Just as Brody, the first player Noah met after the world changed, said these words, 4 players could be seen walking towards them. The mage, Anna Cross, was a slim and tall woman with blonde hair in her early 20s, she walked proudly and knew her value and power well. The assassin, Lily Velvet, was a shorter girl, maybe in her late teenage years. She had a smile on her face and honestly seemed too adorable to both be an assassin and a player in such a rough world. The damage dealer, Leo, was a short twink-type boy with blonde hair but more towards yellow, in comparison with Anna, he was also smiling and seemed more like a support type character, rather than damage dealer. He waved his hand towards Noah and Brody. The crowd control, Albert was tall and probably around 20 years old. He wasn't as slim as Anna, but he wasn't extremely muscular as well. He was the only one from the team to visibly have expensive gear, equipped on himself. He had a strong gaze, looked courageous and was generally pretty serious.
"Hey team, long time, no see. We finally got to meet each other. Sorry for sending you on such a mission immediately."
"The Supervisor knows more than us, so, we better follow anyway." Anna shot a sharp gaze at Noah. She scanned him from top, to bottom as if determining whether he was trustworthy. "I'm Anna by the way, I hope we can help each other in the future. I also want to extend my gratitude for your help regarding the now fallen political head of the lower islands." For the first time, she smiled at Noah but this smile was too quickly swapped with her normal look.
"It was tiring but at least they paid well, anyway, nice to meet you, Noah, I'm Lily, I know I don't look like an assassin but isn't that the idea haha. I want to spar with you someday if you are free, I heard you are very powerful….. and rich." She was smiling the whole time and was so friendly that Noah couldn't believe it. He was used to fake smiles so he instantly raised his guard up.
"I wonder who is stronger haha. I personally invested into damage gears from early on so I can outperform my rivals. Of course, I managed to be on top but honestly I felt bad for President Monroe's defeat. He was a bad person but I think there were less severe ways to deal with him." Leo was also friendly, pretty talkative even. He didn't seem like a damage dealer in any possible, imaginable way. "Ohh, I think I forgot to mention my name – I'm Leo, the strongest damage dealer you will probably meet among the new entities, probably if we don't count you."
Albert was silent the whole time, observing. Waiting for the smallest opportunity. Noah knew this really well. Since the moment they were 50 meters away, he had sensed multiple skills being used over the area, including traps detection, magic detection, entity detection, time manipulation detection, barrier detection, he even went on to use lie detection, poker face detection and expression detection. Noah had a passive gear set effect which made any skill Albert could use useless. "I'm Albert." In these words, multiple incantations were engraved and Noah had to use strong active skills which can minimize or potentially neutralize the damage the incoming skills could cause.
In a split moment, part of the second, the environment changed, Lily had disappeared from her place, and Noah's hand was already holding a dagger behind his back. Around his legs, a magic circle was already drawn, which lit up. The ground shook and began crashing down. Leo had dashed and was already just in front of Noah, while Anna had jumped in the air and had begun loading up magical energy, ready to shoot from above.
Noah exhaled once. That was all. His eyes – emotionless, calculating.
This was a game. Many had done this even back when the games weren't this realistic – all going against the pro player in their tiny hope to win.
The dagger behind his back glitched, pixelating for a moment, before its tip touched Lily's neck. She hadn't even finished her step. Her smile faltered.
"Too slow." Noah whispered.
Leo's dash halted mid-air. His feet stopped on a barrier that was placed by Albert there a moment ago against Noah — a reflection-based inversion field. The power returned back at Leo was multiplied.
"If you think speed wins, you've only played half the game."
Anna's spell never was cast. In fact, her magic was being drained but she couldn't control it.
"You cast faster than most." Noah said, turning to glance up. "But your spell source is too public."
Albert's face finally cracked. All of his traps had backfired at him. Based on his strong knowledge this could happen only because of 2 reasons: 1) The enemy had a way to revert traps; 2) They were all used too many times for him to be able to accept the aftereffect. His world was spinning.
Lily's blade was in front of her throat. Leo was blown up and had crashed in a nearby building. Anna was having hard time breathing and was on her knees because of overusing her magic. And Albert was nearly unconscious.
In just a split moment, these four monsters were demolished by Noah without him needing to do anything in particular. Just by the preparations he took beforehand, such a well-planned and coordinated attack had miserably failed. In fact, most players wouldn't be able to guard themselves from all four of them at the same time. If they focused on Lily, then Leo would appear in their blind spot. Even if the player was physically really skilled, 2 possibilities awaited: 1) Fire from above, which will highly restrict the possible escape routes and the player will be forced to take damage, which will weaken them enough to be defeated; 2) The player will be caught by any of Albert's traps and either immobilised or with severe restrictions placed on them. If they focused on Leo immediately, then this would take up a lot of energy to defend in front of the player, that most vulnerable spots would be left for either Lily or Anna. If they focused on Anna and chose to fight mid-air, it was a dangerous fight: 1) Even though air wasn't the main power of most damage dealers, one couldn't exclude the possibility of Leo having skills which affect the air; 2) Mages were exceptionally powerful in the air, it would have been hard for the player to both keep themselves up there and also dodge attacks while trying to inflict damage against Anna; 3) Being in the air also opened many vulnerabilities, which Lily was capable of utilizing to inflict from small, to fatal damage on the player. If they focused on Albert and chose to make sure to defeat the crowd control unit, which in this team formation was essentially taking the support role would have been an instant loss from all sides.
For the general player, this battle was decided even before it had started. Of course, there were ways to correct the strategy and make it even better, but against Noah, no matter what they tried, they stood absolutely no chance. If it was 50 of them, they could make him struggle but four weren't nearly enough. He was used to that.
"H-how did you know?"
"You are probably still small in the gaming world to understand anyway haha. I'm Noah by the way. I hope you liked the lesson I just gave you."
Even though, simply speaking, this was just a total failure for all of them – everyone was able to actually learn something new and now they could work both individually and as a team, in order to surpass their limits and get stronger.
Meanwhile, preparations of another assassin team, which had a certain target, were ready.
"Preparations, complete. Target, confirmed."
"Go tell a tale, Blue Dragon. Return the monster's head!"
「Activating SS Skill Divine Blue Dragon against Entity: Noah 」
Enormous Blue Dragon, long and spreading such a strong fire that could even burn the universe, such that even space was twisting around it. Its speed accelerated with each passing metre.
"This child's playground has gotten too boring. My new dream world doesn't need old-world cliches like you."
Noah had appeared between the two armed men, one 2 meters tall with extreme muscles, like a gorilla and a person holding a divine artifact sniper, capable of strengthening SS long-range attack skills. In his bare hand was the burning head of the Divine Blood Dragon.
「Entity: Noah has accepted the tale Divine Blue Dragon Savior 」