94. We Lost Because of Me - (3)
94. We Lost Because of Me - (3)
***
[what's with the donation lolololololololol]
[did Rin just laugh?]
[??? that was a backed-up donation going off lololol]
[no but what's with that donation, seriously]
[G1's level lolololololol]
[they got wrecked, right??]
[yep, today the 6-win streak breaks and their rank's about to tank lolololololol]
[is this supposed to be a G1 cheering room?]
[Rin just smirked, didn't she???]
[no seriously what kind of cheering room is this?]
[the donors all probably donated thinking G1 would win lololololol]
Serin quickly wiped the smile off her face as she stared at the chat, which had suddenly heated up.
"Ah, um. Today this is a G1 cheering room. Any chat disparaging a specific player or team is getting banned. I really wasn't smirking or anything. There was just a funny comment in chat, so I laughed..."
Seeing genuinely angry G1 fans, I hurried to do damage control, moving my mouse and starting to ban the toxic viewers who had seized the moment to trash G1.
Click.
Click.
"I just banned seven people who were putting down G1 way too hard. Please don't disparage the team or the players. The match just now was plenty fun, so why is everyone acting like this? And I think G1 will win game 2."
I warned them that if they didn't want to get banned they should watch themselves, while at the same time trying to soothe the G1 fans.
Whether G1 would actually win game 2, I didn't know, but I thought the odds were pretty high.
Even game 1, which had effectively started as a 2v3, had been as gripping as what they'd just seen.
If it was an even 3v3, G1 was surely a cut above in raw strength.
[the people getting banned are seriously toxic as hell]
[no but why are you even trashing the players?]
[Rin, if this is a G1 cheering room... please actually cheer for G1 properly]
[Minseong did make a mistake, but people are going way too hard on him]
[Minseong got MVP so many times every time G1 won, and now just because he made one mistake today people are ripping him apart like they want him dead?]
[G1 will still win game 2, right?]
The chat atmosphere was definitely unusual compared to normal.
On top of that, the player named Minseong, who had made a mistake in game 1, was getting cursed out to a degree that even I thought was excessive.
After that, the chat became a tangled mess of each team's fandoms, and the donations were filled with all sorts of cringe takes amid the overheated pre-match excitement.
While I was dealing with all of it, ten minutes had slipped by before I knew it.
The player selection time for set 2 was approaching again.
—Set 2. BS, who have side selection, have chosen blue side this time. They're expected to try a different strategy by switching colors, and I'm really looking forward to it. Even if they give G1 red side, they're probably prepared for it, right?
—Yes, they probably are. I'm curious what BS's intention is in choosing blue side. In a way, didn't game 1's selections feel very distinctive? The instant picks stood out too, as if they'd predicted all of G1's player selections.
At that moment, Baekya's portrait was instantly locked in, completing BS's first pick.
—BS! An instant pick with no hesitation! They've selected Baekya as their first pick.
Unlike game 1, G1, on red side, did not make their player picks right away. As if they were thinking it over, with only two seconds left on the timer, two players were selected at once.
—G1, unusually, are taking their time with player selection. And at the end of it, Kang Hyeok, and Minseong... they select them again!
—Minseong, who showed a poor performance in game 1, personally took a mental hit, so I expected his condition wouldn't be good enough to come back out today... but I suspect the player himself wanted to return with a resolve to do better.
—Broadly speaking, the counter to the Archer class is the Assassin class, after all. So in terms of matchup, there's no problem.
The commentary continued.
BS's player selection time.
—BS! Here they're hovering over the portraits of Jeongmak and Silent again?
—They're on blue side, so they have first pick, don't they? They have first pick, and they're going with the all-ranged composition again first?
—Using the same strategy, well. Against a strong team like G1...
Unlike before, BS hesitated, leaving the portraits up instead of instant-picking. Before long, the player named Jeongmak was locked in, but at the end, instead of the player named Silent, another player's image was brought up.
—For the final pick, they're fielding Aizen of the Warrior class, opting for the safety of a one-melee, two-ranged composition.
—As expected, going with the all-ranged composition again with first pick was too much pressure. I think this is a perfectly fine choice.
With that, BS's player selection ended, leaving only G1's final player selection.
Before even one second of the selection countdown had passed, an instant pick was locked in.
It was the shield-bearing Warrior class player named Jinhyeok.
—G1's instant pick! By taking Jinhyeok, they've brought the exact same player picks as set 1!
—Angry G1! You can even feel the fighting spirit to avenge game 1 with the same players.
—It's the same player picks, but since the opponent chose Baekya and Jeongmak, a two-ranged lineup, it seems like a reasonable choice.
—Now, both teams are ready. Let's go to the upcoming set 2 match!
With the caster's shout, the player selection screen vanished, and the Colosseum backdrop returned.
This time, G1 on red side spawned on the left,
and on the right, BS's players on blue side materialized with light.
Almost the same players as game 1, but with BS adding one melee class player, Aizen, in place of Silent, BS had changed their strategy.
She was just about to think through the matchup advantages while considering that variable.
Suddenly, a flashy alert sound rang out.
Ding-a-ling!!!
She remembered clearly that donations had been blocked before player selection, so she checked what the sound was.
『Mission: 500,000 won if BS wins today!』
〔Time Limit: 59:59〕
It wasn't a donation; a mission had been set.
Before she first turned on the stream, when Sua was setting things up, missions had seemed annoying, so she'd set the minimum amount to 500,000 won, meaning she didn't want to do them at all...
She hadn't expected someone to actually set a mission.
"That mission's a bit much. This is a G1 cheering room."
She'd written plainly in the stream title that she was cheering for G1, so what was with a mission for 500,000 won if BS won?
[lololololololol]
[what's with the 500,000 won mission lolololololololol]
[wait, did Rin actually accept that mission?]
[if it's showing on screen now, doesn't that mean she accepted it?]
[?? but she said this is a G1 cheering room]
[500,000 won is 500,000 won, you can't help it, ah lololol]
[fr lolol]
[this is bad...]
[Rin got 2 million won in donations from G1 today and she's taking a mission like that?]
[come on, it's just a mission, what's the big deal?]
[G1 fans are getting way too invested again lol]
The chat reactions split roughly into two camps: it was fine to accept the mission, versus why would I take a mission like that in a cheering room. But to me, accepting it felt wrong.
"Thank you to whoever set the mission. But... I'll treat the mission as failed and decline it."
—Mission Failed!
A failure notification appeared on screen, and a small donation alert for 50,000 won—10% of the mission amount—popped up.
I opened the mission settings and changed it from "Auto Accept" to manual.
While my attention was briefly diverted by the mission.
Suddenly, the commentators' excited voices rang out.
—Angry G1!!! They're overwhelming BS's players with crushing momentum!!
—Minseong looks completely different from game 1. The pinnacle of restrained skill usage! Control that draws involuntary admiration. Jeongmak retires in an instant!
—Jinhyeok closes in suffocatingly and marks his opponent! Aizen is being pushed back helplessly.
I quickly took in the match screen and grumbled.
"Ah, seriously."
I was annoyed at whoever had set the mission for no reason.
It felt like I'd missed a fun moment.
***
After confirming Jeongmak turn into light and vanish, Minseong felt his vision suddenly brighten.
A snipe of light bright enough to illuminate everything.
—White Night.
WHOOOOOSH!
Only after the light was fired did the delayed sound ring out.
Perceiving it in an instant, Minseong hardened his expression coldly and activated a skill.
—Shadowless.
The sharp-featured man wrapped in jet-black cloth vanished like an afterimage, letting the snipe of light that had lit up the Colosseum pass straight through him.
Minseong, who had melted away without a trace, disappeared from the Colosseum in an instant.
The reason assassins were called the natural enemy of the Archer class.
It was because of "Shadowless," an overwhelming evasion skill that allowed one to completely phase through a single ranged attack.
Thud!
Minseong revealed himself, having closed some of the distance to Baekya in an instant, and gripped his dagger as he activated another skill.
One of the Assassin class's best skills, usable immediately after Shadowless.
—Shadow Slaying.
As Shadow Slaying unfolded, Minseong's form became a bizarre shadow and shot forward as if endlessly accelerating.
Without a sound, without a presence, Minseong began hurtling toward Baekya far away, as if accelerating.
When he hurled his dagger into the empty air, Minseong suddenly appeared along the trajectory where the thrown dagger existed,
and the moment he appeared, clutching the dagger, he hurled it again into the empty void.
Like that, Minseong chained Shadow Slaying over and over, rapidly closing in on Baekya.
As a result, Minseong's stamina gauge began draining rapidly.
"...So you won't fall for the same trick, is that it?"
Baekya, who had been watching Minseong carefully, tensed up and raised her longbow.
The moment the snipe of light, "White Night," missed, close-quarters combat with the assassin became unavoidable.
The only way to have any chance at a reversal was to finish Minseong quickly, right after Jeongmak had been taken down.
Creeeeak.
Baekya drew the bowstring of her beautiful pure-white longbow with an impeccably straight posture.
Minseong's jet-black form kept flickering in and out of existence like a blinking light, so she couldn't target him by sight alone.
Therefore, she activated a skill while predicting the trajectory of the daggers that kept being thrown.
—Five-Shot Burst.
Baekya's hands began firing the bow at a speed no one could perceive.
Swish-swish-swish!!!
An eerie sound rang out as if overlapping, and in an instant, five arrows like light itself were loosed.
Where he was now, the direction the dagger was thrown, and the direction that dagger would go next.
Baekya drew her bowstring while predicting all of it with near-instantaneous judgment.
The man wrapped in jet-black cloth perceived the five streaks of light fired in an instant.
The paths of the five streaks of light were aimed too precisely at the space where he would move next, and they were also fiercely targeting where he currently was.
—Thump.
Minseong's heart was still pounding as if it would burst,
and even in this moment, as he hurled his dagger and activated Shadow Slaying, his hands were trembling faintly.
'...We lost because of me.'
The mistake in game 1.
No matter who looked at it, they had lost the match because of him.
All because he had been complacent.
BS.
They were a team he had never once lost to in his entire pro career,
and since they were an all-ranged composition, considering his own Assassin class, he had thought there was no way he could lose.
But in the end, his own stupid judgment had ruined the match.
And yet, after the match ended, the older guys had looked at him and hadn't blamed him at all.
—The opponent prepared thoroughly. Don't let your guard down, just play like usual.
The words Kang Hyeok and Jinhyeok gave Minseong were nothing more than that.
Even when it came time for game 2 player selection, Minseong couldn't bring himself to say he'd play, but the others still said he was the right choice.
Against BS's composition, they said, it was right for him to play.
"..."
Minseong's lips trembled faintly.
And that their faith was not misplaced—
Minseong now had to prove it himself.
In an instant, Minseong's dagger vanished as if swallowed by darkness and began tracing a bizarre shadow.
—Ssswish!