The Parrying Horse Mask
Master of the parry — the Horse Mask.
Strange from the title on down, the hot clip refused to stay a moment's gossip. It tore outward until it swelled into something like a syndrome.
The Parry itself had been astonishing, of course. But just as much of the spell lay in the victim's reaction, the situation, the framing, the sheer staging of it — perfect enough to pass for a finished script. Small wonder, then, that the clip jumped the banks of Hanjud's stream, became a live coal across every community tied to Eternal Battle, and refused to cool.
I'll admit it. Parrying a rifle round — not even a pistol round — is hard for pros.
When the parry patch first dropped, former pro Logis said in an interview that the system wasn't made to be used.
And this person doesn't just luck into one. They stop seven?
Skill isn't even the point. Human reaction speed makes this flatly impossible.
It did not die as an argument inside a single post. The fight that cut deepest was why, of all things, only seven rounds out of eight had been parried. One camp swore it was a sophisticated hack designed to behave that way; the other swore a real mistake had fallen out of real skill. The two claims met head-on and neither gave an inch.
Had all eight been stopped, the whole thing could have been written off as hacks and forgotten cleanly. One single hit had left just enough room to object.
If the community ever grasped the actual truth — that the missed round was nothing but a dying computer choking on its own specs — how dumbfounded would they be? But that was only a supposition. The people who didn't know the truth simply kept their useless Keyboard War going.
Split it frame by frame and you can see the character hitch, just slightly, at the exact moment the one unparried round connects.
Meaning it's just an auto-parry hack, and halfway through they move unnaturally on purpose so they miss once.
For the record, I'm Solo Rank Diamond 2. Not taking rebuttals. Later.
And so a post that took a clip shorter than ten seconds, picked it to the bone, and analyzed it as precisely as anyone could climbed onto the hot board and raked in thousands of upvotes. Defenses of the Horse Mask, of course, were not hard to find either.
Look, I'll admit it too — same as the gallery, the odds are it's hacks.
But the people saying it's theoretically impossible even for human reaction speed? That's wrong.
Logis said it was realistically difficult. He also said parry could be used strategically.
On top of that, Hanjud and the Horse Mask weren't insanely close, and there was no wind, so there was almost nothing that could change the bullet speed.
Meaning if the Horse Mask is a parry-obsessed freak who practiced like a maniac, this was a situation where it was actually usable.
Also, they flipped the fire selector to full auto and just held the mouse down, so all eight bullets were the same speed. If you know the timing, one shot or eight isn't that big a problem. Yeah.
In the end, after several hours of ferocious debate, the mood tipped toward the verdict that it was hacks after all. The biggest reason was simple. Once the bait was out, pros and every kind of Eternal Battle streamer waded in, and with one voice they agreed this was as close to impossible as made no difference.
Either way, the incident hauled in enormous attention and even managed the feat of landing in an online piece on a channel that covered games for a living.
And the person who had set all of this on fire — what were they doing now?
Running deliveries, same as always, and working hard at it.
"A billiard hall."
The address led her not to a house but to a commercial building, and three floors up she found the Billiard Hall. Nothing strange about that. Plenty of people ordered somewhere other than home, and jajangmyeon at a billiard hall was famous enough to count as a stereotype.
The moment she pushed the door open, the first thing that hit her was the stink of cigarettes soaked into the walls. She clamped a hand over her nose and screwed her face up as far as it would go.
"Ugh…"
Did this place not even have a smoking room? There was a booth, technically, but it might as well have been furniture. People smoked in it while wandering in and out with the door hanging open, or simply never shut the door at all. If that was the plan, she could not begin to understand why they had installed the thing.
This was bad. It had been a long time since cigarette smoke had gotten into her head, and already she was swimming. She should have worn the helmet. Who knew the one she had set so neatly on Deoldeol's seat would feel this precious. It was getting harder to hold out.
Ah… I want a cigarette.
Yes. The reason she reacted so violently was not simple disgust. The smell was shaking a will she had built through grinding effort.
People might scoff that it was only a game, but a pro's life was never easy. Even now, remembering the stress of preparing for her debut made her shudder. Barely twenty, she had picked up smoking from her coach as if it were the natural next step. Then she was half-dragged into the game, and she quit while tumbling through battlefields — there had been no leisure, in that life, for little luxuries like cigarettes. Five years passed that way, and here she was.
A habit she had quit anyway. She had sworn, firmly, that she would not smoke again. And now, taking nicotine straight to the face for the first time in ages, that resolve was starting to wobble.
No. I can't. How hard had she worked to quit, only to fail this pathetically? Finish the delivery and run. And who had even ordered?
Everyone in the hall was glued to their game and would not so much as glance over. Left with no choice, she raised her voice.
"Whoever ordered the jajangmyeon!?"
"…What. A girl?"
"Holy shit. She's gorgeous."
A woman, appearing in a billiard hall that was a sausage fest among sausage fests — and an incredibly pretty one at that. Once the eyes locked on, they were never going to let it pass.
"Uh, we did order the jajangmyeon, but…"
A group of young men shooting pool in the corner lifted their hands and said it, awkward and hesitant. The moment she strode over with the delivery tin, they fell to furious whispering. Breathing through her mouth by force, she set the food down.
"Two savory jajangmyeon and one jjamppong. That's 17,000 won."
"Yes! …Wait, are you actually the delivery person?"
"Yes."
What, a fake one? Did I steal some real courier's tin and haul this here by hand? And what exactly do I get out of that?
Enough. No weird thoughts. Just get out.
She rushed through the payment and moved to leave.
"When you're done, please leave the bowls out front."
She had turned to go when he snatched her wrist and held on.
"Hold on a second."
"…Would you let go of this? Sir?"
"You're just so pretty. Could I maybe get your number?"
At the confident request, the friends behind him chimed in.
"Ooh. Smooth!"
"Give it to him! Give it to him!"
For a second her reason nearly snapped. She held it, barely, and kept the smile in place.
"I'm sorry. I'm in the middle of work, and I really have to go. Sir."
"I'm not your customer right now. I'm asking you, man to woman."
That baseless little line was the end of the patience she had been clenching down.
"Then, man to woman — you're not my type, so maybe stop clinging."
"…What? Clinging? That's a little hurtful, saying it like that."
"Ha. And there he goes, sliding into casual. This bastard."