Chapter 1: World Champion
"Anyone alive?"
A quiet undertone of static answered Itsuki through his headphones. If he looked to his left and right, he figured he'd see his teammates slumped back in their gaming chairs, their bright white uniforms sinking into the black leather under the weight of their failure.
Itsuki kept his eyes glued to his computer, at the silver-clad knight occupying the center of his screen. His eyes meandered to his health bar, now a sliver of blinking red to the lower left. Below it stood his Spirit bar: a healthy blue strip that remained unexhausted.
Good. If a mage relied on mana for spells, then a warrior needed spirit to use skills and abilities. As long as he had spirit, he could use his skills to block and negate damage. The only issue was – all of his abilities were on cooldown.
The clatter of greaves on marble put Itsuki's senses on alert. His knight stepped back, almost appearing to size up the opponent that stepped forwards.
A warrior. Leather-clad. Dual-wielding scimitars.
Fast. Quick. Deadly.
Itsuki grinned, a nervous quiver nagging at his upper lip. This had started out as a 6 vs 6 arena match, but it looked like things had narrowed down to a duel.
Quite fitting for the final match of the season and the grand finale of the fifth season of competitive Volsunga, the world's premier MMORPG that focused heavily on exciting, tense PvP combat. Itsuki held his breath, his fingers tensed over his keyboard and mouse.
He'd won the past two seasons. He'd win this one too.
But –
The agile warrior closed in, disappearing under a sudden gust of sand that concealed his figure. Itsuki narrowed his eyes and reacted, his fingers clattering on the keyboard. The sandstorm moved forwards, surrounding the knight and clouding Itsuki's screen. The warrior moved about in that sandstorm, hidden and ready for that one precious attack that would strip away what little health Itsuki had.
His knight raised his iron greatshield and hunkered behind it. Behind that impenetrable wall of metal, there wouldn't be any chance for a frontal attack. The warrior would have to strike from the sides or the back, and Itsuki kept his fingers hovered over the familiar keys for parrying.
The instant he'd see a sign – a flash of light in the sandstorm or a low beep that indicated incoming danger – he'd react, parry the attack, and counter. The warrior might have had more health than him, but without any heavy armor, a single solid counter strike would seal the deal for this fight.
Itsuki widened his eyes, his glasses slipping a little on his sweat slicked nose. The sandstorm died down, and the warrior held both scimitars up right in front of him, great vortexes of red energy swirling around them. He swallowed down his panic and tried to assess the situation.
The warrior was preparing a top level skill – learned only at level 100 – called [Bhargavastra]. A series of twenty-five continuous strikes that dealt damage through shields, ignored armor, and hurt like hell. Itsuki hadn't expected the warrior to have kept such a powerful, high-cooldown skill up to this point – flashy moves like those were a great way to tell an enemy mage to prepare a disabling spell, so they were only useful when a supporting mage could cast some form of buff or debuff immunity.
The fact that this warrior saved this skill until now meant that from the start, he'd wanted to end this in a one on one.
What better way to truly cement victory over Itsuki, the two-time world champion? It didn't get any flashier than this.
Itsuki grinned. He could feel the blood pumping through his veins, the adrenaline pushing his mind to its limits in a breathtaking rush. His shield was useless here, his top-class armor didn't mean anything, and he didn't have enough time to kill the warrior before the [Bhargavastra] would set into motion.
With a tap on the keyboard, Itsuki's knight dropped his shield. It clattered on the marble ground before disappearing.
The audience, a sea of bodies packed into a stadium, edged forward on their seats in excitement and broke out into a collective murmur. Itsuki's knight was a paladin – a balanced mix of offense, defense, and supportive healing. Even if the warrior's attacks would cleave through the shield, it still gave his paladin some minor passives such as health regeneration. In a situation like this, any little sliver of health would mean the difference between managing to get off a heal or not.
Itsuki knew the truth of his situation though. Healing wouldn't matter here. He couldn't heal enough to negate all of the incoming damage. Itsuki's paladin grabbed his golden broadsword with two hands, facing the red-wreathed warrior.
There was only one way to truly win this.
Parrying.
As a game, Volsunga prided itself with its immense difficulty, and the parry system played a huge role in cementing that reputation. With perfect reactions, a player could parry an enemy's attack, negating all damage and granting the player who parried a boost of energy to perform a strong counter attack. However, this truly had to be perfect. If a player parried even a single frame off, that one tenth of a second meant that some damage would chip through the parry – and Itsuki's couldn't afford to take even a single point of damage.
The warrior lunged forward, twisting his body, sending his two scimitars swinging.
Itsuki held his breath and let his instincts take over.
The clash of metal.
One perfect parry.
Giving Itsuki less than half a second to react, the warrior continued its combo move, swinging again like a red cyclone of bloody steel.
Another clang, another parry.
The crowd started to realize what was going on, and a huge collective gasp settled over the stadium.
As the parries continued, the crowd started shouting. A slow cheer at first, a little hesitant to believe that Itsuki could parry twenty-five attacks with frame-by-frame accuracy – a feat that seemed humanly impossible. But when those parries racked up, first to ten, then to twenty, the cheers shook the stadium.
Itsuki couldn't hear them. He kept his entire body focused on this single moment. He did not blink, did not twitch his fingers, did not even breathe – all unnecessary movements ceased. He turned into a machine made for this game.
Twenty-five parries, and an explosive cheer from the crowd. An announcer screamed at the top of his lungs.
Itsuki finally breathed in, looking at the warrior standing still in front of him. The warrior had reached 0 spirit from that exhausting attack, meaning he could not attack or defend for a few seconds.
More than enough.
Itsuki's paladin raised his sword overhead, charging it with a max spirit holy infusion that would kill the warrior two times over. When that sword came down, more cheers from the crowd came up, and he sighed, the tension easing from his body.
He felt like he could ride those cheers straight to heaven.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone