“Alright. Next time, please only enter this camp with Party Leaders. Elves are very reserved and are not used to people. Children like the one over there are fine though.” requested Salvador pointing towards Canary.

“Father!” exclaimed Sylvie in objection.

“We’ll keep that in mind.” said Hawk.

As we were about to part ways with the other Parties outside the Elven Camp, Hawk spoke up, “Canary, Dove, return to Naut City with Swan for now.”

“You’re not coming with us?” asked Canary.

“I have a bad feeling about something, so I’ll stay here for now. Come back at dusk.” explained Hawk vaguely.

“If you say so…” I hesitantly agreed.

Once we reached a distance away from the Elven Camp, Swan said, “You should trust Hawk more.”

“I do… but he tends to do things on his own even back in real life. I wish he would trust us more.” I said.

“Hawk doesn’t do things alone because he wants to be alone. He does things alone because they are best done alone.”

“…”

“Hawk changed ever since he was reunited with you. Before, he lacked a purpose. He played Reality because there was nothing better to do. It seems he didn’t care whether he’d die or not. When we talked after he made ARF, for the first time I saw excitement and enjoyment in him. The first thing he mentioned was, ‘I finally found a reason to finish Reality and someone to rely on.’”

“I see…” I said and smiled. While I still had my doubts, I cheered up a bit from Swan’s words. “You seem pretty close to Hawk.”

“He was the first Player I fought with. We fought and talked about our personal lives a lot. I wanted to form a Party with him, but I knew it wouldn’t be good.”

“Why so?”

“Hawk works best as a leader despite not having the personality of one. A Party who listens to him will definitely succeed; however, it’s hard to get people to listen to him. This makes me glad he has a good Vice-Leader like you. Canary is a great Player as well.”

“No need for flattery…”

“Thank you.” said Canary.

“Hawk probably told you this, but Dove is around the same level as Razor; Canary is as skilled as the members of Golden Warriors.”

“Umm… why am I rated so highly?”

“Because you’re movements are smooth.”

“Hawk mentioned that Zoe said the same thing, but can you elaborate further?”

“It all comes down to the timing of your movements. While your actions aren’t perfectly efficient, all your actions, whether efficient or not, are perfectly timed that even veteran warriors such as myself cannot achieve.”

“Why can I do that?”

“There’s probably a reason, but there’s no way I would know.”

“Thank you.”

After we were quiet for while, Canary broke the silence and asked, “Hawk became famous due to his Duel with Blitz correct?”

“Well, most of the top Players already knew him before then since he Partied temporarily often with me, but that Duel made him famous among average Players.”

“How did the Duel go?” I asked.

“Hawk won with 25% Health left.”

“So the fight was close.” commented Canary.

“No. While the Health indicated otherwise, Hawk defeated Blitz as if Blitz was a nobody.”

“But why was the Health so close?” asked Canary.

“Even among the top Players, Blitz is the average Player’s worst nightmare to Duel since he fights through sheer experience and overwhelming fighting advantage. Hawk’s fighting skill is only slightly above average at best, and at the beginning of the Duel, Blitz brought down Hawk to a fourth of his Health without taking a single hit. Then with the same average level movements he did as he was beaten down, he countered all of Blitz attacks and won the Duel without difficulty.”

“He finished ‘analyzing’ him.” I added.

“Yes. Excluding Abilities that get better the longer fights go, prolonging fights against Hawk is always bad against Hawk.”

What Swan said was true even in real life. The longer any game went, the harder it was to win against him. Hawk did not have a general strategy for himself. His strategy was to counter other people’s strategies.