Nia’s entrance exam was about to begin. Vi created a 1v1 lobby and Nia joined in. Sinia seemed to be unfortable with people around her, everybody gave her spad huddled behind Vio watch the game unfold.

  "With so many eyes on my monitor, I feel like I'm the one beied here," Vi said. “I feel the nerves kig in.”

  "o worry," Kai said. "Go ahead and perform horribly. That'll make Nia look good."

  "And, you'd be satisfied with that kind of result?"

  "Of course not," Kai said. "But, maybe that’ll at least calm her down a little. I mean, look at her."

  "Yeah..." Yuel didn't even know what to say. Nia curled into a ball on top of the chair as if she wao bee a hairball. Was she that nervous? Or, was it some sort of ritual before the match? And, why did she put her legs on the chair like? Also, how e her parents never bothered to take care of her messy spaghetti hair? So many mysteries.

  In a proper Ranked Duel, each pyer was allowed to ban three csses, simir to the first round of banning in Ranked MOBA. However, to make life easier, Kai vinced everybody to let Nia skip this part for the exam.

  Unfortunate, but oh well. Yuel shook his head. There was a lot of information to be extracted from how one hahe drafting phase but knowing how to draft was way more advahan just knowing how to py. Lars was the definitive example of that. That goof had zero drafting ability but insane in-game skill. One of those cases when a book couldn’t be judged by its cover.

  With no banning phase, each pyer was allowed to piy css they wanted.

  Alrighty, what do I go for? Vi stroked his . I like me some Viking in Duel, but I feel that might be too aggressive for a test. The girl already looks nervous enough. I don't want to bully her.

  In the end, Vi went for Knight, the solid all-rounder. It should be good enough to pose a challenge for properly testing Nia's mettle without making her sweat bullets.

  Meanwhile, Nia picked Rogue.

  "Rogue, huh," Yuel wore a difficult expression.

  "Hey," Luke excimed. "Before you start trash-talking my bue again, just so you know: it's not a meme in 1v1."

  "Yeah," Kai tuned in. "I wouldn't call it 'high tier' but it's definitely up there in Duel."

  "I didn't even say anythi," Yuel made a face. Though, admittedly, thoughts like that did cross his mind at first. "I'm more surprised it's an assassin pick. They're not easy in 1v1."

  "That's true," Kai frowned and crossed her arms. "I hope Nia knows what she's doing. What are her most pyed csses?"

  "Nobody knows," Yuel said. "She set most of her info to private."

  "ht," Kai sighed.

  "So," Vi started. "Knight is sidered a tough matchup fue, right?"

  "I’d say so," Luke was the first to answer. He probably sidered himself the Nue expert in the group. "Assassin vs. Bruiser is always rough. Like, when you're an assassin and 't kill your target fast, then WTF you're even supposed to do there, amirite?"

  "Maybe we should ask if she wants to ge csses," Kai suggested.

  "She must have picked Rogue because she's fident in it," Yuel argued. "A big part of being good in Duel is being able to adapt to any type of oppo. If she says nothing about this matchup, then I say we let her py. Worst case, if she loses because of the bad matchup, we'll take that into sideration."

  "Fair enough," Kai agreed but she was tapping her foot rapidly. Somebody was clearly nervous about the whole thing.

  Frankly, evehought the odds weren't in Nia's favor. In the few Ranked Duels he pyed, he alicked a bruiser a his easiest matchups were assassins. He didn't win every such matchup but his win ratio against them was definitely higher than against other roles.

  Assassins were usually solid ters to marksmen and mages and those. in turn, tered bruisers. It was a rock-paper-scissors retionship and sometimes victory was decided all the way ba the sele s.

  However, an advantage was nothing more than just that, an adva didn't dictate the ee of the match. The pyers who were truly good at 1v1 were expected to adapt and haheir bad matchups smartly.

  Yuel didn’t i enough time into Duel to reach that level but Nia has been primarily a 1v1 pyer acc to her stats. Therefore, she had to be able to handle an assassin vs. bruiser matchup. Otherwise, it’d put her adaptation skills into question.

  Knight? What a pain. Nia pouted. Drat, they’re doing it on purpose. They must’ve found out I py assassins and picked a bruiser to bully me. Didn’t I leave my stats on private? They must have hacked my at somehow! The i is truly a scary pce.

  Maybe I should just slip away? Nia eyed the door. I bet they won’t even notice. I’ll just go outside and disappear. It’s better than being publicly executed like this. I bet they also pit me against their stro Duelist just to make it a pain. Gufu...

  Nia broke out of her curled posture and lowered her feet to the floor. However, she stopped herself midway.

  Am I going to run away again? Nia trembled. There she was, uaking arance exam for joining a club. Somehow, she already got this far. So, shouldn’t she try just a little harder until the end?

  The exam was shaping up to be a meah that Knight pick but it wasn’t like she didn’t have a ce at all. She has fought many Knights before a some of them. It was a wack matchup but not a hopeless one.

  I-I’ll give it a try. Nia o herself. This was a rare opportunity that might never e again. Ba elementary school, she never joined a club even though it was supposed to mandatory. Nobody properly kept track of it, so nobody forced her into anything. Everybody fot she eveed and she herself was too timid to reach out to anybody.

  But, this time was different. The people from this club noticed her and even found her in her . How? It was like magic. They must have had some sort of secret on their side. Maybe some sort of magical human trag mae that reported Nia’s position iime via GPS. The horror of super teology!

  No, no, no. Nia shook her head. It’s okay. They just happeo notice her when she lying to the club. And, they just happeo find her in her css because they searched very hard. There wasn’t any kind of demonieo teology involved in the process, right? Right?

  READY?

  FIGHT!

  The match began.

  No idea how they find me every time, but... Nia curled bato a ball on top of the chair. This is a ce to join a club for once. So, even though this matchup is a pain, I gotta win somehow.

  Um, what do I pick here, again? Nia browsed the shop. She needed a good starting item to deal with a bruiser, the pesky type of oppo who won’t quickly die from burst damage.

  I check real quiia sneakily g the group oher side of the room. Good, nobody aying attention to her. This called for a stealth mission!

  She sneakily took out her phone and booted the Tipmancer app. Then, she inputted the matchup between Rogue and Knight for Duel mode. The app suggested building Muramasa as the first item for the Rogue pyer.

  Ok. Nia nodded and purchased Muramasa right away. It had about everything she needed: attack power, attack speed, peion, and defeealing. This should let her test the Knight at close quarters.

  With an Lv.3 Muramasa and a Smite utility skill, Nia set out of the base. Where should she start off? The blue buff or the red buff? Naturally, blue was the only safe option. Walking all the way to the Ogre Camp in the ter of the map was too risky. She never did that despite always eaining the idea for a moment before shooting it down.

  Are they gonna invade? Nia cautiously approached the Wraith Camp. Invasions were such a pain to deal with so, hopefully, this examiner won’t bully her. It was already rough enough that she’ll have to deal with a Knight this match.

  Ok, looks clear. Nia o herself and proceeded to clear the Wraith Camp. This was the part where Rogue kinda sucked and needed help. That’s why she bought the Smite utility skill, which dealt heavy damage to one minion and then unleashed a weaker AoE shockwave which hit other minions in range.

  She hammered the Supreme Wraith with Smite and the shockwave hit the rest of the wraiths. That deleted over 80% of the boss’s HP right away and reduced the other wraiths to half health. Nia ed things up by with a couple more basic attacks.

  OK, done. She collected the blue buff and proceeded to the ne. Her oppo arrived on the around the same time as her, also sp a blue buff.

  That's quite the getup. Nia made a face. The enemy Knight was wearing an expensive bck demonic skin with fme effects erupting from every part of its body. He almost looked like a Dark Knight, except even more evil and infernal.

  It was... really cool, actually. Though, the guy had to be loaded to allow himself that kind of stuff. This skin was quite expensive pared to the usual ones. Maybe it was one of those cases when the child bought a skin with his parents' credit card without their knowledge? So, maybe he was stealing money from his own family to buy skins!? There were many such stories floating around the i. Scary how far some people would go.

  Iing ization. Vi processed the Rogue's looks with his amazing Skin Analyzer ability. Everybody thought he was just the Arbiter of Talents, but nay! He was also the Detective of ization! By analyzing how pyers ized their characters, Vi could deduce everything about his oppos! It was elementary!

  Alright, not really. Vi was sure it's possible to learn many things about a pyer by looking at their ization, but his Skin Analyzer personal skill wasn't high level enough to yield any useful results.

  All he could tell was that ed the default Rogue skin quite a bit. The Rogue’s default bck robe ainted in light brown, making it blended well with the desert-themed enviro of the 1v1 map. Simirly, the bck hair ainted blonde and the dark eyes were ged intht silver.

  All in all, it didn't look like Nia used any premium ization parts but she sure repainted everything she could get her hands on. It was an oddly bright take ue, a ormally associated with sneaking around in the darkness. Though, in its own odd way, this bright skin actually blended with the enviro like a chameleon; it made the Rogue look more sneaky than ever. Instead of hiding in the darkness, this one was hiding in pin sight!

  So, I’ll be dealing with a Rogue, eh. Vi naturally jerked. Anybody who pyed Cssmancers had more than a couple of bitter experiences against Rogue for it was the "noob stomper" css until a certain skill level. Once pyers learo buy Stealth Wards against Rogue, its effectiveness dropped drastically and it was reduced to a meme.

  However, that was only as far as the MOBA mode was ed. In Duel, Rogue apparently wasn't that bad. Vi was no expert by any means, but if Kai vouched for a Rogue pi Duel then it had to be rather effective.

  How should Vi approach this? Unlike in the MOBA mode, he hasn’t met that many Rogues in Duel so his matchup knowledge was g and rusty. Even by tapping into the boundless knowledge stored in his Information Bckhole, he couldn't draw out a solid answer. But, it wasn't like his Information Bckhole didn't store sufo or anything. It's just that Vi was too rusty at the moment and therefore unqualified to access suformation.

  His first instinct was to buy a Stealth Ward to ter the Rogue but then he realized it was rather pointless. Stealth Ward was a ter tue in the MOBA mode because the map was big and it was hard to tell where the Rogue will strike from. But, in 1v1, there was only one oppoo keep tabs on, so it was much easier to keep the Rogue in check at all times.

  "I'm surprised you didn't buy Stealth Wards," Yuel said.

  "Kukuku," Vi smirked. "For the one who possesses boundless knowledge and the ability to absorb all information, Stealth Wards are unnecessary! I shall expose the Rogue with the powers of my third eye!"

  "He's right," Kai said. "It's a waste to buy Stealth Wards in Duel. Better spend that cash on finishing your build faster. It's not like 5v5 where there are lots of things to keep track of."

  "Is that so," Yuel crossed his arms. "I usually buy a Stealth Ward and pce it on the o make the Rogue’s life harder. Am I the only one who does that?"

  "I don't do that stuff," Lars shrugged.

  "Me her," Kai agreed.

  "I see," Yuel pursed his lips. If the two best Duelists here didn't do that, then maybe it was truly a mispy and Vi was actually pying correctly right now. Yuel made a mental o research this topic ter.

  The ning phase began and minions from both sides cshed in the middle of the map. This was going to be the tough part for Nia due to Knight's Chivalry passive. Vi's minions had superior defense so they were going to overwhelm Nia's minions. What ter did she have for this matchup?

  "What item did she start with?" Yuel asked.

  "Let's see," Vi brought up the status s. "Whew, Muramasa. Somebody is pnning to go all-in against me."

  "Looks det," Kai said.

  Does Kai even py assassins/bruisers io know enough about this matchup? Yuel wondered. But, I have to agree. A Muramasa start seems solid. That's probably what I'd pick as well in this situation.

  Muramasa didn’t have any particur strong points but it provided all the stats Rogue wanted against a bruiser: attack power, attack speed, peion, and a passive that stole some of the target's defenses with every hit. It should give Nia just enough power to test the ne and it’ll also be a great tool for the eventual 1v1 against a Knight.

  But, Vi didn’t make it easy. He went straight for Mistmail as his first Lv.3 item. Its passive lowered the attack speed of all nearby enemies, which was a great tool for redug Rogue’s effectiveness in close quarters. If a Rogue couldn't nd multiple fast hits in succession oarget's back, it was difficult for it to seal the deal. Especially, against a tanky oppo.

  On top of that, it put Nia in a sticky situation during ning. Rogue was a melee css so it had to advao the frontlio clear minions, just like Vi. However, if they both get to the frontlihe aura effeistmail will reaia and lower her attack speed, which will slow down down her ability to clear the minions. If Vi clears the wave first and then catches Nia isoted in the middle of the ne, she'll have a very bad time.

  I hope this doesn't e across as bullying. Vi smiled wryly. When it came to tering his ne oppo, Vi had plenty of experience as a Top Laner. So, at least in that area, he’ll give Nia some challenge. tering his ne oppo was the only way somebody as ued as him could possibly defeat oppos so it was the only way he knew how to py.

  Welp, Vi smiled wryly. Worst case, if it gets too difficult for her, I'll just lower my level a little. Though, it's going to be a challeo shat past the Mystic Eyes of Weakness Perception. Eh, I'll figure something out. Probably.

  So, how will Nia deal with this challenge? How will she test Vi during the ning phase despite her numerous disadvahis was shaping up to be a tough exam...