Clang—!
A dull, heavy impact echoed through the empty abandoned building.
Rin gripped the wooden sword with both hands—the one being used as a counterweight—only to feel an irresistible force surge up through her palms.
Her footing faltered, and her legs, already trembling from exhaustion, gave out completely. She collapsed backward onto the dusty concrete floor in a graceless heap.
The training session had already been going for ten minutes.
Or rather, for ten minutes straight, Rin had been getting toyed with like a monkey on a leash.
Su Yu, standing in front of her, hadn't even shifted his stance by half a step.
He held the rusted steel pipe loosely in one hand.
Just now, all he'd done was flick his wrist, casually knocking aside Rin's upward thrust with the end of the pipe.
"Hah..."
Rin sat on the ground, gasping for breath, sweat sliding down her cheeks and dripping onto the dusty floor.
Su Yu planted the rusted pipe against the ground, looked at the girl slumped there, and rubbed his brow in exasperation.
"Kid, your stats are lopsided to a ridiculous degree, you know that?"
His voice carried a heavy note of disbelief on the night wind.
"The System rates your Neural Reflex as S-rank. Your eyes really can keep up with my movements. But your stamina is just pathetic."
He paused, the eyes above his smiley-face mask narrowing slightly.
"But that's not even the worst of it." Su Yu tapped the pipe against the ground. "The worst part is, your hands shake every time you swing that sword."
Rin's shoulders jerked, and she instinctively hid her hands behind her back.
"Your eyes spot the opening, your brain sends the command, but every time that wooden sword's about to hit me—or hit anything living—your muscles instinctively flinch and pull the strike short."
Rin lowered her head, not daring to meet his eyes.
That thick smell of blood, the despairing screams in that basement, her own hands soaked in red—those memories clung to her like a disease in the bone.
Su Yu tossed the pipe aside, walked over, and crouched down in front of her.
Rin was afraid of something. Terrified of something.
Su Yu knew it.
Sakura, who looked like nothing more than an Office Slave on the surface, had already clawed her way through years in a dark underworld, pushing past the limits of the human body through sheer will, breaking through the constraints of the Genetic Lock.
These two sisters' past was anything but simple.
But he didn't press for details. Instead, he changed tack. "Rin, can you tell me—why did you start playing this game in the first place?"
Rin bit her lip.
"Because... because the first-kill rewards, and the loot from the dungeons... they can be sold for a lot of money."
She stared fixedly at her knees, tears welling in her eyes, but she forced herself not to let them fall.
Her voice grew smaller and smaller, thick with shame and self-reproach.
"Sis works so hard every day... she's so pretty, but she won't even buy herself a new dress or decent makeup."
"She spends her whole paycheck on my schooling, on buying me good food..."
"I want to help carry some of that weight. I don't want to always hide behind her, being a burden. I want to earn some money—this winter, I want to buy her a scarf as a gift..."
Rin's voice trailed off until it was barely audible.
Her face felt like it was on fire.
In front of Brother Su Yu—a demon-lord-tier player with godlike skill—her reason sounded so mundane.
Other people played games to dominate the server, to enjoy the thrill of combat. She was just after a bit of virtual currency she could cash out.
Wanting to get stronger just to make money—saying it out loud filled her with embarrassment.
But, to Rin's surprise—
"Ha... hahahahaha!"
Su Yu froze for a second, then threw his head back and burst out laughing.
"Making money? To buy your sister a gift?"
Once he'd laughed himself out, he lowered his head, his eyes shining with unconcealed admiration.
"That's the most perfect reason I've ever heard! It sounds way better than all that bullshit about 'protecting world peace' or 'for the survival of humanity'!"
Rin looked up blankly, utterly confused.
"But, Rin."
The smile faded from Su Yu's face.
"Have you ever met a working stiff who couldn't earn a living because they were scared of sparks flying off their keyboard, or scared their wrench might slip and hit a bolt?"
He bent down, picked up the wooden sword that had fallen to the ground, and slammed the flat of the blade against the concrete load-bearing wall with a bang.
"Your biggest problem is that you're treating this holographic projection like it's real."
Su Yu pointed the wooden sword at Rin's nose.
"No matter how realistic this game looks, no matter how fine the textures, those monsters chasing you with a blade are nothing but a pile of ones and zeros."
"And the sword in your hand isn't a real weapon either."
"Treat it like a pickaxe for mining. And those monsters? They're just piggy banks with legs, running around stuffed full of coins and cash!"
Rin blanked out.
That bizarre way of looking at things had completely short-circuited her brain.
Su Yu continued, "You're afraid of hurting them? You feel sympathy for a pile of code? Don't make me laugh."
"In this System, every second you hesitate, every time your form breaks, the System registers your attack as a failure. You know what that means?"
He leaned forward, staring hard into Rin's eyes.
"It means the coins you just earned from that kill—gone."
"It means the money your sister could've used for that dress she's been eyeing for months—gone. It means your sister keeps staying up late hunched over spreadsheets. It means the gift you wanted to give her sprouts wings and flies away."
"If you want your sister to stop working overtime every single night, if you want her to stop having to read the Boss's mood, your only job right now is to look at the code in front of you as garbage standing between you and your paycheck—garbage that docks your performance review. And there's only one way to deal with garbage: get rid of it. Understand?"
Rin's hand slowly settled onto the hilt of the wooden sword.
This time, her fingers didn't tremble.
The old bloody phantoms still lingered at the edge of her mind, but a clearer image was forcing its way over them:
Her sister's back as she sat on the couch after work, rubbing her own shoulders. The way she always said, whenever she pushed pocket money into Rin's hands, "Spend more, Rin—sis has plenty."
For a girl who had tasted the hardship of life far too young, those hazy dreams of heroism, of grand ambitions to save the world, were simply too unrealistic.
But the most down-to-earth wish of all—"let sis live a better life"—was the thing that gave her the courage to grip the wooden sword tight again.
"I get it. They're all my bonus."
The girl tightened her grip on the hilt and climbed to her feet.
Dust still clung to her knees, but her spine was straight now.
"Now you're getting it."
Su Yu nodded, satisfied.
He rose from the broken chair and snapped his fingers.
"Warm-up's over."
His fingers flew across the empty air.
"Fwoosh—!"
In Rin's AR field of view, the empty space in front of her was instantly rebuilt from scratch.
Several dim-blue System backend data panels surfaced directly, dense high-frequency light-circuits computing at blinding speed across the empty floor of the abandoned building.
This was the exclusive GM backend, reserved for Ordinal Scale's highest-authority Producer.
"Beep!"
As Su Yu tapped the last, invisible Enter key.
The light-circuits converged in a frenzy, and a colossal figure—a full two meters tall, clad in heavy armor, a sharp longsword gripped in each hand—condensed straight out of the data stream.
[Target Locked: Elite-Rank Dual-Blade Zombie]
Even though Rin's rational mind knew it was just a hologram, the disturbingly realistic model and the bloodthirsty pressure radiating off the monster still froze the air around her.
"Relax."
Su Yu settled back into the ratty couch like some old man on his porch.
"This thing looks scary, but it has no physical mass. So you don't need to trade blows with it using that pitiful Strength of yours."
He tapped his own temple.
"Your stamina rating is garbage-tier. That's a weakness."
"But your Neural Reflex is your greatest asset. For the rest of this training, I'll teach you how to work the judgment logic of this AR System, and turn you into a proper swordswoman."
"What do I do?" Rin gripped the wooden sword tighter, her palms already slick with sweat.
"Simple. Just three moves."
Su Yu lit up the System panel, and in Rin's field of view, red targeting brackets suddenly flared to life all over the massive dual-blade Zombie.
He began teaching Rin the advanced arts that, in this game, could let her solo-kill enemies far above her level.
"Move one: Mikiri Counter."
"Don't roll around wildly like a headless chicken dodging everything—that just wastes stamina."
"In this System, as long as the blade's edge doesn't actually intersect your hitbox, you take no damage—even if it grazes right past your scalp."
"In the final instant before the blade touches your body, use a tiny side-step to trigger the System's invincibility frames, then flick a counter-slash back at it."
"Remember—the highest form of evasion is baiting with your own body, then striking point-blank."
"Move two: Deflect."
"This is what separates pros from noobs. There's a Normal Deflect and a Perfect Deflect."
"Watch closely for the instant its weapon hitbox flashes as it swings. Deflect within one second of that and it counts as a Normal Deflect—you avoid damage, but if the level gap's too big, you'll still take heavy chip damage. A Perfect Deflect, though, is the 0.1-second perfect frame within that window."
"It doesn't matter how much Strength you have. All you need is to have your wooden sword in the exact path of its weapon at that exact moment."
"Nail the timing, and the System registers a perfect nullification—its attack gets voided entirely. That's the hidden mechanic of this game, and it's your ticket to fighting above your level."
"Move three: Discern."
"Every time you Deflect a monster's attack, pressure builds up on its System poise bar. The heavier the attack, the more posture damage your Deflect racks up—and a Perfect Deflect multiplies that by ten."
"Which means, against a heavy, devastating blow, if you land a Perfect Deflect, its poise bar shatters instantly, dropping it into a long, massive stagger. Once its core weak point is exposed, all the amplification from that Perfect Deflect stacks onto your stats. Paired with your weapon's own art, one-shotting an elite monster becomes entirely possible."
Su Yu's mouth curled up.
"Got it? The moment you land a Perfect Deflect is the moment you loot its coins. Theory's done—time for a live run."
With a snap of his fingers, the elite Zombie let out an ear-splitting shriek, its two blades becoming twin flashes of white as it swung down at Rin's head.
Ten minutes earlier, Rin probably would've squeezed her eyes shut and waited to die.
But now—
facing those falling twin blades, no bloody nightmare surfaced in her mind. Instead, Su Yu's brainwashing from a moment ago looped in her head on repeat:
"That's money! That's gold! That's sis's rent! That's sis's new clothes!"
Boom!
Driven by an overwhelming will to survive and a burning obsession with making money, Rin's Neural Reflex—rated S-rank by the System—unleashed its full, terrifying potential.
The world slowed down in her eyes.
Every movement of the dual-blade Zombie, once lightning-fast, every hint of muscle tension, was now captured and broken down by her retinas.
In her AR field of view, those two deadly arcs of blade-light were no longer a blur she couldn't track—they'd been decomposed into afterimages, crawling along their predetermined paths.
Here it comes!
"Mikiri Counter!"
The Zombie's first strike came with a shrill whistle of wind—a wide, sweeping horizontal slash.
Rin's eyes locked onto the red-glowing hitbox.
She didn't step back. Forcing down her instinctive fear, in the last one-tenth of a second before the blade would've opened her throat, she shifted her footing half an inch to the left.
"Whoosh!"
Her body moved like an afterimage.
The massive holographic blade whistled past, brushing her nose, grazing her flying pink hair.
The System's invincibility frame triggered perfectly!
In that blind instant as they passed each other, Rin didn't hesitate—she flicked a reverse slash, and the wooden sword drew a blinding virtual spark across the Zombie's undefended flank.
"Deflect!"
The missed strike enraged the Zombie. Its right-hand blade reversed into another form—a crushing overhead chop, like splitting a mountain, that came straight down at her head.
This time, Rin had nowhere left to retreat.
But she had no intention of retreating anyway.
Her clear eyes reflected the descending blade. She was waiting.
Waiting for that fated 0.01-second judgment frame.
"Now!"
In the split second the blade's light flared, Rin gripped the wooden sword with both hands and, instead of dodging, raised it straight into that thousand-pound force.
"Ding—!!!"
A crisp System sound effect for a perfect block rang through the entire abandoned floor.
In the ordinary physical world, that wooden sword would've snapped in half instantly.
But under this AR game's underlying rules, as long as the frame timing matched up, even a piece of wood could stop a nuke.
Thanks to the perfectly triggered Deflect, the System instantly nullified all that raging force.
The Zombie's massive body reeled backward from the sheer force of the recoil.
"Crack!"
Along with the sound of its poise bar shattering, the Zombie's chest armor blew open, exposing a glowing red weak point.
Massive stagger!
"Now!"
Su Yu's voice rang out at that moment.
He didn't even need to say it.
The instant Rin saw that glowing red weak point, her body had already reacted on instinct.
She dropped her center of gravity, bent her left leg forward, and reversed her grip on the wooden sword.
Her eyes turned cold as ice, all trace of hesitation and weakness gone.
Without hesitation, she triggered the exclusive ultimate skill of her newly equipped five-star weapon, the Sakura Blossom.
[Secret Art: Cherry Blossom: Scatter—Iaijutsu Slash]!
"Zing—!"
A ringing chime of steel tore through the night.
A dazzling arc of pink blade-light carved through the gloom of the abandoned floor like a crescent moon.
For an instant, time itself seemed to stop.
Amid a shower of pink cherry-blossom petals scattering from nowhere, the blade-light cut clean through the Zombie's chest without resistance.
"Boom!"
The Zombie's once-thick health bar dropped to zero the instant that iai slash landed.
Its massive body dissolved into a storm of scattering data fragments, finally settling into a heap of jingling, gold-gleaming virtual coins and loot.
Battle over.
"Whew..."
Rin let out a slow breath.
She spun the wooden sword through the air in a graceful flourish, ending with a cool "sheathe the blade" pose.
Watching that fluid, effortless motion, no one would've believed that half an hour ago, she'd been a trembling novice who could barely hold the sword steady.
The evening wind blew through the empty window frames of the abandoned building.
Rin stood quietly where she was.
She looked down at the loot scattered across the floor, gleaming with the light of money, and listened to the System's cheerful chime of "coins deposited" ringing over and over.
A bright smile spread across her lips.
It was the first time she'd truly felt the thrill of holding power in her own hands—of controlling her own fate.
————————
Over the next hour.
Rin didn't slack off for a second.
With Su Yu's help, one monster after another appeared to fight her.
Rin kept his teaching in mind: if her stamina wasn't up to par, she'd rely on Neural Reflex and the game's mechanics to minimize the drain, winning each fight through defense-and-counter.
As the last elite Zombie collapsed in a burst of holographic effects.
Pink cherry-blossom petals drifted slowly through the virtual space, then swept up by the night wind, vanishing into the shadows between the concrete pillars.
Virtual coins bounced and jingled across the floor like a sudden burst of rain.
Sheathe the blade.
The Mikiri Counter-Deflect-Discern combo was now etched firmly into Rin's memory.
Rin stood in the pile of coins, chest heaving, breathing hard.
Sweat dripped from her pink hair onto her collarbone, but her eyes danced with two burning flames.
She turned to look at the man sitting on the broken couch.
"Brother Su Yu!" Rin's face was practically begging for praise, pride written all over it. "This move is insane! Once I think of them as piggy banks spewing coins everywhere, my wrist can't even find an excuse to shake anymore!"
Looking at the girl in front of him, light finally kindled in her eyes, a hint of warmth crept over the face half-hidden behind his mask.
He nodded.
"Passing grade for comprehension. Now that your brain and hands have both learned this money-making logic, tonight's physical training ends here."
"But don't pop the champagne yet."
Su Yu's tone shifted, cutting off Rin just as she was about to cheer.
He raised a finger and swiped it through the air.
A translucent virtual screen popped up, hovering in front of Rin.
Dense text scrolled down the screen like a waterfall.
They were live posts from the game's official forum and various social media platforms.
"From the moment you went offline tonight, an online shouting match has been brewing."
Su Yu leaned back against the couch, tapping the bolded headlines on the screen, laying out the facts calmly.
At first, the whole server's fury had indeed been aimed squarely at the ID "Jiahao."
Everyone was condemning him for cheating, for stealing the first kill, for posting taunts.
But it only takes one new distraction for the internet's attention to shift.
Soon enough, the gossip crowd's radar picked up a clip from Rin's stream.
The wind changed direction.
The headlines splashed across the screen were shocking:
[BREAKING! Server's #1 whale showers a rookie with a god-tier item? That girl-group slot's already fixed, I bet!]
[Let's dig into this rookie streamer "Fried Tofu"—how does someone who can barely dodge deserve a five-star weapon?]
[Rich man's game! The server's only Sakura Blossom, handed out for free? If those two aren't doing shady favor-trading behind closed doors, I'll eat my keyboard standing on my head!]
Rin's smile froze as she read the words.
"Slut-shaming rumors, conspiracy theories, victim-blaming. It's the internet's standard combo."
Su Yu's tone stayed flat.
"Half an hour ago, some hacker even tried tracing your real-world IP address through your stream's relay node—getting ready to dox you for real."
Rin's breath caught.
"Don't worry. Bronie set up a firewall on the backend, tossed a few tracer trojans right back at them, and fried every one of those hackers' motherboards."
Su Yu looked into Rin's eyes.
"But that's just the online side of things. The beta test has five thousand players, and Arc City's only so big. There's no guarantee some lunatic won't try to cause trouble offline or online—corner you, take that sword by force."
Su Yu stood up, looking straight at Rin.
"This whole thing started with me—I'm the one who gave you that sword. If you feel like you can't handle this wave of cyber-hate, I can put out a server-wide announcement and pull all the aggro back onto Jiahao's account."
"You can just focus on grinding your monsters and earning your money, worry-free."
Faced with this wave of online abuse and the lurking danger behind it, Rin, far from stepping back, took a step forward instead.
Closing the distance, she reached out with both hands and grabbed the hand hanging at Su Yu's side.
Su Yu's hand was broad and rough; Rin's fingers were slender, carrying the faint coolness particular to a young girl.
Rin tilted her head slightly.
The Moonbeam fell across her profile, a flush of red creeping up her neck to the tips of her ears.
But mischief glimmered like fox-fire in those eyes.
"Brother Su Yu." Rin spoke up out of nowhere. "So what you mean is... in the eyes of all those gossiping netizens out there, we're... some kind of secret couple hiding in the shadows?"
The wind in the abandoned building stilled.
The corner of Su Yu's mouth twitched into a strange shape.
He looked at the little fox in front of him—not the least bit scared, seemingly delighted by the scandal instead—and a wave of helplessness washed over him.
He sighed. "Are you sure your brain's wiring the point correctly here?"
Rin didn't let go.
She lowered her head, her gaze falling on their joined hands.
"Brother Su Yu, thank you for teaching me how to hold the sword."
Rin looked up, meeting his eyes directly.
"Before, I always took it for granted that I could hide behind sis."
"Whenever danger came, I'd shut my eyes, cover my ears, and let myself be a burden someone had to protect—guilt-free."
"But now, I don't want to hide anymore."
She held his fingers, tightening her grip one by one.
"If, this time, when the rumors on the forums come, when the players out to steal my gear come, I let you step in and clean it all up, take all the blame for me..."
"then all I'd have done is move from sis's wing to yours."
"That version of me, no matter how good a weapon I held, would still be a coward who screams for help the moment trouble shows up."
"They doubt my skill. They think I don't deserve this Sakura Blossom, that I don't deserve the faith you've put in me."
"It's fine. I'll use this sword to prove to them that I do."
Her voice softened.
"So, Brother Su Yu, can you promise me one thing?"
Su Yu looked at her. "Go on."
"Don't step in."
Rin held his gaze.
"Just stand aside and watch me."
"Watch me prove to the whole server that I'm not just some pretty face hiding behind you."
Su Yu froze.
He looked at the girl before him, who had transformed from a helpless wreck into a fighter in the span of a few short hours.
He let out a soft laugh.
Su Yu slipped his hand out of Rin's grasp and raised his arm.
His palm landed on her head, ruffling her pink hair until it was a little messy.
"Fine. I promise."
There was a note in his voice—an elder's hope for someone younger.
"Just don't tarnish my brand, Fried Tofu."
With that promise, the weight on Rin's chest seemed to lift.
Blushing, she stepped back twice.
Then she turned, snatched the wooden sword off the ground, and darted toward the stairwell like a butterfly.
Just as she was about to head down the stairs, she skidded to a stop and spun around.
The girl turned, pulling down her lower eyelids with both hands and sticking out her tongue, making a completely un-threatening funny face at Su Yu.
"Hmph hmph!"
Rin's voice echoed through the empty stairwell.
"Master Jiahao! Keep those eyes wide open—"
"Wash your neck and wait! That number-one throne of yours is getting my name carved on it sooner or later!"
Bright laughter rang out like silver bells.
The girl's figure vanished around the stairwell's corner, leaving only a trail of cheerful footsteps behind.
As the footsteps faded, the abandoned building settled back into silence.
Su Yu stood in the Moonbeam.
Looking toward the stairwell, he reached up and pulled down the smiley mask covering his face, the corner of his mouth curling upward.
He turned and sat back down on the ratty old couch.
Leaning back against the dust-covered cushion, he tilted his head back, gaze passing through the glassless window frame to the bright full moon hanging over Arc City's night sky.
Moonbeam spilled across his face, lighting up those unfathomably deep eyes.
Su Yu closed his eyes.
His consciousness sank, diving deep into his own mind.
In that inner world built from spiritual power.
He posed a question to the consciousness sitting cross-legged there, watching everything unfold in reality like a bystander.
"Squad Monitor..."
Su Yu's voice echoed in his mind, tinged with teasing.
"Tell me—at the rate she's learning things, with that reckless, do-or-die streak of hers..."
"Am I going to end up teaching the apprentice so well I starve the Master? What if she shows up with a van full of people to run me out of my own dojo, turning traitor on her teacher?"
Fenghuang said nothing, only closed her eyes—the old relic's mind unbidden recalling a short drama she'd glimpsed once, while Kiana was scrolling through short videos.
The plot was simple enough, boiled down to four words: "Disciple Turns on Master."
____
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