Chapter 36 - The Aftermath of a Commotion (2)
After Rain's HP dropped to less than a third, he decided to shift his strategy.
He finally dropped the Chudan no Kamae and tried other movements.
He tried Weaving—a way of constantly moving your body from left to right that had started with boxing.
—It was also the most effective way to avoid being stabbed.
It was often used in boxing to dodge straights or jabs.
‘While weaving, be careful of attacks coming from the sides.’
Rain remembered the words of the boxing trainer.
Dodging your opponent by moving from left to right exposes you to potentially being slashed.
Practice was probably going to try a slashing technique next.
He just had to wait for that moment and counter-attack—he probably still had a chance to win if he did that.
'Is that a boxing move...?'
Practice gulped while watching Rain, who was stepping left and right.
It was almost impossible to stab someone who was moving like that.
'But this is the only technique that I was able to learn.'
Again, Practice broke through weaving in a way no one had thought.
Stab-! Suddenly, Practice stabbed Rain with his sword from the side.
[Critical Hit! You've dealt 210 damage!]
'Ah...!'
That time, it wasn't just the trainers that were surprised. Everyone else was amazed as well.
Because you moved your upper body from side to side while weaving, you'd be hit without a doubt if someone stabbed you from the side.
It was a solution anyone could've thought of, but nobody had tried.
In real life, moving to the opponent's side would take you at least half a second.
On a professional level, it was enough time for people to react.
But in Asrian Online, people moved faster, so 0.2~0.3 seconds was enough to move to the opponent's side and stab him.
It was all an illusion of the mind.
Most users subconsciously assimilated their game avatar with their real-life bodies.
'How can you maintain your balance while changing directions so fast? Just how much did you practice...!'
Even if anyone could do it, it wasn't something anyone could easily do.
The reason was that moving your character faster than your cognition required you to put in a lot of hours.
'The difference between game and reality...'
The trainers groaned.
Because it was the first game with sensory synchronization, they had mistaken the game for real life.
The bodies in Asrian Online were faster and more resistant than those in real life.
Just as the lion fought by biting with its teeth and not just with its paws, users in Asrian Online had to learn other ways of fighting that were completely different from real life.
But when you didn't know anything about the game, you had to rely on what you already knew—basically, modern martial arts.
To pass to the next stage, you had to learn how to walk again.
—A completely different body.
Practice had just become the first one to stand up and walk.
While everyone else was in shock, Rain couldn't resist anymore and fell to Practice's sword.
That day, Practice moved up to the 1st division.
* * *
Darkness Guild.
It had been two days since the Count's quest had finished, but there was still something they hadn't found the answer to.
On that day, the guild couldn't step inside the ruin… Then why did the quest end in success?
The guild leader, XL, pondered about that for a while.
'There must be something.'
XL was looking at that day's footage.
Because the guild had been at risk, he hadn’t had enough time to think about different things at that moment, but because he was looking at the footage again, he noticed many weird things.
'Why doesn't the contribution rate add up to 100%?'
[The rewards are going to be distributed based on the contribution!]
1 - Mayday's Party (Contribution Rate: 4%)
2 - Bear Shield's Party (Contribution Rate: 1%)
3 - Pias's Party (Contribution Rate: 0.2%)
In the system log, there was that message.
The contribution rate was decided by taking into account lots of different metrics.
Damage dealt, tanking, abnormal status skills successfully applied, etc.
But the thing was that the sum of the contributions must result in 100%.
—Even if an NPC was involved in it.
Because the contribution rate was solely based on a user's participation, the result of adding all the different contribution rates didn't change.
Then had there been a bug in the system?
XL was struggling because he couldn't find an answer to the inconsistency when…
'Wait... A user's contribution?'
XL stood up.
He discovered that he had brushed away another possibility.
He hurriedly watched the recorded footage again.
—A Dark Priest wearing an all-black robe.
In most online communities, people had concluded that she was an NPC.
But people who analyzed the video had only seen the broadcasted footage; they hadn’t been present there to feel the atmosphere.
XL still remembered the confrontation with the Dark Priest.
The movements of the Dark Priest, who seemed to know the game's mechanisms perfectly...
To be honest, XL couldn't believe that an NPC moved in such ways.
'If she isn't an NPC...!'
The weird contribution rate, how the dark priest moved...
If he changed all the assumptions, things became clearer.
'She's a user!'
She was probably a user that didn't get the Count's quest.
That was the only possible explanation for why the contribution rate didn't add up to 100%.
The moment he discovered the hidden truth, cold sweat dripped from XL's back.
A user that hadn't registered in the hall of fame... She was definitely a ranker!
After grasping the overall situation, he worked on the details.
'How can she be that strong?'
If he assumed that the Dark Priest was a user, another question arose.
While facing the Darkness Guild by herself, she wasn't pushed back. Instead, she had completely overwhelmed them.
Her HP, and the damage she dealt, were beyond the specs of a user.
'Did she receive help from the quest?'
Some quests had the format of an event and increased your specs for a short period of time.
XL wasn't completely wrong.
Thanks to the Heaven's Elixir, she could keep fighting for tens of minutes without batting an eye, so it wouldn't be completely wrong to say that she had received help from the quest.
Were those giant flames really one of the skills of the Dark Priest, which was one of the available jobs for a Priest to transfer to?
If that were the case, that would be a great shock.
Even Lattice, the 1st ranker in the hall of fame, hadn't reached level 100 yet. The fact that there was a user that had already transferred jobs was hard to believe.
'No, it's a hidden job!'
XL's thoughts flashed again.
He suddenly remembered the 'Two Person, Named Monster Clear' video.
Even at that moment, when Asrian had just recently opened its doors, she was using the same skills.
She couldn't have surpassed level 100 back then, so the only possible answer was that she had a hidden job.
A ranker with a hidden job…
Then there was a chance that she had previously been an Asra Online user.
It should've been almost impossible to get a hidden job without the previous game's information.
'What should I do about this...?'
XL decided to tell that information only to a few select people and keep it a secret from the rest.
Even if she had received help from the quest, it still didn't change the fact that she had defeated them alone.
If this became widely spread, their image as the number one guild would be completely ruined.
XL decided to tell just a few people what he had just discovered.
—Vice leader Meia and rankers Mayday, Bear Shield, and Pias.
Those who listened to what happened that day were just those five people.
"She's... A user?"
The members that listened to XL's explanation were horrified.
They couldn't believe what they were hearing.
But as XL explained to them point by point, they couldn't say anything against his arguments.
As they kept hearing the explanation, things got clearer.
It didn't take them long to understand the situation and be shocked by it.
"I can't believe she's a user..."
"But he said that she probably became strong thanks to the quest."
"How strong do you think she is compared to Lattice?"
"The only thing we're sure of is that, unlike Lattice, we can try to make her join us!"
"Then this should be the perfect opportunity to do it since nobody knows that she's a user yet."
After understanding the situation, they became sure about something.
She was definitely a ranker that had a hidden job!
They couldn’t let her go!
And that was how making a single user join their ranks became the Darkness Guild's number one priority.
Translator - Daniel Shin
Proofreader - ilafy
* * *
The weekend.
SeoHyun, who had just woken up from oversleeping, ate ramen while browsing through the community boards.
People in the community boards were mainly talking about two things.
The first thing was the Count's Quest that had been broadcasted through The Gamez.
Among the topics discussed, there were things related to him and Ain.
Hyun laughed at the comments in the popular threads.
It seemed like most people thought that they were NPCs that had the 'Dark Priest' job.
"I guess they can think that since the skills are unique."
He didn't hate people getting the wrong idea.
Rather than hating it, he liked that the attention wasn't centered on them.
And then the second hot topic…
NFM had announced an update for Asrian for the first time!
Because there hadn't been any announcement for the last three months, people were excited at the news.
<Asrian Content Update!>
- We have good news for everyone that loves Asrian Online! In four days, the story of Asrian officially begins! You'll be able to check the details in the announcements inside the game!
- We're adding the battle arena content today! You'll be able to access it in any mid or large-scale city!
All battle arenas are connected through virtual networks, so you can meet users from other countries!
"So Asrian is going to start for real now..."
To be honest, he felt that Asrian had been a little bit bland up until then.
There hadn't been anything interesting to do except for a few important hidden quests or named monster hunting.
Of course, it wasn't like playing was boring, but compared to the previous game, it was a little bit lackluster in terms of content.
A story that progresses according to the flow of time…
Well-elaborated stories that didn't lack even if compared to real life…
That was the content Hyun had enjoyed the most in Asra and what made him play that game so much.
"The battle arena opened as well."
Ain was probably very excited at that news.
After all, in Asra Online, she used to be stuck to it.
He wasn't particularly interested in duels, so he wasn't very excited about it.
"In four days..."
Once the patch landed, things would get busy.
A lot of content would be added after the patch, so there would be a lot of things he needed to do.
<You have 1 new message!>
Hyun saw he had an unread capsule message when he logged into Asrian.
He had blocked all spam messages, so there was probably only one person who could contact him.
That someone was Ain.
- I don't think I'll be able to log in temporarily. For about two days? Don't level up a lot while I'm not present!
