NoveLight ™
End of Round 1: Choi Chang-young's Team Loses
After Choi Chang-young was taken down, his team, now outnumbered 6 to 5, was quickly defeated in the team fight.
"...What just happened?"
However, Choi Chang-young could only tilt his head in confusion. He still couldn't understand how that Dark Knight had seemingly appeared from the sky.
Luckily, his curiosity would soon be satisfied.
[Round 1 Highlights]
After each round, a highlight video plays.
In the video, naturally, the unarmored Dark Knight stood out.
The Dark Knight swiftly defeated a scout zombie before scaling the cave wall and rapidly ascending to the ceiling.
The viewers were filled with questions.
But Choi Chang-young had no answers for them either—he felt the same way as the viewers.
A loud crash echoed from the video.
It turned out that a wall made of bones had risen diagonally from the ceiling.
"...Hey, isn’t that the Dark Knight's wall skill?"
The Dark Knight's second skill, Wailing Wall.
Despite being a tank character, the Dark Knight lacked crowd control (CC) abilities. The first skill, Chains that Bind Souls, was somewhat like a CC skill, but it was inferior compared to other tank characters’ CC abilities.
Instead, the Dark Knight was known for having a "wall" skill.
In other words, Wailing Wall was the Dark Knight's signature skill.
"Usually, it’s used to split the enemy formation or block their retreat, right?"
While the viewers were still incredulous, Laura climbed onto the Wailing Wall.
She then slashed her sword to intentionally drop icicles and waited on the ceiling.
When Choi Chang-young appeared, she launched an aerial ambush.
"Attention, soldiers. Gate Conquest is a best of five."
Choi Chang-young spoke as if to calm his viewers.
"We may have lost a round, but now we’ve seen how this person plays… it’s not so bad. We just need to be careful of the ceiling next time. I’ll make sure we win the next round."
Virtual iTuber Gallery
[General] Captain Getting Wrecked, LOL
(Highlight)
Dark Knight sends the Captain flying with a wall, LOL.
[Comments]
Facing the Third Round After Two Consecutive Losses
Once again, Choi Chang-young found himself confronting the Dark Knight.
"Hoooo…"
Choi Chang-young exhaled deeply.
Being utterly trounced in two consecutive rounds stirred his competitive spirit.
He wasn’t usually one to obsess over victory, but the fact that he felt like he could win drove him crazy.
As a Necromancer player, Choi Chang-young was well aware of the matchup with the Dark Knight. The Necromancer had a slight advantage.
‘Yeah… It’s not a total win, just a slight advantage.’
Not many people knew about this matchup since it was rare to encounter a Dark Knight these days. Choi Chang-young had been playing since the early days of Labyrinthos, so he knew.
On the surface, the Necromancer seemed to have the upper hand.
The Dark Knight didn’t have any true area-of-effect (AoE) skills.
To be precise, the Dark Knight's ultimate was considered an AoE, but it had the drawback of not working on the undead.
Moreover, the Dark Knight didn’t have any exceptional mobility skills, making it difficult to close in on the Necromancer.
However, the Dark Knight had a bothersome passive skill.
Negative Aura was a wide-area debuff that reduced the stats and movement speed of all units around the Dark Knight.
‘Normally, because of Negative Aura, it takes forever to kill the Dark Knight.’
The Necromancer relied on the strength of numbers rather than individual strength. Since each undead unit wasn’t very powerful, the Dark Knight's debuff made it difficult to deal damage even when ganged up on.
Furthermore, depending on the setup, the Dark Knight could equip lifesteal or health regeneration, allowing them to endure a prolonged beating.
So, while the Dark Knight would eventually die after a long struggle, the Necromancer would also suffer significant losses in the process.
But this time was different.
The Dark Knight wasn’t wearing any armor.
"All troops, advance."
Thud, thud, thud.
The undead army marched forward in unison.
An undead drummer beat the war drums, and simultaneously, the sound of trumpets echoed throughout the cave.
In the first line, undead shield bearers raised their shields. In the second line, undead spearmen thrust their spears forward. In the rear, undead archers rained arrows, forcing the Dark Knight to evade.
The undead army numbered close to a hundred.
In this round, Choi Chang-young had crafted an impeccable path, as if he’d poured all his talent into creating a perfect farming route.
Thanks to this, it seemed like Choi Chang-young had slain over half of the neutral monsters on the map. This was possible because the opposing Dark Knight hadn’t bothered with neutral farming.
In any case, Choi Chang-young had prepared more units than ever before.
The Dark Knight began retreating as the undead horde closed in.
Without armor, it was impossible to break through such a large force. The lack of defense would be unbearable.
Moreover, without an invisibility skill like an assassin's Stealth, it was impossible to ignore the undead army and reach Choi Chang-young.
Choi Chang-young steadily tightened the noose, leading his undead minions forward.
The Dark Knight, who kept retreating, eventually reached the cave wall. There was nowhere left to run.
‘This is it.’
Choi Chang-young was confident of his victory.
That is, until the Dark Knight uttered a single word.
"Wailing Wall."
The Dark Knight jumped vertically, lightly touching the cave wall with their feet.
Immediately, a Wailing Wall erupted from the cave wall.
A wall made of intertwined corpses suddenly appeared—and the Dark Knight shot forward like a cannonball.
The Dark Knight soared over the heads of countless undead, landing right in front of Choi Chang-young.
"No way, what the…!"
Choi Chang-young couldn’t react in time. Who could have guessed the Dark Knight would close the distance in such a way?
In the second round, he’d deliberately stayed outside the range of Wailing Wall, remembering how he was launched by it before.
He’d assumed that no matter what skills the Necromancer used, they wouldn’t reach the Dark Knight. So, he focused on overwhelming with his undead while maintaining a safe distance.
As a result, he hadn’t prepared any skills.
And his arm was cut off.
"Aaargh!!"
Choi Chang-young screamed. But he stretched out his hand, hoping to stall until his undead soldiers could return.
However, he couldn’t even graze the Dark Knight’s clothing.
The Dark Knight’s blood-red sword was now right before his eyes.
Literally just a centimeter away.
Then, everything went black.
His vision was gone.
Even though he’d lost his vision, he could still see the chat on the stream. How fascinating.
Not that he wanted to find out this way.
With a sigh, Choi Chang-young collapsed.
"Good game. You really carried, Dark Knight."
When the game ended, the Paladin who had cursed earlier was now all smiles.
"You’re really good, Dark Knight. Want to duo up?"
"I’m logging off now."
I exited the lobby immediately.
I had no interest in teaming up with anyone, and I especially didn’t like people who flipped their attitudes so quickly.
So, I returned to the adventurer's tavern. Picking up the menu on the table, I pulled up the game results.
Even though I’d left to avoid staying in the same room as that Paladin, I still wanted to review the results since this was my first Gate Conquest match.
"For a first match, it went pretty smoothly."
Replaying the match in my head, I didn’t think there were any major mistakes in my play.
However, was it perfect? That was a bit unclear. The fact that the Necromancer kept coming to me definitely helped.
I didn’t expect him to chase me down so persistently across three rounds. It covered the Dark Knight's lack of tracking ability and allowed me to win smoothly.
‘But things won’t always go this well.’
For now, this was just placement, so the MMR probably wasn’t very high.
As the MMR increases, I suspect that the focus on information warfare will intensify. I’ll likely need to expand my character pool later on.
There’s always a chance the Dark Knight could get banned.
"Hmm?"
While reviewing the game results, I tilted my head in surprise.
[Necromancer] Virtuber_Choi Chang-young 0K 3D 0A
"So that Necromancer was a Virtuber, huh."
Then this match might have been broadcast.
With that thought, I closed the results and queued up for the next match.
Oh my! An obsession arc! Men and their pride, so typical.