Hey!! Second Place Still Did Great!! Hey!! Second Place Still Did Great!!

"I-I died too…."

The first match. Winning had been impossible from the start.

I was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠queueing duo with senpai, so almost everyone we ran into was a duo as well. No matter how clean the farming or how good the aim, this game was first-person. Hold every angle you liked—once you were surrounded, a gap opened anyway. Senpai had died in the early game, and the enemy had been sniping. There was never a chance we took that one.

Even so, the chat was pretty firmly on my side.

Fair enough. Even I thought that play had looked pretty cool.

"Hehe…. Still, i-it's a little disappointing…."

I meant that.

Three teams had us ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠surrounded, sure, but it was only five minutes in—the extreme early game. Their damage was still thin. Back when I was in my prime, I might not have killed all of them, but I could easily have lived and gotten out.

"Haaah?! Unbelievable! I clearly said I was rusty because it's been so long!"

"Th-that's right. It's been a while for you too, senpai, so y-you're bound to be rusty…."

"Hmph! So you do understand, Miss Izumi? Watch closely. The next match will be completely different!"

"Mmm…."

"…."

The voice that had been so confident a moment ago was gone.

"Th-there's no way."

I said it, and checked my match history.

Bloody Night runs with forty teams.

This is pretty bad….

The longest we'd lasted was the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠last match. Nine minutes. And the way we died was the same every time.

We'd land, split up to farm, and then an enemy would spot senpai, or senpai would spot an enemy, and they'd fight. She would lose—or even if she downed one, another enemy would arrive in the gap and finish her. Of course, the second I heard her fight call I ran straight there. But aside from a single time, she was already dead when I arrived. Other teams had piled in on the sound of the fight, and we lost outnumbered.

In a game whose systems made an early rush miserable, she had a way of forcing every opponent into one. If that counted as a talent, it was a frightening one.

"Mmm."

Honestly, the snipers weren't the problem. The second match and the fifth, I was pretty sure there hadn't been any.

…No. We might have died before we ever ran into the people doing the sniping.

"K-Kurokami-senpai…."

"…Yes?"

Bronze or not, I had thought Kurokami-senpai had a strategy of her own. Even real pro gamers said that dropping into a low rank threw them—the game looked so different they made mistakes. So until now I had followed every word she said.

But at this rate, forget winning. Cracking the top twenty looked impossible.

"F-from now on, c-could you m-move the way I say…?"

I said it.

What if she thought I was being insolent? It had been a long time for me too, and even if we did it my way, our placement might not climb at all. M-maybe I should take it back while I still could.

"U-um…."

"…All right. I understand."

"…Huh?"

"I said I understand! My form doesn't seem to be very good today, so I'll leave it to you, Miss Izumi! In exchange, the goal is victory! Understood?!"

"Y-yes! I-I'll aim for the win, no matter what!"

"Ohohoho! Putting one's subordinates to work is a perfectly respectable ability in its own right!"

"Th-then let's start, senpai."

"Very well!"

"Senpai. Toward 105—p-please use your Night Arc."

"Understood!"

At my call, she instantly cast Arsen's Night Arc.

With the line, Arsen drew in a flash. A brilliant silver edge stretched straight ahead and severed space itself. The cut tore open at once. From the gap a curtain of pitch black unfurled, and in the same instant a storm of bullets and skills poured in.

Every one of those attacks sank into the black curtain. The damage that reached me and senpai was zero.

A Night Arc was what Bloody Night called a character's ultimate. Arsen's—Void Sever—threw up that pitch-black curtain and stopped every attack coming in. It stopped allied attacks too, so a bad cast turned you into a troll, and Arsen's kit made the Arc gauge a miserable thing to fill. Used properly, though, it had the highest ceiling of any tank Night Arc, which was why Arsen was banned at a high rate even in tournaments.

"I-I'll run straight for WN. After you throw smoke in front of us, p-please close with your Q and f-fight."

"Leave it to me!"

Smoke went down, and Kurokami-senpai charged the enemies off to the WN. They were checking her and still watching me. A pretty skilled party, by the look of it.

With Lina's line, blue flame took her legs.

Lina's Night Arc, Full Burst. For nine seconds, movement speed rose by seventy percent, and every skill's cooldown applied at an eighty-percent reduction. On top of ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that she could blink a set distance three times—an empowered Night Arc.

"I'll slip in behind them. C-could you p-pull them with your E…?"

"Of course!"

I blinked twice in a row and took the enemy damage dealer's back. Skilled, just as I'd thought—he spun at once and leveled his gun at me. But Arsen's E, Domain of the Full Moon, had already gone off.

Domain of the Full Moon. For half a second, every enemy in range had their gaze locked on Arsen, and for the half second after that, every attack was sealed. Someone might call it crowd control that lasted a mere second. Honestly, a fight between damage dealers only needed a one-second gap.

I immediately landed Lina's Q, Enfeeble—slowing every movement for two seconds and forcing down their turn speed—then dumped bullets into his head. Her passive, Exploit Weakness, piled on the extra damage. His HP flooded red in an instant, and I finished him with her E, Sprint. Sprint came back off cooldown, and I ran it straight into the enemy tank stuck on senpai and finished that one too.

"The enemies from 105 are c-coming right now, so let's hide and h-heal first."

I hadn't really eaten a clean hit, so my HP was fine. Senpai's, after that fight, was already painted red.

"Haa. How many are left?"

"Mmm. Not counting us, th-three teams."

We'd killed everyone who looked like a sniper, so from here it was a pure skill check. But we'd spent both Night Arcs in that fight, and that put us at a real disadvantage.

"How many medkits do we have l-left?"

"I just used one, so one left."

I'd given all of mine to senpai. That was the last one.

Winning might still be a little much.

Thinking that, I glanced at the chat.

"Hehe…."

The chat was nothing but praise for me.

Well, of course. A team that had been finishing 40th, 38th, 40th, 39th, 39th, 38th, and 35th had shot up to fourth, at worst, in a single match.

"Back then, s-senpai dying was the ch-character's limit."

The chat plastered itself in question marks in a second.

Fair. Until now senpai had taken every one-on-one and died all but once, so the reaction made sense. But I wasn't exactly lying.

Her character, Arsen, was wildly out of place even inside BN. In a game where you shot people to kill them, using a sword for your skills was strange from the start. Her base health was the lowest of any tank, and her passive carried two penalties on top of that.

First: she couldn't use skills while holding a firearm. Second: after a skill or a basic attack, during the sheathing motion, all she could do was move.

Senpai dying in those early one-on-ones had a lot to do with the second penalty. After a skill or a basic attack, Arsen always sheathed. Until that motion finished, she couldn't do anything else. In exchange her basics hit harder than other characters', but the gap while she sheathed in the early game was enormous. Take a character like that and refuse to avoid the early one-on-one, and of course you can't win.

…Thinking about it, the problem was that she fought them at all!

"Anyway, earlier, when s-senpai was fighting, there w-weren't any mistakes in how she moved or spent her skills. That's why a placement like this is possible…."

"Healing's done, Miss Izumi! What should we do now?"

"Mmm. F-first, we wait."

No Night Arcs, and honestly we'd burned through our supplies killing the snipers. There was no need to step out first and turn it into a war of attrition.

Thud. Thud.

"Ah."

"…They're here."

The footsteps were from the southeast. That would be the team that had been on bearing 105.

Could we even take that fight?

Arsen wasn't a character whose performance collapsed without her Night Arc. Lina, though—you could say her Night Arc was ninety percent of her power.

"L-let's avoid them for now."

Lina's Night Arc gauge charged one percent every two seconds. If we could last forty seconds, somehow….

"Ah…."

Footsteps started coming from every direction.

Of course. The match was already past twenty minutes, and the field had shrunk to almost nothing.

"Running doesn't seem to be an option."

"Yeah…."

And of course we were sitting in the center. Our luck was absolute garbage.

BOOM.

The explosion announced the start of the fight.

"Senpai, first, b-behind us…."

I wasn't sure we could win this.

"W-winning was too much after all…."

"It's a shame, but it can't be helped. Still, second place is more than enough of a save!"

Right. Second place on a comeback after so long—I thought that was incredibly good. There had been plenty of snipers, and considering senpai's rank, even more so.

But.

In the chat, the grass was growing.