VRMMO no Shien Shokunin ～Top Player no Shikakenin～

Chapter 62: Start of the preliminaries

The next day after the event started.

I was standing in front of the mage that the empire had deployed to the desert town along with Yumir.

It was a standard mage with the hood of his coat covering his face.

「Please take us to the preliminary grounds.」 (Hind)

「…Both of you are forming a party, right?」

Even his voice was quite robotic.

It was quite eerie, but it’s probably what they were going for and it’s not like he’ll attack us.

「I’m paired with this guy.」 (Yumir)

「…Very well, I’ll start the transfer. Stand still right there.」

After finishing the verification, he started chanting a suspicious spell with an inaudible voice.

When he did, a black mass appeared at the mage’s feet and it swallowed us.

Our surroundings completely changed. Sound vanished, our sense of balance crumbled and our field of vision started spinning around…

It wasn’t the scenery of the desert we were in a while ago, we were standing on top of a small arena.

This was an arena in the empire.

The main tournament will be held at another one, no one other than the other participants in the preliminaries could see us right now.

It’s possible to record the matches, but the latest ten are always available for viewing without having done so.

You can report cheaters that…oh, next to me (who was thinking stuff like that), Yumir was staggering unsteadily.

「…I’ve got a bit of motion sickness.」 (Yumir)

「The scenery did distort itself after all. Shouldn’t it be fine if you just closed your eyes the next time?」 (Hind)

「I’ll do just that. That feeling of floating like if you were in an elevator won’t go away though, but that can’t be helped…」 (Yumir)

Like this, they’ll send the participants from each town to the empire in an instant…once this ends, they’ll send you back after the battle ends.

In simple terms, it’s a spell that warps the target.

The agreement to use this spell was strictly supervised, it was a 『Spell』 that had been able to be used for the first time after every country representative agreed to it.

Therefore, they made it an exception to use it for this tournament…or so the setting goes.

If they were able to use it freely, everyone would be able to launch a surprise attack on another country after all…

By the way, there was an official announcement saying that players won’t be able to use this spell.

Apart from special occasions like this one, they want us to travel via vehicles.

「It seems like our opponents are here, Hind.」 (Yumir)

「Oh?」 (Hind)

Our opponents appeared from within the light with nervous expressions.

Their jobs were heavy warrior and mage…well, they paired up in an orthodox way with a vanguard and rearguard, huh?

They were both guys, given their looks they appeared about the same age.

We didn’t really exchange introductions and when a 「READY…」 appeared within our line of sight in big letters, we prepared our weapons.

No items can be used in a duel and the damage is scaled down compared to when you fight monsters, overall it’s toned down.

However, it doesn’t change the fact that you’ll die instantly if you are hit with a powerful skill…

It was about a minute after the duel had started, Yumir beautifully fell down after taking the 『Stone Blast』 that the mage had aimed at her feet.

「Gya!! What’s this!?」 (Yumir)

「An opening!」

Without a moment of delay, the heavy warrior used 『Berserker Edge』 followed by 『Assault Slash』 and Yumir took it upfront leaving her with 0 HP.

「Hebunh!?」 (Yumir)

「We did it! All that’s left is the Shinto priest-」

Death. It was what I thought it would happen at this point.

Our opponents have really nice synergy. That she was unable to avoid it can’t be helped.

Immediately after that happened, I completed the cast of 『Revive』 that I had started casting a bit before Yumir got hit by the spell of the mage.

The heavy warrior got careless and looked towards me and behind him, Yumir, who had become like a crushed frog, slowly started to stand up.

「B-Behind you! Behind!」 (mage)

「Eh?」 (heavy warrior)

「Fuhahaha! Gotcha!」 (Yumir)

There are games where your MP will become 0 once you die, but in TB you’ll keep your MP.

Even Yumir, who had started the duel with 0 MP, now had a full bar from getting attacked that many times.

While laughing like a villain, Yumir released the powerful thrust 『Burst Edge』.

Together with the violent sparks created by the aura, the stream of magical power penetrated the heavy warrior.

Burst Edge is a skill that deals hybrid damage, but having reduced his physical defense to 0, the heavy warrior was unable to take both types of damage.

As a result, Yumir blew his whole HP bar in a single blow.

Then, we surrounded the mage that was dumbfounded at the sudden turn of events.

No good, since everything had gone according to my plan, I couldn’t contain a laugh. Fuhahaha!

「Well then, the match is decided. What will you do? Do you choose to surrender or do you choose death? Go ahead and choose!」 (Yumir)

「As a rearguard like you, I wouldn’t recommend fighting without a vanguard. There’s no reason to get painful memories on purpose, right? Right?」 (Hind)

「Ah, uh…I-I’ll surrender…the way you laugh is so scary…」

Within our field of view a “Winner!!” danced in the air and the room started warping.

They probably did this to take into consideration players that wanted to fight many times in a row, the way the fights started and ended was really quick.

Once you win you’ll get expelled from the arena right away.

「I thought the casting time for revive was long…? That’s weird…how did he know that she would die with that timing…?」 (mage)

After the mage murmured that, the feeling of standing on the ground vanished.

It wasn’t to the point where it was like Yumir, who made a very displeased face, but it’s true that it’s a bit unpleasant.

It does have its artistic value, but since it seems to be going to be harmful, let’s send a message to the developers so that they improve it.

When we noticed, we were standing in front of the imperial mage in 『Royal Capital Waaha』 again.

The battle ended and we took a breath after exchanging glances.

It might have been because of nervousness, even though it was a short fight, it was quite tiring.

「Hah, we were able to win. Though I don’t know how strong they really were.」 (Hind)

「Fuh, we are a duo made of you and me. It’s a given that we would win!」 (Yumir)

「Ooh, you sure are confident as always. But hear me out, don’t go crying if we somehow end up losing, OK? If we keep fighting, we are bound to lose at some point after all.」 (Hind)

「I won’t cry! Don’t treat me like a kid!」 (Yumir)

This was our first PvP match.

When it comes to the PvP rating, the initial value is 1500.

Once you get this ranking to the top 256, you will be able to appear in the main tournament.

Unlike usual rankings, this one is set as tournament rankings, it’ll reset every event.

During the event, the preliminary duels like the one a while ago don’t have any effect on normal duel rankings.

It goes without saying but…this tournament’s rankings are not personal but it’s a shared numerical value for the duo.

The event is also long, the main tournament will start next Saturday.

The finals will follow, they’ll be held on Sunday.

The preliminaries will last until Friday at 23:59 and then the participants will be decided.

「I don’t get it!」 (Yumir)

So, I summarized it like this for Yumir.

「Until it ends on Friday, we’ll fight preliminaries over and over, it’s fine as long as we keep winning.」 (Hind)

I explained roughly like that.

If we used logic, given the rules it amounted to only that.

Therefore, we had to raise our ranking.

As additional information, apart from the event rankings there are event points, the amount of goods you’ll get will increase as you keep fighting.

If you manage to win you’ll get a bigger amount of event points, but even if you lose, you’ll still get some points.

Taking this into account, even if the rankings for the main event solidifies itself, the difficult situation of there not being people to fight with probably won’t happen?

It’s made so that even people that are not that good at PvP can have some fun, personally it’s a method that I like.

This about sums up the event.

While those thoughts were going around my head, Yumir was stretching close to me to relax her body.

The outstanding body that wouldn’t lose to the queen’s in style was exposed defencessly.

So immodest…I guess the saving grace is that she was wearing armour and it made it so that less places were emphasized.

「Well then, what are we going to do, Hind? Are we going to keep fighting?」 (Yumir)

「Yeah. In order to raise our rankings, it’s not important that you lose, but your win percentage at the end…if we managed to win consecutively in the final phase, it should be enough to catch up.

「Let’s also continue fighting to eliminate our weaknesses.」 (Hind)

「Umu. There should be a lot of players logged in at this time, we’ll find an opponent right away.」 (Yumir)

「It also doesn’t seem to take long for a fight to end after all. Let’s just keep going.」 (Hind)

I want to get an early lead and focus on organizing our gear and skills next week.

Getting some experience is important, so first off, it’s important to go in without thinking too hard about things.

「Alright, I’m getting fired up! Mage, please one more time!」 (Yumir)

「…Acknowledged. I’ll begin the transfer.」

Today, after winning 10 times in a row, we started to lose…

At the end of the day the score was 20 fights (14 wins), our record ended in a 70% win rate.