The Fresh Newbie and the Vicious Veteran (4)

I was in a situation that anyone, at a glance, would have called dangerous. Cold sweat streamed down my forehead because of it. Where in the world had it all gone wrong? All I had done after dinner was look up Battle Mania on Nutube. I had merely come away with a great deal of information. Turning that over, I let out a sigh at the full-length mirror standing in the living room.

"Haa... so this is what they call a negligee...? Why does it flutter like this..."

The words slipped out under my breath. I had only managed them after confirming my own outfit, and they scattered like smoke.

The incident had begun like this. Last night, while I was dressed in a white T-shirt and black hot pants, Hyeeun had told me to change after dinner. But honestly—what chain of reasoning ends in recommending a garment called a negligee? It was a fluttering thing. The touch felt like handling silk so rare it barely existed, and my heart would not settle.

Refusing, of course, had not been an option. She had said the clothes I was wearing needed to be washed, and told me to put them in the machine. And Hyeeun had said this:

"A dress is comfortable for moving around in, isn't it? Wear that into the capsule and it'll be easy to move, obviously, and you won't even sweat much. It'll be really nice."

It would be comfortable, she said. Hearing that, I had no choice but to become what people call a yes-man. Even my meager store of common sense was enough to grasp, roughly, why women wore dresses. Refuse at that point, and anyone would have thought me strange. They would have been perfectly justified in writing me off as some stubborn old fossil who went out of her way to pursue discomfort.

Recalling that recent past, I trudged over toward the computer. I sat in the chair and played again the video I had been watching a moment before.

"A Fighter, you say? Aigoo... even black belts don't play that. So don't even look at it. Seriously—not unless you've actually gone up against guns and blades with your bare hands."

It was genuinely shocking. They were calling the Fighter class garbage simply because its difficulty was too high... If I boiled the sunglassed man's talk down to a single point, it came to this: the Fighter class demanded so much realism that catching a bullet barehanded, or receiving a blade, was truly difficult. Things like that couldn't even be made into skills, he said, because they would break the balance.

And at the same time, a thought came to me. I was a martial artist who could stop guns and blades with my bare hands, so if I taught newbies that method on stream, it ought to work. I had been worrying quite a bit over what my broadcast's content should be, and now the direction had gone and settled itself.

Ambition firm, I rose from the chair and headed for the capsule. I climbed straight in and sat down.

"The texture really is comfortable... hoo... That was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠dangerous. This is not comfortable at all... mm..."

I had let my guard down. Not even in my dreams had I imagined that a thing called a negligee could be so perilous a garment. To pull myself together, I shook my head hard from side to side. Then I put on the goggles, just as I had before. The sound of the capsule closing reached me, and the scenery before my eyes began to change.

This time, not the central fountain. A tucked-away alley.

I set it in the game-start window, where blue panels were rising. That way, every eye wouldn't snap to me in my martial robes. The moment I went in I would have to make skills, and I wanted none of that attention. An empty, quiet alley took shape before me. All I could see were a few benches.

I settled onto one with prim composure, opened a window in the empty air, and set about making skills. The very first thing I needed was the technique I had used the moment I arrived in South Korea: a skill for bounding through the air. Without it, crushing an enemy barehanded would run into serious trouble. It would mean that when I dodged an opponent's attacks, I could move only left and right. After that came the creation of the finishing moves I could fairly call my pride techniques from the Heavenly Realm.

......And so, in a place where nothing reached me but the sound of the wind, I made skill after skill until I decided to take a short rest.

"Nnngh, this is taking quite a while. Well, I did have an awful lot of techniques from the Heavenly Realm..."

What a headache. Turning the techniques I possessed into game skills was no ordinary labor. And because the game company checked them in real time while I crafted them, the time required had multiplied. Had they said an AI did the checking...? That must have been the name of the company team involved in skill creation, I supposed.

I was in the middle of stretching when footsteps that were anything but ordinary began to draw near.

"F-finally... found you..."

A man, gasping for breath. It was none other than zlzonchongjabi, the one I had pounded into paste yesterday. Just how frantically had he been searching for me, to be braced on both hands against his knees and panting like that...? I was so dumbfounded that words failed me. This was practically crossing to the far side of the planet for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a single chance at revenge. So, out of perfectly genuine curiosity, I asked:

"How did you know I was here?"

"If you search someone's nickname in the game-start window, it comes up...?"

Ah. So there was a feature like that. A newbie who had only just started could hardly be expected to know what functions existed. More than that, from the way he spoke, he still seemed to think of me as an alt. To think the world held a person this suspicious.

Ah, wait... Searching my nickname and tracking me down meant he had been sitting in queue inside the game all day, didn't it? He really was no ordinary fellow. In any case, someone like this was no longer worth facing. I ought to leave.

"What, you scared?"

The moment I heard it, rage surged up in me. He had lost to me, and on top of that he had spat out an insult. Anyone who swallowed this much was a fool. The warning not to lose one's temper carelessly did not mean one had to endure it all the way to the end. My resolve set, I met his eyes. Yes. This time, as a representative of the Heavenly Realm's ten million fighters, I would make him feel the gap between us beyond any doubt.

"Hey. If you're that great, accept it right now."

I held a blue window out to him. It was a Full Power Match—the sort of thing only real men could undertake. From what I had found on Nutube, the loser of a Full Power Match was branded with a permanent tag: the title Defeated by [Winner]. Stick a title like that on someone, and even the most foolish soul would surely be unable to walk around with their head held high.

Of course, at first I had hesitated to go this far. But I had already endured three times, and three times was plenty. Endure any more, and in vulgar terms I would simply be a sucker. When I offered him the window, he seemed delighted; he didn't even read what was written on it before hitting accept.

Haa... an ignorant fool who can't even imagine himself losing...

I would show no mercy. I would bring my full strength to bear. I would brand the difference in our levels into that body. I was steeling that resolve when a window marked with numbers suddenly appeared in the air. The count was slowly falling from ten. Did that mean the match would begin in ten seconds?

But zlzonchongjabi looked a little strange. He didn't so much as twitch, as if he had turned to stone. Hmm... Was he only now afraid of the tag that would stick to him? Around the time the number reached one, the scenery before my eyes began, little by little, to change. It had been an empty alley only a moment ago, and now we were being moved to the place with the central fountain. The people around us were all looking our way at once.

What...? We weren't simply starting the match right away...?

A mechanical voice, a woman's, rang out. Hmm. I had thought the match would start at once, but it begins in twenty minutes. And was a Full Power Match the sort of mode that got announced to everyone on such a grand scale? I had only looked at the part about the tag...

In the midst of that, a scream suddenly burst from zlzonchongjabi's side. I turned my head, and the figure of a western gunslinger was changing into a soldier dressed in a military uniform.

Whoa. So he was the one clinging to me on an alt?

The mechanical voice had just said it. A Full Power Match was something both sides fought with their main accounts. Then he had been an alt himself, while driving me into a corner as if I were the alt? What was I supposed to do with this wretched man...

Then voices suddenly began to rise from all around.

"Isn't that the Battle Mania Nutuber, Soldier?"

"Yeah, look. There's a big letter S stuck right on the beret."

"Wait... why is a famous newbie-stomper turning into Soldier...?"

Words that drifted past me. So a famous Nutuber had been smurfing to bully newbies? Those words seemed to act as a fuse, because I even caught this from the crowd: why was the Newbie Shredder changing into Soldier's form, and don't tell me Soldier and zlzonchongjabi were the same person?

"Baekryun, turn your stream on!"

A shout aimed at me. At those words, I opened the settings window and pressed the live-broadcast button. In any case, if things had gone as I originally planned, I would have been streaming for people just ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠starting out as Fighters. This time I fiddled with one more thing as well, and succeeded in floating a translucent chat window in the air.

But... why was the amount of chat climbing that window anything but ordinary...?

Chats appearing in a flash. Even so, thanks to my dynamic vision, reading most of them was no great trouble. I had only just started the broadcast, and the viewer count had already reached three digits. Watching it keep climbing even now, I was beginning to think four digits might not be out of reach.

More than that—what did the viewers mean? Could it be that this man had committed evils so foul that even Ksitigarbha, the bodhisattva said to save foolish beings from hell, would have to fold?