Chapter 6: First Blood
Tang Rou didn't ask for the rematch.
She demanded it.
"Arena. Now." She stood beside my station at 3:47 PM, still in her work apron, keyboard clicks from the customer she'd just finished helping still echoing in the air. "My break's in two minutes. That's enough time for three rounds."
I looked up from the equipment spreadsheet I'd been studying—Myriad Manifestations Umbrella upgrade paths, materials needed, timeline to Level 20 when the weapon became viable. The data filled my peripheral vision through the SOE's Archive Layer, columns of numbers and component lists that the PRD had helped me organize.
"Three rounds in ten minutes?"
"If you don't waste time."
Chen Guo passed behind us carrying a tray of drinks and made a sound that might have been exasperation or encouragement. Probably both.
She's been waiting for this.
The morning had been a test run. Tang Rou grinding her Battle Mage to Level 13 while I pushed Lord Grim to Level 10, both of us in the same café, deliberately not interacting. She'd watched my screen in the reflection of the windows when she thought I wasn't looking. I'd done the same to her.
Competitive reconnaissance. The prelude to actual combat.
"Fine." I saved the spreadsheet and queued for the Arena server. "Three rounds. Best of three wins."
Tang Rou smiled. It wasn't a friendly expression.
She logged in at the adjacent station—her usual spot now, claimed through pure territorial aggression—and her Battle Mage materialized in the Arena staging area. Lord Grim appeared beside her, Unspecialized starter gear looking shabby next to her upgraded equipment.
The Arena countdown began.
[Match starting in 10 seconds. Soft Mist vs. Lord Grim.]
I flexed my hands under the desk, feeling the familiar wrongness of fingers that didn't quite belong to me. The pinky trembled faintly—residual strain from last night's grinding session, the Desync making itself known in the small spaces between inputs.
Sixty-one Mechanical.
Twelve percent combo failure rate.
And she's been practicing for six hours straight.
The countdown hit zero.
Tang Rou attacked.
Her opening was different from the night before.
Where she'd charged blindly into range last time, now she came at an angle, her Battle Mage sliding left to cut off my retreat vector. She'd watched me enough to recognize that I favored backward repositioning when pressured—and she'd adjusted her approach to punish it.
Adaptation rate: Terrifying.
I sidestepped the Dragon Breaks the Ranks instead of retreating. My staff came up for a counter-combo—basic strike into sweep into launch—but the third input lagged by sixteen milliseconds and the launch failed to connect.
[Combo interrupted. Skill queue cleared.]
Tang Rou punished the gap immediately. Her Battle Lance connected with a three-hit chain that chunked my HP by fifteen percent, her execution clean and savage. No hesitation, no telegraph, just pure aggression translated into damage.
I reset distance with a roll and started thinking instead of reacting.
Her pattern.
The PRD had logged her combat data from last night, and I'd spent the morning analyzing it. Tang Rou favored aggressive openers, overcommitted to offensive windows, struggled with resource management during extended engagements. Her strengths were speed and instinct; her weaknesses were patience and stamina.
She wants to end this fast.
Don't let her.
I stopped trying to match her execution and started playing positioning chess instead. Every retreat angled toward terrain that limited her approach vectors. Every attack was designed to bait a counter that I could sidestep. Every exchange ended with Lord Grim slightly further from the wall and Soft Mist slightly more committed to a disadvantageous angle.
Her HP dropped in fragments—five percent here, three percent there, small cuts from punishes she couldn't avoid without abandoning her aggressive stance.
Mine dropped faster. The Desync ate into every combo, every dodge, every input that required precise timing. But positioning didn't need microsecond accuracy. Positioning just needed Game Knowledge 94 and the patience to trust it.
Thirty seconds in. Her HP at 67%. Mine at 51%.
Tang Rou broke pattern.
Instead of another aggressive charge, she stopped. Her Battle Mage held position at mid-range, spear leveled, waiting.
She's learning.
She's learning mid-fight.
I pressed forward this time—a calculated risk, trading the positional advantage I'd built for the chance to finish the round before she fully adapted. My staff came up for a five-hit combo that I knew would drop to three or four.
It dropped to three.
But three was enough. Tang Rou's HP hit zero at the same moment my counter-punish landed, her Battle Mage crumpling to the Arena floor while Lord Grim stood at nineteen percent.
[Round 1: Lord Grim wins. Time: 47 seconds.]
Tang Rou's fingers hadn't stopped moving. "Again."
Round two was closer.
She'd analyzed my positioning patterns during the first round and started predicting my retreat angles. Her aggression became targeted—not blind charges, but calculated strikes designed to cut off the spaces I wanted to occupy.
I adapted. She adapted faster.
The exchange became a conversation conducted in violence, each attack a statement, each dodge a rebuttal. My Game Knowledge screamed warnings about her cooldowns, her resource levels, the windows where she'd be vulnerable—but my hands couldn't translate the warnings into action fast enough.
[Combo failure detected. Execution at 88% this round.]
Better than twelve percent.
Not good enough.
The round ended with Lord Grim at three percent HP and Soft Mist at zero. A margin of one combo chain—the difference between a win and a loss so thin that a single input error would have reversed the outcome.
[Round 2: Lord Grim wins. Time: 1:12.]
Tang Rou logged out of the Arena without saying anything. Her character vanished from my screen, replaced by a party chat message:
"Your hands are getting better. They were worse last night."
I stared at the message.
She noticed.
She noticed and she's not asking questions yet.
Just... collecting data.
Across the café, Tang Rou stood up from her station and walked back toward the counter, her break over, her face unreadable. Chen Guo intercepted her with a question about the afternoon inventory, and the moment dissolved into ordinary café chaos.
But in the reflection of my monitor, I saw Tang Rou's eyes flick toward my hands one more time before she disappeared into the back.
[PRD Update: Soft Mist profile updated. Combat adaptation rate: Exceptional. Behavioral analysis: Subject demonstrates rapid learning, high observational capacity, low tolerance for unexplained inconsistencies. Recommendation: Exercise caution during future engagements.]
Thanks for that.
I flexed my right hand under the desk. The pinky tremor was worse now—strain accumulation from two rounds of high-intensity play on top of yesterday's grinding marathon. The Desync wasn't improving as fast as I'd hoped.
But it is improving.
Eighty-eight percent this round. Better than ninety-seven yesterday.
Slow progress. But progress.
I closed the Arena interface and pulled up Lord Grim's experience bar. Level 10, sixty percent toward Level 11. Frost Forest dungeon unlocked at Level 15. The first server record attempt was five levels away.
The café hummed around me—customers chatting, keyboards clicking, Chen Guo's voice rising and falling in conversation with someone at the counter. Normal sounds. Human sounds. The ambient noise of a life I hadn't chosen but was starting to inhabit.
I opened the PRD's database and started reviewing Tang Rou's updated profile.
Combat adaptation rate: Exceptional.
She figured out my positioning patterns in two rounds. By next week, she'll have counterstrategies for everything I can do. By next month, she'll be better than me.
Unless I improve faster.
Unless this body learns to obey.
The SOE's baseline profile hovered in my peripheral vision, patient and judgmental. Sixty-one Mechanical. Ninety-four Knowledge. The canyon between mind and body, unchanged and inescapable.
For now.
I started tagging the new combat data with notes. Tang Rou's adaptation patterns. Her aggression triggers. The tells she showed when she was about to break from her established behavior.
The system can't think yet.
So I'll think for it.
And maybe, eventually, these hands will remember how to play.
Outside the café windows, the afternoon sun painted long shadows across the street. December 5th. Three days since the 10th Server opened. Tang Rou's Soft Mist was Level 13. Lord Grim was Level 10. Frost Forest was five levels away.
And somewhere in this city, a girl named Su Mucheng was trapped in an Excellent Era contract, waiting for a man who didn't exist anymore to come back and save her.
I closed the database and started grinding.
The clock read 4:15 PM when Tang Rou logged back in from the staff room. Her Battle Mage appeared in the same zone I was farming, close enough to see my movements, far enough to claim coincidence.
She didn't send another party invite.
She just started grinding beside me, matching my pace, learning my patterns.
Practicing for the next rematch.
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