[Hochi]
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[In 100 seconds, the duel will begin. Both partic.i.p.ants are asked to get ready for the duel, and please stand by.]
[Tournament – Duel Stage, Round 1 will begin shortly]
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The duel stage consisted of very easy-to-understand rules. Before the start of the first round, the list of partic.i.p.ants would be made public. All partic.i.p.ants would choose their opponents from the list, and a duel would take place under a bilateral agreement. The winner would advance to the second round, where partic.i.p.ants who advanced would pick each other, and the second round would begin with a deal.
It was impressive that they knew who the opponent was in advance and agreed to compete with each other following the pretence of a duel. If we wanted to distinguish our opponents, we had to be able to build a stable multiplier. Of course, it’d take more time to get into the higher rounds, and eventually, you’d have to go to the end and meet the strongest opponent. The duel was like a luck-based game, a.s.suming that the partic.i.p.ants were well acquainted. It wasn’t difficult to avoid strong players and bad-tempered opponents if you had the right connections.
In that sense, I had to wait for a very long time.
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[Waiting time: 4 hours 13 minutes]
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The others partic.i.p.ated in the first round, advanced to the second and third rounds, and I wasn’t even starting the first round yet. The reason was, of course, easily understood.
[Challenger: Lee Ho-jae]
It was obvious why other challengers didn’t ask me to duel. When the challenger’s name was written as Lee Ho-jae, which crazy person would want to fight? They had enough sense not to fight with Lee Ho-jae. If they considered their life precious, it was best not to get entangled at all.
d.a.m.n it. Why wasn’t my name listed instead?
I didn’t have many regrets about being a clone. I couldn’t blame Ho-jae for being born like that in the first place, and I was satisfied with my situation right now. However, I felt terrible about being treated like an entirely different person. The fact that the system judged me to be Lee Ho-jae made me upset.
Couldn’t it tell the difference between us? If I wasn’t him, why was it treating me the same as Ho-jae? Either way, it was unpleasant.
I felt uncomfortable, but I was more depressed because I was spending time in a daze. It was not like I was waiting for someone. What was going on? I hoped I didn’t have to be alone until the end of the stage like this. That would make me look so funny. I’d be an unselected loner.
Suddenly, I wondered why Park Jung-ah put me on the stage. No matter how much I had been drinking, I had said that I’d do anything for Park Jung-ah and made a promise. The next day Park Jung-ah asked me to join the stage, so I accepted it. I had meant to do her a favour instead of apologizing for the inconvenience that Ho-jae had caused her.
But now, I wondered how my wasted time here would help her. What was Yong-yong doing?
Bald Su… *shakes head* Baek Sung-woong must be having a hard time. Yong-yong had vowed to make money in the market from today onwards, and I hoped that he wouldn’t do anything ridiculous.
I thought about it for a long time when a message came to my mind with a loud noise.
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[Mr. Mike Benderop has asked Lee Ho-jae to fight a duel. Will you accept it?]
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“Yes,” I answered reflexively, relieved at the thought of finally getting out of this boredom, but on the other hand, I was anxious. The other side saw the name Lee Ho-jae and asked for a duel. It was evident that the opponent was a lunatic. I didn’t know their strength, but it wasn’t very relaxing to face a madman regardless of their power.
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[In 100 seconds, the duel will begin. Both partic.i.p.ants are asked to get ready for the duel, and please stand by.]
[Compet.i.tion – Duel Stage, Round 1 will begin shortly]
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After a while, my body teleported to the duel stage. There were a lot of people outside the ma.s.sive stadium, which was the stage. Looking at the large crowd, it was a little understandable why Park Jung-ah asked me to partic.i.p.ate. If so, many people were concentrating enthusiastically on the duel, and I could effectively imprint myself on them. The problem was that I didn’t know how I should act.
[Suit yourself.] I heard Ho-jae’s voice through the ring I had put inside my pocket. While I was drinking with Park Jung-ah yesterday, the ring I had given her split in two. One was for her, and the other for me, but its performance remained the same. Of course, Park Jung-ah’s was something I could only use if I were nearby.
However, there were many differences in design. Park Jung-ah’s ring was a pretty ring with a diamond in it, while mine was just a plain yellow ring. It was a ring design that I hated the most. At my complaint, Ho-jae once again replied that this would be most familiar to me, which was a very unpleasant answer.
“So I can do whatever I want? You won’t scold me later?”
[Yes.]
I tried to reach out a little to Ho-jae’s insensitive voice, but he didn’t seem to care about the rest.
“What if I cause some accidents here and there?”
[Just do whatever you want.]
Tch. I tried to intimidate him by saying I’d make trouble with his name, but I didn’t think it worked.
I looked at the summoned opponent in the stadium. The opponent whom I thought was a genuine lunatic was an unexpectedly handsome man. Perhaps because I was with Baek Sung-woong all day yesterday, I had compared the two subconsciously. There was a big difference, of course, visually. Oh, of course, Baek Sung-woong was manly and good-looking, but his bald head deducted some points.
Baek Sung-woong said he shaved because he liked being neat, but I knew that he had started balding from the centre of his head. Of course, he tried to hide it, but it was evident to me.
Before the duel began, the opponent introduced himself and asked me to address him as Mike. In response, I also briefly introduced myself.
Mike was surprised that I was Lee Ho-jae’s clone, and not him. He had an astonished look on his face.
“So, what’s your deal?” I asked, thinking that he likely wanted to strike a deal with me. Mike wasn’t as crazy as expected, and if he weren’t crazy, he wouldn’t be dueling with a challenger named Lee Ho-jae for fun unless there was anything he needed to talk about.
“We need information from the 31st to 34th floors.”
Oh, he was an American challenger. I was well aware that the American challengers were struggling with the demon stages, which started from the 31st to the 34th floor. The stages were also quite tricky. Ho-jae on the 61st floor was comparable to the American challengers on the 31st floor.
The most significant feature of the demon stages, which started from the 31st floor, involved party play, but the number of parties decreased as you went up the floor. And when facing the most powerful enemy on the 34th floor, the challenger must fight it off and win.
Come to think of it, the design was incredibly stupid, but the 31st floor was an easy stage. By avoiding strong demons and searching for easy demons and collecting vouchers, it was easy to clear off on your own and not with a party. However, on the 32nd floor, only strong demons appeared, so the level of difficulty rose exponentially. It was even more complicated than the 33rd floor. Nevertheless, the number of party players got reduced. In the end, you had to challenge the demon king by yourself.
The Tutorial up to the 30th floor encouraged party play as if to announce its usefulness. In a solo stage, one was usually focused on testing one’s navigation, survival, reasoning, and social abilities. Naturally, challengers become more accustomed to role-sharing battles that aligned with party members rather than single combat.
However, the Tutorial suddenly asked the challenger to fight alone. It was not hard to guess why American challengers had been struggling there for years.
Thinking of stages preceding the 60th floor, the Tutorial required one to break through everything and get through it by themselves. There was a stage that saved and protected many people, but only one challenger was the right fighter. He alone must carry out judgments and battles that control people’s lives. However, the 61st-floor stage could not proceed without team members. The stages after the residential area always tried to force down the challenger in a similar manner.
“What should I do?”
[Do as you please.] Ho-jae answered nonchalantly and so, I did as he said.
I gave the American challenger the information I know, and Mike was very pleased with my information. Previously, Ho-jae’s report was heard through the words of a challenger who graduated from the Korean server’s Tutorial, so the Korean government added a Newbie level to the U.S. server. There were many errors and omissions. I gave him the information that I knew, and he asked questions like a child who was excited to get a toy. In some parts that I didn’t know well, I asked Ho-jae.
“When you meet demons, do you lose your fighting power? What do you do if that happens? Did you lose yours too?” Mike asked.
“No. Try to remember. Did that ever happen? If you meet demons and your combat power decreases, you can stop them to some extent by being resistant to fear or to mental attacks. it’sIt’s most important not to be intimidated by the demon king, but most people aren’t able to do that.”
That was obvious. The demon king didn’t get his t.i.tle by doing nothing. Of course, as soon as one first saw doppelgangers of the top demon species, they wouldn’t think of a monster that Ho-jae had caught and forced to write down information.
After I gave the information, Mike repeatedly thanked me with a look of grat.i.tude on his face. I, somehow, stopped him from paying me back. It was too difficult for me to get satisfied with material compensation. Instead, I asked for a meal before the tournament ended. Mike said he had a famous chef in the U.S. server, and that he would visit the Korean server area with him.
Not long after I entered the tournament, I got to make another good friend. I was as satisfied with Mike.
The crowd wondered why Mike and I sat together on the duel stage and urged us by asking, “Why aren’t you fighting?”, but we ignored the buzz.
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[Lee Yeon-hee]
“I can’t.” The man standing in front of me answered briefly. He was the only Asian-looking man in that group. Judging from the accent, I a.s.sumed he was Chinese.
“Why?”
“Your request was accepted, and the committee is reviewing it. Now that the review is unfinished, we cannot let you move on to another level.”
They wanted me to wait? The problem was how long it’d take to get approved. Even if I was sure the request would be accepted, I had no intention of wasting my time.
“Of course, the principles are important, but we still don’t have enough information about other dimensions. I can’t let you go alone now that we’ve just been in touch with them. If things go wrong, there may be new disputes, and in the worst case, there could be inter-dimensional conflicts.”
I stared at the Chinese man who kept rambling. Now, I could see how misleading Park Jung-ah’s response was. She was straightforward and explained the things I could do but didn’t say what I couldn’t. Oh, of course, it wasn’t like I liked her. But this old man was more irritating than she was.
The man talked with a stubborn look on his face, but his words made no difference to me. Instead of wasting time pointlessly, I decided it was better to strike them out. As soon as I finished my judgment, I launched an attack.