Weapon Master (2)
After dispatching the twin warriors, we pressed onward until a bright light appeared at the far end of our vision.
The exit leading out of the ruins. The only players wandering the interior were the two of us and the two teams we'd just run into — which meant that if we wanted to properly stack up twenty kills, we had to head outside.
I gave Seo Ye-in, who was taking the lead, a word of caution.
"Be careful as we go out."
"Okay."
After all, the exit of a ruin was the perfect spot for enemies to dig in and lie in wait. And ominous premonitions always come true. The moment Seo Ye-in set foot beyond the exit—
Shweeeeak! A gray streak came tearing in, trailing a vicious whistle as it split the air.
Seo Ye-in snapped her arm up to block, but — thunk — the streak punched straight through her arm and buried itself in her chest.
Only then, seeing what had lodged there, did I recognize it: a bolt of solid steel. The attacker revealed himself a beat later, a massive crossbow in his hands.
"You're dead. Let's continue."
"Yeah..."
It being a survival free-for-all, even the melee characters weren't particularly durable. A reasonable suspicion crossed my mind: perhaps they'd been made that squishy on purpose — the more continues a player burned through, the more conveniently the points flowed in.
Seo Ye-in bought a token for 300 points and fed it into the cabinet.
The Barbarian reappeared inside the ruins, at the very first starting point. My position, meanwhile, was near the exit.
"Let's regroup first. I'll head your way."
"Got it."
The ruin's interior was a labyrinth of tangled corridors, but true to my veteran-gamer instincts, I had the entire route memorized. So I was retracing our steps when—
"They're still here."
I had walked straight into the knight-and-priest duo we'd toppled minutes ago. Badly beaten in that first encounter, they wavered, visibly torn over whether to fight again — until they caught on that I was alone, at which point they charged without a second's delay.
To them, I must have looked like a windfall. But contrary to their expectations, I was no ordinary windfall — I was one with a poisoned stinger attached.
Thwip! The instant the needle bit, the knight's movements slowed to a crawl, and in that window I slipped nimbly past him and out.
"Just passing through~"
Enraged, the pair came after me like they meant to kill. I ran, occasionally twisting around to plant a needle in one of them, then ran on — over and over.
The chase didn't last long. Seo Ye-in was already sprinting toward us from the opposite side.
"Axe!"
"Axe."
Whrrrrr! The hand axe went spinning furiously over my shoulder and slammed square into the priest's chest. Her accuracy was climbing with every throw.
The tide had turned: two-on-one had become one-on-two. But the knight seemed to decide it was do-or-die, standing his ground rather than fleeing.
Seo Ye-in tilted her body to slip past his diagonal slash, swung her sword in a counter that he knocked aside with his raised shield, then brought her off-hand axe crashing down as he wheeled his blade around to parry. Clang! Clang!
'They're getting the hang of it, slowly but surely.' Unlike that first fight, which had resembled a clumsy puppet show, the two melee characters' movements had grown far more refined. Everyone was inching closer to genuine Weapon Master play.
There was just one regrettable thing about it. 'This is a team game, you know.'
Whoosh! Struck by yet another needle, the knight tumbled into a status ailment once more — "…!" — and Seo Ye-in's longsword came plummeting down onto the crown of his head. Crack!
Having casually pocketed two kills, Seo Ye-in and I set off along the same path we'd taken before. Before long, the exit came into view.
"Right, let's head out. Mind the arrows."
"Okay."
Shweeeeak! Sure enough, an arrow came screaming in the instant she took a single step outside. But contrary to my expectation that she would dodge, Seo Ye-in stayed rooted to the spot, staring the arrow dead in its flight — and in the next heartbeat swung her sword head-on, splitting the incoming bolt clean in two. Zeeeooong—!
"No way!"
A cry of pure disbelief rang out — presumably the player piloting the crossbowman. But this was no time to stand around gawking. The shot had given away his position, and he sprang up from his hiding place and broke into a run.
Seo Ye-in ran him down at a terrifying pace and separated his upper half from his lower.
No assist registered that time. She'd done it all herself, so there was nothing to be done about it.
Weapon Master was, at its core, a two-players-per-team game, which meant the crossbowman's partner had to be lurking somewhere — either lying in ambush elsewhere, or waiting for us to pass on by. So even with the fight over, I didn't let my guard slip.
"By the way, how did you deflect that?"
Even from where I stood, the moment had been a shock. I fully acknowledged Seo Ye-in's genius, but the Barbarian was an unfamiliar class to her — she was only just beginning to find her feel for it, and splitting an incoming arrow dead-center was a difficulty spike well beyond that.
Seo Ye-in gazed at me blankly for a moment, then answered. "It got slow."
"Bullet Time?"
"...? Yeah."
Her reply came a beat late, apparently because she'd been checking a notification. In the instant the arrow came flying, she had cast Bullet Time without even realizing it — and only after the fight ended and she watched the cooldown ticking down did she grasp what she'd done.
'Absolutely genius.' She had fired off a skill she'd only just learned, instinctively, at the single best possible moment.
I mulled it over briefly, then made a proposal. "Then why not practice it a few more times while we're at it?"
"Okay."
As Seo Ye-in nodded slowly up and down, I cast Amplification.
Amplification
Bullet Time rank increased. (F → D)
Duration: 00:04:58
Cooldown: 00:29:58
Amplification had climbed to C-Rank: it raised the target's rank by two tiers for five minutes, with a thirty-minute reuse delay. And the stats of Bullet Time, boosted to D-Rank under its effect, were—
'Duration: 2 seconds. Cooldown: 3 minutes.'
With the cooldown shortened, she could cast it far more often — two or three more times before the match ran out, most likely.
Beyond the ruins, the terrain was a well-blended mix of rock fields and forest, dotted here and there with spots tailor-made for hiding. That was why the crossbowman had been so hard to spot.
"Let's take it slow. Something tells me those two are coming back."
"Coming back?"
"That's my read."
They'd each killed one of us, so the score between them was still unsettled. For the final round, wouldn't they pick the fight with their partner at their side, taking no chances?
Shweeeeak!
"Well, look at that. Here they come."
Seo Ye-in bounded sideways in a single leap and dodged the incoming arrow. She was about to chase down the crossbowman when a black shadow surged up from nearby and pounced — an assassin dressed head to toe in black, a jet-black dagger in hand to match his outfit. So he was the crossbowman's partner.
I let out a low murmur of admiration. "Wow, that one's got patience to spare."
He had sprung out from a spot we'd already passed, which meant he'd been lying in wait there this whole time. He must have missed his cue when the crossbowman got caught, and only now — with his partner having continued and returned here — did he finally show himself.
While Seo Ye-in reacted to the ambush, the crossbowman opened up the distance, reloaded, and fired. And as she dodged the arrow, the assassin fell back a step, then attacked again to buy his partner time. The crossbowman kept firing as he gave ground; the assassin struck and slipped away. The two of them took turns harassing her.
But I was quietly nursing an expectation. 'Time for her to show me, isn't it?' Bullet Time's cooldown should have just about run its course.
Shweeeak! In the instant the arrow flew in and the assassin's dagger thrust out, something in Seo Ye-in's eyes seemed to flash — and a heartbeat later, the Barbarian's body had wedged itself into the razor-thin gap between the two attacks.
The blows grazed past her with exquisite precision. Her counter followed, and the assassin's arm left his body.
"Ah... magnificent. Truly magnificent..."
I felt like rising to my feet for a standing ovation. But with the battle still raging, I fired a needle instead of clapping.
Thwip! The assassin, one arm short, scrambled to retreat — but with a slowing needle planted in the nape of his neck, all he managed was a sluggish stagger backward.
Seo Ye-in lopped off his head, then went straight after the crossbowman. I called out to her.
"Hold off on the kill this time. I need an assist."
"Okay."
An assist only counted if the enemy fell with my help, so I had to prick him with at least one needle. Seo Ye-in nodded, stuck to him like glue, and hammered her fist into his face without mercy.
It only looked tame because it was a minigame. In real life, that blow would have shattered every tooth in his mouth.
I fired a needle into the pinned crossbowman — thwip! — and Seo Ye-in finished off the man with the dart sticking out of his forehead. That's gotta feel pretty awful.
Once the contest had been decisively settled, the crossbowman-and-assassin duo stopped coming after us. I'm sure they would have loved to keep picking fights and pestering us from afar, but every time they got caught, another 300 points went up in smoke with each death. Besides, most participants had joined the minigame chasing the prizes — a rising death count was a guaranteed loss. So they wouldn't even come near us, while we pushed boldly through forest and rock field, felling enemies at a breakneck pace.
Then, mid-sweep, a lovely female mage poked her head out over the rocks.
"Oh, Lady Seo—"
It was Go Hyeon-woo's character — an ice mage. Perhaps finding it novel to bump into us in the middle of a survival game, he waved his staff in greeting.
"..."
Meanwhile, Seo Ye-in's empty hand was drifting slowly toward her hip. The next moment, her hand blurred — whrrrr—crack! — and the hand axe that went spinning furiously through the air split Go Hyeon-woo's skull wide open.
"Seo..."
Go Hyeon-woo's mouth hung slightly open. They knew each other, after all — he had never imagined she would open with a thrown hand axe, of all things. It was the gulf between playing for fun and playing for prizes.
Go Hyeon-woo moved to say something to Seo Ye-in, but apparently deciding my word would carry more weight, he turned his gaze on me instead. I could feel the wordless pressure: 'Brother Kim, have a word with her, won't you?'
But I had always been on Seo Ye-in's side. Adjusting my volume to the appropriate level, I barked in a low voice, "Soft fool. Such is the fate of those who enter battle burdened by petty sentiment."
"Ugh...!"
And so Go Hyeon-woo came to know the cold, unforgiving ways of the martial world.