16. There Are Levels Even to Toying with Someone.
16. There Are Levels Even to Toying with Someone.
***
Clang!
A massive burst of white light erupted at the same time.
The sort of sound you'd expect from two huge masses of iron colliding rang out as a small weight met a massive black pillar.
"...What?"
At the bizarre phenomenon that had just occurred, the user with the grotesque character customization, 'Bulash,' let out a stupid noise.
The skill he had prepared was one that required preparation time. It was classified as a 'charging skill' because it needed a certain amount of charge time to draw out its proper power.
It was also devastatingly powerful, enough to justify the preparation time it required.
In PVP, no one would just stand there and take it because of that preparation time, so he didn't use it. But seeing that arrogant silver-haired character, he'd figured she would take it, so he had used it.
"..."
Parry.
Bulash swallowed the word that had nearly slipped out.
Rin had instead canceled out his skill by using a parry against it.
Had Rin known that if she'd made even the slightest mistake and the parry had failed, all of her stamina would have been blown away and it would have ended right there?
Seeing the silver-haired character still staring at him with a cold, mocking expression, Bulash let out a hollow laugh.
Whether he tried to toy with her or catch her off guard, nothing went as easily as he'd imagined.
On top of that, right now he was in a completely defenseless state, barely able to right himself from the shock of the parry.
And yet that user called Rin was only watching.
Without making a single move, she simply stood there with a beautiful woman's appearance, smiling coldly.
As Bulash slowly pulled himself together from the parry's aftershock, his expression hardened.
His hand was still tingling.
Sensations like pain were extremely limited in Another World, but weapon meeting weapon—
Being parried felt strangely realistic in that instant, enough that Bulash almost felt as if he had actually crossed weapons with someone.
It surely wasn't only him feeling that. So what did it mean that she was standing there in front of him so unbothered?
'Right. That video... it wasn't luck. It was this.'
As Bulash steadied himself, Serin finally opened her mouth slowly.
"Not going to attack again?"
Even while giving Bulash, who had staggered back two steps from the parry's aftershock, enough time to collect himself, Serin never extended her Crescent-Moon Weight.
That was to properly teach him what it meant to toy with someone—she could have ended it at any time, but she didn't.
That piece of trash needed to experience it, Serin thought.
And parry, despite being an advanced technique, didn't offer only advantages.
A parry fundamentally meant meeting an opponent's technique with your weapon at exactly the right moment. It wasn't an initiative-taking technique; its whole point was to counter the opponent's move.
The greatest advantage of a parry was that it could block or cancel out any skill. But there were far too many types of weapons. And the activation speeds of the various skills derived from those weapons were all different from one another.
That made parrying a skill extremely difficult.
Only a perfect parry created the recoil that exposed an opponent's 'opening,' and even a perfect success could not completely negate the force of the skill.
Which was why, right now—
Before their weapons met, Han Serin had stepped forward once. The impact then pushed her back exactly one step, leaving her standing where she had started without Bulash even noticing.
Bulash, meanwhile, had been knocked back two steps and briefly struggled to steady himself, leaving an obvious 'opening.'
The recoil Han Serin took from her perfect parry amounted to only a single step backward.
Whoosh.
Manipulating the golden cord wrapped around her right arm, Serin spun the Crescent-Moon Weight several times and spoke with a cold smile.
"And why do you keep backpedaling? It's ugly to watch."
She was standing here perfectly fine. What had he been doing to already be two steps back?
'Bulash' felt as if Serin's appearance was asking him exactly that.
Grind.
The bastard ground his teeth, hardened his expression, and leaped again.
At the same time, he swung the black pillar with startling speed, as if its enormous mass meant nothing.
Whoosh.
The pillar swept across such a wide horizontal arc that there seemed to be nowhere for Serin to dodge.
Yet something even harder to believe happened again—more unbelievable than the speed with which that massive pillar moved.
Just like the first time, Han Serin stepped forward one step while simultaneously swinging her Crescent-Moon Weight.
With a soft hiss as the golden cord around her right arm unwound, the Crescent-Moon Weight shot out noticeably faster than before.
Clang!
Once again, a burst of light erupted along with the ringing sound of iron clashing against iron.
"Is this... even possible?"
Muttering with a blank expression, Bulash had already been pushed back another two steps.
He'd thought that since the first skill he used was a charging skill, the opponent had at least some time to respond. Having judged it that way, this time he had used the fastest skill among those he could use.
The gap in speed between the two skills wasn't something an opponent could easily close or react to.
That was why, in Diamond-ranked matches on his main account, he deliberately varied the speed and power of his skills.
He mixed slower and faster skills specifically to make them harder to respond to.
But... he simply could not make sense of Rin standing in front of him.
He even felt a strange sensation, as if common sense was collapsing.
Bulash finally understood why she'd caused such a stir when people first called her a 'hacker.'
Now that he was facing her himself, what he was seeing was almost impossible to explain unless it was a hack or a bug.
That was—
Whoosh!
At the sight of the weight shooting toward him in an instant, Bulash urgently stopped his thoughts and raised his weapon, the pillar.
"Kgh!"
The impact of the weight against his pillar sent Bulash staggering back three steps.
Simply blocking an attack instead of parrying was extremely costly in Another World.
So in Another World, the main approaches were to dodge if possible, or to counter the opponent's skill with your own skill.
If you were confident in your skill, you went for a parry.
Those three were the main options.
"If you don't attack even when I wait like this, then I'll attack. Just so you know."
Serin stepped forward one step. Along with that, a red energy rose from beneath Serin's feet.
At the same time, a green light began to gather in Bulash's hand.
......
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
The ringing blows kept coming as Bulash frantically retreated again and again.
Every time the red-tinged Crescent-Moon Weight tore through the air, Bulash found himself stepping backward without pause.
Bulash’s grotesquely twisted face looked as though he could barely breathe, his urgency and impatience written all over it.
And at some point, Bulash realized.
'This bastard... is toying with me right now?'
At the thought, Bulash bit his lip as if it might start bleeding and ground his teeth as rage surged through him.
Clang!
But even so, right now Bulash could do nothing but stagger back another two steps.
"Pfft."
Serin watched Bulash with a cold, mocking curl of her lips.
And in her movements, there was no jumping, no quick movement, nothing of the sort.
Just one step.
Then another step.
Serin strolled forward as casually as if she were on a walk, repeatedly snapping her arm out.
Yet the weight shooting from that arm bore down on Bulash so relentlessly that blocking was the only thing he was allowed to do.
"With skills like this, you really think you can even stomp low-rank players properly?"
Clang!
As he succeeded in a partial block, a relatively light sound rang out, and at the same time Bulash stepped back just one step.
"You play the game with that kind of mindset, so you get toyed with by a newbie like me."
Clang!
As Bulash used a skill and thrust out an attack, Serin simply stepped forward one step and parried again, forcing him back two steps.
"Built like a damn mountain, and all you do is tremble and backpedal."
Clang!
"Act like a person, you piece of trash."
Clang!
Serin wasn't using any major skills, nor was she exploiting the 'openings' her successful parries created.
She pressured the opponent with the most basic attacks, and whenever Bulash attacked, she drove him back with another parry.
Thud.
"...Fuck, FUUUCK!!!"
Having retreated until he was nearly touching the Colosseum wall, Bulash realized it and kept screaming, consumed by fury.
He could have surrendered long ago and simply left the Colosseum. That option had always been available to him.
Since Another World was a virtual reality game, there could be users suffering from malicious behavior.
That was why the PVP system always included a surrender option.
Bulash knew that better than anyone.
But what he was experiencing right now—
A one-sided defeat.
It was never anything like that.
He was simply being helplessly toyed with as the opponent played with him.
That was why that bastard Rin kept saying provocative things to him in between.
"I'll fucking kill you!!!"
Even as Bulash kept outwardly expressing his blazing rage—
Clang!
Clang!
With the continuous sound of weapons clashing, Bulash felt his body repeatedly slamming against the Colosseum wall.
With nowhere left to retreat, he kept backpedaling until his character was practically scraping against the wall.
"That's seriously pathetic."
At Serin's mocking words from in front of him, Bulash's face flushed bright red as he frantically raised his pillar.
After taking so many attacks, his stamina gauge should have been nearly empty.
Yet lifting the pillar was still so easy for Bulash himself.
But when he checked his status window, his stamina gauge wasn't at the bottom after all.
The reason was simple: his opponent had deliberately used only basic techniques, never putting him under any major stamina load.
"...You fucking bitch!!"
Realizing that fact, Bulash flew into a rage and swung his pillar once more.
Clang!
And with Serin's parry following once again, Bulash pressed his body against the Colosseum wall yet again.
'Please, just once...'
Bulash felt shame at his own backpedaling.
Even as he keenly felt the skill gap with Serin, there was a reason he endured without surrendering.
Even while enduring Serin's repeated humiliation, he was waiting for the one opening Rin would eventually show.
The opponent was human too.
Surely, if she kept attacking and parrying, she would expose an opening at least once.
'Really... just once. Just let it land once.'
And perhaps that desperate wish of Bulash's had been heard.
Tzzzt!
Han Serin suddenly staggered unsteadily, as if she had failed a parry.
"Die!!!"
Screaming at the top of his lungs with genuine emotion, Bulash threw himself forward without a moment's hesitation.