126. G1 vs Rin - Doubt (8)
126. G1 vs Rin - Doubt (8)
***
Even as Minha watched the match, she kept tilting her head.
She had faced dancers quite a few times herself, but a technique where the cord extended endlessly like that and ensnared the opponent was something she had never seen despite playing Another World for a long time.
"The Dancer Class had a technique like that?"
So she turned to Kang Hyeok nearby and asked if he knew. Kang Hyeok nodded with a very ambiguous expression.
"It's one of the counter techniques. But... practically no one uses it in actual combat, so I knew it as a dead technique too."
He had checked every Dancer Class technique while preparing for the scrim against Rin, so he did know it, but since practically no one used it, even Kang Hyeok hadn't identified it at a glance at first.
The name of the technique she had just used was Dance of Requiem.
It was one of the counter techniques whose power varied in proportion to the number of the opponent's attacks.
However, its activation conditions were extremely restrictive: instead of the Crescent-Moon Weight, she had to grab the cord connected to it and deflect the entire trajectory of the opponent's attacks as if letting them flow past. On top of that, the execution difficulty was exceedingly high.
Even if the counter succeeded, due to the technique's activation conditions, she wasn't holding the Crescent-Moon Weight, so a proper follow-up attack was impossible.
It was one of the techniques he had only skimmed past...
Rin had perfectly received it by using a technique no one used, as if she had seen through exactly which technique Minseong would use.
The more Kang Hyeok looked at Rin... the more he felt his mood sinking.
He had thought of her as a wall early on, but now the height of that wall seemed to keep rising.
Just like Kang Hyeok, Minha, having sorted out her thoughts, moved her lips as if she couldn't understand.
"Wait. Then... just how many techniques is this Rin person using? Even from what I've seen just now, she seems to be using quite a lot of different techniques."
"Considering she even used a technique that's practically dead, you'd have to assume she can use most of the Dancer Class's other techniques too."
"Does that... even make sense?"
At Minha's dumbfounded voice, Kang Hyeok let out a short laugh.
Each class had dozens of techniques, but normally people chose and focused.
Even with dozens of techniques available, no one thought about mastering and using all of them.
Even pros didn't try to master every technique suited to their class.
In a frantic match where outcomes were decided in units of seconds,
mastering dozens of techniques and then using each one separately to fit every situation was sheer arrogance and conceit.
Normally, the standard was to hone a few core techniques so that when a situation arose, you could deploy them almost on instinct. In fact, most of the top-ranked players were like that, and G1's players were no exception.
So while the majority of players intensively polished a few techniques to completion...
there was one exception.
'Jeanne d'Arc.'
A player who had mastered every technique of the Knight Class and could handle any situation.
At the image of Jeanne d'Arc that flashed through his mind, Kang Hyeok furrowed his brow.
......
Just then, Minseong appeared on one side of the stands amid a cluster of light.
Swish.
He pushed back his hooded robe to reveal his face clearly and curled up the corners of his mouth.
Then, looking at Hajun and Jinhyeok right in front of him, he raised his voice.
"Guys, guys!! You all watched the match, right! Doesn't Rin seem seriously insane!? Wow, when I got countered at the end, for a second I just couldn't say anything. No, seriously, how is she this good?"
He had lost the match, but more than that, the shocking admiration he'd felt through the match against Serin was dominating his entire body.
If at first he had looked at Rin as a fan of a streamer, now he was purely expressing admiration for Rin's skill as one player to another.
The sight of her deflecting attacks with the cord looked not just beautiful but inhuman.
And at the end of it, the moment when all directions were suddenly surrounded by blood-red cords.
He had tried to escape belatedly, but by then everything was already over.
The emotion Minseong had felt at that moment was something beyond words.
"I thought you'd win, Minseong. That last thing she used was probably a counter technique, right? Watching it, even I was dumbfounded. Seriously."
"Hah... I don't know. The more I watch her matches, the more terrifying she looks."
Jinhyeok and Hajun each reacted differently.
Jinhyeok spoke as if he found it a bit absurd, while Hajun let out a sigh as he looked toward the Colosseum.
Where his gaze was directed. Inside the Colosseum, leaning against a massive boulder, was a silver-haired woman waiting for the next match.
She was looking on indifferently, as if asking why they hadn't come down to the Colosseum yet.
The sight was so picture-perfect that it drew the eye, but Hajun had watched every single one of the previous matches, so a feeling of helplessness welled up even more strongly.
The feeling of sensing defeat before even starting... hit Hajun especially hard.
Trudge.
Trudge.
As his turn came, he rose and headed toward the Colosseum, but there was no strength in Hajun's steps.
Even as he gradually descended from the stands, Hajun's mood sank further.
'I wonder if this is how a cow being dragged to the slaughterhouse feels.'
The feeling of his fighting spirit being completely broken before the match even began.
Even though going into a match against a melee class was supposedly the matchup he was most confident in, Hajun couldn't shake the persistent sense of unease.
Because the time he had sensed defeat against TSJ kept coming back to him.
The thick helplessness and emptiness he had felt at every finals.
The feeling of having to face an opponent he couldn't beat no matter what he did.
The helplessness from the moment he had faced Jeanne d'Arc had kept accumulating and was lodged deep inside Hajun.
'...You pathetic piece of shit.'
Shaking his head hard to forcibly cast off the clinging emotions, Hajun clenched his hand tightly.
Before he knew it, a double-barrel shotgun with a massive muzzle was emanating a faint presence in Hajun's hand.
He gripped the shotgun and chambered a round.
Clack!
The familiar, heavy sound slammed against his ears.
The heavy weight of the oversized double-barrel shotgun seemed to awaken a peculiar sensation.
He couldn't let himself be crushed by defeat before the match even began.
***
Clack!
Snap!
The crisp sound of seams locking together.
It was the sound of a double-barrel shotgun being loaded.
Watching Hajun, dressed as a cowboy, descend into the Colosseum, Serin swung her Crescent-Moon Weight once.
Whoosh!
—The duel will begin shortly.
"Let's give it everything we've got."
When Hajun spoke in a noticeably stiff voice, Serin nodded calmly.
"Yes. Of course."
The opponent was a gunner who used a shotgun.
Player name: Hajun.
Aside from being weak against long-range users with superior range due to matchup, he was a player with a clear advantage against melee classes.
In fact, she knew he recorded an overwhelming win rate against melee classes, taking virtually every victory in those matchups.
'His league win rate was 88%, wasn't it.'
But for some reason, the figure facing her inside the Colosseum arena looked very different from the first time.
Unlike the first time, when he had spoken to her with a relaxed, sly impression, now his face and movements were all stiff enough that even from the outside, she could tell he was nervous.
—2.
Watching the countdown come to an end, Serin kept her eyes on the opponent across from her.
He wore a stylish gray western hat like a Wild West cowboy, with a massive double-barrel shotgun slung over one shoulder.
—0.
Even after the countdown ended and the match began, neither made any big movements.
Trudge.
Trudge.
Neither rushed toward the other; they simply moved slowly.
Their weapons were both close-range, but each had a certain amount of reach.
Shotgun and Crescent-Moon Weight.
If she had to say, the shotgun had the longer range, but to Serin it didn't feel like a significant difference.
Compared to true long-range sniping, they were within effective range of each other, so there was nothing to be concerned about.
However.
For some reason, Serin found the opponent's movements oddly irritating.
'...Something about this bothers me.'
The way the opposing player moved kept catching her eye.
There was no confidence, no real strength to be felt.
In short, there was no "presence" whatsoever.
He wasn't showing fighting spirit like Minha, who had faced me determined to win.
Nor was he enjoying the match like the player named Jinhyeok, who had wanted to test their skills against each other.
Even the match that had just ended—
the player named Minseong, who had said he was my fan, had approached the match sincerely and pressed a meticulous offensive to the very end.
The player named Hajun right now was none of those things.
He was stiff and rigid to a degree that clearly stood out compared to the players I'd faced before.
Even his expression was frozen, which looked strange.
Wondering if he had some personal issue, Serin suddenly took one large step forward and finished deciding how to handle him.
'Well. It's not my business anyway.'
She immediately extended her Crescent-Moon Weight and deployed a technique.
—Explosive Spike (爆錐).
Drawing a blood-red line, the Crescent-Moon Weight shot forward and struck the base of a nearby boulder.
BOOM!!!
With a massive explosion, the boulder shattered into pieces, and a huge cloud of dust rose to blanket the surrounding area.
Hidden within it, Serin deployed her next technique in succession.
—Bloodstained Step.
Serin moved through the hazy smoke, tracing a crimson trajectory that left only a blurry outline.
Soon, her figure vanished into the smoke.
"..."
Hajun stared at the hazy smoke, tense to the limit.
He stopped in place, aimed the shotgun's muzzle, and waited for Serin's figure to appear.
—Jeolyeon.
Suddenly, a crimson blood-red line pierced through the smoke and blazed brightly.
WHOOSH!!
As the massive blood-red line cut across the space, Hajun immediately moved his legs to evade.
Thud!
The moment he dodged the massive blood-red line.
"...!"
Another large crimson light flashed brilliantly right before Hajun's eyes.
—Thwack!!