Glory of the Ducal House

The author is the barbarian warrior in the screenshot. The opposing player was using a dark knight. As you can see, they stripped off all their armor and deliberately made footstep sounds. Their level is only 15, yet they dodged every single attack. Their match record shows roughly fifty wins in a row, and they've already hit Gold rank. There's no way a newbie whose account was created less than a day ago could pull off this kind of play. They definitely have a main account somewhere else. In the fight footage, they cut off the opponent's arms and legs, toyed with them, then finished them off. They kept queuing for Single Combat nonstop. Anyone queuing in this time slot, be careful.

There's a player who hit rank 1 in Narax and Clock, then moved to Heroes and hit rank 1 there too. Their username is always something like "DucalHouseXXX," and once they reach rank 1 they switch to another game. I thought they only played PC games, but they showed up in Labyrinthos too.

Gaejotmi probably won't be streaming Labyrinthos anymore.

I lightly touched the door leading into the boss room. The massive door, firmly shut, showed no signs of having been opened anywhere. That meant I had arrived earlier than my opponent again. It could be true, or it might not. What was certain was that surviving on the battlefield required keeping every possibility open. Blind faith was a shortcut to death, and imagination was the greatest survival tool. So I left the boss room door alone and moved my feet once more.

After walking a little farther, I spotted neutral mobs still wandering in the distance. That meant one of two things: either my opponent was still busy farming the neutral mobs, or they had skipped all of them and were hiding somewhere nearby. Naturally, the latter was far more threatening.

"──."

Clang! My backward swing rang out with the sound of metal. A throwing dagger rolled across the floor. The purple liquid coating it told me it was poisoned. The moment I saw it, I stepped back, and a small figure darted in from the edge of my vision.

"An assassin."

The hood covered their face completely, hiding even their eyes. But I already knew it was a female character. I'd seen her a few times before. With quick movements, the assassin thrust a dagger toward me, aiming straight for the heart. Before the blade could reach my chest, I grabbed her wrist.

Thud! The assassin shook off my arm and retreated. In a contest of raw strength between a dark knight and an assassin, the dark knight would obviously win. She knew that too, so she decided to stop attacking for now. We stood about ten meters apart, glaring at each other across the distance of roughly ten steps.

'Assassins are a bit annoying.'

After dozens of Single Combat matches, I had a rough idea of each character's strengths. As expected, some characters were strong or weak depending on the content. In Single Combat mode, assassins were considered strong. They had high movement speed, stealth, and excellent finishing power. In other words, they specialized in "going out to kill the opponent." The name "assassin" made it obvious. Since their hunting speed was slow, they mostly skipped monster farming and focused on tracking down other players. Among Single Combat characters, they were probably the most popular. Because they skipped all the farming, matches involving assassins tended to end quickly. Whether you won or lost, a game that finished fast was usually an advantage, especially for climbing ranks. Thanks to that, I'd been facing assassins nonstop for the past several matches.

"──."

The assassin exhaled deeply and vanished from sight. It was one of the assassin's skills: Stealth. From experience, assassins had two main plans. The first was to hide and attempt an assassination, but I'd countered it successfully. So she moved on to the second plan: hit-and-run tactics. Using superior mobility and stealth to land a hit, retreat, land another hit, and repeat, slowly whittling the opponent down. It was incredibly annoying, but the counter was surprisingly simple. I just had to limit the assassin's area of movement.

"Wall of Wails."

I spoke the skill name. Rumble! A wall of bone erupted right beside me. The dark knight was a character that weakened the opponent to secure victory, dragging fights into a muddy, drawn-out slog. In other words, it was a character where "infuriating the opponent mattered more than winning." By restricting the assassin's entry routes with Wall of Wails, it became easier to predict which path she would take. Now all that remained was timing her approach. And that was easy to read. She had only hidden her appearance; she hadn't silenced her footsteps.

"Chains That Bind the Soul."

Clatter! When I extended my left hand, a chain shot out and struck the assassin charging toward me. Chains That Bind the Soul applied a stun, so the assassin froze for an instant. I seized the opening and rushed in, swinging my sword. She frantically tried to parry with her dagger, but I'd already anticipated that and deliberately altered my blade's path slightly.

Slash! The assassin's left arm flew off.

"Ugh…!"

A short groan. The assassin tried to retreat in panic, but she couldn't get far this time. My chain had wrapped around her right arm. When I yanked the chain with my left hand, she was slowly pulled toward me. The flustered assassin struggled ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠desperately to free herself from the chain, but it was pointless. Assassins had almost no crowd-control resistance. Eventually she gave up trying to escape the chain and instead charged forward, mixing in a dash skill with a flying kick. I sidestepped at the right moment, grabbed her body, and slammed her into the ground.

Thud! The assassin rolled across the floor with a pained cry. I reversed my grip on the sword and drove it down toward the fallen assassin.

"Mmm… How many hours have I been playing?"

I checked my playtime. Ten hours were logged. That in itself wasn't particularly special. Aside from sleep, I'd been living in the game. Still, playing ten hours straight without a break wasn't common. It just showed how deeply I'd fallen into this game. And it made sense. Simply put, VR games delivered far stronger dopamine hits than PC games.

People felt vicarious satisfaction watching webtoon or web novel protagonists. But wouldn't direct experience provide even greater enjoyment than that vicarious satisfaction? Victory in a PC game was ultimately something beyond the monitor. A blade that nearly touched your neck, dodging every enemy skill with movement, or decapitating foes with overwhelming destructive power—all of it happened on the other side of the screen. In PC games, no situation was truly your own. But in VR, every event that occurred was mine. The heart-pounding exchanges, the tightrope tension, the godlike dodging—I had experienced all of it with my own body. This intoxicating feeling of becoming a hero couldn't be compared to PC games. Especially since Labyrinthos's virtual reality space had such strong realism, it was far more stimulating.

"No wonder it's a popular game."

If I'd known it would be like this, I should've started earlier. I felt a bit of regret for having avoided VR games out of unnecessary worry. It felt like I'd lost half my life.

I chuckled and stretched. Suddenly, a warning window appeared.

"Hmm…?"

I tilted my head at the warning window. I wasn't particularly hungry, though. Ah, it was talking about my real body.

"If you stay connected to VR, you don't even feel hunger, huh."

Honestly, I wanted to keep queuing, but if I was going to be forcibly logged out, there was nothing I could do. I'd better log out, eat something, drink some water, use the bathroom, and then come back to finish queuing.

***

"Your balance is insufficient."

The convenience store part-timer spoke with an awkward expression.