Chapter 156
“Where did the priest run off to? If we can pin her down here, the game will definitely swing our way!”
“Should I use a tracking spell?”
“No, we don’t have time for that. There are plenty of dead ends here, so she couldn’t have gotten far.”
“Ah... Huh? Behind us! Behind us!”
The scream that burst out reflexively was meant as a warning, but the priest’s sword came down faster.
The sword’s razor-sharp blade rushed toward the waist of the knight covering the rear.
Even though another shield-bearing knight immediately threw himself forward to protect him, NoName’s sword had already slit his throat.
Instead, blood dripped from the menacing blade imbued with the essence of the full moon, scattering across the academy corridor.
Those who had witnessed their comrade’s death right before their eyes had no intention of letting it go unanswered.
The shield knight’s straight sword shot toward NoName’s waist.
Clang-!
Rather than the dull thud of a blow striking armor, the lively sound of two swords meeting vibrated through their bodies.
The attack was blocked far too easily, but the knight paid it no mind. He pulled back his sword and raised his shield, prioritizing the decision to buy time.
Without any signal, the mage circled behind him again, tightened their formation, and prepared to cast. All she could do was silently thank the shield knight for buying them time.
“The priest’s out of mana! I’ll keep pressing her, so watch my back!”
The knight shouted after steadying his breathing.
At a distance so close their feet seemed liable to tangle, he drew his straight sword.
His opponent clearly had no intention of running. Was she really planning to take on the two of them head-on?
The two shadows overlapped.
Using aura to push his speed to the limit, the knight kept driving his opponent back, but NoName’s fierce counterattacks precisely severed each movement he made.
Whenever he mixed in a feint to create an opening, NoName instead closed the distance. Whenever he thrust at a vital point, the Skia Bona curved in like a snake, opening its jaws to block the attack.
“Ngh...!”
Their bodies were pressed tightly together. If either of them stopped attacking even once or pulled away, they would surely lose their life.
Their stamina was steadily running out, and they could only leave it to fate to decide who would falter first.
Yet despite that ironclad resolve, the blade he had mistaken for an afterimage lashed across his side, making the knight falter.
The knight instinctively took a step back and frowned.
NoName immediately drove her shoulder in to throw off his center of gravity.
Unable to be the first to fall in a one-on-one melee, the knight gripped his shield tightly and braced against the force thrusting forward.
Cleverly turning her body around to the opposite side, NoName continued inflicting deep, irreversible wounds on the knight’s legs.
The shield knight swung his sword blindly, but NoName dodged it by a hair and thrust toward his vital point again.
Kriiiing-
The shield he had barely recovered from the floor prolonged the knight’s life, but the clash of metal against metal produced an unpleasant screech.
He had missed the rhythm only once, but he could no longer catch up.
As the knight barely swallowed a groan from his accumulated injuries, the mage called out to him like a voice of salvation.
“I’m casting a spell soon!”
“I don’t care if I die—just fire it at the same time!”
That was an opportunity.
The knight’s outstretched straight sword crossed with the priest’s, but that was precisely what he intended.
As neither of them could overpower the other in the standoff, he sensed a massive flow of mana.
Although the priest’s Blink cooldown had long since reset, the knight was pinning down her other hand, so she couldn’t take out a scroll.
The knight smiled at the checkmate created by his brilliant strategy and their accidental standoff.
Rustle-
“Huh?”
If the priest pulled away now, it would actually benefit the knight.
There should still have been time before the spell activated.
Concluding that his opponent must have misunderstood something, the knight rose from the cold corridor floor and immediately followed the priest.
Even if one more person died here, the battle wouldn’t be greatly affected as long as the mage survived.
The knight boldly dashed forward, closing the distance, and swung his sword with all his strength.
Whoosh-
The powerful blow, strong enough to crush all the air ahead of it, ultimately did nothing more than split empty space.
[Twilight Doppelganger: When your health falls below 15%, creates a clone for 10 seconds.]
“So it was a clone...!”
“Aaaaaaaah!”
As her vision wavered, she turned to look behind her.
Using Blink to instantly close in on the mage, the priest drove her short-gripped sword straight into the mage’s heart.
Red blood splattered in every direction across the white wallpaper.
At the same time, NoName pulled the dark, blood-soaked sword free, gripped it around the middle of the blade, and threw it at the knight like a spear.
Ting-
The flustered knight raised his shield first and deflected the sword. He only had a moment to wonder at her absurd move.
“Good. You deflected it.”
The sword that had flown into the air was somehow already in NoName’s hand. How?
The Skia Bona was firmly gripped in her right hand.
So shocked that he unconsciously stepped backward, the knight tried to reset his stance, but the shield had shifted his weight too far to the left, slowing him down.
The difference between life and death was decided in an instant.
Slash-
The horizontal swing left a long mark across the knight’s neck, and
[Critical!]
[Rule the Nation, Pacify the World: Each time you land a successive hit, you deal additional damage equal to 3%.]
[Current: 12 stacks]
[20075(14080+5995)]
Damage far too great to be attributed to a single attack from a priest slammed into the huge knight, announcing the end of the battle.
* * *
[2051 Win-It-Back Season 2 Showcase: Days 1–5 Results Summary]
[NoName (Priest): 3 wins, 2 losses in 5 games]
[Combined KDA: 48/0/86]
One-line review: ?
-Why did they lose two games, anyway?
But although NoName had long since transcended the limits of her character, she had not managed to lead the game to victory.
When everyone’s combat power was adjusted from 100,000 to 50,000, there was one variable none of the tournament organizers had anticipated.
-This meta makes healers completely useless.
The current pro-game meta had been balanced around 100,000 combat power, but the organizers had failed to consider that when every class had only half its usual stats, the healer class would become utterly useless.
-Anyone who spends auction points on a healer is proving they’re a huge suckerㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
* * *
The news that NoName was participating in Win-It-Back grew rapidly, like a snowball rolling downhill.
Voices worrying about the tournament had already begun erupting across various online communities.
But those opinions were far from unified, clashing sharply and sometimes messily.
[Can they really send the number-one-ranked player to Win-It-Back?]
NoName was already physically perfected.
The superb swordsmanship she had displayed in Nightmare had already surpassed the limits of humanity.
People worried that the dramatic story of relatively low-tier players winning through tightly united teamwork could be ruined by NoName alone.
[Looking at her record, NoName’s only played five games. She’s the one losing out because people overrate her. She didn’t know a thing about how to play the game.]
But some believed that story mode and multiplayer were entirely different games.
Being an excellent futsal player was no guarantee that someone would become an excellent football player.
The individual skills honed in futsal could help achieve a goal in football, but the abilities fundamentally required existed on an entirely different level.
Above all, the only practical magic available in multiplayer was Blink, and NoName was practically a newbie who didn’t even know all of WoA’s systems.
Those who had only watched her story-mode streams, those who had only watched her placement matches, and even those who had watched both offered different opinions, sending the situation deeper into chaos.
[I’ve never watched NoName’s stream, but anyway, I’m happy a middle schooler is participating in the tournament, upvoteㅋㅋㅋㅋ]
Sometimes people prioritized external factors like age, age, and age over rational reasons.
He wasn’t particularly convinced, but since it was still a post supporting NoName, the boy clicked the Like button.
On the other side of the screen, NoName was catching her breath.
The intense battle had been like watching a scene from a movie.
She deserved even greater praise if she had won the game, but unfortunately, more criticism was being poured on Kariri, her teammate, than praise on NoName.
[‘Hoyamuyaho’ donated 1,000 won!]
-It was such a shame, but that was amazing...! You rock!
“Thank you, Hoyamuyaho. It’s been a while since you donated, hasn’t it?”
The reason humans could become passionate about sports was that restrictions always existed.
If people could use their hands in football, no one would have been passionate about it, and top-star players would never have been able to rake in such enormous salaries.
Despite all the controversy, the reason games could be called esports was that they shared the nature of being competitions where people fiercely battled one another under the same restrictions.
If sports always had to follow rules, then paradoxically, a person’s skill and popularity were determined by how freely and creatively they could create opportunities within those rules.
The closer a player was to the goal when shooting, and the more stable the ball’s position was, the higher the chance of scoring—but players who had options like mid-range shots and acrobatic bicycle kicks were always treated as the best, following the same logic.
Wherever competition and scarcity existed, capital and attention were bound to pour in.
At least on this battlefield, NoName was so dazzling simply by existing that she seemed capable of blinding everyone.
[‘Hoyamuyaho’ donated 1,000 won!]
-Do you perhaps have any plans to collab with Kariri...?
The boy asked her tentatively.
“A collab... Hmm...”
It was understandable that she wasn’t thrilled by the idea.
They had nearly lost the game just now because of Kariri alone.
“I’ll think about it if we end up on the same team.”
The boy smiled brightly for the first time in a long while.