Chapter 103
Have you ever been to a theater after all the actors and audience members have left?
In a space where the dazzling sets, ear-pleasing music, and colorful lights have all disappeared, the only thing left to face is myself.
The space I could now proudly call home was filled with nothing but silence.
The plates I hadn't cleared yet were piled in the sink, alongside chicken bones picked clean of every scrap of meat, outerwear tossed carelessly over the sofa, and even the underwear I had just taken off.
I had just finished showering.
Water dripped from my hair and dampened the living room floor, but there was no need to worry about it.
It would evaporate naturally within a day or two. I vaguely remembered viewers who had served in the military saying that sprinkling some water on the floor helped in dry weather like this.
‘What is this...?’
Before entering my room, I stepped on a Polaroid photo lying on the floor.
When I picked it up and checked, I saw that it was one of the dozens of photos we had taken yesterday with the camera Haru had brought.
Yuna, who didn't have a phone, had been delighted to receive a whole stack of photos from Haru.
She must have dropped it while chasing Haru around the house after noticing that Haru had drawn a beard on her face.
“I should give it back to her at the academy tomorrow.”
Haru had been taken away early that morning by the man in sunglasses, while I had taken good care of Yuna and sent her home.
Professor Cheon had quietly woken me even earlier, while the children were deep in dreamland.
[I think I need to go to America right now.]
For a moment, I wondered if I was dreaming and instinctively said, ‘America?’, but he calmly explained the situation.
Some of the technology for turning potions into solid form had come from America, but apparently the U.S. State Department had refused to approve the transfer of that technology.
The domestic researchers had tried hard to emphasize that it wasn't for commercial use, but the Americans remained stubborn, so he revealed that he had to go there himself.
[Don't play games for too long. And don't skip meals—make sure you eat properly!]
...Well, he said he would be back by tomorrow evening at the latest, so I could think of it as a business trip to Busan.
After seeing everyone off, the house was far too large for me to wander around alone.
I deeply regretted not leaving Yuna behind, at least.
Even though I hadn't had a drink, an extreme sense of exhaustion came over me.
Maybe it was because I had felt human warmth for the first time in a while.
I could still feel two girls hugging me tightly on either side.
As if they had made a pact with each other, they had placed me in the middle and held me in their arms like a pillow. They had draped their arms and legs over my body and simply fallen asleep.
You shouldn't assume children are light just because they're children. When that continued for several hours, I could feel their weight more than I expected, and every so often I would cough because I could barely breathe.
Yet, in contrast to the exhaustion I felt now, I felt unbelievably refreshed.
I couldn't remember the last time I had slept deeply without even dreaming.
I returned to my room and vigorously dried the water on my body with a towel.
Having a small surface area was useful at times like this.
After wrapping the towel around myself once, there were hardly any places left that it hadn't dried.
I desperately wanted to enter the capsule naked, but this wasn't a house where I lived alone.
Even if no one was watching, I felt that observing a minimum level of etiquette was the proper thing to do, so I roughly pulled on a white dress that reached my knees.
Perhaps I had only imagined that I had dried myself properly, because the silk dress clung tightly to me, dampened by the moisture still left on my body.
I was too lazy to change into something else now, so I simply threw myself into the capsule.
Before beginning the full dive, I caught myself unconsciously preparing the stream settings and drew in a hollow breath.
It was more convenient to adjust the settings with a few clicks than to manually move between setting windows in Virtual Space. As someone who pursued extreme efficiency whenever possible, it was certainly something I needed to remember to do, but...
‘It's not like I even promised to start streaming right away.’
Originally, I had only intended to do a light warm-up.
The current time was 11 a.m., a little earlier than the time I had promised the viewers.
Since I had already finished setting up the stream, it felt awkward to back out now, so I decided that a reasonable compromise would be to freeze the chat permanently and broadcast only the game screen.
There was no need to exhaust myself by dealing with people ahead of time for no reason.
The title was...
[Starting streaming: 0:00:01 – NoName]
[Legacy of Legends – Someone Who Misses Warmth (chat x)]
[Stream duration - 0:00:01]
[Viewer count – 1]
* * *
The main reason I chose Legacy of Legends was that it was the only game I knew how to play.
The main hall, which I was visiting for the first time in a while, was bustling with people.
As expected, Ranked was where the most people gathered.
But my feet carried me to the neighborhood next door.
[Custom Game]
[tag: 1vs1]
As I always emphasized, the essence of LoL could never be called a game of pure mechanics.
If you watched footage from decades ago, when professional gamers played on computers, you could say that the game had at least been a harmonious blend of mechanics and strategy, but now it leaned far too heavily toward strategy.
There were far too few games where the difference created in the laning phase determined the outcome.
A game where a comeback was always possible might be thrilling, but I couldn't shake the feeling that it relied too heavily on luck.
But one-on-one was different.
I liked that all the complicated concepts—each champion's power curve by level, matchups, attack range, and so on—could be lumped together under the single term ‘mechanics.’
Above all, it was always exciting to comprehensively evaluate one's individual combat ability and stand above one's opponent.
Most importantly, it took less time than an ordinary game of LoL.
It had been a while since I had moved my body intensely in virtual reality, so I planned to start with LoL, which had a low degree of freedom, and gradually get my body used to it.
[Room title: PayMustardSauce Password: 2-digit number (1/2)]
[**]
While I was browsing through several rooms and refreshing the list, one room title caught my eye.
It didn't look like a game someone had created to play with friends, yet strangely, it was password-protected.
In the past, I would have simply ignored it and looked for another room, but the tier of the person waiting inside held me back.
[PayMustardSauce - Challenger]
Challenger. People who stood far above even the Master tier I had reached a few months ago.
A sudden competitive urge took hold of me, so I entered a random number.
If it was wrong, I would simply look for another room.
[P/W: 77]
[PayMustardSauce's Game - Valhalla's Battlefield · Blind Pick · 1v1]
‘It worked...?’
It must have been a day blessed with good luck.
In one corner of the Dome House waiting room, an ordinary-looking man waved at me.
“Wow, you came right in again as soon as I made the room. Was the password too easy?”
“...?”
“Ah, you're really shy. I understand. So what champion should we use?”
His friendly welcome, as if he had been waiting for me, felt suspicious, but I assumed he was playing the part of a reclusive master and didn't think much of it.
“Can I choose whatever I want?”
“Hmm, let's see your tier... Oh, Diamond 1? Even if you're Diamond 1, you can't just pick anything, can you? Haha.”
His respectful way of speaking was paradoxically overflowing with ease.
“Then Irelia versus Fiora. See you in top lane.”
“Ooh, now that's romantic! Should I play Irelia?”
“No. I'll play Irelia.”
Irelia was one of the original 51 champions in Legacy of Legends.
As befitted a champion with a unique skill mechanism, she had carried over from the previous installment without a single one of her skills being changed.
She was a champion I had often used when I had an RS mission, so I trusted that my body would remember how to play her even after such a long time.
“Whoa, even though I'm an ADC main, that matchup is going to be tough for you, isn't it? I guess you don't want to receive a chicken gift coupon?”
Ignoring the man who had been saying incomprehensible things since earlier, I organized the runes I would take into the battlefield.
He crouched beside me and kept talking.
“You know the rules, right, viewer? Two solo kills or 100 RS. You can return to base whenever you want, though. Still, since you picked a difficult champion, I'll add you as a friend if you get even one kill.”
“You're very confident.”
“Haha, it's a sort of occupational disease.”
“Now I'm curious what your occupation is.”
“Huh...? You don't know who I am?”
“Do I need to know who Mustard Seed is just because we're playing a one-on-one?”
“You really don't know? No, how did you even find your way into this room?”
“I was just looking through one-on-one rooms when—”
“Wow, what a coincidence! Then I look forward to playing with you! Pay... No, you can just call me Mustard!”
“Ah, yes...”
[Welcome to the battlefield.]
A northwesterly wind blew in.
* * *
The one-on-one battlefield had a bleak atmosphere.
It was a battlefield spread out against the backdrop of the sun sinking below the horizon.
I glared at the woman wielding a blue rapier in front of me.
The moment I moved even a single step, she would rush at me without hesitation and carve up my entire body.
Even after possessing a game character, the way she smiled was still annoying.
It was enough to give Hiasen a pass when he smiled obnoxiously. I couldn't forgive anyone else.
“Then please take care of me, okay? I'll go easy on you, so don't be too nervous. Just relax, relax!”
“...”
Six soldiers marched toward the opposing formation in perfect step.
But the opponent's side was the same.
As expected, Fiora stood much farther ahead than the formed line, blocking the middle path so I couldn't even gain experience.
Come at me if you dare. That was what it sounded like she was saying.
Even though we were only level one, the mind game had already begun.
Fiora had to pop her vitals, while Irelia had to hit her marks.
The matchup gave Fiora a slight advantage. Even if Irelia used E, Fiora could easily counter it with her W, Riposte.
To break the familiar standoff, I tried a simple mind game.
If Fiora's dash missed, I could easily take control from the early levels, so I gauged the razor-thin distance and wagged my tail enticingly.
But my opponent didn't recklessly waste her skills either.
“Aren't you going to take the experience?”
I wasn't going to fall for such a low-level taunt.
I knew the exact range at which I could gain experience.
Just as an enemy soldier was about to fall,
I dashed at Fiora with my blade and struck her.
“You deserve punishment for taking that experience!”
His words were frivolous, but his response was surprisingly sharp and deadly.
Fiora had the advantage in an all-in, and she even had the Bone Plating rune. While 250 of my 600 health was shaved away, less than 200 of his was lost.
This was within my expectations. My health was recovering faster thanks to the Second Wind rune, after all. The difference in HP would become meaningless the moment I reached level two.
But perhaps Fiora still felt something was lacking, because she turned toward me as if she had decided to try another auto-attack trade.
Irelia's skill had an 11-second cooldown, two seconds shorter than Fiora's. But it was obvious that my opponent was deliberately taking advantage of that and trying to force me to strike back.
If I used a skill to dash at Fiora again, he would be able to take up a good position from which to pop a vital.
So we exchanged one auto-attack each and then moved our champions deeper toward the fort.
That confirmed it.
The moment he turned around to land his fourth auto-attack, I was certain the game was already over.
My allied ranged soldiers joined in and diligently chipped away at Fiora's health with attacks that fell like a steady drizzle as she returned to the lane.
“I've already won this game.”
“Are you gloating? You should probably look at your health before saying that...”
“That's why ranged carries like Mr. Mustard can't escape the derogatory nickname ‘spoon.’”
“Huh...?”
He was a dyed-in-the-wool ADC player. I had checked his match history while we were being transported to the battlefield, and that was what prompted me to say it.
A lane fought two-on-two and a lane fought one-on-one had completely different mechanics.
Unlike the bottom lane, where you could use attack range and the timing of the first level two to shove soldiers into the fort and gain a one-sided advantage, Irelia was actually stronger when she was in front of the fort. Since we were both melee characters, there was no proper way to harass her either.
Mr. Mustard was visibly flustered, to the point that the blade of the rapier he was holding dropped toward the ground.
“Wow, that's a strong taunt. So what lane do you play in, viewer?”
“All lanes.”