The Rising Super Rookie Streamer (3)
"By the way, what does Chess Guild actually do? Are they just... a plain old smurf guild?"
It was something I'd been turning over for a while, so I asked. Were they simply another pack of brats, the kind you see in every other game? Their numbers didn't look all that large. Soldier might well have been puffing them up.
I skimmed a handful of the messages and went still with shock. My guess had missed the mark entirely. So the game itself let them hide the name Chess Guild, and revealing membership with an earring was perfectly allowed? And in the middle of a scheme like that, Soldier had been stupid enough to queue on zlzonchongjabi while wearing the thing?
I was dumbstruck—ears stopped, nose stopped, the whole of me jammed shut. I was flustered badly enough that I could feel my own face crumpling.
"So if they hide the guild, there's no way to tell them apart unless they put the earring on themselves...? That's... actually ingenious."
The rest of it landed in the same breath. Smurf with the guild hidden, and no matter how well the new players understood the danger of Chess Guild, they would have no way to avoid it. Ranked matches were at least somewhat safe from a newbie's point of view, but even that had its limits. Anyone who just wanted to play for fun would be in the casual matches, the ones you joined by posting a sign.
While I was still turning that over, Soldier—blasted off along with the shattered rock—seemed to come around. He cleared his throat and started to push himself up. Time, then, to settle the other question I was carrying.
"But why do you smurf? Is that actually fun for you?"
I asked it straight. What part of stomping weaker players was enjoyable enough to do it on an alt? Anyone thinking like a normal person wouldn't take pleasure in that. If I, a Fighter, were matched against a complete beginner, I couldn't imagine being anything but bored. It was a doubt I'd carried ever since my gaming days back in South Korea, all the way to now, so I put it to him.
"......"
He never opened his mouth. Did that mean it really was exactly what I'd said at the end—that he'd done it purely because it was fun? Past simple madness, and into something that felt like genuine lunacy. This was the same man who, wearing the mask of Soldier, had run newbie-friendly broadcasts. At this point he was a real-life Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Even so, the light in his eyes hadn't died. From the look of him, he was already scheming some way to beat me in the next round.
"Lucky for you, though. If you'd gone full dead-fish eyes on me, the next game wouldn't have been any fun. Right?"
I paid him back once more. Wasn't it only polite to return what you'd been given, and twofold at that? I said it with a bright, easy smile, and he began to inch backward. Even so, he still didn't look like a beaten man who had lost the will to fight. Which meant I would have to stamp him flat—plant in him a helplessness so complete he would never stand back up. Through a skill I hadn't used yet. My killing art from the Heavenly Realm days, in other words.
For the record, no one in the Heavenly Realm had ever copied that finishing move. No—no one had been able to. Because of that, when I went to make it into a skill, I half wondered whether it would be rejected as overpowered. It wasn't.
10 seconds until Round 2 begins. Both players, please prepare.
We'd been chatting so companionably that Round 2 was already here. Well, either way, there was no need to let the finishing move leave my mouth. Showing your hand to an enemy is as good as choosing death. And demonstrating with action rather than words was surely the more fitting way for a Fighter.
I had just settled on that when the landscape before my eyes began, slowly, to change.
"Mm... Round two is a wasteland as well. I wanted to finish this quickly..."
The words slipped out in perfect sincerity. I wanted the viewers to see the finishing move as soon as humanly possible. Unfortunately, Round 2 seemed to be opening the same way as before, with the two of us starting a good distance apart. The viewers' reaction, though, was a little strange.
Uh... noona looked like it meant older sister. And at that, my body locked up hard as stone. I was a woman now, so noona—or unni—was the correct form of address, and yet my head refused to accept the fact. In the Heavenly Realm they had called me sojeo, a word that meant young lady, and that had been bearable enough. That one, at least, had a feeling to it. The same meaning can land utterly differently depending on the sound, and my pride as a man had managed to make peace with sojeo. In any case, a bomb inside my skull was a breath away from going off.
"P-please don't call me noona...! You can just use my nickname, can't you...!?"
I begged the viewers. If I didn't say it now, the title would set like concrete. Tie the knot properly from the start, and a future in which they used my nickname might still unfold. That was the judgment I made. Then I checked the chat, and the shock hit all over again.
I had lost my mind. Why had I walked into the trap with my own two feet? Just as the chat said, if I had simply played the game, they would have settled for the nickname well enough... People these days really did love to do the exact opposite of what you asked. Just as Hyeeun had told me, I was a person from another time, and I was only now catching on. In that case, the best move left was to stop reacting to chat at all and play in silence.
I had been turned on my head instead. No—more precisely, it might already have been over. Speak, and the fluster would only show more clearly. Stay silent, and the quiet itself was as good as answering yes...
Caught between advancing and retreating, I slapped both cheeks, hauled my wits back into place, and had no choice but to step onto the field. The instant I took that first step into the wasteland, a dull foomp rolled across the air. Not a grenade, at least. I looked up and found orange smoke blooming open against the sky.
"Uh... that's a signal flare, isn't it...?"
Why announce exactly where he was? Hiding and ambushing me, the way he had in Round 1, would clearly have been the better play. Even so, I broke into a run toward the spot where he had fired it. If someone throws a taunt, walking into it is only human nature—and for the sake of an overwhelming victory, I needed to put on a show of stepping into the trap of my own free will.
As I closed the distance, his shape appeared far ahead. But why wasn't he alone? A crowd of black silhouettes stood with him...
"This time I win. A rat-bastard like you needs to learn its place."
He was bellowing it through a loudspeaker. At the same moment the yellow dust thinned, and the silhouettes resolved: dozens of multiple-rocket launchers, each able to throw a volley of missiles, and howitzers with their barrels cocked high. That wasn't the end of it. Fixed guns, bolted hard into the ground, had been set in place as well. The only thing I could confirm was that no attack helicopters hung in the sky. Seize the air on top of all this and it would be pure overkill—maybe that was why fighter jets couldn't be made into a skill.
Either way, I was certain of one thing. Round 2 was going to be more fun than Round 1.
"Impressive. Only a very little bit, mind you. I'm glad there was some reward in waiting around on stream for you."
I said it in a voice that sounded almost rapt. In a way, this was for the best. If I had hunted him down the moment the match began, it would have ended on a flat note, and the viewers would have been left disappointed at never seeing a grand fight. One way or another, it seemed I was a Fighter down to the bone. Looking at that wall of firepower, I wasn't afraid in the slightest. My heart was pounding, and the smile came all on its own.
I was still in the middle of talking with the viewers when white smoke began to rise. Then, riding that pale smoke, five missiles came screaming in. So this wasn't the place for the finishing move. Better to treat them to a new skill, one I hadn't shown him yet—a feast for the eyes. The main course that bore the name of a killing art was better saved for after I had destroyed his entire formation, to crown the highlight. Thinking that, I began the preparatory motion of the skill.