"If that's the case, fine. Let's start now." Klaus said.
Ashley Cox smiled sweetly and asked:
"Since it's a challenge and you have a chance to go out with me, what do you offer if you lose?"
"Um. If I lose, I'll go out with you." He answered truthfully, after all he was not a bad romantic match at all.
She stared at him, looked at him from head to toe, pouted and shook her head negatively. "Don't give me that. I'm not the kind of woman who will fall for your little game. If you lose, you'll have to go back along with the train when we get to Woodbury, so I'll have one less competitor, which will be great for me."
"Deal." Kaizen agreed without hesitation. He had seen her play and thought she was much slower than he was. So he was confident that he could easily beat her in a simple game like that.
Ashley was surprised by his quick response. She thought that proposing something absurd like him not taking the test would finally get him to leave her alone, but that didn't happen. Consequently, now that he had already accepted, there was no way for her to say that this had just been a bluff, so she would have to play this loser even though she didn't think anyone like him stood a chance against her.
"What is your ID on Dagger Dispute? I'll add you and invite you to the group." She asked, wanting to get rid of him as fast as she could.
"Like I told you, I don't know this game and I don't have an account. Can you show me how to play first?" He held out his cell phone to her.
She looked at his cell phone and said:
"You can't play this game on cell phones like yours. Let's play it on mine then, I'll put it in multiplayer mode instead of online." She started fiddling with the hologram, while thinking, 'He has an older cell phone. Does he really not know this game? If the answer is yes, then why would he so easily accept to put at risk the great chance of joining a special government program?'
Ashley couldn't help but grow more and more curious about Klaus.
"You really don't know how to play?" she still didn't believe him.
"I didn't even know what that game was called."
"Well, let's see how long you can keep up this charade." She said and clicked to start the session in multiplayer. This caused the six-by-six table to multiply and there were now two tables. "The basics of the game are that everyone must completely fill all the squares on the table and whoever can fill everything first is the winner. Dots appear in different areas of the table and at different times, and players need to click on these dots to fill in one square at a time. I'll run a practice mode for you to test while I go to the bathroom."
"All right, thank you." Klaus said and started playing.
Even in practice mode he had one hand trying to hit the dots on the other side, and the game itself took a bit of effort to get used to, especially when it came to thinking about which of the 36 dots still needed to be filled in and which didn't. This speed of thinking got in the way, making Klaus look clumsy.
From time to time, Klaus could only see points in squares that he had already filled in, and when the points were not in these squares, the opponent would quickly steal the other points from him, even if these points were in squares already filled in by the bot. This was because Klaus was thinking too much and was slow.
In other words, besides paying attention to where the points were and paying attention to the opponent's actions and intentions, Klaus needed to be very fast to defeat the machine.
When Ashley returned from the bathroom, she saw Klaus playing and was impressed. He was a complete novice who had no idea what he was doing.
'What was he thinking when he accepted a challenge from me?' she thought, sat down next to him and said, "Listen, you know you don't have to go through with this, right? The challenge was just a joke and I don't want to feel guilty if you drop the test just because of that."
In reality, that was what she wished she had had the courage to say to him, but she didn't, because Klaus seemed too focused and willing for her to say that this was all a joke.
After the first round of training ended with Klaus' defeat, he sighed.
"Sounds a bit challenging really. Can I practice a little before I play against you?" he asked.
"Sure, anytime you like. We still have an hour until we get to Woodbury." Ashley believed that even if Klaus practiced for a whole month, beating him would still not be a challenge for her.
With Ashley's permission, Klaus went back to his seat and continued to play, only this time he put in online mode, and since he completely forgot that he was playing on Ashley's account, he was being paired with much better opponents than the practice bot. Soon, he discovered that the online version was even more challenging and interesting than the training version.
However, he also discovered by playing against the best that he didn't need to be thinking about strategies, like trying to memorize the pattern of the points appearing on his screen or the proper way to fill up the table more easily, in order to win. He was thinking many steps ahead of what he should have been, for this was a simple game in which speed was the most important thing.
Klaus played a few rounds and gradually mastered the online version. In fact, as long as one was fast and had good deduction and pre-judgment skills correctly, the online version was easier than the training version, where the bot had strategies set up in its base programming.
After all, in the online version you only needed to be faster than the opponent while in the version against the bot you needed to be fast and think. If the opponent in the online version was weaker, it was very easy to win.
Klaus was just trying to study the game itself and didn't care about the result at first, losing five games in a row. After he understood that he only needed to hit all the points that came up first than his opponent, he won five games in a row without letting his opponents even fill 1/3 of the table and the last one of them couldn't even fill one square, a perfect victory for Klaus.
Feeling that he was ready at last, Klaus went to Ashley and said:
"I'm ready. Shall we play?"
"You took your time, but there's still time. Let's go." She made no further comment. She would win anyway, and she was sure she would never see this boy again in her life.
The moment the two sat down, this time facing each other, the holographic image projected by Ashley's cell phone multiplied. Soon, the two could confirm if they were, and when the two clicked YES, a ten-second countdown began.
"I hope you keep your word." Klaus said to her.
"Humph! And I hope that's fast." Ashley replied.
As soon as the game started, Ashley saw a blinking dot in the upper left corner of the table, specifically in the first square of the second row. She quickly moved her finger to touch it, but before she could touch it, the dot disappeared with Klaus' touch.
*Ping!*
She didn't care about it at that moment, thinking that either Klaus' finger was close or he was lucky.
When the second dot appeared in the middle of the chart, she aimed at it with her ring finger, and just as she was about to touch it, the dot disappeared once again.
*Ping!*
Ashley was a little annoyed, because she thought she could beat Klaus without letting him fill in any squares, and it was embarrassing to see him manage to touch two.
When the third point appeared, once again she lost out on timing to Klaus. This made her internally angry, because this point was on top of a square that Klaus had already filled and instead of getting in her way of getting her first point, he simply could have prepared better to make sure he got the next point
"It's time to show you what happens when someone challenges me." She concentrated fully and was convinced that she could now beat Kaizen without guilt.
Ashley still thought she had lost those points because of her carelessness, but the same thing happened for the next ten points and she still didn't get even one point.
*Ping! Ping! Ping!
The sound of the points being hit continued to resound, and Ashley was perplexed to realize that she had failed to score even one point. Klaus, on the other hand, caught them all.
'It's not possible... Absolutely impossible' She thought as she looked at the chart at the end of the game and saw that Klaus filled all 36 squares and she, none.
Ashley, who was among the top 100 players in the country of Dagger Dispute, had never imagined that she could compete against someone and not get even one point. It was absurd.
'How can anyone do that? I can't even believe that someone among the top 10 players in the country could beat me like that, so how could this strange boy do it?' After thinking about it, Ashley shivered.
...
Edited by: DrHitsuji
If you want to see original illustrations of Rise Online characters, consider helping me on pa treon: Pa treon.com/NandoFalske
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