Chapter 34: The Saintess’s Madness That Even Rehabilitates Trolls

The man hadn’t always been someone who resorted to trolling gameplay and drawing out others’ emotions and ugly reactions to relieve his own stress.

There was a time when he, too, had been more dedicated to the game Rainbow Tales than anyone else, striving with all his might to reach the coveted Red rank.

By then, playing the game merely as a form of entertainment had long ceased, and he had essentially staked his life on points and rank.

However, the moment he reached Red by sheer luck, his winning streak came to a grinding halt, and he plummeted back to Orange after a series of consecutive losses.

The overwhelming stress was enough to make clumps of his hair fall out, and in that instant, he snapped.

This game, one that demanded intense emotional investment with every match, could evoke fury with every loss.

If you gave it your all and still lost, anger surged.

Even more so, if the loss seemed not to be your fault, the human instinct was to burn with indignation.

In a bid for self-preservation, one might even deflect responsibility, rationalizing that, regardless of their mistakes, the blame lay with their teammates for failing to carry them.

Why hadn’t they performed just a little better?

The man understood this feeling better than anyone.

And he believed others needed to understand the bitterness he felt, too.

Because, quite simply, it felt unfair for him to bear it alone.

That’s when his trolling began.

Shamelessly, he left his relatively high-ranked main account untouched, not wanting its score to drop, and instead began trolling on a smurf account he’d been using casually.

This game was one where the team bore the burden of any single weak link.

Or they lost.

A bad teammate made winning exponentially harder.

And it turned out to be surprisingly fun.

Why had he strained himself so much to carry useless teammates?

Why had he endured the insults and criticism directed at him when he performed poorly?

He’d had an epiphany: this game was inherently rigged by the luck of the draw with teammates.

From the start, the outcome of every match was predetermined.

He’d teach them.

He’d show them that losing was inevitable if they were unlucky enough to be matched with him.

Go ahead, get mad.

It would only confirm that he was successfully imparting his lesson.

The claim that he trolled because he was bad at the game never reached the man’s ears.

After all, he was a player who had reached Red.

In this game, points were everything.

For the few players who lashed out particularly hard, he would sometimes reveal his main account’s rank and ask, “Well, what’s your highest rating?”

Without fail, their angry tirades would dissolve into silence.

Top rating, the highest rank a player had ever achieved, was something none of the players he met at his smurf’s lower rank could boast about.

It was an unbeatable argument.

This logic fueled his trolling like wildfire, delivering a perverse pleasure derived from manipulating others’ emotions.

And over time, it strayed far from its original purpose of “educating” others about the role of team luck in the game.

Now, he trolled simply because he found it fun to make others angry.

Since everything happened within the world inside the monitor, no matter how angry someone became, it wasn’t as if they could actually meet up and land a punch.

The sheer frustration of their helplessness—of them angrily pacing back and forth—became so hilariously entertaining to the man that he could hardly contain himself.

Naturally, his targets shifted to streamers with many viewers, particularly novice broadcasters who had only just begun to gain popularity and were still unable to skillfully control their emotions.

The number of victims was more than just a few, and the Saintess was merely one of his many targets.

But…

Her reaction was different.

It was now the sixth game since the Saintess had ended her broadcast, sent him an invite, and started playing duo matches with him.

Of course, the man repeated his intentional trolling in every single match, without fail.

To anyone observing, it was clear that the man was the one at fault.

Yet the teammates ended up lumping the Saintess into their criticisms as well.

They berated her with comments like: “Isn’t it your fault that someone like that ended up on our team?” “Why don’t you stick to your usual builds instead of being stubborn?” “Who’s going to take responsibility for these lost points?”

The man found the chaos so hilarious that he poured his energy into ruining the games even further.

“Struggle in your malice. Show more emotion. Everyone’s blaming you, even though you’ve done nothing wrong.

“Get mad. Come on, get angry already!”

But the Saintess didn’t react as he expected.

If anything, if she had reacted in a way that suggested she added him as a friend and played duo matches because:

She was confident in her own skills, overflowing with assurance that she could outperform even a player who deliberately threw the game.

Or perhaps she believed, “Sure, it takes you forever to recover lost points, but I can climb back up in no time.”

Or maybe she’d intentionally tried to provoke him into a competition to see who could endure the most of this hollow defeat, aiming to distinguish the victor from the loser.

If any of these motives had been even slightly visible, the man might have found himself fired up with determination.

But that wasn’t the case.

In every match, she gave her all, doing everything she could to lead the team toward victory.

Of course, winning was practically impossible, given the circumstances.

By now, anyone else would’ve grown tired and given up, yet she didn’t.

Wasn’t she disheartened?

Bolstered by her dazzling skill and unyielding mentality, there was even a game they almost—almost—won.

The man felt his pride take a hit but couldn’t help himself.

He had to ask.

His curiosity about her actions had reached its peak.

[Haribo2: Hey.]

[Saintess: Yes?]

[Haribo2: Why are you…]

[Haribo2: Trying so hard?]

[Saintess: Because it’s fun?]

Fun?

What was fun about this?

You’ve lost ten games in a row.

What’s fun about losing?

In a match where losing is a foregone conclusion,

why do you keep giving it your all in every game?

By now, you should be exhausted.

Stop finding it fun!

It didn’t feel like a lie fabricated to outwit him.

The sound of the woman’s laughter—lighthearted and amused—came through the in-game voice chat, automatically enabled by the duo party setup.

Of course, she wasn’t enjoying the losses.

She, like many other players, longed for victories and high ranks.

What she truly seemed to enjoy, however, was the very process of uprooting this troll’s rotten ideology from its core.

As the saying goes, there’s always someone better than you.

A worse villain to outdo the original villain.

A real madness to overshadow fake madness.

The operation, executed so subtly that the man couldn’t even realize it, was nearing its completion.

The fact that he had initiated a conversation with her in chat was evidence of that.

Unaware of any of this, the man thought the Saintess must simply be insane.

Unknowingly, he shuddered at her apparent madness.

There was no other explanation for how she could find such joy in meaningless losses.

And when dealing with a mad dog, avoidance was the best course of action.

The man’s mouse cursor drifted toward the “Exit Client” button on his screen.

As if she had read his mind, the Saintess sent a chat message.

[Saintess: Are you running away?]

From some point, the man’s arms had been covered in goosebumps that wouldn’t go away.

Perhaps it had started the moment she first sent him a friend request.

[Saintess: Just one more game.]

[Haribo2: I don’t want to.]

[Saintess: Aww, come on.]

Her fake display of cuteness was grating.

His expression twisted in annoyance at the hollow charm.

Yet, in the end, the man didn’t close the game and instead entered another match.

His pride wouldn’t let him back down so easily.

Naturally, his trolling resumed without hesitation.

And soon, the game reached its later stages.

From the man’s observation, the skill levels of his teammates were mediocre at best.

While none of them had quit the match despite the unjust trolling they’d endured, their gameplay wasn’t exactly impressive either.

On the other hand, the opposing team was filled with formidable players.

Two of them, clearly using alternate accounts, stood out immediately.

Their usernames even matched, likely a duo pair.

In other words, the situation was the worst it could be.

A win was clearly impossible.

Still, the Saintess persisted, fighting hard without giving up.

It was likely because of her determination that a game that should have ended in surrender dragged on this long.

Now, a teamfight was unfolding with only one troll absent from the fray.

And then, suddenly, the man had a thought.

When you spend your days eating and playing games, honing your skills,

there comes a time when you can instinctively sense which fight, which objective contest, or which teamfight will ultimately decide the game.

The man thought that this was the moment.

The most decisive moment in this game.

And so, unconsciously forgetting his usual antics of throwing himself at the enemy base, he found himself watching the Saintess’s battle.

It was dazzling.

Such was the nature of the longsword as a weapon.

Being a tool capable of simultaneously attacking and defending by manipulating its blade,

the relentless chain of sword strikes bore a brilliance distinct from the striking effects of magic.

The two warriors, whom the man had suspected to be smurfs, were struggling against the Saintess alone.

At first, it didn’t seem like she could handle them to this extent.

When had she gotten so skilled?

As the relentless sword dance continued to overwhelm the two warriors,

the opposing team, conscious of the Saintess’s performance throughout the match, had prepared a countermeasure.

The Saintess, momentarily catching her breath,

was quickly targeted by a spell.

A massive fireball, its flames licking hungrily, descended like a meteor hurtling toward her.

It seemed as if the situation was coming to an end.

In a game pushed to its limits,

the death of the Saintess, who had been the anchor of the team, would undoubtedly lead to their defeat.

At that very moment, when the man thought the outcome was sealed,

a blade flashed.

The extended blade, as its name suggested, cleaved through the world.

It was the ultimate skill embodying the essence of Eastern swordsmanship:

World Severance.

A skill that the man had once derided as childish appeared right before his eyes.

An effect so intense it gave the illusion of the screen itself shattering.

The health and mana bars, as well as the various in-game interface elements,

momentarily fractured under a single sword stroke etched across the entire game world by the Saintess,

only for the shattered world to restore itself as though nothing had happened after a brief silence.

Immediately following the event,

the fireball that had been hurtling toward the Saintess, as well as the two warriors,

were all obliterated within its influence.

The team, now finding a foothold for a comeback, surged forward with momentum.

They pressed on without stopping,

and in the end, shattered the core.

As the victory message appeared,

the man stared blankly at the screen.

Suddenly, a voice echoed in his ears.

For someone who practically lived confined to a small room,

the only voice he could hear was from the in-game voice chat.

And the only person connected to him in the chat was one.

The Saintess spoke to him.

“I know why you do it.”

“It’s fun, isn’t it? Making others lose. Making them angry.”

“…”

“But if you get too caught up in that, you’ll end up forgetting what’s truly fun.”

“I wanted to show you that winning is much more enjoyable.”

“Well played.”

With those parting words,

the Saintess disconnected from the voice chat.

It seemed she had logged off entirely.

The man turned on the light in his dark room and, almost unconsciously, muttered to himself.

“Damn it, fine. I lost.”

Contrary to what he had expected,

playing with the Saintess was no fun at all.

He knew better than anyone why it wasn’t fun.

The Saintess herself had told him.

Yeah, well…

Since it’s no longer fun,

since I’ve realized there’s something more enjoyable,

maybe it’s time to stop this.

I kind of want to climb back up to Red tier anyway.

With that thought, the man pressed the confirm button on the victory screen.

The client displayed the results screen.

But what greeted the man’s eyes was a red message:

**”100-day gameplay restriction.

This account has been restricted from gameplay for 100 days due to confirmed disruptive behavior, such as negatively impacting teammates during recent matches.”**

“…Damn it.”

[Sekaiichiban]: Troll, stop messing around.

[Saintess]: What’s with this all of a sudden?

[Sekaiichiban]: Watched every match you’ve played.

[Saintess]: Stalker.

[Sekaiichiban]: …

[Saintess]: Kind of cool, though, right?

[Sekaiichiban]: Not really.

[Sekaiichiban]: Still think you’re wasting your effort in the wrong places.

[Saintess]: Why?

[Saintess]: Does it remind you of the old days?

[Saintess]: Embarrassed because it feels like looking at your past self?

[Sekaiichiban]: …

[Saintess]: Lololololol.

[Sekaiichiban]: Starting to feel like throwing up everything I ate.

[Saintess]: …

[Saintess]: My bad.