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

  Nia thrust her arms to 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 esg 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 rea speed!" Vi exploded. "Did you all see that!? An instant roll after getting hit from behind! Ultra instinct at its fi! Nobody could pull off such as stunt except for the Insa of the Apocalypse!"

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

  Not going for Izuna Drht away was greedy. Yuel thought. Then again, nding o from behind and then doing Izuna is probably fast enough to catch most people off-guard. It takes a special kind of reaoo dodge such a py oion.

  Lars thwarted Nia's assassination pn 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 ro' roll, yo!" Lars pointed his mic-ssh-pistol at Nia. From now on, the prey gonhe 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 nd the Izuna Drop after the opening attack.

  Of course, it’s not like she always nded Izuna Drop on everybody every time for zero effort. For example, there were times she failed to sneak up to her oppo because they were too cautious of her presence. But, whenever she successfully got to her oppo's back while ih - it was over. Nia started with an opening basic attack from behind ter the damage boost of Imperial Land then ed things up with an Izuna Drop that always nded without an act.

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

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

  BLING

  "Ah!" Nia jumped. A sound ruck her. The entator Pirate was shooting fiery entary at her!

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

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

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

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

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

  BLING! Another shot was ing!

  "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 wao 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 on. The knockback sent him flying toward the jungle and that made his close the distan 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 aon hearing that opening phrase. The Kraken was ing! 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 lihe Kraken didn't e.

  A feint!? Nia wao smack herself so hard in the forehead right now. Of course, Pirate cel 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 o waste his Kraken if he could this up with basic attacks.

  You have killed an enemy!

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

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

  "Gave up? Just like that?"

  "Apparently," Yuel g 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 e up with an excuse this time. No surprise there; giving up in the middle of a fight like this was unpetitive and ht 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 specifi of atta mind whearted but, when things didn't go as pnned, she became lost.

  But, it'd be cruel to hold this against a rookie like her. Yuel also used to freeze like this before whehought his fwless pn 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; o criticize them too harshly. What was way more iing about this entire exge was the way Nia snuck up to Lars and caught him off guard. If she had gone for Izuna Drht away from stealth, this fight would have pyed out differently.

  “She almost got you,” Yuel said.

  “I knht?” Lars ughed. “Almost gave me a heart attack. I thought I was dead meat when she popped outta nowhere.”

  “Was it really that uable?” Yuel asked.

  "Totally didn't see it ing."

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

  "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 e."

  "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 Vi? 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 turo the others.

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

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

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

  "Kukuku," Vi stretched his arms as if to present somebody. "As I thought, BckFlot 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 her than Vanishing Phantom!"

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

  "So, you want to hear it?" Vi wore the smug of a know-it-all. "You want to learruth 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 prese's like a high ranked Presence cealment ability!"

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

  "I bet he got no idea either," Yuel shrugged. "What does it eveo 'erase presence'? Suonsense."

  "I see, I see," Vi 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 es nobody notiia's pn? As you said, it should've beey obvious. But, everybody was shocked. How e?"

  "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 attaing? There was no reasonable expnation for that.

  "You also felt it, right?" Vi asked. "Sometimes, Nia just naturally slips out of your mind like she was here in the first pce."

  "'t say I felt that way."

  "Seriously?" Vi frowned and turo the others. "You all felt that tht?"

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

  "She does have a rather resence," Kai agreed.

  "Ergo, there's no mistake in my clusion," Vi cluded. "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,” Vi nodded. “This is indeed peculiar. Why Yuel always see Nia despite her Vanishing Phantom?”

  “Let’s see how long it takes you to bme that on a ype 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 Vi's observations. Of course, not the part about the “Mystic Eyes” but rather Yuel’s ability to thhly 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 py for them. As such, he always kept in mind where Nia should be positioned on the board. And, when he failed to fi the expected position, that alerted him immediately.

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

  So, perhaps Vi's analysis wasn't that far-off after all. Indeed, Nia was the "Vanishing Phantom". Or, in human nguage, she was good at sneaking around unnoticed and l the oppo'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 simir to how Yuel would sometime notice that an oppo was distracted and used that opportunity sneak up to them without them notig.

  Even though each pyer was trolling 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 oppos, That could expin how she snuck up to Lars and Vi so easily.

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

  After Lars pletely crushed Nia in that 1v1, how was she going to recover? What sneaky new pn to attack will she devise to win the csh?