252. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin
252. Knights of Charlemagne vs Rin
***
The scheduled scrim time with the Charlemagne team was the same as the G1 scrim: 1 p.m.
After finishing breakfast, the three of them were now gathered cozily in Serin's room.
The reason they had brought chairs from the living room and were all sitting together in front of the PC was simple.
Serin was looking up information about the Charlemagne team's players to prepare for her upcoming scrim, and Sua and Seoyun had grown curious about what she was doing, so they had ended up in her room too.
As Serin was looking into Charlemagne-related information, she suddenly turned her head.
There she saw Seoyun, eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"...You want to watch me play?"
"Yeah. Honestly, I'm curious about your streams too, but getting to watch you scrim against a pro team is way rarer, isn't it? Can't I watch?"
"Doesn't the capsule have its own recording function? If you just set it to share the screen to the PC in broadcast output format, Seoyun and I can watch too."
Serin noticed Sua openly chiming in from right beside her and let out a dry laugh.
'You want to watch me scrim that badly?'
Seoyun just seemed curious about the fact that I was scrimming against a pro team, while Sua clearly wanted to see how I would handle a scrim against pro players.
"Me? I don't really mind."
In truth, even if the two of them watched the scrim, it didn't matter much.
She'd be showing it to Sua, with whom she'd built a fair amount of trust by now, and to her younger sister Seoyun, so there was no need to worry about leaks related to the scrim.
"Really?"
"You're not lying, right!?"
"Yeah, just sharing the screen without turning on the stream is fine."
Seeing the two of them answer with delighted expressions, I couldn't help smiling too.
For this scrim with the Charlemagne team, she hadn't attached any special conditions like she had with G1, so the price for the scrim was just a reasonable amount.
But if I could show the scrim to Seoyun and Sua, I thought it might be a way to repay the two of them for coming to check on me out of worry yesterday.
And, decisively.
Even if I scrimmed against the Charlemagne team, I didn't feel the slightest worry that I would lose. The fact that there was no chance of an embarrassing situation arising while showing them the scrim was also a major factor.
"Then can I leave the PC output to Sua from here on?"
"Of course! Don't worry. I may not look it, but I've been a streamer for three years."
When Sua answered smugly, Serin unconsciously gave her a sidelong glance.
She wondered if Sua was really that happy about getting to watch the scrim.
"You know, isn't it amazing? When I search them up, these players have profiles and everything, and now you're scrimming against them. You suddenly seem really different?"
"You're only realizing that now?"
"Since you're playing against pro players, it really hits me that you're way more famous than I thought."
As Seoyun shared her impressions with a bright expression, Serin felt oddly strange.
Since she'd ended up showing her younger sister and Sua without planning to.
She resolved to take the scrim even more seriously.
......
Time passed, and soon they were twenty minutes away from the scrim with Charlemagne.
Seoyun and Sua had each registered with an Another World capsule, so even though they were in the same space, the capsule no longer issued danger warnings or terminated the connection.
Serin moved her body into the capsule to prepare for the scrim,
and as they watched her, Seoyun and Sua each deliberately called out a word of encouragement.
"Good luck, Sis!"
"You know we believe in you, right?"
Slide.
As the capsule closed, Serin answered with a small smile.
Suddenly receiving encouragement made her feel good, but also a little embarrassed.
Once her figure had completely disappeared into the capsule, Seoyun slowly turned to look at Sua.
"I said what you wanted me to say, so you know you have to explain properly, right?"
When Seoyun made her demand calmly, Sua nodded repeatedly with a delighted expression.
"Of course. I'll explain it as clearly as I can. Thank you so much! Honestly, this scrim is something I normally wouldn't be able to watch, so I really wanted to see it."
"Are you... that happy about it?"
"If you were an Another World player, you wouldn't have been able to resist either. You know your sister is famous, right?"
When Sua asked in a suggestive tone, Seoyun nodded with an ambiguous expression.
"Maybe it's because I don't play Another World? Honestly, it doesn't quite hit me that way."
"Then you'll understand once you see how the pro players treat your sister in the scrim. You'll see she's a much bigger deal than you thought."
Sua knew that the scrim with Charlemagne was strictly off-stream and wouldn't be uploaded to RinTube, so she had asked Seoyun during the night.
Seoyun had readily accepted Sua's suggestion because she was also curious to see Serin in action.
After that, Serin's figure appeared on the monitor screen Sua had set up as she connected to Another World.
When Serin accepted an invitation and moved, the interior of a massive Colosseum soon came into view.
And inside that Colosseum stood five knights with dazzling appearances.
The knights stood proudly, each guarding their own position, and their appearance seemed unreal, as if shrouded in mystery—even majestic, like a scene from an epic.
"Wow..."
Seoyun couldn't help but be amazed by the sight.
The pro players she had just been looking up on the PC were all standing at their positions, and it looked quite impressive.
—You've arrived quite early.
The blond knight positioned in the center opened his mouth in a gentle voice, beginning their greeting.
***
The massive Colosseum arena used only for the pro league.
In that vast space, the Charlemagne players, each holding their position, were warming up.
They were Charlemagne's current starting players, and the roster was as follows.
-Roland, Lee Sihyeon.
-Bradamante, Park Mina.
-Olivier, Cha Seojin.
-Angelica, Choi Yena.
-Astolfo, Ryu Hamin.
Each was listed with their Another World pro player name and real name.
Among those gathered in the Colosseum, the first to speak was Bradamante, Mina—a short-haired female knight with a massive mace resting on one shoulder.
"...Isn't this a bit excessive for a scrim?"
At her words, a cold-looking man gestured with his rapier and twisted the corner of his mouth.
"Well, what can we do? G1, the league's first-place team, apparently showed this level of courtesy."
The rapier-wielding knight, Olivier, Cha Seojin.
"You all know Rin is someone worth that much."
Finally, the blond knight Roland, captain of the Charlemagne knight team.
When Sihyeon spoke to the players, they unexpectedly nodded and immediately agreed.
The reason they agreed so readily was, in fact, all because of Sihyeon's actions.
Just before the scrim.
Under Sihyeon's lead, the group had gathered and watched the scrim footage against G1 once each.
Before watching the footage, some players had held lighthearted attitudes, some had renewed their resolve, and some had returned half-resigned—but after watching the scrim footage, not a single player kept the same mindset as before.
Because Rin's skill, which had displayed overwhelming divine authority against G1, was unmistakably real no matter who watched.
And considering the ripple effect of the NewTube video, even players who had intended to treat Rin lightly had no choice but to change their minds.
—!
Not long after, when the invited Serin revealed herself in the Colosseum,
the waiting players' gazes naturally turned toward her.
"..."
The players who saw the beautiful woman in red light armor beneath pure white silver hair all wore surprised expressions.
Even in the video, her beautiful appearance had drawn their eyes, but facing her directly like this, she didn't look like a mere character.
Rather, she looked so natural that it was hard to see her as a character at all.
"You've arrived quite early."
When Roland spoke calmly amid that, Serin shook her head with a slightly surprised expression.
"I wouldn't say I'm early. All of you players were already waiting here."
As she spoke humbly, a female knight with blue hair smiled lightly.
"The G1 players waited to see you, Rin, so how could we treat you carelessly?"
The blue-haired female knight with a massive greatsword pointed toward the ground.
It was Angelica, Choi Yena.
When she finished speaking, another player right beside her also spoke up.
"I watched the scrim footage against G1 with great admiration. Enough to marvel at your skill."
A man with light-blue hair flowing down to his waist and a delicate face that left an impression.
A knight holding a massive spear tilted upward. Astolfo, Ryu Hamin, chimed in.
"...Thank you."
Faced with players who praised her so highly, Serin could only express her thanks, flustered.
'I didn't expect this level of hospitality.'
Perhaps because the G1 video had been such a huge hit, the Charlemagne players seemed quite favorably disposed toward her.
Once Serin had finished brief greetings with the other players, Roland skipped the small talk and got straight to the point.
"You're familiar with how the scrim will proceed, right, Rin?"
"Yes."
Serin answered briefly and went over the scrim format once more in her head.
The scrim format proposed by the Charlemagne side was the same as the first day of the scrim with G1.
Each player would face off 1-on-1, twice per player.
For Serin, it was effectively ten one-on-one duels.
"Do you have any objections regarding the match order, Rin?"
"No, none."
Serin answered calmly, then simply smiled leisurely as she observed their armaments.
At the thought of fighting ten duels against knights, a scene came to mind unbidden.
The episode of a knight who proved himself through consecutive duels against dozens of high-ranking knights.
It felt as though she now stood in the same position, proving herself in the same way,
as if she had become a real 'Roland' herself.
And as he watched Serin, Cha Seojin's eyes narrowed faintly.
"Then we'll begin right away."
When Sihyeon said that, he and the other players began to slowly leave the area, until only two people remained inside the massive Colosseum.
One of them was, naturally, Serin, who would be fighting ten matches,
and the other was the knight Olivier, Cha Seojin—short black hair, cynical expression, rapier gripped in hand.
"You look completely at ease. Do you really think we're easy compared to G1?"
Once his teammates had left, Seojin glared sharply at Serin.
"Not particularly. I'm just confident in my own skill."
Serin's reply was utterly composed, and before the match began, she equipped her weapon.
As a sword appeared in the air, Serin leisurely grasped it.
It was Durandal, a mythic-grade one-handed sword boasting a beautiful blood-red blade.
Seojin, who had naturally assumed she would equip her Crescent-Moon Weight, grimaced visibly when she suddenly equipped a sword instead.
"Are you joking right now?"
Even at Seojin's cold voice, Serin instead smiled brightly, as if the whole world were about to light up.
"Of course not."