278. Ambush
278. Ambush
***
WHOOSH!
With a sound that tore through the air, a spear wreathed in an eerie, dense violet light came surging through the void.
The violet spear had been weaving irregular patterns through the air as though tracing a single predetermined path, and it was surging in menacingly when—
Serin had already perceived it coming.
Ding! Ding!
Before the belated alert sounds even rang out, Serin had instinctively turned her head.
For a moment, she couldn't understand why the alert had sounded twice.
But even so, her gaze could not linger on the eerie violet long spear.
"...What the."
Serin, who had muttered the words blankly, turned her head the other way and stared at something.
Far off in the distance.
A small light flickered like a blinking signal, faintly announcing its presence.
A grayish something, holding a light so faint its very outline was indistinct, was surging toward her without a sound.
After communicating with her viewers, Serin had logged into Another World, and the situation she now faced was something that simply could not be understood by normal logic.
Not even ten minutes after logging into Another World, a sudden ambush had come at her.
They were definitely Outlaws.
And not from one direction—a simultaneous attack from both sides.
The transparent form tinged with gray appeared to be an arrow.
And from the exact opposite direction, the spear that had been stitching irregular angles through the air was a violet long spear.
—Moon Princess.
In a split second, a bright light burst from beneath Serin's feet and dyed her body pure white in an instant. Her crimson light armor took on a pure white glow, while her eyes, in contrast, sank colder than ever.
SWISH!
She twisted her body to its limit and launched the Crescent-Moon Weight in a straight line, as though firing the crescent moon itself, and the weapon traced a pure white arc of light.
The direction she swung the Crescent-Moon Weight was, ironically, not toward the violet long spear she had perceived first.
She went to meet the gray arrow that had been fired later, first.
WHOOSH!
With a small sound, the gray arrow that met the Crescent-Moon Weight head-on instead burst with a strangely enormous light at that moment.
"...!"
Serin hastily covered her front with her left hand and belatedly planted her foot.
BOOOOM!
A massive explosion erupted from the point where Moonlight's pure white trail and the gray arrow met, and Serin's body was caught in the blast and hurled into the air.
Her HP gauge was instantly stripped of about 30%. Serin's eyes flew wide as she twisted her head and swung the Crescent-Moon Weight again.
WHOOSH!
The violet long spear, its trajectory sharply altered, was still pursuing her even now.
'A deliberate skill combo.'
Even in the urgent situation, Serin realized by instinct that this situation was intentional, and she swung the Crescent-Moon Weight wide once more.
Clang!
A great burst of light exploded from the Crescent-Moon Weight as it collided with the long spear.
As the long spear was knocked flying, belated alert sounds appeared at the edge of Serin's vision, and warning messages followed one after another.
Ding! Ding!
[Outlaw. 'Gray Arrow' is approaching you.]
[Outlaw. 'Stabbing Spear' is approaching you.]
"...Ha."
The moment she recognized from the ambush fired from both sides that there were two Outlaws, Serin let out a hollow laugh and spun her body.
—Single Kick.
Serin's body, caught in the aftermath of the explosion, rotated hard and lashed through the air. With a bang, her form, which had been flying through the air, instead surged rapidly toward the ground.
THOOOM!
Despite landing on the ground as lightly as if she had settled down gently, a thunderous sound rang out and a shockwave rippled outward from her center—but Serin paid it no mind at all.
[No wait, what was that just now??]
[Who the hell ambushes with two people]
[Two Outlaws jumping someone at the same time is actually crossing the line]
[I came to watch the actual stream instead of NewTube, why is the personal stream more dramatic?]
[Both of those Outlaws are infamous lunatics]
[Are they actually insane, ambushing Rin? No wait, don't they know what happened to Lyudmila?]
[It's Rin, who goes toe-to-toe with pro players, why are they coming to kill themselves?]
"They're asking me to kill them myself, aren't they?"
Serin muttered coldly, glancing at the chat window as she gave the Crescent-Moon Weight a swing.
WHOOOOM!
The Crescent-Moon Weight, floating in the air, let out a menacing sound as it tore through the air and settled around Serin. She kept it spinning as she surveyed her surroundings.
She hadn't expected an ambush like this before she'd even warmed up, so that single exchange had snapped her mind awake in an instant.
And she noticed the situation was turning strange.
The moment she was attacked by an Outlaw, the Outlaw could not move beyond a certain radius.
Either I die, or the opponent dies—one of the two outcomes had to occur.
But right now, not a single Outlaw was visible in my field of view.
No matter how far away they were, the Outlaw's distinctive red outline should have been caught in her vision.
'Neither of them intends to show themselves.'
Thinking calmly, I held my position for now.
The fact that I was currently in a brushland area seemed to be a major factor.
A place where taking cover was easy.
Trees that had grown high into the sky occupied large spaces here and there, so taking cover wasn't difficult at all.
That must be why no red outline was visible in her field of view right now.
"They used the tracking system to ambush me like this, right?"
Half-convinced, I still didn't stop swinging the Crescent-Moon Weight.
WHOOOOM! WHOOOOM!
Keeping the Crescent-Moon Weight tracing continuous circles of pure white light was a small movement that allowed her to respond more easily to ranged attacks.
[Seems like it, if they didn't use tracking then jumping you here makes no sense]
[No wait, wouldn't tracking cost a ton for someone like Rin?]
[Wow, what Outlaws come at you 2v1, are they confident they can handle the penalty?]
[How is Rin this calm in the middle of this lol]
[I'm more amazed Rin even reacted to that lolololol]
[From last time to now, seems like the Outlaws are deliberately trying to mess with Rin]
[For real, seems like it, Plea got targeted by Outlaws before too]
Even while glancing at the chat, it seemed clear that they had used the tracking system.
—Tracking.
A system that displayed the location of a desired target in real time within one's field of view, and it came with quite a few conditions.
It was typically used to designate someone you bore a grudge against or wanted to kill and locate them, and as one of the systems that encouraged PVP, the cost was not small.
Simply tracking someone significantly raised your Outlaw disposition toward the evil alignment by percentage, and using tracking alone consumed an enormous amount of silver coins.
If you killed the target, the tracking cost was returned, but if you failed, you could only use it by forcibly paying several times the tracking cost to the target.
Because the risks were large in many ways, it was a system people didn't use unless they truly wanted someone dead.
'They want to kill me that badly, huh.'
At that moment, when the absurd thought crossed her mind, a red outline was finally caught in her vision.
She immediately turned her gaze the other way, and far off in front of the brushland, another red outline was showing itself.
WHOOSH!
—!
As though they had timed it almost perfectly, the long spear and arrow surged in from both sides again, and the situation was delicate.
Two Outlaws positioned at nearly opposite poles from each other, with me at the center.
Thinking about it rationally, the right move was to rush toward one side and break them down in one go.
But at that moment, the Outlaw trait came to mind.
From the moment an Outlaw attacks me, they cannot move beyond a certain distance.
'In that situation, if I close the distance with one of them...'
More than anything else, what worried her was what would happen to the other one far away.
Because there had been no Outlaw system in Black Ark.
There had been beings called 'jackals' in a different, malicious sense, but Black Ark hadn't been a completely game-like world.
For now, the priority was dealing with the incoming attacks.
Unlike before, the gray arrow was flying in slowly.
And unlike the one drawing changing trajectories, the violet spear was now flying in a perfectly straight line.
The two Outlaws' attacks each carried different variations, so even making a split-second judgment naturally made her brow furrow.
She could feel at once that these Outlaws hadn't launched a random ambush.
Even as she thought that, her hands were already rapidly deploying a skill.
—Moonlit Threads.
The moment Serin swung the Crescent-Moon Weight, wreathed in pure white light, as though slicing through a point in space.
——!!
A truly enormous light burst out through the brushland.
From the point where the light erupted, countless beams of light shot out as though stitching through the undergrowth, surging toward the long spear that was flying in a straight line.
She couldn't know exactly what skill the opponent had deployed, but Moonlit Threads should at least be able to block it.
CRACKLE-CRACKLE!!
The moment the fast-flying long spear and the countless lights collided, they fiercely repelled each other in the violet-tinged air.
Perceiving that, she immediately turned her gaze and felt that the gray arrow was floating through the air, now right at her doorstep.
The first gray arrow had been a skill that caused an explosion at the point of impact.
'What the hell is it this time...'
She quickly retrieved the Crescent-Moon Weight she had used for Moonlit Threads and was about to swing it at the gray arrow when—
Serin confirmed that the arrow's trajectory had suddenly shot sharply up into the sky.
"Arrow rain...?"
Serin muttered blankly, and at that moment she kicked off the ground hard, widening the distance.
The arrow that had soared into the air burst apart, and a countless rain of arrows poured down across the entire area.
FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP-FWIP!
Amid the gray arrow rain that pierced straight through the massive undergrowth as it hammered down, Serin threw her body through the air, utterly dumbfounded.
The opponents were extremely meticulous.
They attacked with combos and variables as though timing their moves together, and even the fact that the two Outlaws were attacking from completely opposite distances with ranged attacks bothered her.
She could predict that even the fact that they had aimed from both sides like this held meaning.
But even so, there was no more room to hesitate.
"I'll have to just crash into them first."
Conscious of the stream, she muttered the words and chose to take the risk.
If the opponents' skills kept pouring out with this much variety, blocking them would only get harder.
She glanced around. In the direction where the light of Moonlit Threads had faded, the long spear had vanished again.
On the opposite side, a large gray light was surging as though preparing a skill.
—Moon Princess's Step.
The moment Serin's pure white legs took on light, her figure vanished.
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!
A single streak of light seemed to be drawn continuously through the brushland, and the moment she closed the distance significantly with the Outlaw whose gray light was surging—
"...!"
Serin's eyes widened in alarm as she fixed her gaze on one spot. There, an ominous violet light had leaped across the distance in an instant and was raging fiercely.
The Outlaw holding the long spear had hurled their spear with all their strength.
—Meteor Spear.