The fact that he had started attacking while using skills meant my opponent had become serious in his own way.
I looked at him more seriously than I had when I was deflecting his attacks with clashes earlier.
SLAAAASH!
However.
‘Too honest.’
Against monsters, maybe, but against a player, an honest attack naturally would not work.
‘Well, I guess it can’t be helped since this is early on?’
The fact that he could use [Duel Request] and [Slash] meant that he had finished advancing from [Novice] into [Swordsman].
But even so, it was only a Rank 1 basic class, the first class advancement after [Novice]. He could not use any particularly impressive techniques.
In other words, this was a kind of restricted PVP where I was fighting barehanded, while my opponent was fighting only with basic skills, but.......
‘Still, if he were taking this seriously, he’d be better than this.’
Thinking that, I moved to counter the incoming [Slash].
It was a collision between a skill and a normal attack.
Because the skill’s judgment was far superior, even if I countered it, I would fall into a heavy stun. Then if my opponent attacked by aiming for that opening, the PVP would end.
If it were an ordinary parry.
CLAAAAAAANG──!!
‘Nice!’
The thrilling impact of a Great Success parry ran heavily through my hand and shook my body.
This was it. This was gaming.
“Hup!”
CLANG!
When I knocked away the sword after the Great Success parry, blue embers from the skill scattered in every direction, and my opponent stepped back.
‘The judgment is about five to five.’
The level difference and the difference in skill judgment. Because those two corrections were so enormous, even after making the parry a Great Success, the effect I got was only about the same as a clash.
If my opponent had not blanked out and relaxed, he would not have been pushed back.
But.
“Wow!”
“He countered a skill with Perfect!”
“Insane!!”
“Is that possible?!”
The atmosphere among the spectators had heated up, and,
“Y-you miserable bastard!”
My opponent, who had been dazed for a moment after his skill was countered, shouted in frustration. Then he charged at me again.
WHOOSH!
A heavy blow came down from above my head.
“Hut!”
CLAAAANG!!
I countered the heavy blow with a horizontal slash. Once again, the effect of a Great Success parry scattered in all directions.
This time, I had the advantage in judgment.
But I did not have a single skill.
If I overextended and let my stance collapse, then gave my opponent the advantage in judgment, nothing good would come of it.
Therefore.
‘Lightly.’
Without letting my guard down, I delivered an additional hit from a posture that did not overreach.
And sure enough.
WHOOSH!
The moment my slash followed up after the parry, KingdomOldHand’s figure vanished from its path like an afterimage.
He must have canceled the delay with a movement evasion skill and taken my back.
“Hup!”
I carried my momentum through and swung my sword all the way behind me. Then,
CLANG! sure enough, I was able to counter the attack that flew in from behind.
“Wow!”
“He properly got behind him!”
“And he blocked that?!”
KIIIING!
“Daaaamn it!”
Maybe because he was irritated that his attack had failed even after he took my back, my opponent swung his sword wildly.
I could read every trajectory from his stance and the movement of his arms.
‘Simpler than a monster.’
I swung my sword lightly and clashed with the attacks flying in at random.
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG!
“Wow......!”
“Nice control.”
“He’s amazing even without skills.”
“Look at that movement!”
Hm, was it really that much?
Even though I was openly receiving my opponent’s rush and toying with him, it seemed like a close fight to the eyes of players who did not have much understanding.
“Huff, huff!”
Sure enough, KingdomOldHand, who had unleashed attacks at random, gradually began breathing harder.
He had spammed reckless attacks, and his stamina had rapidly depleted.
Since this was a game, he was not actually getting tired, but when the resource called stamina was consumed, your breathing grew ragged and your movements slowed.
Then naturally.
‘He can’t continue the offensive.’
Next, I stopped clashing and lightly stepped to the side.
Then.
“Urgh?!”
KingdomOldHand failed to soften the momentum of his attack and tried to swing his sword straight into empty air.
As expected, he had merely been swinging at random.
In his mind, he probably wanted to continue the rush and create an opening to land a guaranteed [Slash], but.......
‘His mind game is too shallow.’
Was he originally the type to force options with a strong class? Since he could not take control of the flow, he was absurdly weak.
Literally like a newbie.
‘It’s over.’
There was no need to see any more.
I hooked my foot around KingdomOldHand’s ankle as he was cutting empty air and tripped him.
THUD!
“Urk?!”
As if he had not expected it at all, KingdomOldHand fell straight onto the dirt.
“What kind of dirty trick are you......!”
My opponent shouted and tried to rise from the ground. Toward that KingdomOldHand, I quickly thrust out my sword.
With the tip of my sword pressed against the nape of his neck, KingdomOldHand could not get up and stopped moving.
“What now? Looks like you’re no match for me. Why not surrender?”
“What?!”
At my suggestion, KingdomOldHand flared up.
“You’ve been subdued like this even though I don’t have any skills.”
“Kh......!”
KingdomOldHand’s face quickly turned bright red with anger.
“How is this being subdued?! Tripping someone and playing dirty is being subdued?!”
“The [Grappler] line has lower-body attack skills too. Compared to that, this is much simpler.”
Classes with a martial artist concept had legitimate moves such as leg sweeps. I only used a foot trip because I had no skills, so calling it playing dirty was absurd.
“Not just that! You’re using cowardly dirty tricks!”
“Dirty tricks?”
“Don’t play dumb, you disgusting bastard!”
KingdomOldHand argued back as if he were the victim.
“There’s no way you can parry like that! I can see exactly what you’re doing!”
“What am I doing?”
I had only blocked him.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but anyone can do this much with some practice.”
“Don’t make me laugh!”
SLASH!
KingdomOldHand forcibly activated a skill from his fallen posture. Well, this game had lenient skill judgments, so it would activate even like that.
However, thinking that it would hit was a bit pathetic.
CLAAAAAAANG!
I lightly parried the rising slash he used from the ground with a skill.
“Urgh?!”
“Ohhhhhh!”
“He blocked it with a parry again?!”
KingdomOldHand staggered back from the aftermath of the parry, and the surroundings exclaimed in admiration again.
It was not that impressive....... Were there a lot of beginner players here?
“Anyone can do it?”
KingdomOldHand, who had barely regained his stance, muttered as if he was dumbfounded.
“Then keep doing it!”
Then he screamed and launched another skill attack.
“If that kind of thing is possible, that is!!”
SLAAASH!
A slash wreathed in skill effects came at me. It had a simple trajectory.
CLAAANG!!
I parried the attack again with my sword. The Great Success effect rang out thrillingly.
However, KingdomOldHand’s attack did not stop there.
“More!!”
SLAAAASH!
‘Oh-ho.’
Thinking it was impossible to seize an opening, he started using slashing skills in succession.
‘This is a little better.’
It was a simple, ignorant attack method, but I had no skills.
Because of that, just unleashing skill slashes so ignorantly put him at an overwhelming advantage.
The idea of making up for his lack of rush skill with skills was not bad either.
However.
‘He picked a bad opponent.’
It was not easy to mix feints into early skills. Therefore, although KingdomOldHand’s slashing skills were strong and fast, they had honest trajectories.
In other words, if someone had the skill to receive skills with normal attacks, blocking them was not that difficult.
CLAAANG!
I blocked a horizontal slash using a skill with a vertical slash.
HSSSS!
The moment the swords crossed vertically, sparks from the parry effect spread around us.
SLAAASH!
KingdomOldHand immediately launched another skill slash. It was a rather forced connection. Since it was a skill activated forcefully with his posture collapsed, the startup motion was far too slow.
If I wanted to stab into the opening, I could have counterattacked there.
But.
‘I’ll take it head-on.’
CLAAAANG!
I countered the skill slash that came at me head-on once again.
The parry was another Great Success.
The judgment was close to a clash, and both attacks came to nothing.
SLAAASH!
“Aaaaagh!!!”
KingdomOldHand screamed. In a half-desperate state, he used a skill once more.
A slash wreathed in blue effects was unleashed in succession.
To show the difference in skill, I decided to parry every last skill slash.
CLANG! CLAAANG! CLAAAANG!
Like that, his skill slashes and my parries collide several times in a row.
And then.
CLAAAAANG!!
“Huff, huuuuff!”
When I received and neutralized the tenth skill slash with a Great Success parry.
“Kh......!”
THUD.
KingdomOldHand dropped to one knee on the ground.
It seemed he had exhausted all his resources, such as stamina and SP.
The match was decided.
Only the finish remained.
“Hup!”
I began attacking the defenseless KingdomOldHand.
SLASH!
A horizontal slash cut across KingdomOldHand’s body and left a red line.
Perhaps because of the level difference and because I effectively had no weapon, the damage was fairly large, but it was not the final blow.
I had no intention of dragging it out, so I immediately unleashed follow-up attacks.
SLASH-SLASH, SLASH!
As a result of several quick slashes.
“Urgh!”
[WIN!]
[Won the duel against ‘KingdomOldHand’!]
[Won first PVP!]
[Reputation increased!]
KingdomOldHand’s HP became 0, and a message announcing my victory appeared.
“Wooooow......!”
“The level 1 side really won?”
“Insane, what did we just see?”
“He just blocked skills like that.......”
“Parrying more than ten times and counterattacking was insane.......”
“What was that last part? Was it a skill?”
“No, you can’t learn something like that right now, can you?”
Hm, it was not a skill. I had just thrown out a suitable flurry.
It seemed there were many baby newbies who still could not tell the difference. A good sign.
“Damn it!!”
KingdomOldHand spat out a curse and punched the ground. He looked unable to overcome his anger.
I sometimes saw PVP beginners have their mental break like that after repeated losses.
Usually, there were two patterns afterward.
Either they stubbornly raised their skill and became demons seen in matchmaking, or they simply left the game.
Well, in truth, was one loss really something to get that stressed about? But even trivial things could make people act like that when victory and defeat were involved.
On top of that, he had confidently picked a fight and been thoroughly beaten, so his pride was probably in ruins.
“You still don’t seem to know the basics very well.”
I decided to give him a little advice.
“If you want to do PVP, why don’t you at least watch a PVP guide? I don’t know about events, but those movements didn’t look familiar to me.”
“Kh......!”
Rather than snapping at him with something nasty like, “For someone who criticized others for not watching guides, you clearly haven’t watched enough guides yourself,” I spoke in a roundabout way.
He was just a newbie inside a well too. His claim of being a Kingdom old hand was probably a bluff.
Newbies had to grow up quickly and become prey for me later, so I should speak nicely and let it pass.
“Don’t make me laugh!”
That was what I thought, but KingdomOldHand did not seem to intend to end it like that. He sprang up from where he had fallen and shouted.
“You think consecutive parries like that are possible?! You're a cheating bastard!”
“I never hid my skill, so what makes me a cheater?”
Wasn’t this game only one week into launch? A veteran could be level 1. Especially on a classic server.
“Ha, you’re really hilarious. Is it fun playing games while cheating?”
“What?”
“I know everything! You hack-using bastard!”
Wow, what a fresh idea.
‘It’s been a while since I heard that.’
In PVP content, when someone lost in a strange way, saying, “Ugh, that guy is hacking!” was a common enough occurrence, but.......
“What kind of delusion is that? Game companies are so good at catching hacks these days. And who uses hacks in an RPG?”
In one-shot PVP games, even VR games had quite a few hack users, but in genres played over a long period like RPGs, there were practically no players who used hacks that risked getting their accounts banned.
In fact, I was not even sure if they existed. I had never met one in the past either.......
‘He’s nitpicking over everything.’
But.
“Huh, hacks?”
“Is it true?”
“Now that I think about it, isn’t it a little weird to parry consecutively like that?”
“Right, he’s level 1, but it looked like he used a skill too.”
For some reason, it seemed rather effective on the nearby newbies.
“That’s right!”
When the atmosphere nearby turned intrigued, KingdomOldHand’s face visibly brightened and he shouted.
“First of all, it makes no sense for a guy who couldn’t even get a medal to be this strong!”
“What does a medal have to do with skill?”
“Of course it has something to do with it!”
When I snapped back in disbelief, KingdomOldHand raised his head and argued.
“If he couldn’t even get a medal, that means he doesn’t know the game itself well! You think it makes sense for a guy like that to chain parries without skills?!”
Hm, was the reason he had been acting strangely from earlier really because he suspected I might be a hack user?
“Consecutive Great Success parries?! Without a single skill? Cut the bullshit! Even a pro couldn’t do that!!”
KingdomOldHand seemed to think it was a fairly reasonable idea.
“Is that true......?”
“No, but isn’t it strange? Coming here at level 1 and chaining parries is a little......”
“Right, parrying in this game is really hard without skill correction.”
“He doesn’t seem to have advanced classes either.”
“It’s also kind of strange that he came to a hidden quest area without a medal.......”
Suspicious gazes gathered one by one.
“No, the one who initiated PVP in the first place was that player over there, wasn’t he? Isn’t it a little strange for the side who received the PVP request to be using hacks?”
There was also an opposing opinion. It was the armor player who had spoken to me at first. They seemed to be sweating bullets after being stuck in the middle for no reason.
“No, but.......”
“But the play looked practically bug-level.”
“Does it make sense to Great Success parry all those fast attacks?”
“If he has that level of skill, he should know something about the game too, but he doesn’t seem to know anything about the game.......”
While the onlookers argued back and forth.
“Now! What do you think?!”
Once the surroundings began to lean in his favor, KingdomOldHand shouted triumphantly.
“It was obvious to anyone! I just couldn’t say it because I couldn’t openly mention hacks!”
“You should have said it from the start instead of groaning.”
“Why are you pretending to be relaxed? Now that it’s come to this, you’ll be reported and your account will be locked either way.”
“Are you sure? If it’s a false report, you’ll be penalized too.”
I said that out of genuine concern.
I did not know the report function in detail, but I had heard there were cases where people were punished in return after making careless reports.
“Ha, is that supposed to be a threat? Looks like you’re attached to your account after all.”
However, KingdomOldHand sneered. It seemed he thought I was bluffing.
“If you bow your head and apologize for using hacks, I might not report you.”
“Why would I?”
“Why?! You heard them! It makes no sense to spam skills like that without a medal! Anyone can see its hacks!”
“There’s one thing you’re misunderstanding.”
“What?”
“I never said I didn’t have a medal.”
I opened my inventory and equipped the medal on my chest.
“W-wait. That?”
“A medal?”
“That’s definitely a medal.”
“What? He had a medal in the first place?”
“Wait! The color’s weird.”
“That color is.......”
The highest reward of this hidden event.
“Gold......?”
“That’s gold, isn’t it?”
A golden Medal of Honor.