Replay Analysis (2)
Normally the tiger Beomi was reduced to palm-sized by a shrink spell, but in his true form he was larger than a grown man.
No phrase fit him better than "the size of a house."
When Park Nari gently stroked his back once, Beomi rumbled low in his chest and padded forward to take his position.
[3]
[2]
[1]
[Start!]
Beomi crouched low, gathering his whole body like a coiled spring, then launched himself forward.
In the blink of an eye he was upon Go Hyeon-woo, front paw swinging.
A speed of agility utterly unbecoming of his bulk.
And that was not all — the full weight of his body rode on every blow, making each strike bone-crushingly heavy, and mana even glistened along his claws.
A spirit beast really is a spirit beast.
That tiger alone looked capable of shredding just about anyone in the 600-point tier to pieces.
One hit from that paw, and I wouldn't be surprised if his jaw ended up rotated around to the back of his neck.
When Go Hyeon-woo blocked that absurdly powerful forepaw,
— Crack.
His E-rank [Leopard's End Longsword] perished after a single exchange.
Honestly, it had been hanging on by a thread even without Beomi's attack. It had taken heavy damage in the previous match, so there was nothing to be done about it.
Go Hyeon-woo immediately drew his D-rank [Leopard's Head Longsword].
— Crack-crack-crack!
The brief opening was covered by his partner, Bukgung Han-seol.
The moment she unleashed her force palm, the tiger Beomi faltered for an instant.
"At least this one's sane."
"A girl who meshes rather well, indeed."
Unlike the mage from the previous match, she at least had a minimal grasp of the concept of teamwork.
Just as I'd suspected, Bukgung Han-seol was a master of palm arts. A cold energy like frost shimmered over both her hands — proof that she had trained in cold-ice martial arts.
Go Hyeon-woo and Bukgung Han-seol threw themselves into a proper combined assault.
Sword aura and force palms rained down on Beomi in torrents, yet—
[Park Nari — 94%]
[Park Nari — 95%]
[Park Nari — 97%]
They couldn't deal all that much damage.
He deflected the sword aura as if wearing armor of thick hide, and even the wounds they did inflict healed at a staggering pace.
Turning my gaze toward the home base where Park Nari and Jeong Su-ji had taken position in search of the cause, I found it immediately.
A fresh, verdant green aura was billowing out of Park Nari.
A supporter type, huh.
Protection, healing, buffs — a support-oriented druid who dabbled in a wide variety of auxiliary skills.
At low skill levels, that made you a half-baked jack of no trades, but at high levels you became practically omnipotent.
And Park Nari was a top prospect of one of the Four Major Factions.
Jeong Su-ji, for her part, had little presence compared to the other three, but from time to time she hurled mud pellets or tangled feet in tree vines, keeping both martial artists in check.
When Gwak Ji-cheol had charged in alongside her, that sly little interference of hers had been surprisingly annoying.
In other words: she's good at disruption. That's a compliment.
Park Nari's strategy, summarized in a single line, was to keep Beomi on the front line and support him to the hilt.
In a war of attrition, the side with better sustain — Park Nari's — would inevitably win, so Go Hyeon-woo had to break that formation by any means necessary.
I nudged Seo Ye-in, who had been watching the replay in silence.
"This is where it gets important. Watch closely."
"Okay."
How they navigated this obstacle would show exactly what kind of judgment Go Hyeon-woo and Bukgung Han-seol possessed.
The two of them seemed to want to try the most simple-minded method first: an all-out frontal clash.
Inflict damage exceeding Park Nari's protection magic and healing output, and settle it in one stroke.
They stoked their momentum, unleashed their respective finishing techniques, and poured everything out in an instant.
[Clear Stream]
[Ice Extreme Snow Soul Palm]
The blades of wind and a bitter cold front came crashing down.
— KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA—!
And yet…
[Park Nari — 79%]
Even that, the tiger Beomi endured.
His health had dropped considerably, but he hadn't taken any critical damage, and just like before, it was rapidly refilling.
[Park Nari — 79%]
[Park Nari — 80%]
[Park Nari — 82%]
— Grrrr.
Cunning as ever, Beomi did nothing but hold out, playing defensively while he healed.
"A frontal clash is actually the hardest approach, you know."
"True words indeed."
At my remark, Go Hyeon-woo nodded in agreement.
The frontal clash is simple in concept but demands an enormous gap in skill.
You'd need to be a tier or two above your opponent to easily overwhelm Beomi, but the two of them weren't meaningfully stronger than Park Nari.
Frankly speaking, they were slightly weaker.
[Park Nari — 100%]
All that hard pounding, and before long the tiger's health was back to square one.
If even the people watching the replay felt their strength drain away, imagine how the combatants felt.
Yet the fighting spirit still blazed in Go Hyeon-woo's and Bukgung Han-seol's eyes.
After what looked like a few seconds of huddled strategy, they split to either side and unleashed the same finishing technique.
This time not at Beomi — but at the home base where Park Nari and Jeong Su-ji stood.
— KWA-KWA-KWA-KWA—!
I nodded slowly.
"That one was good."
It resembled the tactic Go Hyeon-woo had used in the first match: strike the relatively fragile back line with ranged attacks first.
One shortcoming, though.
When I glanced over as if to ask for the answer, Seo Ye-in met my eyes for a second, then pulled her mouth off her straw.
"…Gave them way too much time."
"Exactly."
By the time the ranged attacks reached the enemy base, the defenses were already stacked layer upon layer — earthen walls, tree vines, and beyond.
— Kyeh-heng!
Taking advantage of the chaos, Beomi lunged in and broke the flow entirely.
He slammed a body check into Bukgung Han-seol, and her slight frame went rocketing away as if she'd been struck by a truck.
Go Hyeon-woo had no choice but to chase after the tiger.
"It all went sideways from there, didn't it."
"It did. A shame, that."
Park Nari and Jeong Su-ji's side couldn't just stand by while the opponents tried one method after another, so they kept shaking things up and throwing them into confusion.
From then on, the pattern simply repeated — variations of the previous two strategies, each one blocked in turn by the impregnable fortress of their defenses.
— Crack.
By around the fourth consecutive use of [Clear Stream], the D-rank [Leopard's Head Longsword], too, reached the end of its durability.
Go Hyeon-woo fought gamely on, breaking a few more iron swords in the process, but he never managed to reverse the tilting match.
[Time Remaining 0:00]
[Go Hyeon-woo & Bukgung Han-seol — LOSE]
vs
[Jeong Su-ji & Park Nari — WIN]
The verdict: a decision loss after burning through the full ten-minute time limit.
"We showed you a match unworthy of you two."
"No, against prospects like that, you fought well."
They were still opponents Go Hyeon-woo couldn't quite bring down.
He'd lost a fight that deserved to be lost, so he didn't seem particularly discouraged.
Go Hyeon-woo tossed a question my way.
"What would you have done in our place, Brother Kim?"
Seo Ye-in, too, stared at me as if curious.
I looked at the people frozen inside the replay crystal and answered.
"In a situation like that, I'd have divided the roles."
"Role division, you say…"
One person pins down the tiger Beomi while the other strikes the home base.
Ideally, Bukgung Han-seol — who could control space with her ice palm — would take the former, and Go Hyeon-woo, with his comparatively higher destructive power, the latter.
The path burrowing into enemy territory wouldn't exactly be smooth either, but if it worked, cutting through two casters' defenses in close combat was far easier.
Go Hyeon-woo closed his eyes briefly, picturing my strategy in his head.
"There's clearly potential in that. Why did it never occur to us?"
"Can't blame you — circumstances were what they were."
Beomi had been pouncing this way and that, no doubt scrambling their heads, and the pressure of the ten-minute timer ticking down second by second would have cramped their thinking too.
Keeping fresh strategies coming while also coordinating with a teammate in the middle of all that is an extremely difficult thing to do.
"Just do better next time. That much should be enough for the report. Anything else you want to ask?"
"…"
Perhaps his curiosity had been sufficiently satisfied, because Go Hyeon-woo didn't open his mouth again.
I glanced at Seo Ye-in; she shook her head side to side just the same.
Both of them had quick minds, so they'd probably gotten the gist by now.
"Now let's talk about the parts that can't go in the report. Honestly, even if you'd used the method I just described, the outcome wouldn't have changed much."
"Why so?"
"The gap in specs was just too big. The gear especially."
If they wrote "we lost because of a spec gap with the opponent" in the report, Lee Sudok might smack the back of their heads.
So they'd left it out — but the spec gap was still an undeniable reality.
Park Nari was a prospect backed by the full support of the Guild Coalition and the Nature Club.
The range of skills and traits she'd learned was extremely wide, her own fundamentals were nothing to sneeze at, and she'd papered herself head to toe in every kind of item imaginable.
Including the [Life Cube] she'd recently traded with me.
Go Hyeon-woo, by contrast, had precisely one sword to his name.
And that one was a far cry from a famous blade, doing well just to avoid shattering.
Go Hyeon-woo chewed over my words for a moment, then let out a heavy sigh.
"…Then losing was only natural. Her skill was not beneath my own, and her preparation was thorough to boot… I must reflect on this."
"You don't need to match Park Nari's specs. That's impossible to begin with — her club is practically dumping its entire household finances on one person. But if you carry even a few key countermeasures, fighting people like her gets a whole lot easier."
"Such things exist?"
Go Hyeon-woo's expression turned keenly interested.
Seo Ye-in, apparently thinking she too might someday face a Park Nari-type opponent, quietly focused on my words.
I looked slowly back and forth between the two of them, then spoke.
"Cursed swords."
To be precise: swapping in cursed blades imbued with effects like a "healing reduction" curse.
For instance, if you raked an opponent with the [Starving Sawblade Sword], the sword would absorb their healing for a set period of time.
Anyone struck by the [Gut Poker] took additional damage from healing magic instead of recovering — unspeakable agony included free of charge.
Beyond healing reduction, there were blades that inflicted paralysis or poison, or ones specialized purely for shattering a mage's barrier — the more swords in your collection, the wider the range of situations you could handle.
Peek into the inventories of the very top swordsmen and you'd find nothing short of a famous-blade exhibition.
In that sense, they're not so different from gunners, who wield all manner of [special rounds] even beyond the gun itself.
Having heard the full explanation, Go Hyeon-woo let out a quiet breath of admiration.
"Truly… I remain woefully ignorant when it comes to items. Another lesson learned from you, Brother Kim. I realize anew just how long the road ahead is."
"The road is long, just like you say. But it's only week three, so don't get too impatient."
"I shall bear it in mind."
"Then, since we're on the subject of items, let's ease into the main topic, shall we?"
What Go Hyeon-woo needed to prioritize right now, ahead of collecting all manner of famous blades?
Durability management.
That was, after all, the fundamental reason we'd sat down to watch this replay together.
Taking [Clear Stream] — the technique he'd used most so far — as the benchmark, an E-rank longsword had barely survived one use, and a D-rank four, before breaking.
Running a rough calculation from that:
"B-rank or better, plus a few durability-related artifacts. Then you'd have practically no worries about breaking."
"B-rank… That would not be easy to come by."
"It's a distant goal for now. But even just bridging the gap with C-rank gear would solve your immediate problems."
That said, C-rank was by no means a common grade.
The good ones were at the level even second-years were using, after all.
Go Hyeon-woo pulled out the catalog and checked the "longsword" section.
He was getting more comfortable with the student store by degrees.
But buying a C-rank weapon with points…
"That's no small matter."
"They're expensive. Save your points. They're too precious to waste on consumables."
He'd bought the [Leopard Series] half as an experiment, and their low rank had kept the point burden light.
From C-rank onward, though, the prices were nothing to laugh at.
Why pour points into a consumable that was guaranteed to shatter someday anyway?
Just obtain them another way.
Without spending money. Without spending points.
Go Hyeon-woo's gaze followed mine, sliding to one side.
The garden — neither too high nor too low — that occupied a corner of our view.
The Dungeon Hall.
"We farm them as drops."
[58] The Support Eats It All Up