SLASH

Outta nowhere, a dagger cut through Lars from behind! Nia was behind him and she gonna wreck if he doesn’t act fast!

"Crap!" She gonna go for that airdrop move! I gotta get outta here!

Ok! Nia nodded to herself. She successfully infiltrated enemy territory and delivered the opening strike. The passive of her Imperial Spear boosted the damage of her abilities by 50% after landing a basic attack so it was time to end this with Izuna Drop!

Nia thrust her arms to wrap herself around the enemy. After that, she gonna leap into the air and-!? Wha!? She only caught air! The enemy disappeared!

"Eh? Wha..." Nia blinked. How? What? But, Izuna Drop is supposed to be a guaranteed follow up after the opening attack...

"Phew!" Lars exhaled after barely escaping in the nick of time. He rolled away as soon as the ambush hit him and just barely got out of the range of Nia’s Izuna Drop.

"Hell yeah! Safe!" Lars pumped a fist.

"Such reaction speed!" Vincent exploded. "Did you all see that!? An instant roll after getting hit from behind! Ultra instinct at its finest! Nobody could pull off such as stunt except for the Insane Beast of the Apocalypse!"

"#JustLarsThings." Luke joked. By now, everybody got used to seeing Lars pulling off such inhuman miracles.

Not going for Izuna Drop right away was greedy. Yuel thought. Then again, landing one hit from behind and then doing Izuna is probably fast enough to catch most people off-guard. It takes a special kind of reaction monster to dodge such a play on reaction.

Lars thwarted Nia's assassination plan but the battle wasn't over yet. Nia was deep in Lars's territory so, of course, he was going to capitalize on this awesome opportunity!

"Let's rock n' roll, yo!" Lars pointed his mic-slash-pistol at Nia. From now on, the prey gonna be the predator, yo!

How? It should've hit... Nia trembled. Ever since she first started using this assassination tactic, this was the first time she failed to land the Izuna Drop after the opening attack.

Of course, it’s not like she always landed Izuna Drop on everybody every time for zero effort. For example, there were times she failed to sneak up to her opponent because they were too cautious of her presence. But, whenever she successfully got to her opponent's back while in stealth - it was over. Nia started with an opening basic attack from behind to trigger the damage boost of Imperial Lance and then wrapped things up with an Izuna Drop that always landed without an accident.

In fact, even landing two strikes before Izuna Drop usually worked. Nia only stopped doing that after some Diamond rank opponents started dodged it recently. It became risky to rely on a setup that only worked 90% of the time so she opted for the one that worked 100%. At least, it should’ve worked 100%...

Was this setup dodgeable this entire time? That’s... Nia's entire life was a lie. She has executed this setup at least a hundred times by now. So, as turned out, in each of these times her opponent could've easily countered her with a simple Dodge Roll? No way...

BLING

"Ah!" Nia jumped. A sound note struck her. The commentator Pirate was shooting fiery commentary at her!

Bad. Bad. Bad! What do I do!? Nia never imagined her setup could be countered like this. What should she do in this alien scenario? This situation was yikes through and through.

Thanks to this failure, Nia found herself deep in enemy territory at her opponent’s gunpoint. Her opponent was a marksman who successfully created some distance between them. With all of that in mind, should she try attacking anyway? No way. She'll die.

I have to escape. But, where!? The Pirate was blocking the path ahead while the enemy’s Golem area was behind her. She was sandwiched, stuck between a rock and a hard place. Great.

Her only viable escape options were the jungles on her sides. But, were they really viable? Could she even escape through- BLING! Another shot!

S-So fast! Nia was moving back and forth to juke the enemy's shots but they were so fast and accurate. I-I have to do something!

BLING! Another shot was coming!

"A-Ack!" Nia squeaked and hit Shuriken Flip like a panic button. The Ninja flipped backward and threw a Shuriken toward the Pirate.

Oh noes, I did it again! Nia wanted to smack herself in the forehand so badly right now. Shuriken Flip wasn't meant to be used as a panic button like this but she did it anyway. This was a disaster. The end was nigh.

At least, the backflip made her fly all the way into Bot Jungle. So, she got outside the range of the Pirate's shots. Or, so she thought.

"Ya really using that?" Lars grinned after sidestepping the random shuriken. "Then, I gotcha, dude!"

Lars turned his back toward the Ninja and activated Backfire Cannon. The knockback sent him flying toward the jungle and that made his close the distance in an instant.

"E-Eek!" H-He's already here! Nia jumped. So fast! So accurate! This monster gave her the chills. She had to get out! Get away! As far as humanly possible!

"Release the-"

Nuuuuuu! Nia instinctively rolled away upon hearing that opening phrase. The Kraken was coming! She had to evacuate the premises on the double.

She successfully rolled away but silence followed. There was no follow up to the Pirate's opening line. The Kraken didn't come.

A feint!? Nia wanted to smack herself so hard in the forehead right now. Of course, Pirate can cancel the Kraken. What was I thinking!? Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It was over. She was stripped of her options against the Pirate's Kraken. There was nothing else for her to pull anymore.

Did she just stop? Yuel wondered. After Nia recovered from the roll, she showed no signs of moving. She just stood there like a statue.

"What's up, dude?" Lars asked. "Welp, guess I just do it?" He fired away at Nia. There was no need to waste his Kraken if he could wrap this up with basic attacks.

『You have killed an enemy!』

"That was weird," Lars said. "You think maybe her controller stopped working or something?"

"Doesn't look like it," Yuel said. "I think she realized she got outplayed and gave up."

"Gave up? Just like that?"

"Apparently," Yuel glanced at Kai. What sort of defense was this biased attorney going to pull this time?

"H-Huh," Kai averted her eyes without saying anything. Even she couldn't come up with an excuse this time. No surprise there; giving up in the middle of a fight like this was uncompetitive and outright disrespectful. There was no excuse for such a thing.

In fact, from the moment Lars first thwarted Nia's sneak attack by dodging her Izuna Drop, her movements became sluggish. It was like she had a very specific plan of attack in mind when she started but, when things didn't go as planned, she became lost.

But, it'd be cruel to hold this against a rookie like her. Yuel also used to freeze like this before when he thought his flawless plan was about to fall apart. Besides, anybody would be astonished by seeing Lars doing Lars things for the first time.

In short, all these faults could be attributed to being a rookie; no need to criticize them too harshly. What was way more interesting about this entire exchange was the way Nia snuck up to Lars and caught him off guard. If she had gone for Izuna Drop right away from stealth, this fight would have played out differently.

“She almost got you,” Yuel said.

“I know, right?” Lars laughed. “Almost gave me a heart attack. I thought I was dead meat when she popped outta nowhere.”

“Was it really that unpredictable?” Yuel asked.

"Totally didn't see it coming."

"You should've figured something was up when she sent her clone forward but didn't break stealth. Remember, Shadow Clone's cooldown is reduced if the stealth ends earlier so she always went out of stealth right away to minimize cooldown. So, her staying in stealth for even a second should’ve been a red flag."

"Yeah, makes sense," Lars nodded.

"So, what happened? How did her gank surprise you?"

"I dunno. It just came outta nowhere, yo."

"But, you saw she was stealthed. You should've suspected something was afoot."

"Hmm. Yeah, probably."

"Probably? Wait, don't tell me you didn't check whether she was there after she made the clone."

"I'm pretty sure I did. At least, I think I did. Hmm. I did, right?"

"You asking me?" Yuel made a face. This was going nowhere fast. What was it with Lars and Vincent? When it came to Nia, it's like they lost their ability to analyze the situation. It was so bizarre.

"You all saw that setup, right?" Yuel turned to the others.

"It was hard to tell, man," Luke shrugged. "Wasn't she like at the corner of the screen the whole time? We couldn't even see her half the time from this perspective."

"Is that so," Yuel thought back on Nia's routine and realized that Luke was right. Most of the time, Nia stayed on the far right side of the lane. When she sent her clone toward the minion wave, the clone had to travel diagonally to reach the wave. Meanwhile, Nia remained tucked away at the edge of the lane. Therefore, she was always barely visible from Lars's point-of-view while he focused on the minion wave.

Did Nia play like that on purpose? This stunt didn't work on Yuel in the slightest but it seemed to lower others' guard. Was this a 200 IQ ploy? Or, did Nia just have a knack for decreasing her presence?

"Kukuku," Vincent stretched his arms as if to present somebody. "As I thought, BlackFlower got something! Even though I'm the Arbiter of Talents, her talent has been eluding me for a long time. But, that's only natural, for her talent is none other than Vanishing Phantom!"

Here we go again. Yuel rolled his eyes. Though, admittedly, he was a little curious to hear what Vincent thought of Nia. Just a little curious. Better not give that clown too much credit.

"So, you want to hear it?" Vincent wore the smug of a know-it-all. "You want to learn the truth behind her magic, don't you!?"

"Get on with the program already," Kai urged.

"Alrighty, listen, and listen well. Her ability is..." *dramatic pause* "To erase her presence! It's like a high ranked Presence Concealment ability!"

"Whoa! Cool!" Lars exclaimed. "So, what does it do?"

"I bet he got no idea either," Yuel shrugged. "What does it even mean to 'erase presence'? Such nonsense."

"I see, I see," Vincent nodded. "So, Chessmaster wishes to challenge me to a debate. Very well! I, the Arbiter of Talents, accept the challenge!"

"It's not a debate. I'm just saying you're making random stuff up. That’s facts."

"Then, pray tell, how comes nobody noticed Nia's plan? As you said, it should've been pretty obvious. But, everybody was shocked. How come?"

"That's..." Yuel didn't have an answer. He was asking himself the same thing and it stumped him. How was it possible that only he saw Nia's attack coming? There was no reasonable explanation for that.

"You also felt it, right?" Vincent asked. "Sometimes, Nia just naturally slips out of your mind like she was never there in the first place."

"Can't say I felt that way."

"Seriously?" Vincent frowned and turned to the others. "You all felt that too, right?"

"Totally, man," Luke said. "It feels like if I don't focus on her I gonna forget she's even there, haha."

"She does have a rather weak presence," Kai agreed.

"Ergo, there's no mistake in my conclusion," Vincent concluded. "Nia is the Vanishing Phantom!”

“That’s rather flimsy evidence you got there,” Yuel argued. “As I said, I don’t recall feeling that way about Nia.”

“I suppose that is a valid point,” Vincent nodded. “This is indeed peculiar. Why can Yuel always see Nia despite her Vanishing Phantom?”

“Let’s see how long it takes you to blame that on a new type of mystic eyes I got.”

“Oh! But of course! It's because you got the Mystic Eyes of Weakness Perception! As long as somebody exists, your mystic eyes shall fully expose their weaknesses no matter how weak their presence is!"

"What a load of nonsense," Yuel sighed. But, maybe there was a grain of truth to Vincent's observations. Of course, not the part about the “Mystic Eyes” but rather Yuel’s ability to thoroughly analyze the situation.

In his mind, Yuel saw the match as a chessboard. At all times, he thought about the positions of the pieces and the possible lines of play for them. As such, he always kept in mind where Nia should be positioned on the board. And, when he failed to find her at the expected position, that alerted him immediately.

Any occurrence like that meant he had to fix his mental chessboard according to the new data, Also, that naturally begged the question of how such disparity occurred in the first place. That’s probably what helped him consider the possibility of Nia’s sneak attack.

So, perhaps Vincent's analysis wasn't that far-off after all. Indeed, Nia was the "Vanishing Phantom". Or, in human language, she was good at sneaking around unnoticed and lowering the opponent's guard. Except, that didn’t work on the way Yuel kept track of the game.

But, was it even possible to have such a talent for sneaking around in a third-person video game? Well, maybe it wasn't impossible. In a way, it was similar to how Yuel would sometime notice that an opponent was distracted and used that opportunity sneak up to them without them noticing.

Even though each player was controlling an avatar with a poker face, it was still possible to read them to some degree based on their movements and tendencies. Nia probably relied on tells like that to slip away without altering her opponents, That could explain how she snuck up to Lars and Vincent so easily.

For now, this was just a theory based on circumstantial evidence. Yuel had to see more proof to draw a solid conclusion. And, the next part of this exam will surely be interesting.

After Lars completely crushed Nia in that 1v1, how was she going to recover? What sneaky new plan to attack will she devise to win the next clash?