Battle Royale (2)
Hwang Jiwoo steeled her resolve.
"Atreve-se a subir ao céu?"
"Vamos fazer isso rápido e vamos lá!"
The Brazilian players were shouting this and that, but she ignored them. Without a translation bird nearby, communication was impossible anyway — and she didn't need to hear the words to know they were hostile.
Fwoooosh!
Flames came spewing from the beaks of the birds they rode.
Kyaaaaaa!
The Ice Bird wasn't about to sit still, either. It coiled its body into a ring to slip past their flames and, in the same breath — shhhrrk! — shook out its frost-laden wings.
Frozen Field
A wide-area spell that drags the movement speed of every summon in sight down to its absolute limit.
Crack, crack-crack! The air began to freeze solid.
The skill had one catch: the caster's own summons felt the cold too. For Hwang Jiwoo, though, that meant nothing. Every summon she owned was ice-attribute, and she had a Frost Cat with its cold resistance pushed to the very limit.
'Jinwoo-nim told me.' This combo was a broken build every veteran already knew about, he'd said. It just saw little play because its damage was low — but she wasn't most players.
And so it proved. The Brazilian players, panic creeping across their faces, were suddenly at a loss.
Kyaaaaa! The Ice Bird climbed steeply for the heavens. The enemies tried to give chase, but their slowed movement let the gap stretch wider and wider.
Swish! Hwang Jiwoo calmly extended her hand. She couldn't settle for this much — this was the combo they had drilled countless times in training, after all.
"Lich!"
Vwooom! The Lich hovering in midair flared with a sinister gleam. And simultaneously—
Whiiiiine! A blizzard began to howl.
Blizzard
Supreme ice-attribute wide-area magic. Consumes half of the caster's MP to slash enemy attack speed and inflict continuous damage.
The Blizzard raged on.
Britain's main screen locked on to South Korea's Hwang Jiwoo and Brazil's Gabshiwa and Piris. An aerial duel splashed across the all-seeing camera was not something the broadcast could simply skip past.
— They've already engaged!
— Yes, and it's no ground battle — it's an aerial battle!
— Who is it?
— One moment! Let's pull in a zoom!
At the caster's cue, an operator at the broadcast center zoomed in smoothly. Revealed in the same instant: the battle between the Ice Bird (A-rank) and the Assault Wyvern (B-rank)!
— An Assault Wyvern? That's Brazil! They've always been strong in the air, no?
— Indeed. Brazil's rank one and two, no less! What luck — meeting in the same spot the moment the match begins!
— That's what owning the skies does. However vast the forest, it's easy to pick each other out from above!
— By the way, what is that bird?
— An Ice Bird! It's an Ice Bird! An A-rank summon, famous among gamers! The standard play pairs it with a B-rank Lich, and they seem to be running it exactly by the book!
Leave it to England's commentators — their knowledge of summons was encyclopedic.
— Then who's the player flying that Ice Bird?
Zuuuum! The camera pushed in deeper, catching the East Asian woman riding on the Ice Bird's back.
— Jiwoo Hwang! A national representative of South Korea! Er, but... just a moment.
The commentator's flustered voice spilled out along with the shot.
— This woman is unranked!
— Unranked? You mean she's not in the world rankings?
— No, that's the thing... she's not even in the South Korean rankings.
— R-really? And she's producing control like that?
It wasn't dazzlingly flashy. But she placed every skill exactly where it belonged, defending and enduring so the Brazilian players couldn't land a single proper blow — and she was doing it against world rankers, the very players rankers called "big shots," without so much as a place in her own national rankings.
At that very moment, with the main screen fixed on Hwang Jiwoo, South Korea erupted as well.
"Th-there!"
Hwang Jiwoo's father shot to his feet, jabbing a finger at the screen, foam practically flying from his mouth.
"Those Brazilian bastards are attacking our daughter!"
"Honey, calm down."
"Kyaaak! What if our daughter dies?!"
"Dying in there doesn't mean actually dying. Honestly, everyone's watching — this is so embarrassing...!"
Hwang Jiwoo's parents were in YooBaek City too. She was a member of the guild, so it went without saying.
South Korea's broadcast crew was shouting itself hoarse as well.
— Hwang Jiwoo evades the Assault Wyvern's breath yet again! And she counterattacks immediately!
— Yes, but her damage is far too low.
— Their movement and attack speeds are slowed, granted, but drag this out and she loses in the end. Hwang Jiwoo has to go up! The moment she descends, she walks straight into the Brazilian players' trap!
— Quickly! Baek Jinwoo needs to close the distance faster!
The broadcast split between two screens: Hwang Jiwoo on one, Baek Jinwoo on the other. Jiwoo holding the line, Jinwoo tearing across the map.
Shwaaaa! Gripping the Celestial Wyvern's horn, Baek Jinwoo was charging at a blistering pace. But sooner or later, he too would cross into the Frozen Field's range.
— Ah, no, this is bad!
— At this rate, Baek Jinwoo slows down too!
— The Frozen Field's range extends this far?!
The Ice Bird's field of vision was wide.
Crack, crackle! Feeling the air around him begin to freeze over, Baek Jinwoo smiled.
'Hwang Jiwoo.' She was doing well. If she were the sort to be bested by a mere wyvern like that, he would never have taken her as a disciple in the first place.
"Pokryongi."
A nod. Pokryongi bowed her head and gripped her staff tight in both hands.
"Let it rip — Byeon (Transformation)!"
"...!"
She took the Pokryongpa she had spent this whole time stacking through Yeon (Stacking) and reshaped it, deploying it as Byeon (Transformation). How? Like this!
Fwoooosh! Fire erupted from Pokryongi's dragon-headed staff, and a moment later an immensely long corridor had opened up across Baek Jinwoo's path.
'Neutralize the Frozen Field with Pokryongi's firepower.' If the air froze over? Heat it right back up!
Shwaaaaaa! Thanks to that, Baek Jinwoo's speed didn't drop by so much as a hair.
— Whoaaa! What is that thing?!
— First time I've seen it too! What skill is that? One of the Fire Dragon Mage's techniques?
— Baek Jinwoo is closing in completely unaffected by the Frozen Field! At that speed, there's a chance! More than a chance—!
The commentators were beside themselves, and naturally the audience went right along with them.
"Whoa!"
"Niiiiice!"
"Jinugod! Jinugod! Jinugod!"
With one heart and one voice, everyone stared at the screen. Their opponents were Brazil's rankers — world rank 40 and world rank 100, at that. South Korea had never so much as grazed the bottom of the world rankings, and in any other year these were players who'd have been too busy running to even dream of a fight. And yet? Hwang Jiwoo was holding. And Baek Jinwoo was racing in to take them down.
'This is... the SKY led by Baek Jinwoo?'
'This is really our national team's level?'
'Baek Jinwoo aside, Hwang Jiwoo is insane too. I take back everything I said about them picking an unranked player. She's holding THAT off?'
'At this point, even a loss is a loss well fought. They fought great!'
The public was moved by Hwang Jiwoo's dogged refusal to fall, and marveled at the daring of Baek Jinwoo, racing to his struggling teammate's aid while unveiling new skills along the way. Something electric surged up through their chests and broke out in goosebumps across their skin.
And then, at last—
"Porra!"
"O que é aquilo?"
The Brazilian players could only gape as Baek Jinwoo bore down on them at monstrous speed!
"Jinwoo-nim!"
Hwang Jiwoo's face, by contrast, lit up in an instant.
Baek Jinwoo had already taken the enemy's full strength at a glance. 'An Assault Wyvern stacked to the brim with damage, is it?' Even the remaining four summons were all support types — buffers, constantly refilling the wyvern's speed and MP. 'They built their whole strategy around aerial combat.' No wonder Hwang Jiwoo had looked like such a tasty morsel.
"Hwang Jiwoo. You held out well."
Cleaning them up midair would hardly count as work.
Tat!
Hungyo, who had been hanging from the talons, launched himself down toward Gabshiwa with immaculate timing.
Ssshhk...!
Doldori, meanwhile, slipped around behind Piris in full invisibility. And in the same breath—
Shkk!
Hungyo's blade sheared through the Assault Wyvern's neck, and Whrrrrr! — Doldori's scythe, materializing out of nowhere, spun a dozen-odd revolutions of its own. At a monstrous speed, no less!
SPURT! The wyvern and the summons astride it sprayed blood.
And that was that! Against the combined output of two damage-dealers stacked with the buffs of a fully-graduated Ramba, the wyvern's HP was simply too low to hold up midair.
[South Korea] Baek Jinwoo — 2 Kills!
[South Korea] Baek Jinwoo — 3 Kills!
Hungyo dropped away, his work finished — Shwaaa! — and Baek Jinwoo banked the wyvern and caught him with ease. At the same time, he flashed Hwang Jiwoo a hand signal: come down, this way!
And so Baek Jinwoo unveiled a blazing debut on the world stage.
— Whoa...
— Wh-what was that?
— How many seconds did it just take South Korea's national team... to finish off two of the so-called big shots?
— I don't think it was even three seconds?
— Granted, their movement and attack speeds were crippled, but... that was an absolute banger, no?
The world lost its mind. Everyone watching the highlights of the aerial duel found themselves struck dumb. Slow-motion replays of Hungyo hanging from the talons and shearing through the wyvern's neck at the perfect instant played over and over, and the death god who had appeared out of nowhere left question marks hanging over every head.
No one took it harder than the Brazilians. A middle-aged woman covered her mouth with both hands; a young man tore at his hair, face crumpling; a grandmother wept; a grandfather wailed at the sky.
Could anyone blame them? Their nation's rank one and two — practically the country's hope itself — had been cut down in a single stroke. If it had been Rachel wielding the blade, fine, no one would have said a word. But a ranker from some no-name minor nation? No, hold on — didn't they say she wasn't even a ranker?
— The main screen has changed!
— Rachel! Rachel is on the move!
But in a survival game spanning ninety-two nations, they couldn't keep showing that one scene. The feed switched in a heartbeat, and the veteran English commentary crew flowed smoothly on to the next topic.
"Jinwoo-nim!"
Hwang Jiwoo, safely landed on the forest floor, greeted him with a buoyant voice — her eyes all but begging, did I do well?
But Baek Jinwoo was in a hurry. 'The hidden reward.' He had no intention of giving up the prize reserved for the top killer, which meant moving fast from here on out.
"First, get a touch on Pokryongi."
"Yes!"
Hwang Jiwoo gave the back of Pokryongi's hand a light tap. With that, the sudden quest's timer reset to a fresh hour.
"Your kill count. Still zero, right?"
"Yep. The ones I ran into right at the start were them."
"Then from here on, route every kill to me."
"Yes, of course."
"First, we're heading back up."
Come to think of it, seizing the skies wasn't a bad call at all. They'd said items were most likely to spawn on high ground — so lock down air superiority first, then sweep every high point. Find an item? Take it. Spot an enemy? Deal with them.
A quick glance — Baek Jinwoo looked to the upper right of his vision.
Players Remaining: 850
Seventy players had already dropped, and Baek Jinwoo had accounted for only three of them! There was no time to waste.
"Let's move. Now!"
"Yes!"
The Ice Bird and the Celestial Wyvern took to the skies once more.