54. League of Spirit (3)
[You will soon be moved to the battlefield “Rain-Soaked Ruins.”]
The notification unique to Stella Dome hummed in their ears, and in an instant, they were transported into a ruined battlefield.
Flash!
When they blinked, ruins stretched out before them.
A Control Tower stood tall, wildly out of place amid the wreckage, and in front of it a row of small Guardian Towers had been lined up.
“Oh, so this is the battlefield.”
“It doesn’t really feel that different from Stella Dome’s illusionary practice.”
Eizel poked at the ground a few times, then reached toward her waist.
It was an unconscious habit—she had been about to pull out her staff.
But there was nothing there.
“Ah.”
Only then did she belatedly realize that all weapons had to be purchased from the shop once inside the battlefield.
“You can open the shop from the Control Tower. At the start, each person gets 1,500 mana, and the standard is to buy a staff and a mana stone.”
Naturally, both a weapon for casting spells and mana itself were essential.
After checking that everyone had uniformly bought either a wand or staff along with a mana stone, Flame continued.
“You probably know this from the strategy book, but buying items like robes and boots is just as important as upgrading your staff.”
She had already memorized all the item types, but she still did not know which items were best in which situations.
Because she had no actual match experience.
“Now we have to choose spells. It’s best to pick only one high-power spell. People basically refer to it as your ‘ultimate,’ because the stronger the spell, the more ridiculously long the cooldown becomes, to the point that you can’t use it multiple times.”
“So you’re saying we should dedicate one slot to a spell that can change the tide of the battle, even if it can only be used once in a fight?”
When Hae Wonryang asked, Flame nodded.
“Exactly. Well, sometimes teams take two or three depending on strategy, but that’s rare. It’s inefficient. Once everyone’s chosen their spells, there’s a second spell you absolutely have to take.”
“…You mean Shield, right?”
The usable spells were predefined.
Since it said “all spells,” Shield was naturally included too.
And right there, the first problem appeared.
“Ahjussi, what about you? What are you going to do?”
“What do you mean, what am I going to do?”
Baek Yuseol showed Flame his spell registration slots.
A single spell.
Blink.
That was all.
“Mmm… are you really going to be okay without Shield? It’s one of the mandatory picks. There are even matches where that one spell alone decides victory or defeat.”
“Well, I’ll just have to do my best not to get hit.”
Without even the basic Shield spell, if you were exposed to magic, there was a real risk of being deleted instantly.
The one fortunate thing was that there were items with long cooldowns that could protect your body from enemy attacks, and every robe upgrade also increased your base defense a little.
Still, the fact that he had to invest more into defense than anyone else was already a penalty in itself.
He was an extreme attack-type dealer, yet he had to spend resources meant for offense on defense instead.
No matter how much Flame wanted to reassure herself with “it’s Baek Yuseol, so it’ll be fine,” his expression still looked undeniably uneasy.
He himself did not seem confident in his own performance.
“And on top of that, he can’t even use Blink however he wants inside the arena…”
In reality, he had used Blink practically without limit—but here in the arena, fairness required that it consume a set amount of mana.
And beyond that, he was an offensive dealer who did not even have a single attack spell capable of instantly suppressing the enemy.
No matter how talented Baek Yuseol was, the penalties stacked against him inside the arena were simply too severe.
“Come to think of it…”
Flame suddenly felt foolish for how confident she had been about winning.
All the countless conditions that allowed them to display incredible power in reality were useless here.
“So that’s why.”
There had been a reason Ga Yurin, who would definitely know the reputations of Ma Yuseong, Baek Yuseol, and Hae Wonryang, had picked a fight with Flame.
No matter how overwhelmingly strong they were in reality, inside the arena the team trained specifically in managing limited resources—Ga Yurin’s team—would obviously be the more skilled one.
“Ahjussi. Are you really okay?”
“Yeah. It’s fine. Let’s just play a practice match or something first. I need to get a feel for it too.”
Using her captain’s authority, Flame adjusted the arena system settings and summoned AI players onto the opposing side.
Though the AI would not demonstrate performance above a certain level, it would still be more than threatening enough for complete beginners.
“I’ll set the AI difficulty to Level 1. We’re basically blank slates who don’t know anything yet.”
And then Ma Yuseong abruptly said,
“There’s a higher difficulty than that? Can’t we just do the hardest one?”
“I get why that sounds interesting to you, but that’s impossible. Stella’s highest difficulty is hard even for pro players.”
“The higher the difficulty, the more the AI gets stat bonuses on mana and items. The spells are terrifying too—set by Stella Dome’s system with ninety-percent accuracy—and their reaction speed is like a ghost’s. But more than that, you can’t even beat them in growth.”
“Ahh…”
“Now do you get it? So we…”
At that point, Flame noticed something odd in the atmosphere.
Baek Yuseol, Ma Yuseong, and even Hae Wonryang and Eizel were all staring with sparkling eyes.
“You absolute lunatics…”
In the end, Flame had no choice but to move her finger away from [Level 1], which she had been hovering over, all the way to the far right where [Level 12] stood.
“Ugh. If we get torn apart without doing anything, don’t blame me.”
Tap!
[AI difficulty Level 12 has appeared in the Red Team’s side.]
[1 minute until match start.]
[Good luck.]
LIOS matches, nicknamed Stella’s internal war, boasted a long and deeply rooted tradition, so they were highly popular even among outsiders.
Since it was one of the most popular sports in the entire world, long before Stella began investing seriously in raising players, outside experts had already been visiting Stella frequently.
They did so in order to recruit young but talented players into their own teams as early as possible.
Magic warrior cadets absolutely had to graduate from school before they could become official magic warriors—
but LIOS players could quit school and start competing whenever they liked.
Especially this year, a large number of promising talents had entered the first year, and on top of that, some of the most talked-about genius magic warriors were participating in the competition. There was no way pro team owners, coaches, directors, and players would not be interested.
“Tch. Arrogant little bastards. Disgusting.”
One young professional player clicked his tongue and shook his head.
“There are always punks like that, then and now.”
The countless people in the staff viewing seats who were watching the practicing students through dozens of monitors instantly understood exactly whom that player was talking about.
“He’s talking about Team Flame.”
“Tch. Makes sense.”
LIOS was unmistakably a sport, and since it did not involve fighting with one’s life on the line, magic warriors often looked down on it.
But even if it was a sport, did those kids have any idea that within it, fierce wars and desperate battles that could never be lost took place every single day?
LIOS demanded the ability to handle strategy and tactics at least as much as real combat, perhaps even more.
And every single year, there were always promising magic warriors who knew nothing of that and barged into LIOS anyway.
“I understand those kids are impressive, but… aren’t they taking LIOS too lightly?”
“They’re acting like that because they are taking it lightly.”
Countless teams were already playing practice matches across their own battlefields, but Team Flame stood out in a strange way.
They looked as if they had only just arrived on the battlefield for the first time, standing around gaping blankly. They had to listen to explanations from their captain about what items to buy. It was obvious they knew absolutely nothing about the game.
“They’re looking down on LIOS far too much.”
The very fact that they had boldly submitted an application for Stella’s internal LIOS tournament despite having no match experience at all already came off as incredibly arrogant.
While the pro players simmered with irritation, the club officials who had come to scout young players simply shook their heads.
“That look of theirs is hopeless.”
“Tch. I had high expectations since they said they were geniuses among geniuses, but to think this is all they prepared. A little disappointing.”
And then the next scene was enough that even the pros could not hold back their mocking laughter.
[AI difficulty Level 12 has appeared in the Red Team’s side.]
Their practice opponent was AI. The kind only absolute beginners, people who knew literally nothing, ever chose.
And yet the difficulty setting was bizarre.
“Looks like they don’t even understand difficulty properly.”
“Level 12 AI is hard to handle at all unless you’re at least a high-rank amateur.”
“To begin with, it starts with overwhelming equipment advantages, so there’s nothing you can do.”
“And the way it uses its limited spell slots is on another level too.”
Those cadets called geniuses would probably be brought to despair in no time.
All their lives, they had been praised as geniuses because of their varied magic, diverse attributes, and massive mana reserves—but inside a LIOS arena, things would be completely different.
“What spells did they choose?”
Only seven spells could be selected.
One of those had to be Shield as a matter of course, and in the case of the Knight position, you even had to bring along a Power Jump-type spell, limiting your options even further.
“Hm?”
But when the officials saw the spells chosen by the five boys and girls, they could not help feeling disappointed.
They had expected inherited Full Moon Tower spells or unique bloodline magic—
but the spells they chose were all extremely ordinary.
Bloodline and inherited spells had such enormous mana consumption that they often felt wasteful to use up one whole spell slot on, but they also had the potential to instantly flip a battlefield—
so the choice these students had made was difficult to understand.
“The only unusual ones are… that girl who looks about middle-school age and Baek Yuseol, is it?”
“That’s Flame, Director.”
“Ah, right. I’ve heard of her. They said she uses angelic magic?”
“Yes. They say she can use all the magic of other races—elves, dwarves, beastfolk, and so on.”
But what did those remarkable strengths matter?
The number of usable spells was limited, after all.
Even so, Flame’s spell slots were filled with unusual spells the officials had never seen before, so they observed her choices with curious eyes.
“And this guy Baek Yuseol… he really only brought one spell?”
“Either guts or stupidity.”
“Rumor has it he has personal circumstances and can only use Blink.”
“What do I care about that? I don’t know how he performs in reality, but he’s completely useless for LIOS.”
He had taken Blink, a spell devoted purely to mobility, and not a single attack spell to provide killing power—
so inside LIOS, Baek Yuseol was nothing more than dead weight.
“He’d be better off not being there at all. If he dies, he just gives mana to the enemy team.”
“That’s true too. Hah.”
Because they knew how famous Baek Yuseol was, the pro players focused all their attention on the screen, looking forward to seeing him taste humiliation in LIOS.
By now, the other matches had long since vanished from their view.
“They’re finally moving. Took long enough.”
A LIOS match fundamentally began with five players spreading out across three lanes, clearing the enemy monsters pushing in while protecting their towers.
You did not necessarily have to kill the monsters yourself from the beginning.
Since your tower would fire long-range shots, you could also collect mana by landing the final hit on a monster whose HP had already dropped from tower damage.
That was even more correct in the early game, when mana was still extremely scarce…
“Pffft.”
“What is he doing?”
“The reputation of ‘genius’ must be weeping.”
The one standing in the central lane—the player who had the biggest influence on the team’s morale and the outcome itself—Ma Yuseong, began by doing something idiotic.
He started recklessly spamming spells against the mini monsters.
From the start, the number of available spells was tiny, and the sight of him firing them off wildly every time a cooldown ended was so perfectly beginner-like that it was laughable.
“…Huh?”
In the end, Ma Yuseong did kill all the mini monsters and gain resources, but his mana drained rapidly, leaving him unable to attack the next wave advancing afterward, forcing him to retreat.
As a result, he effectively donated all those monsters to the allied tower and started the match at a disadvantage in resources.
“He’s probably too used to having vast mana reserves.”
The other lanes were in slightly better shape.
Flame, the girl in the upper lane, seemed to use her magic aggressively while still wisely taking advantage of the tower, while Hae Wonryang and Eizel in the lower lane quickly grasped the basics and conserved their mana.
Meanwhile, what was Baek Yuseol doing in the alley route?
The Rain-Soaked Ruins map had several winding alleyways like a maze, and monsters created from the players’ invested mana roamed those spaces.
Baek Yuseol had not invested a single drop of mana, and Hae Wonryang did not have much to begin with, but because Ma Yuseong, Flame, and Eizel all had excellent mana volumes, the alley monsters roaming around exceeded the average level.
“Hm? That little brat looks like he’s played a few matches before.”
Alley monsters were quite troublesome to deal with early on. Their attack power stung more than one might expect, and their defense was high too.
And yet Baek Yuseol skillfully dodged each and every attack, allowing not a single hit to land on him as he succeeded in taking them down.
If he had never played before, it was the kind of feat that should have been impossible.
“No. It’s his first time. Didn’t you see him registering his spell slots earlier? Spell registration is proof it’s his first match. Replacing spells would’ve been one thing, but that was clearly first-time setup.”
“Hm…”
Around then, the players and club officials alike all began to think that those boys and girls were rather strange—
and that intuition proved correct.
Those beginners, who had looked like blind people stumbling around without even grasping the rules, suddenly began moving actively.
They killed mini monsters with efficient routes and efficient spell use, and even showed aggression in trying to shove the enemy back right as the next wave of mini monsters spawned.
Their rate of growth was absurdly steep.
[Blue Team Death!]
But that was as far as it went.
The Level 12 AI was no joke.
Starting from the very beginning, the AI appeared loaded down with high-performance items and pressed Team Flame by already wielding four or more spells.
Team Flame, still lacking both resources and item buildup, and with only a small number of usable spells, could not help being pushed back by an overwhelming gap.
A continuous chain of deaths for Team Flame.
A widening growth gap and collapsing towers.
There was nothing more to see.
It was a complete rout.
“And in the end, that’s how it goes.”
“More anticlimactic than I expected.”
“If they’d started from Level 1 AI and worked their way up, we could at least have gauged their skill progression. But no—drunk on their own pride, they ruined themselves from the start.”
“Hah, maybe it’s for the best. Their pride’s probably been crushed flat. Maybe now they realize just how powerless they are on a LIOS battlefield.”
One by one, the officials began turning their amused gazes toward other matches—
but strangely, the active pro players or former players could not tear their eyes away from Team Flame’s game.
Even though Team Flame was losing in total, complete fashion.
“Hey, why are you still watching that match? To enjoy the sight of them falling apart to the bitter end?”
“No, not exactly…”
The player pointed with a finger at Ma Yuseong’s personal monitor.
“Look at that.”
“What? He’s getting completely wrecked.”
“Does it really look that way to you?”
The player almost found it ridiculous that someone incapable of properly reading a match was acting as a director, but he suppressed the thought and explained.
“At first, he wasn’t trading spells efficiently at all. He always lost in spell exchanges, and he took more damage too.”
“Right. Enough to waste the name Ma Yuseong. And it’s still the same now, isn’t it? He’s just getting beaten on one-sidedly.”
“Yes. The fact that it’s still the same is what’s strange.”
“What?”
At that unexpected remark, the director looked puzzled, and the player continued.
“When the AI gained ten units of growth, those boys and girls only gained one. At this point, in the middle of the match, there’s no need to even discuss the growth gap.”
“Right.”
“And yet… the spell trades they’re showing are on the same level as they were at the beginning of the game.”
“Hm?”
Now that he thought about it, it was strange.
Normally, once the growth gap widens, you do not even get to trade hits. You just get crushed by overwhelming power and die one-sidedly.
But to still be trading at the same level as early game?
That meant…
“Ma Yuseong has completely analyzed the enemy’s patterns. More than that, he’s exploiting them with perfect efficiency. He’s breaking every attack and punishing it. If not for the cheat-like growth rate of Level 12 AI, he’d be steamrolling the other side by now.”
“…Huh?”
Now that he heard it explained, it almost sounded right—but he was still only half-convinced.
It was not uncommon, even in amateur leagues, to see the kind of play where someone let enemy attacks slide past with movement instead of spells, poked away at the opponent’s HP using minimal mana, and then landed one powerful strike for a critical hit.
“Wait a second.”
Amateur league?
The moment that thought hit the director, a chill ran down his spine.
“Weren’t those kids in their very first match?”
The other officials who overheard the player’s explanation also turned their eyes back to Team Flame.
At first glance, the situation looked the same as before.
Team Flame was still getting pounded one-sidedly.
And yet…
once the growth gap becomes that wide, the losing side should be getting flattened by overwhelming force.
So why were they still fighting in a pattern similar to the opening stages of the match?
“Even so… a beginner is still a beginner. They aren’t securing vision at all. They’re not even installing basic Radars on the map.”
And that made another point all the more astonishing.
“Normally you secure vision through Radars, or you predict that enemies are hiding in unscouted areas and respond that way. But those kids are handling everything purely with reaction speed and moment-to-moment instinct.”
“But they’re still done for. Their teamwork is terrible. They can’t even pull off a proper full team fight.”
When all five of them gathered together for battle—a so-called teamfight—the result was total chaos.
They had not even shared their spells with each other, so their combos did not connect at all, and sometimes their own attacks even got in each other’s way.
But in individual one-on-one combat, they were showing skill so astonishing it was hard to believe.
“This…”
They all found themselves thinking the same thing.
If they played one more round, wouldn’t they actually beat the Level 12 AI?
Their growth speed was that outrageous.
If they faced the same opponent just one more time, then even if the probability was low, they might actually win.
That was the conclusion the players arrived at.
[Blue Team Defeat]
At last, Team Flame’s Control Tower collapsed, and defeat was declared.
The players watched the arena with eager eyes.
This was only the first practice match, after all.
They were already urging them on in their heads to hurry up and move on to the second one.
But they still did not know nearly enough about Team Flame.
“Ahh~ I’m tired!”
“Don’t you think we practiced enough?”
“No?”
“I strongly believe that was more than enough. Should we go eat now?”
“I’m hungry too, Yuseol.”
“I agree. If I do not have dinner precisely at seven o’clock, my biological rhythm will collapse.”
“Hey, you lunatics! We only played one match!”
“We’re going out for spicy pork cutlet and naengmyeon for dinner. Then don’t come.”
“…Ah. Well, I can’t resist that. I’m coming too.”
“Ah! M-me too!”
And just like that, the five boys and girls walked off out of the arena and disbanded.
The practice ended after exactly one game.
“…What?”
Watching all of that through the monitors, the officials from the pro clubs could only stare blankly at the place where they had vanished, their faces full of disbelief.
“What the hell are they…?”
They were starting to seriously doubt whether those kids had any intention of taking the competition seriously at all.
[Read only on MugenCodex.]
