Latest Game Maniacs (3)
Latest Game Maniacs (3)
I let out a soft sigh as I removed the virtual reality headset. I stepped out of the world of 0s and 1s and faced reality.
Maybe it was because it was just the preliminaries.
The interior of the simply constructed booth came into view.
"......Whoa."
A man who, like me, had taken off his VR headset let out a hollow laugh.
Having belatedly regained his senses, he stood up from his chair and walked over with awkward movements.
"...To be honest, I thought you were just hacking, but you really are skilled."
The tournament used a two-person team format, so naturally two opponents approached us as well.
"It was a clean loss. I have no excuses."
One of the men offered a handshake to Julia.
I remembered him as the one who had lasted about 0.5 seconds longer against her combos.
"I'm sure you'll win the whole thing. I'll be rooting for you."
But whether a handshake was offered or not, Julia paid him no attention and simply kept looking in my direction.
It was a blatantly dismissive response.
In the end, the apology fell to me—the one with the decent social skills.
"Sorry about that. She's not very used to conversation...."
At my words, the man gave an awkward smile.
"No, actually, it's the reaction I expected."
"Pardon?"
"Even when I ran into them a few times in ranked games, I never got a reply. It's not just me—I heard they were like that with others, too."
The handshake meant for Julia now turned toward me.
I hadn't exactly played a starring role in the preliminary matches, but that didn't mean I was callous enough to outright refuse a handshake the way Julia did.
"I didn't actually get to see you play, but if you're teamed up with 'Tokkigyeongdyu-nim,' you must be pretty skilled yourself, right, sir?"
"......."
No, not really.
I was Silver.
Since Julia had solo-killed everyone, he'd clearly gotten the wrong idea—though not by my design.
But before I could offer any explanation, the man offered a brief farewell and moved to the outside of the booth.
"Anyway, I'll be rooting for you."
...Well, what did it matter.
So long as the preliminaries ended without incident.
I let out a short sigh.
There were more participants than I'd expected.
The scale was about three times larger than I'd anticipated, too.
And as the opponent had suggested, I hadn't actually fought in any of the matches myself.
But just repeatedly putting on and taking off the VR headset was slowly building up fatigue.
I suddenly—
worried about that, so I asked Julia.
"How's your condition?"
"...It's fine."
The earlier image of her casually ignoring the opponent's greeting and handshake was nowhere to be seen.
She immediately nodded and answered my question.
She even carefully raised both her mechanical prosthetic hands in a thumbs-up, striking an exaggerated pose.
Was that Julia's idea of a joke?
I couldn't quite tell.
Unlike usual, she wore a mask on her face—for the same reason she didn't have the 'White Rabbit doll' she always carried around.
Just as I'd heard before.
The rabbit doll she carried was a valuable device that hacked signals and applied distortion to block recognition from nearby cameras.
It was only natural.
It was also an object that couldn't be brought into this tournament, which was being broadcast on a stream.
As a side note, the mask was a spare I'd briefly lent her.
It was a variant similar to the one I was currently wearing—a mask that would keep you perfectly fine even if tear gas went off inside the arena.
Perhaps finding the mask a bit stuffy, Julia pulled it away from her face just a tiny bit.
It was only natural for it to feel stuffy the first time you wore it.
The higher the grade of the mask, the stuffier it tended to be.
As I looked at Julia, I half-stood and scanned the outside of the booth.
I could see a few people busily moving about, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to our booth yet.
Come to think of it.
Weren't we the last match of the preliminaries?
It was about time for the main tournament matches to begin.
As if my prediction was right on the mark, a loud microphone sound echoed through the arena.
I focused my gaze on the screen set up inside the booth.
《Thank you for waiting so long!》
At one side of the stage, the man who appeared to be the main caster continued his commentary from behind a large desk.
《I'm told the preliminaries wrapped up before we knew it! Which means we can finally move on to the main tournament matches, which can actually be broadcast!》
Waaaaaah-.
A roar of cheers from the audience followed.
《Now, first let me introduce myself─.》
But then.
The caster sitting beside the commentator cut him off and grabbed the mic.
《Oh, come on! Who doesn't know who you are around here! We're way past the scheduled time already, so let's just hurry it along!》
Well, I didn't know him.
I glanced to the side and saw that Julia didn't seem to recognize him either.
At the caster's words, the commentator shook his head.
A loud sigh carried over the microphone.
《Everyone in Neon City has such ridiculously short tempers, I swear.》
After deliberately clearing his throat a few times, the commentator steadied his voice.
《Can't be helped, then. Let's get started right away with the very first match of the main tournament!》
A shower of light and smoke burst onto the stage.
Holographic footage appeared as well—the same trailer video Julia had shown me before.
Two people slowly walked up the steps onto the stage.
Their strides looked remarkably confident.
《This is the very first team. A formidable favorite to win this tournament. A team that also produced excellent results in the last competition! 'Outer Raise'!》
Oh.
They were players famous enough that even I knew them.
What a sight, getting to see them at a tournament.
Chances to watch matches like this live didn't come often.
Who were their opponents?
《And next.... Now, the following participants!》
From the opposite side of the stage, where Outer Raise had come up, more figures emerged.
Female players this time.
In a cyberpunk world where the gap between men and women's abilities had been virtually erased through cyberware or bioware implant surgeries, this wasn't an unusual sight.
But they looked somehow familiar─.
.......
Huh?
《The team name is extremely unique. It's the 'Strongest Machine and Strongest Human Team'!》
What the hell.
22. Latest Game Mania (3)
Unless my ocular cyberware had been hacked.
The identities of the people who had just walked onto the stage were unmistakably 'Eve' and 'Catherine.'
Maybe I'd been running low on qi lately.
I was seeing things that weren't there.
I rubbed my eyes and looked ahead again.
"......."
Strange.
Why was it still the same.
Eve was dressed in a maid outfit, same as always. She'd even bought new clothes—I kind of wished she'd start wearing something different by now.
Whether Catherine was embarrassed about her face becoming known in a place like this, she was wearing a mask like Julia and me, covering the lower half of her face.
The commentator's flustered gaze turned toward Eve.
《Haha..., this shouldn't be an exhibition match. You've come out in a highly unusual outfit. A maid outfit─.》
Suddenly, the commentator stopped talking.
《.......》
A heavy silence fell over the Dome, which had gone quiet after the cheers subsided.
But the commentator, failing to grasp the situation, muttered in a trembling voice.
《...Could the participant's name be.》
He was talking to himself while checking his notes.
《......Eve? Could this possibly be the 'Streamer Eve' herself, in person?!》
The sound of him gulping was amplified through the mic and broadcast to everyone.
《I'm a fan─ no, that's not the point. You suddenly stopped streaming recently, and if it's not too rude, may I ask the reason? No, wait, put this down. Right now, I'm speaking on behalf of her countless fans─.》
The caster beside him covered the commentator's mouth and put a stop to the situation.
《Ohoho, this guy's always been so into watching streaming broadcasts.》
I could very faintly hear a voice saying, Is he insane?
At this utterly unpredictable broadcast accident, the caster struggled to take the commentator's mic away.
《Eve, turn your stream back on!! Turn it─.》
Eventually, he was dragged away forlornly by the security guards.
Hmm.
What on earth was all this.
With the Smile Zone and everything else, I'd been so busy lately that it had been quite a while since I last watched Eve's stream.
It seemed she'd even stopped streaming altogether while I hadn't been watching.
"......."
Well, that made sense.
Thinking back now, the reason Eve had started streaming in the first place was to buy a 'prosthetic body.'
And the credits she'd been giving me for living expenses—there was no longer any need for that either.
The credits Pit Mac had transferred to me alone were already fattening up my account plenty.
Unless a tax audit suddenly came down on me—
and the city confiscated all my credits—I effectively had no reason to worry about money anymore.
In the midst of this chaos, with the commentator having been dragged off.
The very person at the center of the uproar, Eve, walked completely unfazed toward the booth on stage where the VR headsets sat.
Catherine, moving with an awkward gait that didn't suit her at all, followed behind Eve.
No, I mean, seriously.
Why were you two here?
But since the people who could answer my questions were already on stage, all I could do was shut my mouth and watch their match.
The caster wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead.
《...There was a brief disturbance. My apologies.》
The caster, his complexion darkened, made an effort to calmly regain his composure.
《......We will now resume the match!》
The main tournament match began, and while the two teams on stage were selecting their characters—
I could feel a headache coming on.
They say headaches are a chronic disease in the cyberpunk world, and it seemed the things that made my head hurt had no intention of ever going away.
I tried to assess the situation calmly.
.......
On further thought, this was something close to cheating.
Of course, Julia's and my goal in entering the tournament hadn't been 'victory.'
We'd entered to shake off the hacking suspicions anyway, and we didn't necessarily need to win for that part.
But.
It was also true that a concrete result was necessary.
I carefully tried to imagine a future where we didn't win. I exercised my imagination to the fullest.
- Wasn't that rabbit pretty good? Maybe they're not hacking?
- lol 'normie' who couldn't even win anyway
- I watched it live in person and they weren't as good as they looked online yeah this is facts
- That's what you'd expect from a hacking piece of shit
"Ugh."
My head.
I clutched my head at the resurgent headache.
No matter how I looked at it, this was a crisis.
Julia looked at me with worried eyes.
I waved my hand to signal I was fine, then quickly checked the tournament bracket uploaded to the net data.
My and Julia's team, 『Warrior Is The Best』, and
Eve and Catherine's team, 『Strongest Machine and Strongest Human』—whether fortunately or unfortunately, I couldn't tell—
Were placed at the extreme opposite ends from each other.
...That was somewhat better, at least.
Even if we lost in the finals.
Since it would be a loss to the eventual winners, it seemed like public opinion might be a little softer.
- They're under Eve anyway, right rabbit?
"Heh."
The inner demons in my head just wouldn't go away.
《......Oh my god, the match is over! Team 'Outer Raise'! They've been defeated without landing a single hit against the Strongest Machine player! Everyone is in an uproar at the emergence of a new dark horse!》
Something.
I had to find some way.
Perhaps sensing my worry.
Julia gently shook her head and said,
"...Please don't worry too much."
"Is there another way?"
At my question, Julia offered no answer. She only clenched both fists tightly.
It was a sign that she trusted solely in her own martial prowess.
...Maybe it was because of the fighting game.
Weird analogies kept popping into my head.
Anyway, there was still quite a lot of time left until the finals of the main tournament.
I resolved firmly—
to find some clear solution in the meantime.
Just then, someone poked their face inside the booth where we were staying.
"Oh, is this the place?"
It was a man with roughly swept-back, red-dyed hair.
"I saw the participant list and suspected it, but I never expected you'd actually be here. Huh? Could anyone really have believed this?"
Muttering to himself constantly, he walked into our booth as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Who the hell was this now?
A filming drone flew in behind the man.
It was the kind of gear that streamers who did outdoor activities often carried around.
Even though the atmosphere clearly wasn't welcoming him at all, the man looked around the booth and then walked in my direction.
He extended a handshake with a confident gesture.
I had no idea why fighting game people liked handshakes so much.
I ignored the handshake for the moment.
I frowned at the uninvited guest and asked,
"Who are you?"
"Ah, you don't know me? That's possible, sure. No, a regular person might not know. You guys, keep it quiet."
Maybe because he was a streamer, he muttered to himself an awful lot.
As he did so, he added a word and introduced himself.
"Hello, I go by streamer Rococo."
Ah.
He was the fighting game streamer who had targeted her—the one who had appeared in the materials Julia had showed me.
What had this guy said again?
[Ah~, that person? Probably not hacking. I mean, they don't even show up at offline tournaments, they react on a frame-by-frame basis, and they make zero mistakes, but still. I personally think it's possible. I know because I've gotten my ass handed to me in ranked too. And by the way, that's why I don't play that trash game anymore, so stop sending me donations telling me to play it.]
.......
First, I turned around and checked whether Julia had a folding katana in her hand.