Chapter 192: Preliminaries 1
Chapter 192: Preliminaries 1
In the end, the duel incident got settled far more cleanly than I'd anticipated.
The Flower Atop the Tower really had just been a noble young master embarrassed about baring his chest; he wasn't nursing any sort of grudge. "It was a fine match. I'd only meant to evade the first shot, given what I'd heard of your abilities, but you taught me something."
"Oh, um, no, I... thank you for the match."
By way of apology, the Flower Atop the Tower promised Han Ye-ji a custom batch of specialty ammunition. The knight, now shed of his armor and dressed in lighter attire, thumped a fist to his chest in salute and vanished. Watching Han Ye-ji grow visibly flustered in the face of that impeccably courteous farewell, a single thought crossed my mind.
'Well. Now I look like the only goddamn asshole here.'
I'd overreacted—probably because the memory of false #MeToo accusations from my past life had gotten under my skin. But faced with an opponent who handled the whole affair with mature grace, I had nothing left to say. At least he'd left without any hard feelings, remarking that he'd learned a great deal from seriously studying an opponent who fought with firearms, and made a smooth exit. Fine. A lucky break.
Song Ye-na, ever the prodigy, had headed straight for the training hall, citing some insight she'd gained. Lee Ha-rin had bustled off to the infirmary, claiming a flood of patients had hit right before the tournament. That left just two of us in my quarters: me and Han Ye-ji.
"Honestly, it was basically rock-paper-scissors. No—more like a coin toss? Just a straight fifty-fifty gamble."
She'd helped bring down fleeing suspects and resisting criminals before, but this was the first time she'd stepped into a dueling ring alone, without squad support, and come out the winner. Both cheeks flushed pink with excitement, she kept chattering on.
"A knight of that level could've sliced straight through my bullets if he'd put in the effort. I think he dodged the first round because he assumed it was a concussive magic shell meant to shove him back. If he'd just cut the bullet and closed the gap on the next leap, I'd never have gotten my barrel lined up. I'd have lost."
She coughed, wet her lips with a drink, and kept going. More of the same: she'd won by a fluke, her opponent had underestimated her, and so on. You'd think a first duel victory might earn herself a little confidence, but apparently she lacked the shamelessness to openly sing her own praises.
"Still, you won because you put in the work."
Every time a compliment landed, her eyes scattered like a lost traveler's. As if she were watching some mortifyingly overwrought drama scene unfold, her eyes, her hands, even her waist fidgeted without a moment's rest. Too shy to rate herself highly, too shy to take praise at close quarters where our gazes kept meeting. Unable to bear the awkwardness, she abruptly changed the subject.
"Um, I didn't come up with all of it on my own..."
The swamp sorcery to counter an earth spirit, the southern desert sorcery to scrub away sandstorms—she confessed she'd picked up both from her regular lurking on the Seonghwa Gallery. She'd soaked up every bit of praise, but the truth was she'd cobbled her strategy together from internet gossip, and the fact seemed to mortify her. The flush spread past her cheeks to her earlobes and the nape of her neck as she shrank into herself.
But so what? Who cares where the strategy came from?
'I used to read guides and still couldn't hit Diamond in the moba challenge.'
How to game well, how to study effectively, how to succeed at life—guides like that. The internet is drowning in them. Self-help books overflow with them. Reading a hundred of them means nothing if you don't act. The person who executes, who puts it into practice and succeeds, is the one who earns the credit. Not that any of that really mattered—I just found the way she flinched at every compliment too cute to resist.
※
Han Ye-ji, unable to endure any more teasing praise, fled to the Tournament Safety Management Committee. Lee Ha-rin, ardent Constellation devotee, had slipped in among the medics so she could watch the matches live. Kim Ha-eun was so absorbed in her dream city that she showed zero interest in spectating. In the end, only Song Ye-na was actually competing.
I'd asked if she wanted anything from the armory, and she'd quietly shaken her head. It wasn't an item she was after—there was someone she wanted to fight. She was entering the tournament in search of enlightenment, not material gain. Even when I casually offered to let her pick any blade from my collection, she'd refused, saying she had no desire to lean on a famous sword. It was strangely impressive.
'Is this a martial arts novel?'
Ideally, I'd have gathered my Incarnations in a VIP box and watched while kicking back with a cola, but they'd all gone off to handle their own business. My skin was too thin to hassle them just because I was bored. If I asked them to watch with me, they'd obviously drop what they were doing and come, but...
'Isn't that kind of pathetic?'
Ordering someone to ditch their responsibilities and entertain me because I'm bored—that's pathetic no matter your gender. Just a sorry way for a human being to act.
So the option I settled on was holing up in my room. Obviously, that didn't mean I was giving up on spectating. I fully intended to lean on the comforts of modern civilization.
"So, what do I do?"
"If you look here, you'll find the Academy's internal channels. Yes, that button."
I sprawled sideways on the sofa, clicking the remote. Beside me, a Beastman guard was politely walking me through the controls. This one appeared to be of the bear bloodline—rounder ears, broader shoulders. Despite the imposing build, her instructions were nothing but genial as I worked the TV.
"Are you sure this will suffice? Matches like these often don't capture well on camera. They do offer slow-motion replays in some cases, but... truly, watching in person is—"
"Ah, it's fine. I'm not trying to learn anything by watching."
"Understood."
She'd been concerned that magic, sorcery, and psychic abilities didn't register properly on standard camera lenses and required specially enchanted broadcast equipment. But I wasn't trying to perceive any of that with any precision, so it didn't matter. What I wanted was to lie sideways on the sofa and be lazy. To sprawl, sit up, shift around, and snack on finger food. The guard quickly picked up on my mood and dipped her head.
"The tournament preliminaries run simultaneously. Press that blue button and cycle through the channels—you can start watching from Arena 1 on down."
With that last bit of explanation, she quietly shut the door behind her. The living room settled into silence—then was promptly shattered by a crowd's roar. Some MC I didn't recognize, but who was evidently famous in this world, grabbed the mic and started booming.
※
The broadcast wound up less entertaining than I'd hoped. No—to be precise, it was bound to split opinion.
[Preliminary Match: Incarnation of The Sword That Severs the Yoke, Song Ye-na, versus—]
Well, I had to at least catch my kid's match. I settled in with that in mind and watched.
'That's it? Seriously?'
A single sweeping arc of the longsword sheathed at her hip, and her opponent flung both hands up like a stickup and dropped her weapon. It brought to mind something I might've read in a martial arts novel, but one thing was certain: it was goddamn boring to watch.
Beep, beep, beep—the starting signal blared. They sprang at each other. One stroke of the blade, and the opponent was disarmed. Settled in under ten seconds. I know it's the preliminary rounds, but wasn't that a little too anticlimactic? I'd been lying down; I hadn't even managed to sit fully upright on the sofa or finish chewing the biscuit I'd brought to my mouth.
The match was so absurd I found myself reaching for my smartphone without thinking.
— Tournament preliminaries are a waste of time
[Mana duel decided in under 3 seconds.jpg]
No, the match is literally shorter than the countdown
The pre-match signal runs five seconds but the match ends in three lol
└ Well, swordkids can at least drag it out to ten
└ That's just time spent running at each other, you fuck lol
└ Mages do it in three, sorcerers can end it in one
└ Quit talking shit, you bitch
└ If the gap's big enough, the match starts and the spell pops and game over
└ Oh, this one nailed it
— Should've just kicked off the bloodbath from prelims
[Mana duel decided in under 3 seconds.jpg]
[Sorcery duel decided in under 1.4 seconds.jpg]
[Swordsmanship spar decided in under 10 seconds.jpg]
The Incarnation everyone's been buzzing about on the boards—Song Ye-na—had the longest match
And even that was mostly the post-buzzer exchange of bows
You goddamn bitches—you call this a match? You call this a tournament?
If this counts as a duel, then the gang kids who got beaten up by bullies and stretched their ten-minute break into a grueling slugfest
were running a stamina mudfight that counts as an all-out marathon brawl
└ That last line, you bitch
└ Blocking punches with your back, got it
└ Suddenly strafing the whole field with splash damage
└ Room-dwelling Constellation losers watching matches and arguing online at the same time, startled lol
I couldn't resist scrolling through the flood of posts that had already gone up. Regular people without powers seemed to share my feelings: most of the posts were complaints about the absurdly short match times. But, naturally, a few truly formidable keyboard warriors were already hard at work. The preliminaries weren't even over—they were still in progress—and yet someone had already compiled a list of the first-half victors. A couple of posts dug so deep into mana and sorcery duel trends and the direction of the continent's magical engineering research that a civilian would struggle to follow them.
"Constellation? Are you in?"
"Yeah. Come in."
Just as the TV was fading into background noise to keep me company while I was on my phone, I heard Song Ye-na's voice and a knock-knock at the door. She must've finished that hollow match, showered, and headed over. The door swung open at my word, and a fragrant shampoo scent drifted in.
'Even with enhanced senses, that scent's pretty strong.'
I lifted my eyes from the phone and turned my head. Her face was flushed red. The scent of shampoo and conditioner hung heavier than usual—she must've scrubbed hard. Her footsteps had turned awkward with nerves, and her eyes were sliding furtively around the room.
Now that I thought about it, I'd rarely been alone with Song Ye-na like this.