Chapter 298: Fixing

Hae-won rushed into the cafeteria of the Fanta-See Network main office, wearing her standard attire of baggy sleeveless shirt and sweatpants, with messy hair and flipflops. There were a few other recent hires walking about around her in dresses and suits so that her attire stood out like a sore thumb, yet none of them even bat an eyelash at her appearance.

As she entered the cafeteria, she saw not only Shinji already seated at a table eating quickly, but Tommy sitting across from him. In addition, one side of the table had an empty chair with food and a cup of coffee with steam rising up.

“Thanks.” Hae-won said as she sat in the empty seat and took a sip. Tommy gave her a knowing nod, and the three then went silent as they stuffed their faces as quickly as possible.

“Feng or Seraxus?” Tommy got out of his mouth, the words muffled by the food.

“Dunno.” Hae-won replied, equally muffled. With this response, Tommy turned to Shinji.

“Same.” Shinji shrugged, though he had waited to swallow the food in his mouth before speaking. 

“Really? I’m surprised.”

“Feng’s good.” Hae-won replied.

“You gonna help cast the matches?” Tommy asked.

“Prolly not. Maybe. We’ll see.” 

“VGN’s gonna have some sort of countermeasure. To make sure Seraxus isn’t beaten by Aegis.” Shinji explained his reasoning.

“You think so?” Tommy raised an eyebrow at this, and Shinji nodded as he took another bite of food. “Like what? Seraxus throwing the match?”

“Hah. No way. That kid would never do that.” Hae-won laughed, causing tiny specks of food to fly out of her mouth, but neither Tommy or Shinji reacted to this as if it was a normal occurrence. 

“Dunno. Guess we’ll see.” Shinji replied with another shrug. He took another quick bite of his food and washed it down with coffee, then stood up from the table. “Gotta get back. The time dilation always throws me off and I don’t wanna miss too much.” Shinji explained.

“Right.” Tommy agreed and stood up as well, followed by Hae-won, and the three made their way back to their simboxes to continue their work.

—--------

“To what do we owe this pleasure?” Feng asked curiously. He stood in the arena waiting room alongside his 4 companions, huddled in a circle but all facing the hallway entrance into their room. Having just permitted his entrance, Calikgos stepped inside wearing his Sages of Destiny’s blue tabard which contrasted heavily with the bright red attire of the 5 Vindicator guild members.

“There’s about 5 minutes left before your match starts, so you’ll need to listen closely. I’m sending you all an in-game message with a link to a video clip.” Calikgos replied as he stopped looking directly at Feng in favor of staring with and interacting with his interface in his peripheral vision, poking his finger out at the air in front of his face to hit the buttons.

“A clip of what?” Feng asked curiously.

“When you see it, you’ll understand. It should guarantee your victory in this upcoming match.” Calikgos replied as he finished sending the message and closed out of his interface to look back into Feng’s eyes. As he did, Feng’s party members were already fidgeting with their interfaces to access the clip they’d been sent.

“You think we need your help to win?” Feng looked at him with a hint of hostility. 

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Calikgos shrugged. “We can’t take chances though, now that Synopse’s team is out. You’re the only chance we’ve got left to save face - the only competent streamer I can rely on to follow instructions and get things done properly.”

“Hm…” Feng crossed his arms and eyed Calikgos up and down. “You give this to us, and we beat Seraxus, and that means your guild and Makaroth will drop in popularity. I’ll be the number one streamer from now on. You’re really okay with throwing him under the bus like this?” Feng asked with an inquisitive stare.

“Better than letting that Aegis kid do it. Or worse, having Seraxus leave this tournament with that sword still in-tact.” Calikgos answered him.

“Good point.” Feng shrugged in agreement.

“Watch the clip. With the information on that, you won’t be able to lose.” Calikgos gently patted Feng’s shoulder with a smirk, and Feng smirked back deviously before Calikgos turned and walked out of the waiting room.

—---

The VGN casters were standing atop the raised platform, talking up Feng and Seraxus’ upcoming match as they eyed Serenity and her crew climbing up the stairs to get on stage.

While one caster spoke, the other was preparing to step forward and intercept Serenity, but before he could he received a message in his interface, instructing him to let them preform. He stopped walking towards Serenity, waved the message away, then went back to standing beside his co-caster as he continued to ramble on to the stadium, and millions of viewers currently watching the tournament unfold through the numerous livestreams that had eyes on them. 

“Many people underestimate the Vindicators and call them a simple Zerg guild. Zerg of course being a gaming term from the early days that refer to groups that rely on their numbers as opposed to relying on tactics or skill.” One caster explained.

“That’s simply not true, and it’s been proven time and time again. While of course relying on numbers for certain tasks has its inherent advantages, dismissing Zerg guilds without recognizing their true strength in the gaming world is the real reason why they often come out victorious anytime they set their minds to something.” The second caster explained.

“What is that true strength?” The first caster provided the leading question - and all the while that this conversation was happening, Serenity and her crew were preparing the stage for her next performance. 

“Well, when you put thousands of players into a single group, it creates fierce competition amongst the players within that group. In this case, the Vindicator guild. With so many people fighting to stand out, and so much pressure and so many rivals, it’s incredibly hard for you to stand out. You can’t just be the best player on Lanusk - you have to be the best of the best players on Lanusk in order to reach the top ranks of the Vindicator guild. So, while sure, the low ranking members might not be much more than fodder, but that means the players at the top, like the ones in Feng’s party, are the diamonds that were born from the pressure of being a part of such a fiercely competitive guild.”

“I see, that does make sense. When you’ve got leaders, raiders and PvPers that can reach the top of a guild like Vindicators, you have no choice but to come to the conclusion that those players had a hard road in getting there. And at the very top of this guild we have Feng, who is respected by all of them. Unlike Makaroth, who relegated his top PvP officer to participate in the tournament, Feng has taken it upon himself to enter personally. Therefore we have to assume he has not only the capability to take out Seraxus, but the confidence that he can.” 

As these broadcasters spoke, their words reached the ears of the entire world. Viewers in the stadium, in their Simboxes, and outside, were now all wrapping up their small bathroom and snack breaks for the intermission.

Seats were filled across the globe with viewers and players alike, on the edge of their seats for the upcoming match. Even Aegis’ party was watching intently from inside their waiting room.

“We won’t need to wait any longer though, as the intermission timer is now ending in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1!” 

The second match of the Semifinals will now begin. Each team has 60 seconds to enter the arena before the first match will commence.

As the robotic female voice announced this, two doors on opposing sides of the arena opened up, and a light wave of silence fell over the arena.

“Ladies and gentlemen! I hope you are all enjoying the tournament so far! How is everyone doing?!” Serenity called out using her voice amplification spells. Her words were followed up by excited cheers from all onlookers, and both casters moved to the side to give her room for her performance.

“You all probably know by now that, while it’s important to enjoy the show, we must all work together to stop that sword of Hatred from leaving this arena. Are you guys with me?!” She asked, and she got another wave out loud cheers.

“Alright then. Let’s cheer on Feng, and keep hatred out of our hearts!” She said while pumping her fist into the air excitedly, and simultaneously her drummer, who’d set up in the back, started a beat. 

Serenity followed this up by waving her hands and drawing all of her instruments out of her inventory, causing them to float around her and glow with a light aura of pink magical energy. She, along with her dancers, were dressed slightly more modest than simple bikinis this time, but not by much. Short skirts and very revealing tops were being employed, and Kenji quickly waved his staff from behind her to create gigantic illusionary replications of Serenity and her dancers all around the arena so that they were distractingly visible. 

As she did this, though, the first silhouettes became visible from the doorways leading into the arena. On one side, Seraxus stepped out and slowly walked across the sandy tiled arena floor with his companions smirking and followed closely behind him. 

On the opposite side of the arena came Feng and his four party members looking calm, cool, and collected. The audience roared with cheers, audible even over the sound of Serenity’s music which Feng welcomed as he approached the center of the arena.

It wasn’t long before both parties reached the limit of where they could go before the match started, each walking up against the transparent blue magical walls that kept them separated. Once there, Feng’s group remained calm and stared across the arena at Seraxus’ party, whilst Seraxus’ party started mockingly dancing along with Serenity’s music, imitating her dance moves. Hajax started pretending to rub his own chest over his plate armor, causing the others to laugh while Gambit started twerking towards Zuon with a heavy hint of playful sarcasm, placing one hand over his mouth while he did it.

It was made clear to Feng that they were not in the least bit concerned with him as an opponent, and were instead playfully having fun trying to insult Serenity’s music. Still, Feng kept his cool and took a deep breath, unsheathing his mithral Katana.

“This should be easy. Just stick with the plan, and I will handle Seraxus.” Feng said to his group, and the others replied to him with knowing nods. 

Match begins in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

The moment the blue wall separating the two teams went down, Feng’s party dashed forward with incredible speed, forming a line of five players. Seraxus’ group spread themselves out and watched them approach, drawing their weapons but still looking somewhat lax.

“Ronin: Truestrike.” Feng called out, causing his mithral katana to give off a magical cyan tint. The moment Seraxus saw it, he drew out all of his weapons and got into a fighting stance with his knees, then lunged forward to meet Feng and his party. Feng’s party quickly fanned out wide around Seraxus to avoid him and instead went after his companions who had to quickly correct their composure, leaving Feng to fight Seraxus one on one.

“Who the fuck do you think you are? Hah!” Seraxus shouted mockingly as he saw this one vs one attempt from Feng, then confidently and with incredible speed swung his sword of hatred down at Feng. 

Feng suddenly utilized a skill from his advanced samurai class, Ronin, to shift his form into multiple images. Not echoes, but illusionary copies of himself that momentarily threw off Seraxus as he was unable to locate which copy was the real Feng, which allowed Feng to slip past all of Seraxus’ other battlemaster weapons and slash his cyan blade across Seraxus’ cut.

A red damage number of 6,331 appeared above Seraxus’ name the moment he had taken the hit, and Feng carried his running momentum beyond Seraxus a few meters to get out of range of his other floating weapons before turning around to face Seraxus once more.

Now behind him, Seraxus turned around to see that Feng’s party was focused solely on tying up Hajax and putting pressure on him, with one cleric player healing them from Feng’s side as they did so. Seraxus analyzed the formation quickly and pieced together Feng’s plan.

“You think that if Hajax can’t heal me, you can kill me one on one? Just cause your class has that truestrike bullshit that makes your attacks ignore my armor?” Seraxus asked with a raised eyebrow. Feng didn’t reply, and instead charged at him again. Seraxus was on the defensive, maneuvering his weapons and trying to cut off Feng’s advancement, but Feng created the temporarily illusions again. This time, Seraxus didn’t hold his ground and instead jumped backwards multiple times as more illusions kept spreading from the others, giving the appearance for a moment that 12 different copies of Feng were rushing at him from the front. 

Eventually, Seraxus changed tactics and charged into the illusions, having made himself sure he had figured out which one was the real Feng and slashing out at him with his sword of hatred. It was a fake, however, and the real Feng found an opening during this and slashed out at Seraxus again, dealing another 6,126 damage to him. For the first time in a very, very long time, Seraxus had been dropped below 70% of his maximum health. A hint of fear flashed on his face ever so momentarily as he looked to Hajax and saw that he was having trouble keeping himself and the other members of their party alive. If Hajax tried to stop what he was doing to heal Seraxus, he’d likely die.

Seraxus then took a deep breath to calm down as he watched Feng do the exact same disengaging tactic by running away behind Seraxus a few meters before turning around to face him once more and preparing to charge again.

“Cute strat. I wonder how you came up with that. Avoidin’ the attack range of my weapons and disengagin’ possible counter attacks. Striking one hit at a time patiently only while I am unaware of where your real body is, and disengagin’ the moment you deal damage and reveal your true body.” Seraxus said out loud what everyone in the world was currently witnessing.

“Then your boys just gotta stop Hajax from healin’ me, and a couple more hits gives you the win. That your plan?” Seraxus asked condescendingly. “You forget this aint no one on one match. And this blade’s got lifestealing on it. Didn’tya?” Seraxus smirked as he turned to face Feng’s party members who were currently engaged with Feng’s.

“Duel!” Feng shouted just as Seraxus had taken three steps, causing a large cyan ring to expand outward from Feng’s feet across the floor of the arena. It wasn’t something that could be avoided, and the ring extended far beyond just Feng and Seraxus. In a few seconds it had overtaken the entire arena and imprinted the kanji character for Bushido onto the forehead of both Seraxus and Feng with a faint cyan magical glow. 

With it, a debuff appeared in Seraxus’ interface, which due to his livestream, the whole world could now read so that even those unfamiliar with Feng’s advanced class skills could see what was going on. 

[Ronin Duel]

The first living humanoid creature to enter this circle alongside the caster will be forced into a duel to the death with the caster. All attacks made by either creature participating in the duel can only harm the other duelist. The duel ends only when one of the duelists' health reaches 0.

Source: [Feng - Level 195]

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Aegis, who was watching the match both watching Seraxus’ livestream and looking at the arena monitors in his waiting room, stood up alongside Rakkan with wide eyes. 

“What, what does that mean?” Darkshot asked in confusion as he was watching the match unfold as well.

“Feng has Seraxus movements figured out somehow. So it means, if he keeps this up…” Pyri asked with a look of surprise on her face.

“We’re not going to be facing Seraxus in the finals.” Lina finished for her, as Rakkan and Aegis both remained watching silently with intense stares. 

--------------------------

For the first time in a very long time, Seraxus looked threatened. He halted his charge towards Feng’s companions and turned to face Feng again, who began his charge towards Seraxus once more. Seraxus was done with speaking and carefully analyzed Feng’s movements, trying to get a sense of where the real one was as Feng split into multiple fake illusions once more and rushed at him.

Seraxus responded this time with a strange dancing motion, weaving his floating weapons around himself and sidestepping several illusions until he was sure he’d found the real Feng.

“All I gotta do is hit you once, bitch.” Seraxus snarled as he swung his black blade of hatred out at an illusion, failing to hit the real one. A third time, red damage numbers appeared above Seraxus’ head, taking him to 55% health.

Feng did the same follow through movement and continued charging past him to get out of retaliation range of Seraxus’ weapons as Seraxus spun around and watched him stop a few dozen meters away, preparing to charge once more.

“Your rain of terror in this world ends here. I, Feng, the leader of the Vindicators will put an end to you.” He spoke with a smirk on his face, though his words were directed to his livestreaming audience as he briefly eyed his viewership numbers nearing in the 25 millions as he took the number one spot over Seraxus by a significant margin.

Seraxus didn’t reply, but smirked back confidently as he watched Feng do the same charging attack towards him for a 4th time. 

The illusionary copies fanned out and darted at Seraxus from the front. Seraxus cut off a few of them with his floating weapons, but more and more just formed out of them. Feng was flexing his movement speed to Seraxus, but Seraxus wasn’t having trouble keeping up, it was just that somehow, Feng knew exactly where to hide his real body to avoid Seraxus’ attacks.

As Seraxus realized this, he realized what he had to do to stop this tactic from working. He took a deep breath as the illusions closed in on him, and the moment the true blade of Feng cut into his abdomen, Seraxus acted by quickly swinging his blade of hatred down on where Feng’s real form was.

Feng saw it coming and jumped back to avoid the blade just narrowly, routing his disengagement back away from Seraxus -

“Switch.” Seraxus swapped his sword of hatred in his hand with one of his floating weapons that he’d carefully positioned around Feng to cut him off, as it was already in mid swing. Perfectly timed, there was no way for Feng to avoid the strike, and was instead forced to parry it by raising up his mithral katana.

The sound of ringing metal rang out from the point that the two blades hit each other, and the blade of hatred slid off the end of the mithral katana’s blade.

0 Damage was dealt to Feng as his samurai skill to execute a perfectly time parry was activated, completely negating the damage of the attack as long as the parry is timed perfectly, so that the blade of hatred rolled down towards the ground and pierced into the floor of the arena, erupting from it a blast of black abyssal mist. Unfortunately, though, that was not the only thing that fell down to the ground.

As Feng continued rushing away from Seraxus, and the place where the parry occurred, the bottom half of his Mithral blade had broken off from the parry and fell to the ground.

“Hah. Nice blade.” Seraxus mocked as Feng finished making some distance between him and Seraxus, and turned around to face him once more and see the mithral blade on the ground. He eyed the hilt of his sword where the rest of the broken blade stump was extending out of it, and it looked completely unusable. “So, mithral swords are strong enough to perfect-parry my sword? That’ll get some martial classes excited. Everyone’s gonna start trying to perfectly parry me now. Too bad your sword broke.” Seraxus said mockingly as he started confidently strutting towards Feng, and Feng nervously began backing up.

“Can’t equip another katana in the middle of a match though, eh? So that parry trick is a one time thing.” Seraxus smirked. Feng, however, looked completely lost. His mind was obviously racing, trying to calculate a solution to his current predicament, but Seraxus wasn’t about to give him that time. “Let’s wrap up this duel, shall we?” Seraxus added before lunging at Feng with enthusiasm.

Combatant Feng has been defeated.