the angels themselves. It was a game played strictly between the races who carried angel blood, or who shared some measure of angelic lineage.
Which meant, naturally, that someone like me — born of angel blood — could hardly go a day without challenges raining down on my head.
I reach for a spear.
"...Wait, what exactly are we doing here?"
"Ah! It's your first time, so you might feel a little hesitant about it."
No modern person playing virtual reality for the first time would just start swinging weapons at another human being. Ordinary people are naturally reluctant to attack someone.
Yena, declaring that this much at least was necessary, pulled a ridiculous bear-mascot hood over her head. Purely cosmetic — not a single stat or enchantment attached to it. Inside the bear suit, she flourished her daggers with a flourish of enthusiasm.
"Whenever you're ready, just say the word. Really, don't feel pressured at all. Take it slow — nobody's going to judge you."
"Let's begin."
"Then in just a moment... Huh?"
I took up a spear with no markings of any kind.
"I said, let's begin now."
"...Uh."
Yena nodded in a flustered daze. A barrier swept down to enclose the two of us completely, and a message rang out through the chamber.
Arena Match — 1 vs 1
A number floated up into the air above us: 10:00. Ten minutes, presumably.
The clock ticked down to 09:50, and still Yena hadn't moved. Was she yielding the first move out of courtesy?
Don't mind if I do.
It had been a long time since I'd fought a real battle — my first since becoming utterly, devastatingly weak. Having strength is a fine thing, but being weak doesn't mean you're helpless. Power isn't something you lose just because the vessel holding it has shrunk.
"Huh?!"
I had always been the "weak one" back there, after all.
A Dash closed the distance between us in an instant. Yena flinched in surprise, but kept her composure and evaded the thrusting spearhead with a clean sidestep — vanishing to the side in the blink of an eye. Instead of countering with her daggers, she played her footwork lightly and slipped around behind me. Clearly, she wanted a read on my reactions.
I recover the spear. Then strike behind me.
Yena dodged.
Even with identical stats, my opponent was an agility-type assassin — and an assassin, so gifted in movement and evasion, is a class that doesn't pair well with the Combat Assist System at all. Assassins win by moving faster and more erratically than their opponent, seizing dominance over position; feed their patterns through Combat Assist and that movement turns monotonous. Put simply, their unpredictability stops being unpredictable. Against anyone accustomed to fighting Combat Assist users, an assassin is terrifyingly vulnerable — an assassin whose next step you can predict is nothing more than a swordsman with a shorter blade.
"...?"
But an assassin who fights without Combat Assist is another creature entirely. She carved her own movement routes, and from them an endless well of variables sprang up.
"You're pretty quick, aren't you?"
Yena twirled and slipped around my spear without ever committing to an attack. Even when I deliberately left gaps in my guard, she merely watched my reactions. Considerate of her, in her own way...
Is it actually fine for me to attack?
If I was being honest with myself, I'd been wondering all along whether I was really allowed to stab her with this spear. Virtual reality or not, was killing a person actually acceptable? It wasn't as though I'd never taken a human life — but I had never been a butcher who slaughtered for pleasure. Aside from those who declared their hostility, I had never once killed a human being.
Might as well take her measure while I'm at it.
"It's totally fine, so just go for it! Attack like you mean it!"
Yena shouted at my hesitation. So that's how it is?
"In that case."
I swung my spear toward the path of Yena's darting movement — no, "swung" isn't quite right. It would be more accurate to say the spear was already there.
"Hk—!"
That's how fast it shot forward, tearing through the air with complete disregard for the limits of human anatomy.
With a resounding KRAANG!, Yena — who had thrown up her dagger in a panicked block — was blasted away across the arena, slamming straight into the blue barrier.
And she blocked that, too. How? And I'd actually committed to a real attack that time.
Inside the bear suit, Yena's round eyes had gone saucer-wide as she stared helplessly at her own trembling hands. Then something like fighting spirit reignited in her, and she charged with both daggers raised.
The left... is a feint.
"...!"
I ignored the shimmering afterimages of her daggers — a skill, most likely — and knocked aside the real blade coming in from the right with the tip of my spear.
Tiiing— The clash of steel on steel reverberated through the arena. Yena retreated once more — and then, once more, slipped around behind my back.
So it is a skill.
No shift in weight, no resistance, no flow of force — she simply moved "unconditionally" to my blind side. It had to be a repositioning skill. Its name, what was it... something like Backstab, maybe? That's what it had been called in the world I once inhabited.
I seized the back of Yena, who was busy seizing mine.
Her eyes flew open so wide they looked ready to split at the corners. She possessed a skill that made such a feat possible — but I possessed the blood of angels.
Fwoosh.
"Wha..."
"Well. I won."
The unmarked spear punched through Yena. In place of green blood and spilled organs, blue light effects bloomed where the blade had entered.
Only one voice rang out across the arena.
RED WINS!
Apparently I was Red.
Every exchange of blows sent the chat window into convulsions. When Lily finally began moving in earnest, an eerie silence swept through it — and the moment the duel ended, the entire chat exploded.
Word had spread, and viewers from the community and Livetube alike came flooding into Yena's stream in a deluge. Yena, still sitting frozen in disbelief at the result of the duel, stared blankly at her viewer count as it climbed in real time.
27,901.
31,400.
35,217.
39,51—
"Ah!"
"What is it?"
"The stream exploded."
It had blown up, all right. Yena laughed a hollow, empty laugh. Everything that had just happened felt like a dream — because if it wasn't, there was no possible way this many impossible things could happen back to back.
Instead of restarting her broadcast, Yena turned to look at Lily, who was idly turning the spear over in her hands for no particular reason.
"Ms. Lily."
Just one thought had taken root in her mind.
"Would you... perhaps be interested in streaming yourself?"