Chapter 108
Teaching was a far higher-level act than learning.
If learning meant simply opening your mouth and gulping down knowledge someone else had brought you, then to teach someone, you had to chew, tear apart, and bite into raw knowledge until it was easy to digest, then pass it on just before it went down their throat.
It was a rather filthy analogy, but the point I wanted to make was the same.
But perhaps I had no talent for teaching, because I couldn't help but chew and swallow the food myself.
“This is really my limit now... I can't do this...!”
Adela complained, panting heavily.
Judging by how impressive her talent had seemed when taking down Valum, I was beginning to wonder whether her willpower was actually pitifully weak.
-Is this really okay?ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-The cat does the work, while the elf pockets the money
-Ah, but you're giving her Churuㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Correction: It's not Churu, but ‘Churu flavor’
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Down with the exploitative boss!
The carrot-and-Churu strategy had been half successful in correcting Adela's bad habits.
In other words, the other half could be considered a failure.
I wondered whether the problem lay in designing instrumental conditioning with Churu as a means of positive reinforcement and carrots as a means of positive punishment.
When I taught Klaus swordsmanship in the past, I had actually used a real whip, so perhaps the punishment had simply been too weak.
But it was too late to change methods now.
Because, little by little, she was clearly improving with each successive round.
“Tired? Can't do it?”
“Haa... I told you I'm tired!”
“Are you really tired? Do you not even have the strength to stand?”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This is giving me PTSD from boot camp
-Trainee 145121, lift your legs higher! Commando exercises, number eight, begin!
-Kyaaaaaaaaaaaak!
-Adela would be innocent even if she bit NoName for thisㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Seeing her express her gloom with her entire body, I felt that I shouldn't push her any further.
Master Maria always dismissed me as cold-blooded, but I was actually such a warmhearted person.
-Let's abandon Adelaㅠㅠ
-No, protect Adela!
-Is she really getting stronger?
-At this rate, Chronicle is going to beat the crap out of her eventually
-The way she's being taught right now seems so pointless
While Adela rested, I turned my attention to the chat. Perhaps they noticed that I was reading it, because the messages started coming in twice, then three times as fast.
“There’s a reason I’m teaching her this way.”
Human beings were complex, but that did not guarantee perfection.
If you attached a ‘model hand’ to your arm and hid your real hand somewhere out of sight, your brain would feel pain simply by sensing an impact to the model hand. It was a kind of phantom pain.
Likewise, Adela and I were connected through taste—the simplest sense and the least useful in combat—to leave her as little room as possible to interfere with her senses.
Then, by feeding her one-dimensional feedback such as whether something tasted good or bad, I made her mistake my judgments for judgments she had made herself.
‘Habits’ in combat could not be corrected overnight.
Even if you knew something intellectually, it was all pointless if you couldn't put it into practice the instant an emergency broke out.
[‘Wolrmot’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Honestly, if it doesn't seem effective, upvote thisㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
“You, come out here for a moment.”
I could tolerate backseat gaming up to a point.
But gathering supporters who outright opposed my opinion had clearly crossed the line of what I was willing to tolerate.
I hit pause. The game turned into a black-and-white world, and without a moment's hesitation, I clicked the account of the person who had just donated.
[Wolrmot (Watching live)]
Live spectating meant that he had entered a capsule and was currently running WoA.
I created a barren battlefield and entered his ID right away.
[Inviting: Wolrmot]
-Whoa, holy shit holy shit holy shit holy shit
-So jealousㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-They're making this a one-on-one!!!
It wasn't a good thing at all, so why was everyone getting so excited?
It was time to make an example of him.
* * *
Name remembered the viewer ‘Wolrmot’ not only because she had an excellent memory, but also because his attitude while watching the broadcast was so atrocious.
His frequent thousand-won donations grated on Name's nerves, and he never hesitated to make sexually harassing remarks in the chat that went far beyond the line.
He was simply someone who had gotten lucky and avoided being caught by the managers.
But considering what was about to happen, whether he was genuinely lucky was something I would have to reserve judgment on.
[Viewer ‘Wolrmot’ has entered the user-created game.]
“Whoa, what is this?”
-Silverㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Wait, this guy was backseat gaming?
-What a legendㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Name threw him the same sword that Adela had been using.
“Catch.”
“Ah, yes!”
-He suddenly got so politeㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Turns out he was just a keyboard warrior?
-This guy's chat is fucking filthy. Just blacklist him;;
-ㄴHow has he not been banned yet
-ㄴThis is really somethingㅋㅋ
Meanwhile, Name continued to stand there empty-handed.
Before the invited viewer could even raise a question, Name spoke first.
“If you beat me, you go on the blacklist. If you lose, you go on the whitelist.”
“Isn't it the other way around...?”
“No, it's right.”
“Why is it a whitelist if I lose?”
“The color of a complaint form.”
“Oh...”
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Kyaa
-Kyaa
-Even if you win, you break even; lose and you're going to courtㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This is what you call a proper lesson, burrrp~~~~~
-Life is the real deal
-NoName is giving him a proper life lessonㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㅋㅋThe word ‘whitelist’ sounds fucking terrifying
-Black would be a hundred times better
“For your information, I’ll report you under the Act on the Protection of Children and Youth Against Sexual Abuse, not for insult, so please give it your all.”
-Let's get that real-life justice going
-You skipped all those female streamer channels and had to get caught by NoName of all people
-So she really was a minorㅋㅋ
-As long as it isn't me~~~~~~~!!!!
-I know we shouldn't laugh at this, but why is it so funnyㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-ㄴI've been having a lot of hard days lately too, but this brought a smile to my face
-Wolrmot, your sacrifice will surely be forgotten someday...
-ㄴㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
A man with an unremarkable avatar trembled all over. His face had gone so pale that not a trace of color remained.
“I’m truly sorry... Could you let me off just this once?”
“No, there’s no need to apologize yet. You can say that when the time comes.”
“Just this once, please let me off. I’ll never come to this stream again. No, I’ll delete both my WoA and Twishy accounts! I swear, I really will...!”
-Don't let him off!
-Proper lesson! Proper lesson!
-He's Silver, so what good would deleting it do?ㅋㅋ
“It’s simple. I’m just going to stab Mr. Wolrmot in the heart. I’ll only attack once. You just need to block that one attack. Then I’ll put you on the blacklist.”
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you...”
-Wait, she's letting him off?
-Who can't block it when you tell them everything?;;
-We almost got a lawsuit ending, what a shame
-If this gets submitted to headquarters, his Twishy account will probably get permanently banned too?
A user-created match intended to avoid a lawsuit began.
Name ultimately did not pick up a weapon.
Her determination to fight bare-handed was plain to see.
Wolrmot heaved a sigh of relief when he saw NoName charging toward him at terrifying speed from the opposite side of the battlefield.
She was surely just trying to intimidate him. In reality, the match gave him far too many advantages.
She wasn't holding a weapon, he had been given dual swords that were strong in one-on-one combat, and, finally, she had restricted both the attack's trajectory and the number of attacks she would make.
Even assuming that she viewed her own abilities objectively, NoName was practically a newbie who had experienced nothing beyond story mode.
Some people praised her talent as being at Challenger level, but he thought differently.
‘She only got lucky and unlocked a hidden route...!’
He took a deep breath and settled into his stance.
It was simple. He didn't even need to attack. She had clearly declared that she would only aim for his heart, so all he had to do was cross his two swords and defend. It was that easy.
When the distance between them narrowed to within striking range,
NoName vaulted over him in a single bound.
Wolrmot's stance twisted out of shape.
He had naively assumed the attack would come straight at him from the front.
There was no rule saying that stabbing someone in the heart had to be done from the front.
But since he prided himself on having decent reaction speed, he rotated his body 180 degrees and crouched down again.
NoName's eerie eyes flashed through the gap between his raised arms.
In an instant, aura suffused her arm. Her shoulder turned first, and her torso followed.
But her center of gravity was clearly too high. She wasn't aiming for his heart, but his head. More precisely, her other arm came flying toward his neck.
‘A feint...!’
Having watched the broadcast the whole time, he recognized the attack.
It was the incredible movement she had shown an hour earlier when Adela had nearly perfectly defeated Valum.
And just as Adela had mercilessly pierced Valum's carotid artery, NoName intended to smash his head apart in exactly the same way.
“Somebody who doesn’t even keep promises...!”
At that moment,
Through the gap between his instinctively raised arms, Name's fingertips pierced the man's heart with pinpoint accuracy.
-????
-You blocked your head?
-You're done for
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-She told you everything and you still couldn't block itㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-This is Silver level...?
-WoA's future is bleak
The blow landed squarely in his heart.
NoName's attack had clearly come flying with enough force to cut off his neck, so he was left utterly bewildered as to why his own heart had ended up being pierced instead.
“No... this...”
Name withdrew her hand and pulled a file folder and a ballpoint pen from her private space.
“See? Changing a person's habits is this difficult.”
Human beings were meticulously designed to block attacks that threatened their lives at unexpected moments.
Even if doing so would, conversely, put their own lives in danger.
A satisfied smile bloomed on Name's face as she verified her hypothesis through experimentation.
-Death Note ㄷㄷㄷㄷ
-It really existed
-Gasp...!
-Lawsuit ending, hell yeah!
“Good work.”
* * *
-(Manager 5): Um, NoName?
“What is it, ‘CatMatingIsTheBest’?”
-(Manager 5): Could you just call me Manager...? No, that's not it. I think I saw other names on that blacklist—no, whitelist, besides that guy. Surely my name isn't on it too, right?
“Who knows? I’m not sure, ‘CatMatingIsTheBest’.”
-(Manager 5): What do you mean, ‘who knows’!!! Is it really written there? You're not going to sue me, right?
The cat-furry girl suddenly grew anxious at the appearance of the whitelist and asked about it, but that was merely an aside.