“So… any idea about what we can do for the next match, against the Dragon Knights?”
We’re yet another time inside the room the DMA staff gave us for this tournament, planning the next match. This time we’ll have to face the strongest team in the tournament, the one most viewers think will win.
Of course, this isn’t settled in stone and any team might beat them in a stroke of luck... Like us, in our next match. But this doesn’t mean we are that team. Heck, even I don’t think we can make it past this round.
“...”
Laura lowers her head in shame and says nothing. Ah, this is bad! Our strategist is the first one to throw the towel! Though I’m not going to blame her… after seeing Makarel slaughter her way through every match, and her three companions that are good enough by themselves… I can’t think of any way to stop them.
For some odd reason, her name sounds familiar. Makarel, Makarel… It’s as if I’ve heard that name somewhere before. It’s weird, because I’m new to this game, so I shouldn’t know anyone since long ago. And I don’t know any famous player with that name…
I look at Clara. Unlike usual, when she avoids my gaze so that I don’t ‘discover’ she didn’t investigate the other party at all, this time she gazes back at me and raises her tentacle-fist up high, loudly proclaiming.
“I have an idea! And I’m sure it’ll work! We just have to disconnect from the game and punch Marta until she reveals every weakness the Dragon Knights have! This way, we’ll be the ones dominating the game! Hehehe!”
“What the heck are you saying, Clara!” I hold her fist and force her to lower it. “Are you really going to attack our sister for a match inside a game!? Also, how many times do I have to tell you to not use violence!”
“But it’s her fault we’re in this situation! She should pay for her acts! And the time’s now!”
I smack her on the head once. She pouts, but it seems she finally calmed down.
“Owww… Come on, Andreu! It’s her fault we’re now in this situation! Just a little bit…”
She raises her fist once again, swinging it around as if she’s going to smack someone’s face.
“I said no violence!”
“Ok…”
“...It’s true it’s because of her that we are in this situation now, but this doesn’t mean you can beat her.”
Clara looks at me with puppy eyes. She doesn’t want to let Marta go, doesn’t she? I sigh.
“...If you still want to try it, you can go and ask her to betray her comrades to help us. Maybe if you do it with your puppy eyes and appeal to her properly she’ll help us… But no violence!”
“Yay! You’ll see, Andreu! I’ll ask her nicely and make sure she tells me everything! Hehehe!”
“Yes, yes… good luck there, Clara.”
And good luck to you too, Marta. You’re going to need it.
Though I don’t expect anything from this at all… It isn’t like I don’t believe in Clara but that I know Marta too well.
If it were only Marta’s comrades who are affected, or if Clara was the only one fighting against the Dragon Knights, she might tell Clara everything. But this time I’m there too… plus it isn’t Marta’s comrades, but a team she spent lots of effort and time training. I’m sure she wants them to win, and there’s no way she’s going to help us in this situation.
Well, who knows? You can never say never. Maybe it’s a miracle and it works.
I look one last time at Laura, just in case she came up with something, but it doesn’t look like it’s the case. Then, as usual, I’ll leave Ricard for the end... It’s now my turn.
“I do have some idea if you can call what I have in my mind as an ‘idea’, that is…”
I start talking, and both Laura and Ricard immediately change their gloomy expressions for a mix of interest and suspicion.
It’s normal for them to react like this because my ideas tend to be a little bit crazy and unexpected. They might work and win us the game, or fail and put us in a dire situation.
But this idea… isn’t going to be any different from usual.
“So, you know I have the Grand Finale skill, and the enemies shouldn’t know that I have it… unless they somehow learned about it in the last game…?”
I turn to look at Ricard but he shakes his head in denial.
If not even he could identify the Grand Finale skill, which I used to survive the light beam from the giant machine, even knowing about it beforehand, nobody should be able to identify it.
If I’m confident about one thing regarding Ricard, it’s his geekiness.
“There was something weird at the end because the visual effects from your light explosion and the original Doom Ray merged together… but it’s impossible to identify what skill you used only with this. Some naive viewers might even think it’s just the same Doom Ray as the other times. But not even experts like myself can be sure of what happened at that time, just that you survived so you must have a skill that gives invulnerability… maybe like the God’s Intervention one, or other skills like…”
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
I resume my explanation, interrupting him.
It was a nice explanation, but you were going to deviate from the original question, Ricard… Why can’t you stop talking about game stuff when you start, instead of telling only the relevant stuff?
“...so… maybe we can force them into a direct fight, especially Makarel. Then I’ll blast everything with my Grand Finale skill, possibly killing everyone in close proximity. Even if I only manage to hit one of them, as long as this one is Makarel, you three might be able to win the game against the remaining enemies!”
“Hmm… I see what you mean…” Laura puts her hand on her chin as she thinks about my idea. “But if it fails, it won’t be possible to make a comeback. But it might be our only chance… Maybe we can plan a strategy around this…”
“Then I’ll leave it to you, Laura. I’m sure you can make a better plan than me. The only thing that remains now is knowing as much as possible about our opponents…”
I turn my head to look at Ricard, who’s practically jumping in excitement because he knows it’s now his turn. He’s both the one in charge of the game knowledge and the one who investigates the enemies in detail. An indispensable person for the team. If only he could get to the point…
But before he can start, it’s Clara the first one to react.
“Yes! And I just have to force Marta into spilling everything!” Says Clara, pressing her right fist against her left palm.
“Clara, didn’t we talk about this already!?”
“Yes, yes… I won’t use violence! I promise!”
…can I really trust her…? Well, if she does use violence, I’ll look the other way and feign ignorance. I’m sorry, Marta, but the self-preservation instinct is kicking in.
I nod at Ricard to show him he can start.
“I like that you proposed that idea because after analyzing everything the Dragon Knights did in the previous matches, I came up with a similar one. The thing is that while all their members are good, the only one who’s a monster is Makarel. The other three… not so much.”
Is that so? I was so focussed on watching Makarel during the replays that I didn’t look at the others and assumed they had a similar level. Not as good as her, but better than anyone else.
“With this I mean they’re on a similar level to the best players and teams in this tournament, like the players from the Sword&Sorcery team. Drago is very good at melee combat, I hate to admit it, but better than me. Fredloq might be the best archer in this tournament when it comes to aiming his attacks. He lacks in evasion, but it doesn’t matter if you can’t get close because you’re already dead before you can do so. And Nanawa is incredibly good at destroying enemy formations and strategies. He and his assassin squad are capable of disabling the most dangerous units from the enemy team before they can do what they’re supposed to do, like what happened with the mage squad in their fight against the Knights of the Round Table…”
He scratches his head as he recalls that match.
I must admit it was incredible how the Dragon Knights managed to settle the game unilaterally, in the offensive, and with more than half the allotted time remaining.
“But if we exclude Makarel, they aren’t as good as other teams because they lack both leadership and adaptability. They rely too much on her. If I had to put them in comparison, the Sword&Sorcery team Laura likes so much is a lot better than them. I’ll say it once again because this is very important… this is ONLY if we exclude Makarel.”
He nods sagely at his own words.
“You see… as the DMA expert I consider myself, I’ve seen quite a lot of games and players… and I can only compare Makarel to those monsters at the top of the PvP leaderboards. Those players are unbelievably good at combat, capable of predicting and avoiding most attacks, while at the same time, they can anticipate most of what you’re going to do even before the match starts. And they have the capacity to adapt and change strategies on the fly, something you only get after thousands of games…
It’s as if a pro player created a smurf account just to mess with the noobs… But it’s weird because none of them would waste their time like this. If they had the free time to participate in the tournament, they would do so in the maximum player level, level 20, to display their skill against other high-ranking players and grow their fame. After all, there’s a reason why the most watched tournament is always the level 20 one.”
After a long speech, he finally pauses for a while and looks at me once again. For a moment, I thought he was going to die… I didn’t see him breathing in the middle of it…
“That’s why, if your idea works and we can somehow get rid of Makarel… we’ll have a chance at fighting them. But there’s one thing we must keep in mind all the time: if she’s really the same as those players in the high rankings, she should expect something like this coming. So we not only need to make a plan to kill her but also plan how to do it before she realizes she’s the one being targeted.”
“Yes… something to make her believe it’s going as usual and then surprise her with your Grand Finale skill. Maybe we can use what you showed in the previous match to our advantage. If they know you’re supposed to have an invincibility skill, we might be able to bait her with it…”
“Bait her into a trap… I like it! Hahaha!”
I like everything that has to do with traps.
Especially if they are random or unpredictable in some way. And even more, if they lead to the enemy’s destruction: either mental pain, where the player themselves despair; or actual game pain, where the champion dies, are good…
The best are the ones that inflict both, like The Tunnels’ Nightmare or falling into the underground river or water channels in the Minitaur Queen room.
We continue planning everything until we have a solid plan for the next match. Well, a plan as solid as a plan revolving around ‘suicide bombing’ can be.
“If we lose this match, there won’t be anybody who’ll criticize us. After all, we’re against the favorite team. But we’re going to do our best. Maybe you forgot, but we’re already in the quarter-finals! If we beat the Dragon Knights, we’ll be only two steps away from being the champions! And it’s no shame losing in the quarter-finals!”
Laura encourages everyone, we were all making gloomy expressions once again... We now have a plan, but this doesn’t mean we have high expectations for it to work.
“Now that you say it… I never thought I could reach so far when I didn’t have anyone to play with two months ago…” Says Ricard, the oldest player present. “I must say, it was a pleasure playing with you all. If we lose, it’s ok. This is the first tournament I’ve seen with so many good players in the player level 5. It’s impossible to be always the best.”
“Yeah… if this is going to be our last match, let’s leave a good impression on everyone! Let’s say goodbye with a Big Bang! Hahaha! You got the joke, right!?”
“Don’t worry, Andreu! I’ll make sure to force Marta into spilling the beans! And then we can improve our plans so that we’re sure to win! Hehehe!”
Didn’t you forget about this already? Why are you returning to it once again, Clara!?
Like this, we prepare ourselves to face the hardest enemy team we’ve encountered yet: the Dragon Knights, and the unstoppable Makarel.
Please, wish us good luck…
[https://i.imgur.com/ZGSK4Pl.png]
By this point in time, both The League of Evil and the Dragon Knights were quite well known because there were only a few teams remaining. And after their match against All Shall Despair, which went viral because of the sheer craziness contained in it, their match against the audience’s favorite team was the one most people were waiting for.
A match that would bring a big surprise to everyone: both the viewers and participants.