127. Two People
127. Two People
***
—Let's take a break every two games.
When Kang Hyeok suggested a break like that, Serin didn't refuse.
It wasn't so much that my body was tired or worn out... I just needed a moment to catch my breath.
The G1 players each had different styles and entirely different classes, so naturally the ways to deal with them were different too. Which meant I needed time to sort out my thoughts and prepare for the next match.
Slide.
I wanted to empty my head for a bit, so I deliberately sat in the stands, away from the G1 players.
The moment I even unequipped a few pieces of gear, including the Crescent-Moon Weight.
Slip.
Before I knew it, Minha was sitting in the seat beside me.
I had told her to come find me during every break from now on...
But I hadn't expected her to actually approach so casually.
Still, having someone come up to me like that didn't feel unpleasant.
"Rin... you parried that at the end, didn't you?"
Minha's expression as she asked, as if it were hard to understand, held a kind of disbelief.
A look that seemed to ask if that was even possible.
Minha's expression was so different from the utterly haughty look she'd had before. It made me laugh for no real reason.
"Yes. That's right."
Last Breath.
It was a skill I'd thought she might be able to use, so I'd barely managed to pull off the parry. But even the moment I attempted it, I hadn't been certain the timing was perfect.
The bullets of light flying at me were truly faster than I'd imagined.
I was lucky I'd vaguely anticipated it. If I hadn't been prepared, it wouldn't have been strange at all to go down pathetically.
I'd been meeting Minha's gaze as Minha stared at me for a moment, and then Minha shook her head and laughed in disbelief.
"You answer so casually... honestly, I'm the one who's dumbfounded. No, really... I'm curious how someone like you suddenly appeared. How are you so good?"
Minha's expression as she spoke with pure admiration.
The distance she'd shown at their first meeting was now almost impossible to feel.
Rather than giving a long answer, I just smiled softly and looked at Minha.
"...Who knows."
I didn't want to act arrogant just because I'd beaten them, or show off my skill.
From the perspective of pro players like them, I was either someone impossible to understand, or no different from an irregular who'd suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
......
The virtual reality closest to perfection among all existing virtual reality systems.
—Another World.
While pro players had gotten into the game early and put in all kinds of effort.
I had spent years rolling around every single day in Black Ark, another world that was no different from reality itself, just trying not to die.
The number of actual users currently enjoying Another World reached into the millions. Among that countless mass of users, the people who played as "pros" were those with talent to match.
Even the player named Hajun, who had disappointed me at first, had done a complete 180 at some point and come at me with attacks that were uniformly sharp and difficult.
In fact, I'd felt I couldn't end it without allowing some hits, and had ultimately taken a small amount of damage.
Beyond that, even the players I'd faced earlier all clearly felt talented. And I already knew how much pro players practiced from researching their scrims.
Pro players' practice time averaged close to ten hours a day.
I knew the practice hours set by pro organizations were clearly less than that, closer to half, but I also knew that most players voluntarily invested that much time each day into scrims or individual practice.
In the NewTube videos that briefly revealed their daily lives, the pros' extraordinary effort was plainly visible.
But even with the effort of all those uniformly talented players...
It couldn't be put on the same level as the experience of surviving for years, desperately honing skills and crossing the line between life and death.
The environments they'd each been through were too different.
I had lived through real combat every day for so much time that I'd even forgotten the passage of time.
The pro players had also built their current skills by adding effort to their talent.
But between them and me, a gap clearly existed,
and the current results were proving it.
"Can your skill really improve that much just from hunting?"
The chain of thoughts that had been trailing along was cut off by Minha's voice from beside me.
"Hunting..."
At the question of whether killing monsters could make someone this skilled, I couldn't help but laugh.
But then I nodded.
"I can't say for sure it's the same for everyone. But even just going around to various hunting grounds does help your skill quite a bit."
Thinking back to the hunting ground I'd recently visited, the Tomb of the Frozen Knight, it didn't seem entirely impossible.
It was certainly separate from the real-combat sense of facing various classes, but the high-level hunting grounds in Another World were honestly all quite difficult too.
"Really? I always thought dueling people and killing monsters were completely separate domains... Hearing you say that makes me wonder if I should go back to the hunting grounds for no reason."
"The gear you have equipped right now all looks really expensive too... didn't you get it from hunting?"
I'd assumed pros also hunted a lot.
"Well, I... it's not like I haven't hunted much. But once I started my pro career, I could get gear support, so I didn't bother hunting separately."
When Minha shook her head and said that, I found it a little surprising.
Mythic-grade items. Even for an unpopular class, I knew each piece went for billions in Another World currency. In real-world terms, it easily exceeded ten million won per piece.
Maybe because I was staring at Minha’s gear, Minha covered her mouth with a small laugh and continued.
"Yes. The team provides mythic-grade gear as a baseline. And honestly, no matter how good the gear is, it makes no difference in matches."
While listening to Minha, I remembered the fact that in pro matches, gear grade made no difference.
In the Arena, gear adjustments could go up to 20%, but in pro league matches, even wearing rare-grade gear gave the same destructive power as mythic-grade items.
"If it makes no difference in matches... then pro teams don't really need to provide gear support, do they?"
When I asked out of sudden curiosity, Minha shook her head slightly.
"From a match perspective, it's certainly meaningless like you said. But pro players are always visible to the public through matches, right? We're playing for the fans in the first place."
After saying that, Minha suddenly pulled out a black sniper rifle and showed it to me.
My gaze naturally went to its stylish exterior.
A sniper rifle with a flashy appearance, as if a dragon were breathing fire.
When I looked, Minha smiled softly and showed off, fiddling with the accessories adorning her hair and her special suit.
Watching that, I couldn't help but laugh because Minha's behavior was cute.
It felt like she was showing off to me, asking if she wasn't pretty.
"So the team supports you in various ways for the sake of your public image?"
When I said that to play along with Minha's behavior, Minha beamed.
"Yes. Even if there's no performance difference, mythic-grade items and items below them clearly differ a lot in design. And honestly, the symbolic meaning of a mythic-grade item is huge too."
Then Minha, who had been glancing at me, said something I hadn't expected.
"Rin, seriously... have you ever thought about going pro?"
***
TSJ. "Team SJ Entertainment."
Five consecutive ACK Pro League championships.
The strongest team in ACK pro team history.
The best team in existence.
They were, in name and reality, the number one team.
Though right now they had temporarily yielded first place to G1 and were sitting in second, considering the remaining matches, the rankings weren't set in stone.
Moreover, they were the team being picked to win this year's summer league as well.
Beyond just ACK fans who watched ACK.
Even league experts, officials, casters, and commentators—the majority had no disagreement in picking TSJ as the first-place winner.
G1's current eight-game win streak and first place in the league were certainly being evaluated as surprising and truly formidable among officials and experts.
But even so, the majority of public opinion was still with TSJ.
A big reason for that was one piece of news that had recently generated countless articles.
TSJ's face and ace player.
—Jeanne d'Arc joining TSJ.
......
A massive blue building in the middle of Gangnam, famous for its expensive land prices.
—Team SJ Entertainment.
It was none other than TSJ's headquarters.
One entire floor was used as player dorms, and on the other floors, various welfare facilities for team players were located.
TSJ's investment was incomparable to other teams. It was on a whole different level.
Player private rooms. Strategy research rooms. Lounges. Everything was massive in scale from the start.
And the other floors of the building had skin care for players, casual sports facilities for personal leisure, and even personal trainers for health management.
It was no exaggeration to say that most of the welfare and benefits that could be provided existed in the TSJ building.
And a major factor behind that massive investment was that SJ Entertainment's stock price had skyrocketed over the past few years.
That SJ's stock had risen sharply not because of a celebrity from SJ Entertainment leading the Korean Wave, but because of a single pro team player, was an unexpected situation even officials hadn't anticipated.
There was a player entering that blue TSJ building.
The third floor, used as TSJ's dorm.
Click.
A woman opened the door and stepped inside.
Beneath brilliantly shining black hair, a woman with a beauty that held a certain coldness.
"...?"
Eunha, who had returned to the dorm for the first time in a while after a long break, tilted her head for a moment.
Normally, this would be practice time.
But the dorm she saw now was dark, as if the entire space had not a single point of light.
Eunha unconsciously thought back over the date.
August 16. Monday.
It wasn't a break period, and with the league playoffs right around the corner, it made even less sense for the team players to be away.
Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-bang!!
The space suddenly lit up with a bursting sound, and Eunha blinked in surprise, stepping back one pace.