A New Battlefield (4)

Hoo. That one was pretty brutal too.

I let out a long breath as I watched my opponent break apart and drift away as ash.

I had spent years moving from one battlefield to the next, carrying out every kind of contract there was—assassinations of key figures, infiltration and sabotage, hostage rescue, escort and close protection, intelligence gathering, reconnaissance, even supply raids. The jobs never matched in type, method, or difficulty. Survival had forced a wide education on me: dagger work, urban combat, countersniping from high ground, close-quarters fighting, psychology, and more besides. If I wanted to stay alive, I had to be able to answer any variable, so I learned whatever came to hand and studied like my life depended on it. Because it did.

And yet...

It still wasn't easy.

Even I was starting to feel the fatigue of the opponents matchmaking had been throwing at me. The ordinary civilians of those first few days were long gone. Now every fighter I met had at least a thousand matches behind them. The level of the people I was paired with had leapt, and lately the trend had only gotten worse. The moment I climbed out of the capsule, I went to my senior.

"Didn't you say the Amateur League is supposed to be random matchmaking? The guys I've been running into lately are no joke."

Instead of answering, he held out his hand.

"What's with the hand?"

"What do you think? You want information from a broker, you pay for it."

He said it with a slick, oily grin. I looked down at that hand with eyes gone flat and cold.

"How much."

"Hmm, let's see. Esteemed customer, I'm afraid I'll be needing about a hundred million won."

"What? A hundred million?"

The absurdity punched a hollow laugh out of me. My hand went to the scabbard at my hip.

Shrring—

The blade slid free with a cold, thin sound. My senior flung ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠both arms up and stumbled back on reflex.

"Hey—hey! This is a crime! Criminal Act Article 284, special intimidation! Article 350, attempted extortion! Article 324, coercion! You qualify for every single one!"

"So your life's only worth a hundred million, hyung. I'm actually getting a little hurt over here."

"You punk. You trying to rot on prison rations for the rest of your life?"

"The law sits far away, and a fist sits right here. If you don't open your mouth before I count to three, I really will put a hole in you."

I took one step forward. He squeezed his eyes shut.

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you, all right?!"

He muttered and grumbled for a while. Then, at last, he loosened up and spilled the premium intel.

The conditions for a Pro License were straightforward: a record of at least a hundred matches, and a win rate over seventy percent. Because of that, other Amateur Leagues occasionally produced something called an Undefeated Promotion—exactly what it sounded like. A fighter who claimed a Pro License across those hundred matches without a single loss.

"Pull off a promotion undefeated, and the offers for high-numbering matches start coming in the moment you enter the Pro League."

"High numbering? And what's that supposed to be?"

At my question he clicked his tongue.

"The Pro League isn't somewhere you can swing a blade whenever you feel like it. It opens once a week, and the matches in a day are fixed at ten. So even inside those ten, there are tiers."

"Ah. They're arranged in order of how well the card draws, then."

He nodded, then went on, ticking the points off on his fingers.

"Matches one through five are low numbering. Six through eight are High Numbering. Nine is the Co-Main Event, and the long-awaited ten is the Main Event. Four stages, like that."

"Ooh."

"From the Co-Main Event up, the warriors who fight are called Contenders. Put up a good record there and you earn the right to a World League promotion match. Starting to see why an Undefeated Promotion matters?"

If you took your Pro License undefeated, you didn't have to grind through matches one through five—the low card—at all. The moment I heard it, the corner of my mouth twitched before I could stop it.

"And the money's that much better too, right?"

"Do I even need to say it? The higher the number on the card, the more zeroes hit your account."

He drew a circle in the air with his finger, right in front of my face. When I came back to myself, I was grinning like an idiot.

He spoke again.

"Thing is, the Japan Amateur League has never once had an Undefeated Promotion. That's why your matchups look the way they do. Everyone's out for blood, desperate to smash that precious record of yours. A kind of record hunt."

"Hmm. So what you're saying is, I've become a golden goblin."

Now that I knew the story behind it, I sank deep into the sofa. At last the shape of things came into rough focus. The matchmaking really was random—except the strong ones had piled into the hours when ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I logged on. According to my senior, the named participants were deliberately hitting the match button in time with my connection window. Regulars who were touchy about protecting their win rate, on the other hand, were dodging me outright by shifting the hours they played.

No wonder the difficulty jumped like that.

I'd been a little spooked, wondering if the wall to the pros was really this high. Learning it had been engineered—unfavorable matchups, on purpose—actually set my mind at ease. I wasn't short on skill. I was getting jumped.

That aside.

An Undefeated Promotion...

My record stood at ninety-one matches. Nine more wins, and the Pro License was mine.

Hunters, huh? Well. We'll find out soon enough who's hunting whom.

I was going to have to harden my resolve.

Ichigaya, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo. Seventh floor of the Palaceside Building.

Kajiwara Yusuke, director of the International e-Contents Department at Mainichi Shimbun, summoned the editors on the desk and his reporters the moment he arrived at work. There was only one reason. The Japan Amateur League's first Undefeated Promotion was drawing close.

"So it's come this far."

"Who on earth is he? We've dug through everything, and there's nothing."

The day before, the live audience for Participant No. 2,749's match had finally broken ten thousand. It wasn't only the people who already watched the Amateur League. Ordinary viewers had come running, and so had users from social media and overseas communities. Kajiwara Yusuke smiled with quiet satisfaction and tapped a photograph of Akki in mid-swing.

"We can peel his identity back slowly. What matters is that the entire country has its eyes locked on a single phrase right now—Undefeated Promotion. This is the scoop of a lifetime."

An Undefeated Promotion meant more than simply taking a Pro License without a loss. In the entire history of Nova Arena, only about fifty warriors had ever achieved the record. Without exception, they had climbed through the World League and into the Master League, and among them were warriors who had reached even the Super League. Against that backdrop, Japan—never rich in high-tier warriors—could hardly help a quiet, private hope.

Director Kajiwara turned to the younger reporters.

"Well? Think Akki can actually promote undefeated?"

"Mm... Honestly, I'm skeptical. Every community is in an uproar, and all kinds of named fighters have started sniping him. Even the famous Ninja is running Snipe Matching in the same time window, swearing he'll be the one to break Akki's streak."

"Oh? Is that so?"

Ninja. Participant 3, and a veteran among veterans, active in the Amateur League since the earliest days of Nova Arena. A win rate of 69 percent. A record that had ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠blown past ten thousand matches. In the Japan Amateur League as it stood, he was judged to have no equal.

Director Kajiwara gave a satisfied nod.

"Akki and Ninja... Now that's an interesting matchup."

Twenty years of a reporter's instinct told him so. The public would eat this up. Hard. And from where he sat, it didn't matter which of them won. If Akki won, they would hammer the title of the Japan Amateur League's first undefeated promotee. If Ninja won, they would build the story of the strongest man in the league—the one who felled a named star called Akki and rose into the Pro League.

Director Kajiwara tapped the table with his index finger—tok, tok—and jerked his chin.

"Put a spotlight on this. A series is fine, if we need one."

"Understood."

With that, the meeting ended. The reporters gathered their notebooks and spilled out of the room in a rush, and Kajiwara, left alone, quietly savored the smell of a scoop he hadn't tasted in a long time. The mood wasn't confined to Mainichi Shimbun. It was already spreading fast through the other major papers and the broadcast stations.

The front pages of Japan's major dailies were plastered with a single name: Akki. Newsrooms swapped headlines in real time and waged a war for clicks, and from before dawn the traffic curves on the online portals shot straight up. The shock reached the Japan Amateur League at once. From 2 p.m. onward, the number of matches plunged. The league's named participants, meanwhile, began to hunt that very window.

In the middle of that warped current, every one of Akki's matches turned into a bloodbath that kept palms slick with sweat, and those desperate, brilliant contests were more than enough to whip the viewers into a frenzy. One by one, Akki cut down the opponents who stood in his way and climbed toward the legendary height of an Undefeated Promotion.

And then—

In Go Tae-min's final match before his promotion to the Pro League—

The two of them were set to meet.

An ancient ruin under fallen dark. Collapsed stone walls stood everywhere, telling anyone who looked that this place had been a ruin for a very long time.

I didn't say a word.

Far off, inside a white portal, a participant was staring at me. Black cloth wrapped him from head to toe. His face was hidden completely behind a mask, and the scimitar barely showing at his waist caught the moonlight and gleamed, cold. Participant No. 3. Ninja. The man they called the strongest in the Amateur League was looking straight at me.

Drop that one man, and I would finally tear off the amateur label I was sick to death of. Not by crawling up from the dirt, either. The moment I debuted, I would be holding a VIP ticket straight into the high-numbering matches, where the bundles of cash came pouring down. And honestly, I was looking at this situation in a very positive light. The heavier the name Ninja carried, the higher my own price would spike for stepping on it.

Shrring—

I drew my sword, slow. A custom-forged blade, blackened from the grip all the way to the tip. In the dark, even its outline went faint. From a distance, it would look like nothing but a white demonic mask—the Akki—floating in empty air.

Strongest in the Amateur League, huh.

Beneath the mask, I lifted the corner of my mouth.

Let's see what you've got.

Pat-pat-pat!

The white veil of light that had caged us peeled away, and we kicked off the ground in the same instant. The distance vanished. We swung with the full intent of ending each other in a single stroke.

Kraaang!

A metallic shriek tore at my eardrums, and sparks burst between the blades.

Neither of us spoke.

My ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠grip buzzed, numb to the bone. Shoved back three steps, maybe four, I narrowed my eyes. In the dark, Ninja's gaze was cold as a machine, and it didn't so much as flicker.

So the record wasn't just for show.

He was a monster of a different tier from every participant I had met before.