Season 3: Chapter 65: ROFL (2)
"The most troublesome thing about European civilizations is their knights."
Cookie had said this when planning a strategy against European nations.
"Knights are dangerous, especially for civilizations specializing in ranged weapons like Korea. They’re all a headache from France’s second era royal knights to England's templars and Germany’s third era Teutonic knights."
The reason for all of them was similar.
"These units basically only receive half damage from ranged attacks. Their armor simply deflects most arrows with insufficient draw strength."
This made killing knights with ranged attacks nearly impossible. Without firearms like muskets and hand cannons that appeared in the fourth era, fighting knights with ranged attacks was foolish.
"However, there is a way to take them down from a distance."
It wasn’t that knights were invincible at long range. While facing knights solely with bows was certainly foolish, what if a coordinated attack was launched?
"Archers have to coordinate with spearmen."
The story would be different with spearmen. It was a classic strategy for spearmen to wait in ambush and rush out to counter the knights drawn in by the archers. Once the spearmen immobilized the knights, vulnerabilities would be momentarily exposed.
"You can’t cover joints with armor. The waist, elbows, knees, ankles, neck, and back... their armor has gaps in all these areas. If archers concentrate and shoot when these knights become stationary, they can hit them. Especially..."
Even the most thoroughly armored knight had vulnerabilities at the joints.
Cookie pointed to a spot.
"Here."
The eyes.
The blue sky reflected in the sharp, clear eyes and an arrow could be seen flying within the piercing blue irises.
"The eyes are very vulnerable."
The feathers of the arrow slowly fluttered. Everything moved slowly. The sound was drowned in time and the air itself seemed to solidify.
Whooosh...
Only the arrow traveled through the halted world. Crushing the hardened wind, it finally dove into the blue iris.
"It hit."
Crash.
The slowed world collapsed.
Thwack!
"Kugh!"
The knight jerked his head back and a fountain of blood spurted out. At the same time, a cry could be heard.
"Waaaaaaah!"
Not just the soldiers, the spectators dressed in red also rose from their seats.
"Waaaaaaah!"
Eardrums buzzed and commands sprang from both sides.
"The royal knight is in danger! Block them!"
"Now! Kill them!"
The situation quickly escalated.
The royal knight fainted with his head tilted back and became exposed. It was an ideal state to kill him.
"If you hit the eyes, they become temporarily incapacitated and expose all their vital points."
Not just the neck, but almost all the vital body points became exposed. Even the hit detection improved.
Now was the moment.
Pang shouted at the archers, "Shoot to kill! Fire!"
Following Pang's shout, countless arrows flew toward the knight. Like a downpour, the arrows spared no place and pierced everywhere.
The knight turned into a porcupine and his exposed white neck soon turned bloody red.
Thud!
"!"
The knight fell from his horse and died.
"Waaaaaaah!"
An enormous roar rang out just because one knight had died.
Almond turned his gaze elsewhere.
"Now, there's one left..."
One more knight still remained.
"Huh?"
Where had the other knight gone? He could not be found.
“Eeeeing...!”
"Behind!?"
Without knowing when the knight had turned and charged, a dark shadow loomed behind Almond.
Almond rolled forward and barely managed to dodge the knight's sword.
Whoosh!
However, he had no next move.
The knight, undeterred, charged again to finish Almond with his sword.
"This bastard is the real problem—"
At that moment, another person on horseback sped past and attacked.
Boom!
"I still have a bamboo spear, you bastard."
It was Bread. She charged with her horse and stabbed with her bamboo spear. The knight collided head-on with her.
"Ugh...!?"
“Eeeeing...!”
The royal knight with a splendid fluttering banner fell off his horse.
Thump!
The knight hadn't died, but rolled to escape those on horseback.
However, Bread threw her bamboo spear somewhere else.
"Here."
Almond caught her bamboo spear.
"Finish it."
Almond ran forward and stabbed the knight rolling on the ground.
Thrust─!
"Aaaaaah!"
The second knight also died with a scream.
Bababoom!
Trumpets blared.
‘Huh?’
The donation alert was supposed to be off.
[The enemy has surrendered!]
It wasn't a donation alert, but a surrender notification.
***
‘They surrendered?’
Almond felt surprisingly shocked. He knew it was coming, but the rush of emotions when it finally arrived...
'We won?'
They had won. Those three words filled his mind. Flashbacks of past events momentarily passed by: Korea’s scrimmage defeat, when he saw the 98% prediction favoring France, the times they shot arrows from defense towers, the moment the royal knight appeared, the sensation of stabbing with the bamboo spear, and the notification they had never seen in scrims before.
Dudung!
[Joseon Wins]
Almond was momentarily at a loss for words. He couldn't quite spit out what he wanted to say. It wasn't just him.
The roar of the battle quieted and a calm settled. One side was exhausted and the other was overwhelmed with emotion.
Had they really won?
'Really?'
The warm feeling of victory gradually seeped into Almond’s skin. He felt it tangibly.
‘It's our victory.’
Snap!
Bread raised her sword high and shouted, "We won!!!"
Never before had everyone shouted so loudly. They threw their weapons up and roared in victory.
"Waaaaaaah!"
Pang ran over while almost screaming, "Hey hey! I knew we could count on you! Almond! You were the one who shot the knight, right!? Eh!?"
Was this really the person who used to keep a stern demeanor when Almond first joined, telling him not to speak unless it was about strategy?
Spam, Latte, and Carrot also ran over and hugged each other.
Laughter came naturally.
“Hahaha!”
Almond felt the same. Although he hadn’t spent much time with the team yet, the magnitude of his joy was no less. He smiled so broadly that his teeth dazzled.
— Congrats!!
— Wow, really amazing
— Simply legendary
— That’s crazy
— Praise the “NUT”
— I deserve a pat on the back for watching this live
— Those who didn’t see this live lost half their life lol
— Crazy, can you believe this really happened???
***
When the surrender notification appeared, OrangeKing and caster Kim Sang-Hoon sprang up and shouted.
"Wooowww!!!"
"We won! We really did it! France lost in the second era!! Although Korea didn't get the Jikji, they secured a great victory!"
— lol Jikji joke
— lmao
— So moving
— I can't believe this
— Is this real?
Overwhelmed with emotion, the caster looked again at the victory alert and shouted, "This impossible fight! With brilliant move after move! They turned it into a real victory! I can't believe this! France must be even more in disbelief!?"
OrangeKing nodded in agreement.
"Exactly! Look at the face of that French commander. It's as if his soul has left him! He's completely out of it! On the other hand, Korea…!"
"What about Korea?"
"They're thrilled! Laughter just keeps continuing! It's like a ten year indigestion has finally been relieved!"
— lmao
— "K - ROFL"
— Are they really serious because they keep saying it lol
— lol
— Cookie's beaming smile lol
The caster heard something through his in-ear while still riding the wave of victory and spoke, "Alright! They will soon be selecting the MVP of this game! But first, let's watch the highlights!"
***
Meanwhile, in the French spectator section…
"Dammit!"
Bang!
The atmosphere was much more gloomy and could even be described as hostile.
"Those idiots! Are they trying to be eliminated in the preliminaries again!? What will we do if we can't even beat Korea in this group!?"
"Damn it! A cavalry civilization can't beat an archery civilization?! These idiots are the ones who'd lose to a bow and get beaten by a rock! It's hopeless!"
The seemingly drunk spectators swore profusely, eventually getting banned from This World.
[1 minute of silence]
Red text appeared over their faces, making their words completely inaudible. Nevertheless, they continued to open their mouths non-stop, clearly continuing to curse and unable to quell their frustration.
The rest of the spectators, tired of swearing, started leaving the stadium one by one. They didn’t hesitate since they could disappear from the stadium with just the press of a button.
[Logout]
Gradually, the French spectator section became empty and only four words remained on the display.
In contrast, the Korean spectator section still remained. They continued singing in a festive atmosphere.
If heaven and hell were combined, it would look like this.
Among them, two non-Koreans who weren’t French could be seen.
"How did you see it, Anto?"
It was an Italian player. Anto, the person being asked, was the general commander of the Italian team.
"France wasn’t able to harness its golden era."
"Yes. Setting up just one defense tower at the beginning made too big of an impact. Plus, there were many other minor mistakes."
"Hmm. Right. The only thing they did well was choosing the slave miner faction. Their performance was disappointing."
"In a good way, I find the strategy used by Korea quite perplexing."
The other man, Toby, was the leader of the Italian think tank team like Kim Chi-Seung for Korea.
"Perplexing?" Anto asked for a further explanation.
"Yes, Korea has been stubborn about using only conventional strategies throughout the scrims. It was known that they were building up for the next season rather than this one to make their standard play stronger."
"Hmm. That's true..."
"But the Korea we saw in this first game looked completely different from the scrims. Instead of being solid with standard playing, it was a festival of one-off unconventional strategies and tactics. Isn't this intentional?"
Toby's remark implied that Korea had prepared these unconventional strategies, dubbed wild builds, and hid them during the scrims.
At first glance, it made sense. However, it seemed like a stretch to Anto.
"Unconventional strategies require even more practice..."
Hiding a strategy meant not practicing it. Anto found it unreasonable to use unconventional strategies in real games without any practice.
"From what I see, Toby…"
"?"
"It's still unclear whether Korea is playing differently compared to the scrims. They might have prepared this strategy just for France."
"That's true. France is a rival, so they might have prepared something special."
Toby agreed that it was highly possible, but something still nagged at him.
‘Isn’t it a bit underdeveloped for that?’
If Korea had really prepared the strategy just for France, the build would have been a bit more polished and tailored for France. However, the fast second era build wasn't a perfect fit for targeting France. It was as if they considered other countries as well.
‘Well, no one will fall for it again.’
Korea had already shown off their fast second era build with bamboo spears. The likelihood of other civilizations losing against that significantly decreased.
Italy, having witnessed this game, would certainly not fall for it. That was what Toby thought.
"Well, anyway, we’ll see what Korea's strategy for this tournament is when they play against Spain. No need to rush."
Italy and Korea would face each other last. They still had plenty of opportunities to learn about Korea.
"Anyway, they put on a good show."
"Yeah."
"Oh, but…"
"?"
Swoosh.
Anto handed over a screenshot he had saved. It seemed to have been taken during the game.
"This person..."
"If Korea really bothers you, look into this player."
The photo showed a handsome black-haired man drawing a bow.
"I didn’t see him last year. He seems quite remarkable."
"Understood."
Toby nodded and looked at the scoreboard.
[MVP Selection in Progress...]
Highlights of the game replayed while the judges voted for the MVP.
‘Should I watch the MVP interview?’ Toby pondered briefly before leaving the stadium.