So a 3% Win Rate Isn't Throwing?
1.
"Y-you want us to switch positions? F-for real?"
Harumong stammered the question. She sounded thoroughly rattled.
"Yes. I-I'm completely serious."
"W-why on earth?"
"I'm kind of curious myself."
"Every scrim, Bullet's damage output was about one-point-five times higher than anyone else's. That's the only reason we won those first fights. Do we really need to switch?"
Heukrangi and Aura piled on with questions one after another.
"Y-you all play NOVA Syndicate a lot, so you already know this… b-but this game is kind of deformed…"
"Deformed?"
"Yes… s-supports don't just heal. They pack attack power right up there with the DPS…"
Weapons differed, sure, but the raw DPS gap between damage dealers and supports was surprisingly small. Supports just looked weaker on the scoreboard because they had to heal on top of everything else.
"E-even when I put out one-point-five times more damage than the other DPS, one of the big reasons we still lose fights is exactly this…"
The missing damage support from our own support. That hole was bigger than it looked.
"I-in the first place, you showed up to a tournament on a support you aren't even used to, so skill usage, heals, damage—none of it is landing properly…"
"Huk…."
The call fell silent for a beat. My words must have landed a little hard.
"……I'm sorry."
Harumong's voice had gone small and dejected.
"N-no, it's fine. These things happen… Position choice is free, after all. I-if you'd been on a strong team it probably wouldn't have shown as much…"
Our team power was just that low. If even one person failed their role, the whole structure collapsed. There was no way around it.
"I-in the end I kind of feel like Aura just drafted badly…"
"You're suddenly swerving into me now?"
"I-it's true though… How exactly did you run the auction… to end up with only people like this…"
"There were six hundred forty streamers! How am I supposed to check every single one of them? I didn't know it would turn out like this either! Plus it was my first time as team captain and first time in the auction…!"
"…Picking like this out of six hundred forty is a talent in its own right."
"L-later… if the stream tanks, you'd probably do great running a junk shop or something… the way you pick up this kind of stuff…."
"You do realize you're one of the 'junk' pieces in that junk shop, right?"
Heukrangi pointed it out flatly.
"I-I'm more like the antique inside the junk shop…? You know those pawn shop shows with the bald guy… where someone buys something for twenty dollars, gets it appraised by an expert, and it turns into two hundred thousand…"
"And you're that case? You're the two-hundred-thousand-dollar piece?"
"Well… y-you could say that…"
I puffed my chest a little and smiled with pure smugness.
"Two hundred thousand my ass. If you factor in all the damage and inconvenience you've caused this tournament, you should be paying us two hundred thousand."
"T-then Heukrangi can cover half of that…"
"Why me?"
"Because you trash-talked me and whiffed every shot at me…"
"Ah."
"Kyarruk kyarruk!"
The soft duo burst out laughing.
"Alright, alright, back to the original topic…."
Aura clapped her hands sharply and reined in the chaos.
"So Bullet's idea is that switching positions with Harumong gives us better odds of winning?"
"Yes. Exactly… a-and on top of that… c-could I take main shotcaller as well…?"
"Main shotcaller too?"
"Yes… h-healers sit all the way in the back, right? Just looking at positioning, I think that's the best place for calls and orders…"
Tanks had to hold the front line, so reading the full fight was hard. Damage dealers varied by hero, but constantly swapping positions meant their vision was never stable.
Supports have to float around too, but…
I planned to hand the more mobile support heroes to Momoru. There were a few that were relatively easy to pilot.
"Alright. Let's try it. We haven't really had a main shotcaller this whole time anyway…."
To my surprise, Aura accepted the proposal without much pushback.
"T-then from now on I'm this team's commander, right…?"
"I guess…?"
"T-then starting now I'll be using casual speech. A-and all of you will use formal speech with me…."
"Excuse me?"
"What the hell kind of bullshit is that all of a sudden?"
"Ahem…! W-who do you think you're talking casually to, Commander? What unit are you even from?"
"I'm unaffiliated?"
"I see… Anyway, for now I'll handle the calls and orders? I'll play support too? And I'll try the casual speech. Only during scrims, though."
"Okay!"
"Let's try it!"
"With a 3% win rate there's nowhere left to fall. Fine by me."
The soft duo and Aura went along without further complaint.
"Everything else I can live with, but the casual speech is a hard no… That girl's already like this now. If she goes full casual who knows what kind of shit she'll pull…."
"I already became commander through a legitimate voting process. Or does Heukrangi hate democracy? Planning election fraud? Going to snatch the ballots?"
"W-what kind of crazy talk is that all of a sudden! No. I'm not like that."
"So you agree?"
"…You pushed that hard, what else am I supposed to say. Fine. Do it. Go ahead."
"T-then this motion passes by unanimous consent! I will make our team great again!"
"Waaaaah—!"
I kept bowing my head to the sound of clapping.
"The team we're scrimming against this time is Team Gae-mangchi."
"…Gae-mangchi?"
The name felt oddly familiar for some reason.
"Remember that fight video Bullet showed earlier? They're the people who appeared in it. The team we said had the next-lowest win rate after us."
"Huk! Why did we have to get them of all teams…."
Those people were a little scary.
"I didn't request it. They came to us. I accepted because they looked like a perfect practice partner."
"W-well… they are exactly the sparring level that matches us, yeah."
"Their side is treating our team like pure prey too. They've been on a losing streak lately so the mood's bad, apparently. Looks like they want to beat us to get some energy back."
I'd watched a few of their scrims. When they lost they tore into each other like they wanted blood, and when they won they hyped each other up like absolute maniacs. In every way, a team with very clear character.
"Ha! Unbelievable. The team with the second-worst win rate after us dares to think that? We really need to teach them a lesson, don't we!?"
"S-still, their scrim win rate is 25%, so they can think that… And we are now at 0% scrim win rate!"
"Why?"
"Because Harumong and I switched positions…! The old team and the current team are completely different…! I-I think the stats should start over from zero…!"
We were the New Neo Hyper Hybrid Team now!
"I'm a little worried that restarting the stats will just drop us below 3%…."
"T-that won't happen. It's impossible unless we're actively throwing…."
"So you're saying we were throwing before?"
"T-then are you saying we weren't?"
"Enough talk. Just get in."
Aura sent the invite. When I accepted it, the enemy team was already fully seated.
"Hmph."
Why was he picking a fight already. I didn't like it one bit.
Ugh, I couldn't hold it in. If it had been voice maybe, but in chat I was not about to lose.
This kind of WWE is necessary, right?
Just like everyone watches the fight between first and second place, people would also pay attention to the fight between last and second-to-last.
583 watching………
My room's viewer count had actually climbed quite a bit. That meant a lot of people were interested in this match.
"B-Bullet, why are you doing this…."
"Th-that's right. W-we should all get along…!"
The soft duo freaked out and tried to stop me. But to escape being a tiny streamer, sometimes you had to push harder.
I'll use this scrim as the springboard for my stream growth…!
"Kkuh… all of that is true…."
There was no way to refute it. But that didn't mean I had to accept it.
Clack-clack-clack—
"Aww, why would you say that out loud. This is so goddamn embarrassing."
"Y-you should be more embarrassed about the things Heukrangi has said…."
"You fucking bitch."
Clack—
The game is starting.
The second I started hammering the keyboard to clap back, the game kicked off.
"Iiiiiik!"
I slammed the desk once out of pure spite, then the corner of my mouth curled upward.
"Team Gae-mangchi dies here today…!"
Next chapter: Team Gae-mangchi… dies!?