Chapter 212: Overwhelming Dominance
Translator: Double_L Editor: Hitesh_
Meanwhile, on Mars, students of the Kaedeian Royal Academy were fairly excited about the upcoming matches. The girls couldn’t wait to see how different was his version of Art of the Soaring Heaven.
One of the key factors of battle strategies was improvisation. The more complicated it was, the harder for it to be subdued. One would need to participate in bigger battles from time to time in order to completely master the essence of a new strategy.
People would like to see if Art of the Soaring Heaven was really designed to counter Art of the Blazing Flare.
Rhin was sitting down with a solemn expression. She was joined by a group of students who were the experts in this category. Apparently, they were also watching the matches in order to gather enough data and evidence for their research on Art of the Soaring Heaven.
Both players were given more than half an hour to prepare themselves. The first match was about to begin, yet the numbers of spectators was still increasing. Clearly, they were all interested upon seeing Einherjar Wannabe’s name was mentioned.
Cameron was certain that Einherjar Wannabe would never let him down. But unfortunately, he still wasn’t able to have Einherjar Wannabe under his control. How he wished Einherjar Wannabe would act under his command? Recently, Cameron had been trying to figure out Einherjar Wannabe’s real identity. Apparently, his random appearance was not very good for business development. Hence, Cameron was thinking of approaching him in person by tracking him down with the clues that Einherjar Wannabe left behind. Nevertheless, Cameron was also worried that Einherjar Wannabe might actually be a player who was owned by another organization.
Whenever players logged into PA, the system would be indicating their general whereabouts, for instance, a certain district on Earth. If Cameron could find the exact login location that matched Einherjar Wannabe’s login time and customs, Cameron might have a big chance of tracking him down.
In fact, a lot of media companies had also been asking DREAM regarding Einherjar Wannabe’s real identity. But DREAM didn’t say anything about it, not because they didn’t want to, but they were clueless as well.
Turned out Einherjar Wannabe’s IP address was untraceable. He was on Earth alright, but his location was bouncing here and there, which was something that they had never seen before. Even though Cameron had recently received the permission from DREAM’s board of directors to track Einherjar Wannabe down, it was still quite difficult judging from the latest technologies he had. Nevertheless, his technicians were now thinking of a way to solve this.
Cameron couldn’t help wondering how Einherjar Wannabe was able to log in at different locations from time to time, and he suspected that Einherjar Wannabe actually had a special team of people with advanced technologies to help him. Hence, his ID was able to bounce here and there. After all, a single person would never be able to do so. If Einherjar Wannabe did have a team to support him, that would mean that the opposing party was bigger than he could imagine, and he didn’t even dare to imagine what they were really trying to do…
The stronger and more secretive Einherjar Wannabe became, the more worried certain departments and organizations would become. Even though they didn’t do anything at this point, yet they would want an explanation from DREAM at some day for sure if Einherjar Wannabe defeated one of the successors of the Five Great Houses. However, that was unlikely to happen for the time being.
Nevertheless, when that day came, even God would not be able to answer his prayers for sure.
"Any update on the tracking?"
"Negative sir. Apparently, the opposing party is better than we expected. We couldn’t even narrow down the location with our power source tracking method. I’m afraid we’re dealing with a much bigger corporation." One of the technicians looked startled. After all, as the company which developed PA, DREAM was armed with all sorts of advanced technologies, yet they were unable to trace Einherjar Wannabe’s whereabouts at all.
Some even wondered if he was actually a ghost that lived in the virtual world.
Meanwhile, Wang Tong was seen warming up and exercising his wrists. His opponent had to be even stronger since she was Rhin’s upperclassman. Wang Tong was fairly excited and hopeful that it would be a good match.
However, it seemed like Wang Tong didn’t notice that his Space Crystal was letting out a faint shimmering glow…
As for the shopkeeper, he was smiling happily at the counter. The golden goose had once again worked his magic and "summoned" a bunch of customers in a blink of an eye. Even the open monitor area in his shop was fully packed with people. Those people were seen talking nonstop, and the excitement was heating up. However, the shopkeeper didn’t mind the loudness at all since the more excited they got, the thirstier they would become, and he would be able to sell more drinks tonight.
Both players showed up in the arena at 2000 hours sharp. Everyone was full of anticipation, eager to find out if Einherjar Wannabe would be able to maintain his standard in a more difficult challenge like this.
The match was about to begin, and every student from various academies was watching this match in all sorts of methods.
Everyone knew that battles in Battlecraft Combat were not for entertainment at all, yet this match had caught the interest of ton of professional players, and the spectators’ turnout was even much higher than Earth Confederation’s previous tournaments.
Apparently, everyone was here to see if Art of the Soaring Heaven was really that invincible.
In fact, a battle strategy had to be verified for its effectiveness. The stronger it was, the more complicated it would become, and more loopholes it would contain. But, if the strategy was too simple, it would become too boring and people would lose their interest.
Einherjar Wannabe and Parese were both doing their final adjustments. Their complicated hand speed exercises were more than enough to dazzle the crowd.
Finally, the match had begun!
The match immediately became a mirror battle as both players’ hands were evenly quick at the beginning phase. None of them wasted any time, and every detail was done to perfection. Nevertheless, it didn’t surprise many people as most of them were also able to copy those robotic movements that didn’t require any thinking. However, something did happen after a minute.
When Einherjar Wannabe completed his air base, people immediately knew that he was about to demonstrate his Art of the Soaring Heaven.
Meanwhile, Parese was seen using Kaedeian’s favorite Art of the Blazing Flare. As the No.1 amongst second graders in Kaedeian Royal Academy, Parese was more mature and steadier that Rhin, hence her Art of the Blazing Flare was, of course, better than Rhin’s. Furthermore, Parese’s controlling maneuvers seemed impressive as well. Clearly, she didn’t panic even though she was facing the famous Einherjar Wannabe.
Recons from both players were pretty decent as well, and they paid attention to every detail of their movements. It seemed like neither player kept any secrets from each other in the beginning phase, while the match further developed to one that resembled the previous fight between Einherjar Wannabe and Rhin. But as Einherjar Wannabe began to deploy his plane, Parese’s ground forces were seen getting into formation. Apparently, she had shortened her financial development stage to create a ground formation that targeted Einherjar Wannabe’s gimmicks.
As Einherjar Wannabe’s plane approached, Parese deployed a small group of troops to counter his airborne attacks.
Both players began exchanging fire, and it seemed like Einherjar Wannabe’s strategy was completely busted. Apparently, his plane was unable to destroy her radar tower since he was unable to deal with the defense on the ground, and things were not looking good.
If Einherjar Wannabe were unable to deal with her strategy, without a doubt, Parese would be turning the table in no time.
As a matter of fact, Parese’s controlling maneuvers was rated top-notch in her academy, not to mention her way of reconnaissance and utilizing Art of the Blazing Flare was different compared to the others. Instead of hastily destroying Wang Tong’s plane, she planned to guard her radar towers while conserving forces and waiting for the perfect chance to ambush in one shot.
However, just that everyone was wondering if Einherjar Wannabe would back down and think of another way, his second fighter jet had come to the rescue. It seemed like he was demonstrating parallel dual controlling maneuvers!
One of his planes was busy attacking Parese’s radar towers while the other one was seen subduing the opponent with its airborne advantages. Parese knew about the importance of radar towers, so she had no choice but to defend them with all of her might, even if it would cost her to lose a great deal of troops.
Parese’s controlling maneuvers were flawless, yet for some reason, she was always this close to getting rid of Einherjar Wannabe’s planes.
Einherjar Wannabe’s planes were traveling in completely different patterns even though he was controlling them with parallel dual controlling maneuvers, as one was in charge of attack and the other one was in charge of interfering. The effectiveness and accuracy of Parese’s troops immediately dropped since she had to separate her troops in order to deal with two planes, and she was unable to afford losing so many troops.
Both players were trying their best to control the current situation. Parese then took over with her strongest controlling maneuvers and secured the statuses of her radar towers!
Everyone was looking at the huge monitor. They could tell that Einherjar Wannabe was getting KO-ed soon since his invisible team was basically useless in this situation.
All of a sudden, Parese’s siren went off at her base, and her face went pale as she turned around to see what was going on. Turned out Einherjar Wannabe’s ground troops had approached her base, and even though it wasn’t very large scale, still it was more than enough to deal her the finishing blow.
This time, Einherjar Wannabe demonstrated the parallel tri controlling maneuvers, adding frontal attacks and rear interference into his attacks.
In the end, Parese helplessly surrendered.
Everyone began to wonder if that was, in fact, the true power of Art of the Soaring Heaven!
It was indeed a sudden victory of Einherjar Wannabe. However, people were able to learn that planes were not only good in recon and interference, they also enabled a player to select his or her preferred strategies according to the situation. Obviously, Parese’s operational awareness was very good as she was able to defend her radar towers from getting destroyed while subduing Einherjar Wannabe’s parallel dual controlling maneuvers. However, during this process, Parese’s operational maneuvers had become slower, and she had to burn out her financial development in order to produce more troops for this struggling battle. Meanwhile, Einherjar Wannabe had developed enough forces and was already very familiar with Parese’s base.
Even if Parese were stronger, she would never be able to stand against his three hasty controls; it was definitely a sudden knockout.
Wang Tong then licked his lips and drank some water. To be honest, what happened just now was actually a quick change of plans because the opposing player’s strategy was specifically designed to be used against him. But instead of going with different strategies after observing and understanding opponent’s performance, Wang Tong’s overall strategy remained unchanged, and he focused on understanding opponent’s situation first before improvising the strategy to deal with it.
The first match ended in less than ten minutes. Somehow, it did feel like a performance.
Students of the Kaedeian Royal Academy was stunned and silenced by what happened a while ago. Apparently, they were still unable to figure out what it was. Moreover, they were curious if Einherjar Wannabe won by controlling maneuvers or an upper hand in strategies.
Parese shook her head. To be honest, her chance of winning was higher, victory was so close yet so far. She might have had a bigger chance to win if she chose to go for an instant all-out attack a few minutes earlier.
However, she had made the wrong choice.
On the other hand, Rhin seemed to have realized that Art of the Soaring Heaven actually had another key factor, which was the superb controlling maneuvers of Einherjar Wannabe.
People would always feel like they had a chance to win when dealing with his Art of the Soaring Heaven. After all, it did look weak at the very beginning.