208. Second Only to One, Above Ten Thousand (一人之下 萬人之上) - (10)
208. Second Only to One, Above Ten Thousand (一人之下 萬人之上) - (10)
***
Viewers: 53,177
[She gets even stronger from here?]
[Daji, you're killing me...!]
[How can someone actually be that pretty?]
[Did Daji use an Awakening Skill too?]
[Daji's whole vibe is insane with the longer hair...]
[Rin with awakened Divine Blood vs. Great Hero Daji, what...]
[I came from RinTube's scrim and was already impressed, but the live stream is even crazier]
[Isn't Rin the first user to ever meet Daji? I've never seen a hero who looks like that before, damn]
As Serin, having awakened her Divine Blood, moved beyond matching Daji blow for blow and actually dealt damage to her, the chat window blazed up like a massive fire.
The chat, rising in waves, only grew hotter as time passed.
And the same was true for Sua, who was watching the stream intently.
The duel between the two dancers unfolding on screen was so dazzling and beautiful that merely watching it stirred a multitude of emotions.
And when Serin's startled expression appeared at the sight of Daji transforming once more, Sua found it impossible to tear her eyes from the screen.
'If she's surprised enough to react like that, just how strong is Daji?'
There was clearly some kind of mysterious aura emanating from Daji's changed form. But how much stronger Daji had become, and how her detailed abilities had changed, was impossible to see unless you were the actual player.
No matter how much internet streaming and broadcast technology advanced, a stream ultimately only showed what the streamer had configured it to show.
Then, suddenly, as Serin gripped the Crescent-Moon Weight with force and slowly closed her eyes, Sua couldn't help but feel bewildered.
"...Six seconds."
She muttered blankly. The Divine Blood status displayed on screen was now practically over.
'Shouldn't she be making a decisive move?'
Watching her sister close her eyes instead of acting immediately, Sua felt an inexplicable eeriness.
She had already used her Awakening Skill and then Divine Blood, so realistically there should be no way for her to get any stronger.
Standing in place with her eyes closed, her sister looked at first glance like she had given up, but at the same time, the fact that she hadn't let go of the Crescent-Moon Weight made it seem like she still had the will to fight.
And knowing Serin's personality, Sua couldn't see her as someone who would give up.
She had declared she wouldn't give up even when entering the horrifying difficulty of the Stage 5 trial.
"...Hoo."
Neither of them had moved, and the screen simply showed them standing there, but to Sua it looked like a hair-trigger standoff.
It felt as though the two of them could resume their dazzling battle at any moment with the slightest step or gesture.
Just as the tension was peaking and even the chat was buzzing with comments about Serin's actions and Daji's appearance—
Click.
—『The broadcast has ended.』
The screen abruptly went black, and a message Sua was quite familiar with filled the display.
"...?"
Sua stared at the message and blinked blankly.
When she turned her head, the chat window that had been rising in waves had also gone gray, with no new messages coming in. The viewer count and the stream's timestamp had all frozen the moment the screen went black.
Unable to process the situation, Sua frantically hit refresh.
Tap.
But no matter how many times she refreshed, the result was the same.
Only the characteristic message indicating that the streamer was not live remained.
"You're kidding...?"
Sua spoke in a devastated voice and hurriedly grabbed her phone to send Serin a BaTalk message saying the stream had ended. But with a massive sense of emptiness rising from deep in her chest, she blankly chewed her lip and couldn't sit still.
"No... how can this... how can this actually happen? Ugh, seriously, please..."
Muttering over and over as if she simply couldn't accept this reality, Sua's hands trembled as she had no idea what to do with her frustration.
She had skipped her own stream—the highlight of her schedule, one she would turn on no matter what—just to watch Serin's stream.
And now it was ending like this. So anticlimactically?
'What if the duel ends like this...?'
The thought that Serin might not turn her stream back on until there was a result made Sua feel like she was losing her mind.
"Ah..."
Letting out a small sound, Sua blankly clutched at her hair.
She was a streamer with experience and an Another World player herself, so she realized it instinctively.
The possibility that Serin would turn her stream back on was close to zero.
The capsule used to connect to Another World certainly had multiple functions, and as long as the environment was set up, turning a stream back on was trivial.
But recalling how Serin had seemed completely consumed by the situation ever since facing Daji, the legendary dancer, Sua could only think blankly that this was truly the end.
She already empathized with Serin's position.
Her opponent was a Great Hero, an existence most players could never even encounter, and while exchanging blows with such an opponent, it was impossible to also pay attention to the stream.
Most telling of all, after coming face-to-face with Daji, Serin hadn't said a single word acknowledging the stream.
After that, shivering slightly, Sua fidgeted restlessly, then with a dazed mind began tapping at her phone.
As she sent BaTalk messages, Sua tried desperately to get through to Serin.
Yoon Sua.
[Your stream turned off!!!!!]
Yoon Sua.
[Ugh, please... seriously... turn the stream back on. I feel like I'm actually going crazy...]
Yoon Sua.
[If you see this, please reply, or just call me. You understand, right? I seriously need to hear the result directly from you. My head is so blank right now, I can't think of anything. Please just turn the stream back on.]
Yoon Sua.
[I seriously skipped my own stream because of you!! So how can you just turn it off like this?? I'm dying to know what happened after that, ugh... seriously, do you want to see me lose my mind? Please turn the stream back on!!]
She already knew Serin wouldn't answer, but sending messages was the only thing she could think to do.
And so Sua continued sending increasingly frantic messages.
In the truest sense, she was someone closer to being "genuine" about Another World than anyone else.
......
And at the same time, at the G1 team dormitory.
"Huh?"
"Stream ended? Minseong, is this a connection error or what?"
"Minha! Try refreshing or something."
When the stream-ended message appeared, Minha and Minseong, who had been watching Rin's stream, exchanged words of confusion.
After refreshing and checking various sources of information, they ultimately had no choice but to feel deflated.
The community was already in an uproar over Rin's stream going off.
It wasn't a connection error. The stream had genuinely ended.
"It's really ending here...?"
Minha swept her hair back and spoke in a deflated voice, and Minseong also let out a sigh before speaking as if something felt off.
"Minha. Wasn't Rin clearly focused on her duel with Daji? It didn't feel like she'd turned the stream off herself."
"Right, she didn't seem to do anything up until she closed her eyes at the end. Could she really turn the stream off like that?"
Just as they were talking—
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!
An alarm went off, signaling 6:55.
The second scrim, which had been scheduled in advance, was set to start at 7.
Even as they got up from their seats to do the scheduled scrim, a deep sense of regret lingered in both of their hearts.
"...Ugh, seriously, so who won?"
As Minha muttered to herself just before connecting to the capsule, Jinhyeok looked at her with a strange expression.
***
Twitch.
Clenching her fist, shifting her legs—Serin's condition was clearly abnormal even from the outside.
It looked as though she was adapting to her body.
Watching this, Daji suppressed the bloodlust rising in her red eyes and tried to assess the situation.
She was said to have mastered every technique, but considering that Rin had just undergone a completely different kind of transformation, the act of closing her eyes could itself have been some kind of technique.
And now, from Serin's appearance, there was only one type of technique Daji could infer.
'A type of Descent. That must be it.'
Not expressing some existence through dance, but allowing the existence itself to dwell within one's body—it was a dangerous technique, but one that could contain immense power.
Before becoming the Moon Dancer, Daji herself had frequently used dances of Descent.
—Descent.
A form of borrowing the power of a spirit with special abilities—such as a mountain god, a demon woman, a great general, or a mythical beast—by harboring that spirit within one's body.
And Daji's speculation had pierced straight to the heart of the matter.
The Dance of the Heaven-Filling Slaughtering Ghosts was a dance that summoned the souls of slaughtering ghosts that existed in the world, a technique Daji had created solely for slaughter.
But Serin, who had awakened her Divine Blood in Black Ark, had brought about one massive change to the Dance of the Heaven-Filling Slaughtering Ghosts while in her Divine Blood state.
Rather than gathering the souls of many slaughtering ghosts, it summoned the soul of a single existence whose immense power no slaughtering ghost could rival.
Serin had completely transformed the technique by harboring the soul of just one being.
That was why, even for Daji, who knew every technique of the Dancer, the current Serin was not any existence she had ever used for Descent.
'What kind of existence's soul...'
Unable to even guess whose soul it was, Daji calmly observed the situation.
Serin had spoken as if she'd realized the difference in power, yet she showed no sign of being intimidated. That composure seemed eerie to Daji, and that eeriness was what kept Daji from moving easily, making her simply watch Serin.
"..."
And Serin, whose entire demeanor had changed, was thinking the same thing.
Even as she adapted to her current body, she didn't miss a single movement from Daji.
Unlike just moments before, when she had provoked Daji with mockery, Serin's eyes were now sunken with profound depth.
Seeing the dancer carefully observing her own form, Serin could feel that Daji's mental state had also reached a certain level.
Moreover, upon checking her own body's condition, the gap in power between them was even more immense.
But despite her true feelings, Serin spoke with a composed expression.
"Dancer, what is your name?"
At Serin's question, as if they were meeting for the first time, Daji was instantly certain it was a type of Descent.
"This one's name is Daji. And what might the name of this other 'you' be?"
Daji asked in a coquettish voice, covering her mouth. Serin, facing her, also wore a mysterious smile.
And then Serin's lips slowly parted, and she spoke a single name.
"Heavenly Demon Cheon Ryuhwa."
It was the name of the lofty flower who had dyed the world in death,
and the name of the existence who had reigned over one axis of the world called Black Ark.