The World's Finest Means of Conversation (5)
The moment I stepped in, he started backing away—one step, then another.
And as if that weren't enough, the fact that I'd caught the bullet had him wearing the most spectacular look of panic. Well. Ten years scraping by in the Heavenly Realm ought to leave you with at least that much as a basic skill. Bullets were one thing; even if an arrow came screaming in at the speed of sound, I was confident I could snatch every last one out of the air.
Anyway, in the middle of all that, I checked his nickname. It read RealGodGunslinger.
Ah. Then this was how we'd do it.
"Mr. Gunslinger, why are you suddenly backing off? Weren't you going to torture me for five hundred seconds? Hmm?"
I smiled, bright as anything, and in the same breath spoke in a voice so gentle that even the Buddha—famous for his compassion—would have sighed in admiration the moment he heard it.
Only then did he seem to come back to himself. He stopped his retreat and cleared his throat.
"Y-you—what the hell are you? Back in Central Plaza you were definitely...!"
So he'd seen me looking around Central Plaza. One glance, and he'd decided I was a newbie and tried to seal-club me.
The moment I heard it, my heart started pounding. By Heavenly Realm standards, I ranked among the very best, which meant almost no one with any real skill picked a fight with me or issued a challenge. And now some snot-nosed brat was looking me over and licking his chops? A fresh experience, after all this time—how could I not be thrilled?
Heart racing, I played along.
"Of course this isn't an alt. Today's my first time playing a game called Battle Mania. Maybe you're just not that good?"
I said it plainly. Maybe you're simply worse than I am.
At that, every trace of his earlier panic vanished, and the air changed in an instant.
"You little piece of shit, where do you get off?! You blocked it on pure luck!!"
People these days sure were angry. I'd only kindly pointed out a fact, and he was talking like he'd swallowed a locomotive's firebox whole. No—if we were being honest, the one who ought to be angry was me. The nerve of a man who'd tried to stomp a helpless newbie, turning around and playing the victim.
Right after that shout, RealGodGunslinger leveled the revolvers in both hands at me. Two rounds burst from the muzzles, wreathed in tremendous flame, and came screaming in.
"You think just widening your attack range is going to work? You should have split your fire."
Saying so, I jumped, slipped the bullets, and took stock. Hmm. Red-faced and raging—he still thought he could win. To correct that foolish notion, I hit the ground and shot toward him like an arrow.
"Get ready to look like a beehive!"
Poor thing. Even inside his effective range, there was no world in which those bullets were going to hit me.
This time the gunshots were loud enough to take an ear off. In a landscape where lead poured like rain, I meant to dodge with the smallest possible movement. The round coming for my right cheek, I slipped by turning my head a fraction; the one aimed at my shoulder, I let slide past with a twist of my torso. Five seconds of that, and I was right under his nose.
"Don't tell me it's already over? Hurry up and start round two."
From point-blank range I threw a flurry and gave his whole body a thorough massage, then finished by sending a fist into his face. With a solid thwack he went flying backward, and the miserable scrape of him skidding across the ground that followed was pathetic beyond words.
This was exactly the treatment he deserved. As a Fighter who pursued fairness, I could never let an injustice like his slide. I'll say it again: how does a person exist who can proudly declare he'll seal-club a newbie who can barely walk—someone who doesn't know a thing? Even in the Heavenly Realm, no one bullies the powerless.
Anyway, the man my fist had launched was staggering back to his feet.
"Do you even know who I am, pulling this!?"
What was he trying to say all of a sudden? And why was he showing off the earring in his left ear? Hmm. A quick look told me it was shaped like a black pawn from chess. Don't tell me that was RealGodGunslinger's hidden trump card.
"This is proof that I belong to Chess—Battle Mania's massive seal-clubbing guild!"
Wow. Would you look at that. I'd tensed, even a little, thinking it was some secret weapon, and now I was embarrassed for myself.
Put simply, the situation was this: in some Lineage-type game, he was saying his blood pledge ranked in the top three, so the big brothers wouldn't sit still if you messed with him. And the guild name was Chess? A pack of seal-clubbing trash throwing themselves a festival. With that, his status dropped from ordinary garbage to a bug on the roadside.
Any decent person would polish their own strength instead of acting that ugly. Feeling a flicker of pity for the spectacle, I decided to offer him one last option.
"And what exactly am I supposed to do with that? You're not worth fighting anymore. Do exactly as I say, and I'll end this gently."
"......"
"Apologize—sincerely—for looking down on the Fighter class. You've felt it yourself now, haven't you?"
I was being very generous. Apologize for insulting the Fighter class, and I'd finish him with as little pain as possible. Honestly, part of me wanted to slap him until he dropped to his knees and begged me to stop. But why would I torment someone weaker than me? Any martial artist with a normal sense of things would think the same.
In the middle of that, he started trembling all over, then spat out a pitiful voice.
"Quit running your mouth with that garbage class!!"
Impressive. They say if you can't accept reality, denial comes first. Seeing him speak with his grip white-knuckled around the revolver, he'd clearly lost it a little. In a situation like this, was I supposed to be grateful he wasn't screaming hacks? In most PVP games, the moment someone meets an overwhelming skill gap, they insist it has to be cheats—the so-called hack-parrots.
"Still, think it over one more time. The gap is this obvious. Keep going and you're the only one who gets hurt. Wouldn't it be better to build your skill and challenge me next time?"
One full plate of unsolicited advice, straight from the heart. I hoped it might bring him back to his senses, even a little.
That hope went unfulfilled. He dropped back into a fighting stance, and at the same time his figure began to fade with the wind—along with a brown tumbleweed, the kind you see in every Western.
All right. No more advice with words. I'd give him a proper lesson with my fists instead.
In a place where only the indifferent sound of the wind remained, I focused as hard as I could. Even as I concentrated, I caught that the flow of air behind me was wrong. I spun at once and saw a bullet coming for me, so I put on the same little circus act again and pinched it between thumb and forefinger.
I'd thought it was a skill that only hid his appearance. I hadn't expected it to swallow the sound of the gunshot, too.
Then I took off in the direction the bullet had come from.
"You think you've concealed yourself perfectly, don't you? But the grass where you're running is still getting trampled. I can see it."
He could fool sight and hearing. He couldn't fool the terrain around him—I could see the weeds flattened along the path he'd taken. I never thought a virtual reality game could reproduce reality at this level.
Anyway, once I'd predicted his route, I shot out my right arm and caught him by the collar. In that instant, his invisibility broke.
"Let go of me! I'm Chess Guild!"
"......"
"And you, with some Fighter class—!"
"Ha... you really are hopeless."
No saving him. Still clinging to his guild's backing, and still looking down on the Fighter class on top of it. Not a shred of pity left. I'd have to finish him properly.
Resolved, I hurled the man I had by the collar high into the air. With a rush of wind he rose, then began to fall back toward the ground, and his expression in that moment was a sight to behold. He looked like he'd seen a monster—pure terror.
I drove a fist into his abdomen. The hit folded him at the waist like a shrimp. Time to finish off what little HP he had left. I changed the angle of my fist and slammed RealGodGunslinger straight into the ground.
The words left me low. At the same time, the impact of driving him into the floor blew an enormous crater into the ground, and with a final thunderous boom I confirmed that the last of his HP was gone.
Hoo. To think my very first match in a virtual reality game would be against a seal-clubber.
With everything finished, I was rolling my neck out as a cooldown when a mechanical chime rang—ding. Trying to figure out why, I poked at this and that, found myself in a state that could only be called pure shock, and spoke.