Chapter 32: How the Saintess Deals with Trolling

The sword swings.

The sound of rain subsides.

Time halts.

A clean line is engraved in the space where the blade’s trajectory passed.

The movement of the metal, which even swallowed sound, sweeps through the area.

As the sword returns to its scabbard, the slash that silenced the battlefield prepares itself, a single step behind.

The cleaved space screams.

Finally, the world begins to split apart, like a toy assembled incorrectly or magnets with matching poles forced together.

Everything within the influence of this rupture loses its life.

『The Saintess has slain Ribbon Nuu-chan.』

『The Saintess has slain LookingforNee-Mo.』

『The Saintess has slain National s*ave Showoff.』

『The Saintess has slain Bell Tower.』

There stood the swordswoman, who had annihilated four enemy heroes with a single stroke.

Despite her overwhelming display of power, the form connected to the sword — from the hand and arm to her body — was absurdly beautiful in its curves.

Without hesitation, the woman turned around.

A massive jewel radiating blue light filled her gaze.

It was the very thing she had risked her life to protect.

But the jewel, already riddled with cracks and fractures, finally shattered into countless pieces.

Amidst the spray of azure fragments, the woman mourned deeply.

Lowering her head like a flower wilting at dusk, she grieved in silence.

Rainbow Tales is fundamentally a game about battles between twelve players.

As the word “battle” suggests, not all players can emerge victorious.

While six revel in the thrill of victory, the other six must swallow the bitterness of defeat.

Like the two sides of a coin or the rising sun and moon, the greater the joy of victory, the more profound the emptiness of defeat.

Today, a persistent unwelcome visitor, long absent, returned to my record screen wearing red shoes.

In other words, I lost.

[14-win streak broken just like that…]

[If I’d held on for one more turn, I could’ve turned it around…]

[Would it have been the same if I’d played as a priest?]

[No, you’d have lost faster, LOL.]

[The fact you managed this much with a warrior is amazing.]

[How do you win with teammates like that?]

[This was a surrender match. Dragging it this far before slipping was the best you could do.]

[The fact you got this far with trolls is impressive in itself.]

[Host’s swordplay is solid, though.]

[Your ult timing was great!]

[Your hipster tendencies never change—an Eastern Swordsmanship Essence build, LOL.]

[Better than a Gaia’s Disciple build, though…]

[Do you just memorize builds after playing Lethe for 10 years? How do you pick an unfamiliar build and nail both the main and sub-skills perfectly?]

[Well…;;]

[The ultimate skill is so cool.]

[The ultimate’s name is cool too, haha, World Cleaver, haha.]

[Teenage syndrome ON.]

[Why is the win rate so terrible when it looks this cool?]

[Style and performance are separate things.]

[This is a pick for immature players, haha.]

[It’s a bit much to pick just for the ultimate’s fun factor when you look at the stats…]

[With the rise of stat sites, only useless people remain in the game—back in my day, we just played what we wanted, but now, as soon as you pick a character with a low win rate, people start crying at the pick screen.]

[Are you old? How old are you?]

[Quadra kill with the 4-player ultimate, damn, that was sick.]

[Did it really split the interface for a moment? That’s seriously insane.]

[The only screen-clearing skill in Rainbow Tales, haha.]

[We lost the game, though. What’s the point? Haha.]

[LOL]

What was the problem?

Was it starting the game with a weapon and specialization I hadn’t used in ten years of in-game play?

Come to think of it, the only time I used the longsword was when I taught Mohe, the longsword warrior, while preparing for a tournament.

While I picked up enough knowledge to handle the weapon, actually performing in battle was another matter.

In a constantly changing battlefield, there’s a definite difference between knowing how to use a weapon and specialization in theory and having it ingrained as a reflex.

Number of matches is an important indicator.

Whether you’re a pro, an amateur, or just someone enjoying the game, all players, regardless of their experience, find it hard to easily change positions or weapons.

Being able to handle countless situations with ease is a key skill, and I might have been a bit arrogant to take on the penalty of using unfamiliar weapons and a changed position.

But I shook my head inwardly.

While I couldn’t compare to the priest class, who had over eight thousand matches, objectively speaking, my longsword warrior play didn’t have many flaws.

There were times when I made imperfect decisions and got into tough situations, but every time, I overcame them with quick thinking and great physical reactions.

Had we won the game, I would have rightfully been able to call myself a key player in that victory.

With a yellow 2-range MMR match, there was no one on the enemy team who could handle the longsword wielded by the saintess.

So why did we lose?

There’s no need to sugarcoat it.

It was the team.

Of course, I wasn’t planning to complain or blame my teammates for not meeting expectations, nor did I think their mistakes led to the defeat.

Everyone has their shortcomings, and everyone makes mistakes.

Pointless criticism only creates conflict, and that, I knew, would have a major impact on the game’s outcome.

But when I talk about the team’s problem, it’s not about that.

I looked at one of my teammates’ KDA in the results screen.

“Haribo2: 0/23/1”

These were numbers that would never appear if the game was played normally.

There was a teammate who not only wasn’t playing the game but was stubbornly performing actions that helped the enemy team instead.

No matter how much I carried and performed spectacularly, we just couldn’t win because of that.

Next, I scrolled through the message log.

The message window gradually went up until it reached the first in-game chat that appeared right after the game started.

“Haribo2: What the hell is this healer doing, suddenly starting this and causing trouble?”

After that, he sold all the items he had equipped and just charged into the enemy base.

He meaningless lost his troops and just racked up death counts. That was all he contributed in this game.

As you can tell from the chat, he was clearly displeased that I suddenly changed my weapon and specialization choices when starting the game.

It’s been over ten years since the game was first released.

Player development wasn’t just limited to in-game performance.

For gamers wishing to win, some figured out ways to meaningfully increase their win rate even outside the game.

For example, there’s the stat search that I’m talking about now.

It seems like he must have searched my username.

It seemed like he couldn’t understand why someone who had only played 8,000 matches as a priest would suddenly start using a longsword as a warrior.

I mean, if I were to suddenly change from playing 8,000 matches as a priest, sticking to just one build, to switching to a warrior, I wouldn’t feel great about it either.

Wanting to win is a natural human desire, and wishing for a more reliable teammate is understandable.

Sure, my pick might not have been ideal.

He might have thought it would be difficult to win with a teammate like me, and I can understand that.

But that’s no excuse for resorting to behavior called trolling.

Not even attempting to play and giving up on your own potential is a sad thing.

Even if, by a hundredfold concession, I had committed some major wrong that deserved punishment, this kind of retaliation was not the right way to do it.

What did the other teammates do wrong?

Thinking up to that point, I felt sorry for my teammates who had lost points because of this unnecessary incident.

How did I end up getting tangled up with this guy?

Except for the troll, the remaining teammates were united and played at a level higher than expected, so I saw a chance we could have won based on my performance.

That possibility bounced back like a spring, and the defeat ended up being even more regrettable.

“Well, it can’t be helped.”

I said into my microphone for the viewers of my stream.

How frustrating must it have been for them to watch a game where the outcome was almost decided by a single troll, especially with a streamer on the losing side?

At times like this, it’s better not to let my anger out first.

The best thing is to brush it off like it doesn’t matter.

Well, it’s not like it doesn’t matter at all, but I just moved on and queued up for the next game.

These trolls, despite the game company’s strict sanctions, would still somehow slip through and constantly disrupt legitimate gameplay for other players.

As a player with ten years of experience,

and especially someone who has received countless criticisms and harsh remarks, there were always people who, with malicious words like “slut” or “netcamper,” would throw tantrums and ruin the game simply because they didn’t like me.

If this game was just an extension of that kind of situation,

then it would be no more than a minor inconvenience, like stepping on some sticky gum by accident.

Besides, I couldn’t easily vent my frustrations toward these people,

since I, too, had been a user who had come close to trolling myself.

There were times I tried to stick to a concept, and by doing so, acted in a way that could clearly be considered problematic in terms of normal gameplay.

I couldn’t really say much about it.

I had been reported by teammates multiple times for my actions and had been banned a few times, so criticizing trolls felt like a person with a criminal record criticizing others,

even if I had already paid the price for my own mistakes.

Ugh, I feel a little sorry for the teammates who were affected by my actions.

…Being here, experiencing a random troll, makes me reflect on my past actions.

The matchmaking was complete.

And what caught my eye was:

“Haribo2 has joined the room.”

The message of having encountered the same troll from the previous match on the other team.

“…”

I was about to pick a priest build,

but suddenly something about it felt very unpleasant, so I locked in the longsword warrior build from the previous match.

In response, the in-game chat exploded with every kind of insult directed at me.

The level of insults was so high that they were being filtered by the system.

Even though I was hearing insults that were too crude to even process,

I couldn’t help but feel a little pleased and smiled.

It felt like a child throwing a tantrum because they didn’t get their way.

It won’t be easy to break my will.

Let’s see who comes out on top.