Chương 120: B2 Chapter 27 - Can’t Catch A Break

I ended up playing Art Of Steel for much longer than the duration of my death-timeout. The game was surprisingly fun, which I didn't expect from a game that lacked [Shadow Dash]. It helped that almost every opponent laughed when seeing my combo of weapons, calling it a troll pick, only to get a dagger in their hearts in under a minute every time. Needless to say, I won all five placement games to get my rank. The game placed me straight to Gold Novice.

Silver and Gold were the average ranks of the game, where most non-professionals ended up in. The quality of opponents here varied a lot. The serious players weren't yet good enough to give me any meaningful practice, while some of my opponents were clearly taking the game lightly, just trying it out for fun. One guy even tried to sit down and make friends with me in the arena. I killed him for his skill points, advancing my rank, and moved to the next fight.

For now, my goal was to win enough games to get into Diamond Expert or Master Elite. That was the range where I'd be fighting experienced swordsmen and spear users. Diamond should be the skill range where I'd actually start improving as a fighter instead of just dominating noobs. I did learn a few things even against low ranked players, though.

Namely, I wanted to know whether a sickle would actually be a viable weapon to learn, or if I should just scrap the idea entirely and sell The Sickle Of The Soul Harvester in Wonderwind. When used offensively, the sickle was quite garbage. Its range was short, and the curved blade made it hard to thrust compared to the sharp tip of a dagger It offered a lot of utility, though. The sickle worked almost like a disruptor to disable an opponent's blade directly.

My dagger on my other hand could then be used to finish an opponent off. I quite liked the style for realistic combat. In Wonderwind, though… My sickle was my damage source. It had a lot of attack force, and its effect procced when hitting enemies. Using it for utility would be like buying a supercar just to drive it to Ender's Game a couple times a year. My build definitely needs some changes, was the conclusion either way. The auction had been a bit dry lately. Maybe I could contact FireBrand again.

Overall, my first five hours spent in Art Of Steel were a success. I won fifty-eight matches and lost one. That one happened due to a bit of an embarrassing mistake. I tried to land a perfect block against a greatsword user. In a realistic fighting simulator, my wrist slid inward from the weight of the greatsword, which understandably crushed me to death. Figures. Still, fifty eight wins were enough to bring my rank firmly to the upper half of Platinum Adept.

I'd only need a dozen or so more wins to reach my first goal of Diamond Expert. Satisfied with that for the day, I logged out of VR. I stretched, feeling decently refreshed, but hungry. The good type of hungry one felt after completing a day of hard work. Even better, when I opened my phone, I saw I'd gotten three messages from Veyra. Veyra:" Wait, you're playing Steel? hahaha" Veyra:" Btw, the forums are a mess right now. I would stay away for a bit if I was you."

Veyra:" Wonderwind community trying not to be idiotic for 5 seconds challenge: impossible xD. They'll forget all the nonsense after 1 good play. I wouldn't worry." What now? I thought. Assassin:" New Drama?" Veyra was offline and didn't respond immediately. She usually took at least ten minutes or so to open messages. Sometimes more. With a sigh, I opened the forums. I scrolled for around five seconds, until just under the front page, I found the post Veyra was probably talking about.

The title read, " Assassin A versus Dragrath in the Caverns Of Creation wilderness." Oh for fuck's sake, I thought. Who recorded this? Dragrath himself wasn't known for posting anything online. His account on the forums famously had zero comments. The video was instead recorded from the sidelines, from the entrance to the Summoner's boss arena, by a third party. Hibana and SwordShiba were dead by the time the video started, but the recording captured the full duel between me and Dragrath.

It also showed Veyra getting chased down after I died. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. The poster of the video was VeilShot. The fifth god, and the best archer in the game. The hell? I thought, genuinely surprised. Since when had he been stalking us? The caption on the post read, " I captured this gem on a stroll out in the city. Make of it what you will lol. Solo Mage seems a bit overhyped to me. I won't be losing god status against these guys."

By AwningDawn, 3, 984, 274 upvotes: " Holy shit, A got destroyed. That wasn't even close." Reply By GodlikeFred, 2, 491, 480 upvotes: " To be fair, nothing looks close against Dragrath. But yeah, I had expected more after Solo Mage's Worlds run. Maybe A was caught off guard? He's fighting with different gear." Reply By Mountainz, 2, 679, 501 upvotes: " A just looks scared imo. He got outplayed from the very first exchange and didn't even try to do anything back. It's like he's just hoping god will save him lol.

His dashes are awesome, but if those are taken from him, he's clearly worse than Dragrath. Veyra did much better here. Shame her ally died too fast." Goddammit… I thought with a sigh. Sadly, the last comment was entirely right. I had been scared of Dragrath. I was worse than him. It had been a shame I couldn't protect Veyra. I felt my mood drop with every comment I skimmed.

I was about to just put my phone down, reading shit like, " I was wondering if A could replace one of the gods, but I guess not," until a comment caught my eye. By Rowlanius, 431, 958 upvotes: " He seems to also be losing in Art Of Steel. Maybe he's not that good? I guess switching to a sickle could be harming him as well. The nerfs to his weapons seem to have hit especially hard I guess." I blinked. How was I losing in Art Of Steel? Someone else had also asked the same thing.

Reply By LiazoGames, 349, 254 upvotes: " Steel? What do you mean? Is he playing that?" Reply By Rowlanius, 581, 644 upvotes: " Someone made a post earlier today. Link here: I just beat Assassin A in Art Of Steel!" I clicked that. To my fears, that post was exactly what I thought it was. Out of all fifty-nine matches I played today, the one fucker that had gotten a lucky win against me made a post about it directly on Wonderwind's forums. He posted a recording from a bird's spectator view.

The comments were what one could expect from this beautiful bunch of internet trolls. By LarryTheLegend, 291, 477 upvotes: " Did A just try to land a perfect block LMAO" Reply By Makuz2, 201, 428 upvotes: " He did land it to be fair lol. Kinda doesn't work in Steel though." Reply By ErrinlolsWife2, 345, 791 upvotes: " Dragrath beat him so hard he switched games or what?" By 1337Boomer, 523, 675 upvotes: " I just checked his account. He created it today and played 59 games with a winrate of 98. 3%.

He literally lost one game. It also looks to me like he was dominating OP. He just didn't know perfect blocks weren't a thing in this game lol. Let's not pretend Assassin is suddenly a noob for losing against Dragrath, who's literally the best player in the game. Idiots here are clowning on him for losing one match out of 59. Not to mention, all of the 58 wins were with a dagger and sickle, which are considered troll weapons."

Reply By PlatedInSteel (Original Poster), 693, 127 upvotes: " Yeah, Assassin was absolutely toying with me. Top players are in a whole different league. You'll only understand it if you actually face them. The sheer speed just isn't captured on camera. I would have absolutely lost in a second if he just killed me right away. Even my final swing was pretty much blind. Imagine my surprise when he actually died lol." Well, that was something at least. Not everyone was an idiot. I decided to write a comment of my own.

Reply By Assassin, 1 upvote: " ggwp, congrats on the win" I then wrote to Veyra. Assassin:" I need five minutes alone with this Veilshot guy, I swear lmao" Veyra:" XD" Veyra:" He's also pretty good though. Just don't lose to him, or our reputation is cooked." Assassin:" I'll quit if I lose to him" Assassin:" Anyway, I'll be on a short training arc. Steel feels like a pretty good place to practice. I'm pretty close to Diamond now, which should be in the top 10% of players." Veyra:": o after just 1 day?"

Assassin:" Yeah, I played for 5 hours lol. I'm hoping the fights get more challenging soon." Veyra:" Aiden Miller versus Julius Fischer when? >. >" Assassin:" Aint no way hahaha, I'd be surprised if I even find anyone close to him on the ladder. I'm interested to see how he compares to Dragrath, though." Veyra:" Lmk if you meet him on the ladder xD, can't blame you if you lose" A smile quickly replaced the bad mood as I read the message. Veyra certainly viewed me highly.

That felt infinitely better than all of the hate on the forums combined. That said, I doubted I was any match at all for the literal best fighter of modern times. Even reaching a rank high enough for the matchmaking system to deem me worthy of queuing up against Julius Fischer would be a massive achievement. I'd need to reach the top one hundred leaderboard in Steel as well just for a chance to fight the top players. I wasn't sure if that was possible.

Probably not if I fought with my weapon combo of a sickle and dagger, which was very much off-meta in real world combat. Regardless, I sent Veyra a meme with the caption, " Nah, I'd win." She sent a laughing emoji and wished me luck. With that, I closed the forums and tossed my phone aside to go cook cup noodles and perform my daily push-ups. I could do twenty of them now fairly reliably, sometimes a few less if I'd spent too much in a pod. I'd have a few more days to practice and work on my build.

After that, I could finally fly to Thailand.