I stayed silent as I walked toward the bathroom, ignoring the satisfied expression of the angel that was floating next to me. I maintained my silence as I slipped into the bathroom, and checked every stall to make sure it was empty before catching her eye.

"Come, we need to talk about what just happened," I said, unable to hide the anger infecting my tone, even at the risk of annoying the supernatural creature that was following me.

"I - can't," she stammered with a sudden panic.

"Why?" I growled in anger, unable to contain my tone even under the risk of angering an extremely powerful supernatural being, preparing myself to receive another deflection.

"It's -" she stammered. "It's men's washroom."

"Really," I murmured, barely stopping myself from cursing. "It's empty."

"N-no," she stammered, scandalized.

"Excellent," I murmured. Apparently, my angel guide was also shy. Rather than insisting, I left the room and walked away toward a corner instead, hoping that we wouldn't be interrupted. "What was the notification that I had just received?"

"Notification?" she asked.

"A writing in front of my eyes, saying pattern recognition and intimidation," I said.

"It appears in writing?" she said, surprised. "That's convenient."

"Do you mind explaining to me what was that?" I said, hoping that I would get an answer this time.

"I have triggered the System to give you some Heroic Traits," she explained simply. "It didn't have much Intent available, but I had nothing to do around, so I decided to test the system, to make sure it works properly."

Of course she did. But no matter how tempting was to curse her aggressively, I forced myself to keep my lips tight. Don't anger the extremely old, extremely powerful magical being, I repeated to myself.

Even if she was acting sillier than a drunk sorority girl trying to complete her pledge.

"I thought I needed people's worship for me to receive power."

"That's only for Divine Traits," she said dismissively. "Heroics Traits doesn't require worship, being the focus of the mortals' anger or admiration is enough. How else do you think little boys like Cadmus and Jason received their powers?"

"Obviously," I answered with a sigh, trying to ignore the fact that not only she had referred to two mythical Greek heroes like they were little children — though, after casually referring to gods, not too surprising — but the heroes she referred to were from the oldest tales.

"What about Achilles and Odysseus," I asked with a sudden impulse.

"Who?" she said in confusion, but this time, it didn't seem like the blank expression that appeared on her face when I asked about her name. No, it was a simpler lack of recognition. "Ajax? Menelous? Diomedes?" I asked, only to receive the same blank response. "How about Hippomedon of Mount Portinus?"

"Little boy of Talaus, I remember him," she said with enthusiasm. "Though I don't remember his actions, I'm sure he had become a strong hero."

"He did," I said. Her answers revealed some, but brought much more. Every single hero she had recognized had lived quite a bit before the famous siege of Troy, and she had not recognized even a single one of the heroes that were reportedly participated in the siege of Troy.

Interestingly, that gave me an interesting cutoff date. Somewhere between thirteen-hundred and twelve-hundred B.C. It wasn't the most beneficial information, but considering her sudden silence whenever I asked about her history, every scrap of information was useful.

Strangely, she didn't ask any more questions about them, not at all, which contrasted greatly with her usual chipper attitude.

"We should go back to the tournament," I said. Asking more questions was clearly useless. Even without considering the weird mental blocks she displayed, she was already too flighty to understand what was important, and I lacked the time to properly explain that to her.

Luckily, even without asking her, one thing was clear. With her personality, if she had a choice about what skill to give me, she wouldn't have given me intimidation. Yet it was my favored weapon against my opponents. And pattern recognition clearly had a direct link to chess.

Even the way I perceived was clearly outside her own understanding and related to my own subconsciousness, limiting her role to somehow triggering the System if my assumptions were correct.

So, the selection either came from my subconsciousness, or somehow linked to the nature of this so-called Intent based on what people that watched me was feeling.

All that remained was to see what kind of impact those so-called Heroic Traits had on my abilities. Not that I expected much. They came with numbers denoting their power, and I was currently at the first stage. Not the greatest advertisement.

So, to get a better understanding, when I walked back. Unlike my first entrance, I wasn't tense.

I wanted to test the Pattern Recognition before the Intimidation.

The people looked at me with a mixture of anger and fear, but that was hardly different from the way they looked at me before, confirming that intimidation wasn't some kind of passive magic aura.

Or, it was weak enough not to make a difference, but I hoped it wasn't the case.

I hoped the first was the case, but I feared it was the second. It would be just my luck.

When I arrived at my next game, the opponent was already waiting for me. A familiar face, even. I remembered defeating him in the previous tournament. He was a decent player, around my skill level if no tricks were pulled.

Unfortunately, he had proved particularly vulnerable against said tricks, his mental power collapsing after his second loss, marking him as the loser.

"I won't fall to your tricks again," he growled, which earned a warning glare from a nearby referee, but didn't escalate to an official warning since the game was yet to start.

"We'll see," I said with a smirk. Under normal circumstances, I would have started to worry, because he was the kind of encounter I hated the most. A skilled opponent that was prepared for my trick, turning into a slogging match where even a victory hurt, because it dispelled the threatening aura I had worked hard to cultivate.

Luckily, it made him the perfect opponent to test my new ability.

Now, I needed to see how much this Pattern Recognition helped.

While a bit simplification, chess games — especially formats like Blitz with extremely limited thinking time — could be categorized into two types. One was where both players stuck to more established openings, sometimes moving twenty even thirty steps into the game without deviating from the traditional playbook.

People preferred to play those kinds of games, especially in the early stages of the tournament, because they were mentally less exhausting — significantly — while still determining the better player with decent accuracy. Though, it favored experience and studying rather than ability and raw talent.

The second way of playing was deviating from the standard openings through a surprising move early on. It turned the comfortable slugging into a slogging match, like boxers fighting without their gloves. It was not a preferred way to play, because even for the winner, it came with great mental exhaustion.

And mental exhaustion quickly built up after playing almost fifty games during a tournament, even more if the games went to longer tiebreakers.

It was why I earned a frustrated glare from my opponent after reacting to his kingside pawn opener with attacking with the right-side pawns, throwing the game into chaos in exchange for losing a slight advantage.

He bit his lips and stuck to the center, playing defensive, but in a more balanced manner than my previous opponent, not making the mistake of abandoning the initiative.

I responded by attacking with my rook, making the game even more complicated. It was the worst nightmare of a Blitz player, a board that would have been considered even as a classical game, where players routinely expanded more than ten minutes just to consider one move.

I had to admire my opponent. During the previous tournament, he would have started panicking in the same position. This time, he stuck to his guns, smoothly establishing an interlinked defense cutting most of my attack routes.

So, I just twisted my attack formation at the cost of a knight, wasting a piece to make the problem even more incomprehensible.

His defense adapted, but not without wasting a nice chunk of his time. Meanwhile, I was examining the board with an almost hypnotized fascination, enjoying the flowing offensive and defensive lines, much clearer than before.

The Heroic Trait I had received was even more useful than I had hoped for. It wasn't certainly something that would be termed magical, at least not the kind that would suddenly make me invincible. A grandmaster, or even a high-ranked master, would still cut me into the pieces.

But it wasn't negligible either. If I was trying to win the current game half an hour ago, I would have likely lost it, though earning the bonus of an exhausted and annoyed opponent in exchange.

This time, as I pushed my queen forward, my opponent just toppled his own king to indicate surrender before standing up. "We'll start the next game after a break," he said, using one of his timeouts immediately.

Smart, I thought. Too bad that, unlike what he expected, it wasn't luck that allowed me to catch an obscure opening in his formation, but the improvements from the skill.

Though, after fifteen minutes, and two games later, his shocked gaze certainly didn't share the same nature. He looked crushed. "You can't be this good," he said, shocked. "We have just played two months ago, and all you had was tricks."

"Well," I said with a shrug. "Do me a favor and keep it a secret, but last time, you fell for my tricks. This time, you were a worthy opponent, so I used my true skills," I said, consoling my opponent, which was normally not something I preferred to do. I preferred to crush my opponents, removing a future challenge.

But realizing my sudden magical guest brought some benefits along with the headache, I was in a good mood.