The Fresh Newbie and the Vicious Veteran (5)
"What does that person even do, for everyone to be like this...? Is he really that famous...?"
The chat was a flood. Most of it was people cursing the user standing over there, and it didn't seem to be cursing without a reason. If it were, there wouldn't have been messages mixed in about how disappointed they were in the bastard. In the middle of all that, there was exactly one thing I could be sure of: zlzonchongjabi and Soldier were the same person.
Good grief. He really was no ordinary bastard. So that was what they meant by a man like a leaf, one face in front and another behind. If good people exist in the world, then of course bad people do too. There is a reason they say this world overflows with schemes. But this case was different. On the outside he played at kindness, while in truth he was a vicious wretch who trampled growing sprouts without mercy.
Once I had the shape of it, my expression went cold. And zlzonchongjabi... no. I ought to call him Soldier now. Soldier, who had been screaming only moments ago, shook his head as cold sweat poured off him. How would the bastard come out of this? Make excuses? Tell the truth and beg forgiveness? Or spin some plausible tale out of nothing at all?
While I was turning it over, his mouth finally opened.
"That's not it, everyone...! That user, Baekryun, was cosplaying as an alt and trying to play with the newbies, so I approached her on an alt of my own...!"
The bastard had played the worst possible move. I genuinely couldn't tell whether that thing was a human being or a beast. If he had at least been honest now and apologized to me and the viewers, some people might have turned back. But hearing him slander me in that booming voice, it was clear his brain had finally gone rotten.
Then what about everyone else? Was there anyone who might actually believe that piece of trash's lie...? Uneasy, I shifted my gaze toward the crowd gathered in the plaza, and every one of them wore a look of pure contempt. Whew. Thank goodness. In my heart I had been thinking, what if someone actually believes that— but it hadn't come to that.
Lies really couldn't beat the truth, it seemed. More than that, this game left a trace of your class selection in your character information. The chats that followed said as much. Search the name Baekryun, and there was only one trace of a class being chosen, and that single class had been picked just yesterday. A small mark also labeled her a new user. A record did appear if you changed classes, they added, but it didn't show what the class had been.
But does that even make sense...?
He had judged me a newbie without ever checking my information. Surely he hadn't decided that just because, in the Central Plaza, I looked like someone playing for the first time, and because I had chosen the Fighter class? While I was thinking it, Soldier seemed to be working something with his fingers. For quite a long while, too.
"What...? The class selection date was yesterday...?!"
Ha... To think a fool that complete actually existed. A child who took only what his eyes could see as the truth, and never properly grasped the facts. Back then, I must have looked like terribly tempting prey. No wonder his ability to read a situation had fallen off a cliff.
"Don't you have any shame? A person ought to have a conscience."
I said it to him outright. He had cast aside human decency and stepped off the path a person ought to walk. I truly wished he would feel even a little prick of guilt. But in that moment, the tone of his voice began to change.
"Don't fuck with me!! Who the hell is crazy enough to play Fighter!!"
Tears spilled over. Why had the world given birth to a villain like that? With a finger I wiped the corners of my eyes, gone damp from the weight in my chest—pity for such foolishness, and for the way the Fighter class was treated.
The bastard who had shouted snatched the beret off his head and flung it onto the ground.
One line in particular caught my eye. So Soldier's editor had posted on the DCInside boards, exposing that the bastard had been smurf-stomping on an alt? Putting the chats that followed together, it came to this. Someone going by SoldierEditor had been waiting for the right moment to blow the whistle on Soldier's two faces, and that was when I ended up in a match against him. Taking that as his chance, he had uploaded every scrap of evidence he had gathered, together with footage recorded from my broadcast.
With that, every piece of the puzzle fell into place. In a single line: the karma of a man whose everyday conduct had never been upright had finally burst. If he had lived rightly, none of this would have happened...
And right in the middle of it, a message rose.
Full Power Match begins in 1 minute.
To think twenty minutes could pass so quickly. All I had really done was watch the bastard's disgrace and piece together the truth. At any rate, it was about time I got ready.
"Well then, this time as well, I'll win without allowing a single clean hit. Please take care of me."
I bowed toward the chat window, toward the precious viewers who had come to watch my stream. When I straightened, a great many messages were already climbing the chat.
Why were they moved by something so obvious? For a Fighter who holds benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom dear, it was only natural... Were there really so many people these days who couldn't keep even basic courtesy? If so, then I would simply have to drive my unsolicited advice home all the more clearly through my broadcasts.
The moment I made that resolve, time must have run out, because the scenery before my eyes began to change, just as it had before. A place where yellow dust came sweeping in, and ground thickly carpeted in sand. If I had to put it in a single word, it would be wasteland. As if to prove it, rocky mountains of differing heights rose in the distance. And the feel of the place—the clammy unpleasantness of sand that seemed to cling to my body, and the heat rising off the ground—insisted fiercely that this was a wasteland and nothing else.
I was still taking in the map when a sudden boom reached my ears.
The chats kept coming, and with them a sandstorm surged up from the blast of a grenade. Mm... It was chaos, and yet old memories came back. When I sparred in the training yard, the people watching would cheer, and I myself had been moved to admiration just from watching others fight with my own eyes. Because of that, I could feel what the viewers watching this broadcast must be feeling. Then I would have to show them a match they could trust. I would seize an overwhelming victory and raise this duel into a performance.
With that resolve, in the instant I went to take a step—
Ah. I forgot to ask the viewers about the Chess Guild...
—the thing I had forgotten came rushing back. It had definitely been in the chat a little while ago, that line about his alt being in the Chess Guild making the whole thing legendary. I had taken in so much in so short a moment that it had slipped away. From the players' point of view, it seemed like quite a famous guild... Well. I could ask about the Chess Guild after I finished the match in front of me. It wouldn't be too late.
Anyway, I was weaving this way and that, dodging the grenades that kept going off, when I suddenly realized the world around me had gone dark.
"A rain of grenades...?"
I lifted my head to the sky and saw them pouring down like a torrential storm. How many did you have to throw for a sight like this to open overhead? But for a Fighter, dealing with it was not difficult in the slightest. I had lived through situations like this in the Heavenly Realm more times than I could count. Now it was time to show the viewers, and Soldier, the power of the skill I had made—and make the greatness of the Fighter known.