The Stolen Lover
The defining trait of the Red Wilderness is how wide open it is. Cover is almost nonexistent, the terrain rolls gently, and the sightlines have no choice but to run clear to the horizon. For that reason it is, of course, rated as a map where ranged weapons hold the advantage. Sandstorms do blow in as events and screen off the view for a while, but there is no helping the fact that the place is barren ground for melee. Thanks to that, almost no one brings a close-range weapon into the Red Wilderness.
But what if the match runs deep into its later stages?
The fog shrinks the safe zone as time passes, which means the benefit of range disappears. The player count thins on its own, and little by little melee's strengths start to breathe again. Even so, people still shy away from it, because lasting all the way to the late game is brutally hard. Call it a pure hold-out strategy if you like — you still have to move if you want even the bare minimum of growth.
Push through those trials and simply endure, though, and melee takes a decisive edge. Ah. That is, of course, only true of the great majority of melee weapons that have at least some answer to ranged fire. Trash melee with no resistance to range whatsoever is the exception. A trident, say. Or a fork. Or the symbol of Poseidon.
The trident being garbage is a fact. Even so, the look of the thing and its attack animations are flashy for no good reason at all. In a word, it was fun to watch. Utterly useless to me, but still. For someone who always puts victory first, the only thing that matters in a weapon is performance. Right now, though, the situation was a little special. I needed more than a simple win. I needed to pull a crowd. Which is why I was out here stabbing people with this trident.
"Get—get away!"
A panicked voice came from the other side. Fair enough. Run into someone charging you like an idiot with a trident, and panic is the only reasonable response. They immediately started dumping rounds. I didn't even bother answering. I just ate the shots and kept charging like a moron.
In Eternal Battle, the later a match goes, the more growth outweighs raw mechanics. How hard you farmed. How high you pushed your level. How many set bonuses you completed. Victory is decided by things like that. By that measure, the win was already as good as mine. I had personally dropped more than ten people and grown like a maniac, and three set bonuses were already online. A handful of bullets didn't even register.
Faced with something that shouldn't have been possible, my opponent froze in fear. Unfortunate for them. I had not the slightest intention of going easy. I closed in at once and drove the spear straight into their chest. Their health vanished in a single hit, and they dropped into a downed state. One more deep stab, and they were dead.
I offered the corpse on the ground a brief moment of silence, pulled the trident free, watched the water drink itself up into the weapon, gave the body a quick search, and moved on. Repeat that exact process twice, and the win was in my hands.
It had gone so smoothly that I felt a little dazed. Amateurs or not, I had expected at least a few people who could actually play. At this rate, taking first today wouldn't be hard. Not that carelessness was allowed.
When the match ended and I pulled off the headset, the casters were loud enough to sting.
"Ugh."
Are they seriously that worked up? It was almost impressive I hadn't heard them, loud as they were. The problem was how much of that racket was probably about me. Not empty confidence — a perfectly reasonable guess. I had gone into this with my eyes open, but the blowback waiting afterward still made me a little uneasy. Maybe changing my name the week after the tournament would be the smart move.
Once the first match ended, we were given about five minutes of rest. After that, the second would begin. Obvious as it sounds, the thing doesn't end after a single game. Tournament matches run faster than ordinary Solo Rank and wrap up in around thirty minutes, and an event of this size could hardly be over in half an hour. So they play three matches in all and combine the placements from each into a final ranking. Even that is on the light side. From what I had looked up, amateur tournaments usually run five matches as a baseline, and some of them spill past a single day into several.
I didn't leave my seat. I didn't want the attention, which was also why I had deliberately taken the farthest corner. Fans who had already peeked over my shoulder might have realized I was Jjamppong Aficionado. So no showing off. Sit quietly. Even bored, there was nothing to do. Under the tournament rules every phone had been turned in, and if you were caught doing anything on the computer besides Eternal Battle, it was treated as cheating on the spot. Strict, sure — but better than sloppy.
"We'll begin match two."
At the referee's words, I pulled my focus back in.
The round that followed began, of course, on an entirely new map under entirely new conditions. Memory, though, does not vanish with it. The other entrants would already be watching me, winner of the first match. The earlier someone had been eliminated, the more of my play they would have seen. I, on the other hand, had lasted the longest, and so I hadn't seen a single other screen. Split hairs about it, and I was starting at something of a disadvantage.
Fine. That much wouldn't move the bigger picture. The gap was too wide. Not one of the people I had eliminated with my own hands was worth being wary of, and dying without ever running into me only meant they needed even less caution than that. Of course, there was always the chance someone had been screwed over by a disaster-level streak of bad luck and knocked out unfairly. Thin, but not zero. So long as I didn't get careless, first place across all three matches shouldn't be difficult.
All right, then. Time for another chicken dinner?
"Hm."
I stepped into the waiting room with a bright smile, because the view I welcome most was right in front of me.
The Ruined City.
As I have said before, it is my favorite map. It means nothing now, but back when I was surviving inside Eternal Battle, it was the only battlefield where I could taste modern civilization — even if that taste was nothing but ruins. The situation here was better than it had been in the Red Wilderness. There is plenty of cover, and a great deal of the fighting happens in tight spaces, the insides of buildings and the like. In other words, a far kinder stage for a melee weapon. God, the midgame of the last match had been miserable. When I had barely managed to take a sniper down by leaning on the sandstorm to block their sight, the curses had nearly come out on their own.
Right. I was picking melee again this time. Not merely melee — even if I hate it, one more time. I meant to stamp first place with the trident. People lose their minds for an extreme gimmick player like this.
I locked in a spawn, closed my eyes, and opened them. The instant I came into the world I lit up and went hunting for a trident.
"...Ngh."
A groan slipped out before I could stop it. Unlike last time, the trident refused to show its face. In its place came guns of every kind, even bows — ranged weapons, heaped up to my heart's content. It was about time I picked something up. Run into an enemy like this, and it could get genuinely dangerous.
Use another weapon for a little while, and swap the moment I found it? That would collapse the trident-only bit. It was why I had squeezed my eyes shut last match and walked right past the Kar98k. No helping it. In a pinch, I would tough it out with a sidearm, and play as carefully as I could in the direction of not meeting anyone.
"Huh?"
"...Ah."
And so, the very instant that thought formed, contact was made.
Our eyes met. A brief silence. I was on the verge of bolting when my gaze locked onto the weapon in his hand.
Why do you have that...?
I stared, hollow, at the trident in his grip. It looked like a cheating girlfriend curled up in some other man's arms. Wait — I'm a woman now, so should that be a boyfriend? Either way, I was feeling the NTR in real time, shaking with the betrayal of it. And that feeling spiraled, in the end, into an extreme course of action.
I'm taking that.
No. Not taking it. Only taking it back.
I fixed him with a look full of killing intent. He flinched under it. The face was familiar — by the look of things, he had died to me last match as well. Perfect.
"Hand it over. Right now!"
There was no hesitation. I clenched my bare fists and charged. He swung the spear at once, trying to answer. I rolled calmly to the side, slipped it, and drove in with a body tackle. The trident's greatest strength is its superior reach, which meant I had to deny him that and force the fight into a brawl at point-blank range. Once I confirmed his stance had broken, I immediately hooked his leg and tried to take him down. Get it to the ground, and I win without question. With no difference in our stats, though, a sequence like that doesn't come easily. Doesn't matter. If he doesn't go down the first time, I just keep trying until he does.
"W-wait! Time! Just a second!"
"Shut up! You dare steal my trident! I will not forgive you!"
"I'll give it to you! I'll give it, just let me live!"
"I don't need it!!"
I seized his collar, yanked him toward me, and hauled him up. Holding my footing, I turned through the motion and threw him face-first. A clean movement. Perfect technique. I mounted him where he lay prone on the ground and started pounding him with my fists. Under that one-sided beating, he was, quite literally, beaten to death.
I was so worked up that I forgot even the moment of silence. I lifted the trident and drank in a winner's joy. I also forgot that the whole thing was being broadcast to the tournament.