188. Knights of Charlemagne
188. Knights of Charlemagne
***
Tuesday, August 24.
12:00 p.m.
At an hour when some people were taking a small break from their ongoing work, others were having a light lunch, and still others were enjoying fine food at good restaurants.
Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep!
When the alarm went off twice, Serin swept back her tousled hair and forced open eyes that refused to stay open.
Staring blankly at the familiar sight of my room, I fumbled through the memories of the night before.
She had meant to walk Sua back to her officetel, but she'd ended up spending more time at Sua's place. Time had flown just from talking about the project and Another World again. After that, she hadn't gotten to sleep until dawn.
"Haaah..."
Her mouth stretched wide. She yawned hugely and sluggishly sat up.
Raising both arms overhead to loosen up, she thought over the day's schedule.
Looking into the players on the team called Knights of Charlemagne in preparation for the scrim this Friday, and streaming as usual.
Broadly speaking, it was a busy-but-ordinary schedule with nothing special about it.
Still, having things to do was sometimes motivation enough to get her body moving.
Click.
She opened the door, grabbed a towel, and headed for the bathroom.
......
"Knights of Charlemagne, huh..."
Serin muttered blankly as she sat down in front of her PC and began reading through the material on the Knights of Charlemagne again.
—A medieval European legend and body of literature. The twelve knights who served Charlemagne, king of the Franks, and a legend often mentioned alongside the Knights of the Round Table.
The Knights of Charlemagne was a work Serin had taken an interest in early on.
Though she'd come to know it through a game that adapted the figures into other characters. Actually, even in Black Ark, if not all of Charlemagne's knights, several of them had appeared as significant characters, which was why she'd been interested.
Roland.
Astolfo.
Angelica.
Olivier.
Ogier.
"Who else was there again?"
Among the names of Charlemagne's twelve knights on the screen, some were unfamiliar, while others felt familiar.
The most representative was Roland.
He was a knight whose name even people who knew little about Charlemagne had likely heard at least once, to the point that there was even a chanson de geste called The Song of Roland. Moreover, in Black Ark, he was widely known as an NPC who met a tragic end no matter which choices you made.
As for the actual impression she'd gotten in that other reality, Roland was a knight who tried desperately hard.
But he was also a tragic knight who, after endless effort, met death without receiving any reward at all.
It was such a tragic ending that she still remembered it.
'So the reason I got the scrim was really nothing special.'
It struck me anew that the reason I'd accepted a scrim with the Charlemagne team was a little funny.
Even if the history was slightly different, literature about Charlemagne definitely existed in this world too. So there was nothing strange about a player using the nickname Roland. The player using the Roland nickname was clearly a different person from the Roland in Black Ark.
And yet... she'd accepted the scrim just because she'd seen them lose rather miserably in a match.
"Did watching that match trigger some kind of ranged-class hatred in me without realizing it?"
She remembered that, maybe because of how the Charlemagne team had been all-killed by Minha back then, she'd been even more ruthless toward Minha in the scrims afterward.
Thinking about it now, it felt like a butterfly effect, like a single thread connecting into one larger line.
Setting aside the definition of Charlemagne like that, she began searching for information on the pro team Knights of Charlemagne.
Click-click.
Compared to TSJ and G1, which she'd already looked into, there wasn't much information on the Knights of Charlemagne team.
Several results came up on the search screen, but there was no neatly organized write-up on Charlemagne, so I'd have to put in the effort to dig further myself.
Was this the difference in fandom between popular and unpopular teams?
*
————
ACK League team name: Knights of Charlemagne.
Finished the league schedule in 7th place.
Currently eliminated from playoffs.
Only the Another Worlds qualifier, to be held after playoffs, remains.
————
*
What caught her eye most of all was the team's record.
A team lingering in the lower ranks, in contrast to TSJ and G1.
"Have I only been meeting top-tier players?"
Eunha, who'd said she had no free time now because of the playoff schedule after last weekend.
And the G1 players, who she knew were spending their days busily ramping up their playoff preparations.
Unlike those two teams, the team called Charlemagne, which didn't even need to prepare for playoffs, felt somehow strange to her.
From the size of the team's fandom to its league record.
And since she'd even happened to watch their match against G1, she even knew the team's atmosphere.
The casters had said they fought reasonably well for their ranking, but in the final gauntlet match, they'd been all-killed by Minha.
She even remembered the Charlemagne players leaving the arena afterward with their shoulders slumped.
She could tell without even seeing it that the team atmosphere must be bad too.
—Starting lineup.
-Roland. Lee Sihyeon
-Bradamante. Park Mina
-Olivier. Cha Seojin
-Angelica. Choi Yena
-Astolfo. Ryu Hamin
—Reserves.
-Ogier. Park Hyeonjin.
-Maugis. Kim Chanhyeok.
After looking over the roster once, she laughed for no real reason.
"They really did name their players after Charlemagne's knights."
Slurp.
Taking a sip of her cafe latte, she searched for player videos on NewTube to get a more detailed picture.
When she sorted the videos by view count, she saw videos whose titles alone seemed to tell her the outcome.
That made sense, since the videos with a million or several hundred thousand views were only against teams that were obviously known as strong teams.
TSJ. G1.
I'd seen the match against G1 myself, and although I hadn't watched the match against TSJ, I somehow felt like I already knew the result.
"Still, do they at least put up a fight?"
......
Clang!!
The flashy effect unique to a parry rang out with a sound that was almost crystalline.
Jeanne d'Arc had only lightly flicked her sword once, as if shaking something off. Yet Roland and Olivier were both sent flying back.
Scrape!!
Roland, shoved backward and dragging along the ground from the parry's aftershock, was horrified, while Olivier stared at Jeanne d'Arc with disbelief in his eyes.
The techniques they'd prepared to deal with Jeanne d'Arc. Even though they'd launched a coordinated attack using different techniques, it had been blocked with absurd ease.
And the sight of Jeanne d'Arc receiving that and pulling off a parry... was so inhuman it was hard to believe.
—God's Blessing.
The jet-black armor Jeanne d'Arc wore was enveloped in pure white light, and her body itself seemed to hold light within it. That alone made Roland and Olivier feel a kind of pressure.
Because that was the image of the noble knight that no one had ever been able to break through.
Roland's expression twisted as he gripped his sword tighter. They were clearly facing the same knight class, so how could there be such an enormous gap?
Even though he experienced it every moment, Roland still couldn't believe this situation.
It was clearly a 2-on-1.
And yet he couldn't imagine breaking through this battle line against Jeanne d'Arc.
Clang-clang-clang-clang!!!!
When Roland turned his gaze at the sharp metallic sounds ringing out nearby, he saw Angelica holding a 1-on-1 front line.
Whiiish!!!
A jet-black spear shot toward Roland from a great distance, and Olivier hastily raised his shield to activate a skill.
—Royal Guard.
As a golden shield enveloped them, it erased the massive jet-black spear that had come crashing into them.
But the jet-black spears continued to fill the sky.
Whiiish!!!
As the massive spears poured down endlessly, the previous 2-on-1 situation no longer held.
The moment Olivier threw himself forward to block the spears filling the sky, Jeanne d'Arc, who had been watching the situation indifferently, activated an additional skill usable in her sanctified state.
—Holy Flame.
Hummmm!!
As the sword Jeanne d'Arc held emitted a brilliant light that was almost sacred.
Roland hurriedly activated a skill as well.
—Knight's Oath.
The silver armor Roland wore emitted a soft light as well, and Roland's physical abilities surged.
Suddenly, Jeanne d'Arc kicked off the ground.
Boom!!
In an instant, the ground caved in from the aftershock of the immense force, and Jeanne d'Arc, rushing at Roland like light itself, brought her sword down swiftly.
The sacred white light drew a beautiful curve as it descended, and Roland immediately moved to meet it with his sword.
"..."
In a space so close their breath seemed to touch, within a span close to an instant, Roland met Jeanne d'Arc's indifferent eyes and felt as though he were sinking into an abyss where nothing could be seen.
Slip.
In that moment, Jeanne d'Arc's hand made a small adjustment. Then the sword enveloped in sacred light abruptly changed its trajectory.
Slice.
The brilliant light resting on Jeanne d'Arc's sword sliced through Roland's neck in a single stroke.
......
Tap.
Serin pressed the spacebar to pause the video, then immediately rewound it five seconds.
And she checked again the sight of Eunha cutting through Roland's neck.
"That's really subtle."
Roland's response against Eunha clearly couldn't be called bad.
He'd instantly raised his physical abilities and quickly moved to meet her sword.
It could be seen as a textbook defensive response.
But Eunha, who completely twisted that textbook response and tipped the match in an instant, was truly a player with unrivaled skill.
It was something she felt every time she saw even a fragment of Eunha's play, but Eunha seemed to know the optimal movement by instinct.
On top of that, she had technique that made it hard for opponents to respond, and her split-second judgment was impeccably clean.
Skimming the comments under the video, it was from a few days before Eunha had announced her hiatus mid-season.
As I was watching the video, I remembered my original purpose.
The scrim against the Charlemagne players.
"It's not like they lack fundamentals, but something's oddly off."
As pro players, they all had the fundamentals.
But that was all. In decisive moments or in how they responded, there was a strong sense that they were uniformly dull rather than sharp.
The G1 players she'd scrimmed before had each had their own flaws and weaknesses, but even so, there was almost nothing to criticize in other areas.
Players who could become stronger just by patching a few things—that was what the players had looked like as they gradually improved over the two-day scrim.
But unlike G1, the players on the team called Charlemagne were at a level where just watching made her wonder where to even start.
If she had to point out the players' mistakes from what she'd just seen alone, she could name at least three, with flaws visible in multiple areas.
"How exactly am I supposed to scrim them...?"
Serin, who had been preparing for the scrim with a light heart, suddenly felt like she'd been handed a huge dilemma.