Chapter 343 – #75_Pride And Prejudice (2)
#341
1.
Three days of secluded training.
Diana was engrossed in studying magic and exploring the position board for a rematch.
Although her life as an apprentice witch wasn’t very long, this was the first time she had delved so deeply into anything.
No matter how fun the position board was, it was still just a game.
She had never felt the need to set aside time to study it separately.
But for the first time, she realized.
The desire for revenge was a powerful motivator, strong enough to overcome her innate laziness.
Count Yesod had used over 100 handkerchiefs to wipe away his tears while watching Diana, who was holed up in her room from morning till late at night, engrossed in her studies. That alone was enough to gauge her passion.
She analyzed the records of famous witches and studied magic books on dispel, which she felt she was lacking in.
And after analyzing it in conjunction with Siwoo’s style, Diana discovered something astonishing.
“To shamelessly lie like that…”
That male witch was absolutely not.
Absolutely not a beginner.
The way he laid out his pieces in advance and constantly looked for opportunities to dispel.
She discovered by going through the records that this was a tactic used by a witch in the 19th century.
Of course, it seemed he had made his own arrangements, but the position and method of laying out the pieces were almost identical.
Even the way he concentrated three mana sources into one point to enhance his breakthrough power was similar.
The tricky dispel method that an ordinary male witch couldn’t have done was actually not his original, but a copycat.
And yet, he acted like it was his first time.
Like he had never seen or heard of it before.
He let Diana lower her guard and shamelessly stole her victory.
Of course, she had no intention of holding him accountable for that.
It was a dirty and despicable act, but she lost the last match not because of dispel, but in a melee, so there was no point in arguing about it now.
“But… I’ve already prepared a surefire strategy…!”
But Diana’s growth rate, having fully devoted herself to studying, was fierce.
She had finished strengthening her power by about 1.5 times.
With a countermeasure prepared for the only variable, the dispel pin, there was no way she could lose.
Diana sprang up and headed towards the host bar with a confident stride.
2.
“Um… Siwoo is already with a guest right now.”
Diana, filled with a desire for revenge that could bring frost in June, had arrived at 7 a.m. to have ample time for a duel, but Siwoo didn’t come out to greet her.
Instead, the doorman she had seen before looked at Diana with a troubled expression.
“Can’t I just order more expensive drinks?”
“B-but…! P-please wait a moment…!”
“I don’t have time to wait. Show me the way. Now.”
If it had been Diana before, she would have waited or come back tomorrow.
But now, she didn’t have that luxury.
She had trained so hard that she wouldn’t be satisfied until she beat that man down right away.
Diana brushed past the flustered doorman and headed straight for table number 1, where Siwoo always sat.
Her thumping footsteps were filled with emotion, and the moment she yanked open the temporary blind, three pairs of eyes, startled by her sudden appearance, turned to Diana.
“…Oh, hello?”
“……”
“……”
There was a completely unexpected person with Siwoo.
A trainee witch with a large bonnet that was bigger than her face and a dress that looked as expensive as Diana’s.
She had beautiful black hair with long, flowing curls and violet eyes, and her doll-like, cute features were strikingly similar to someone else.
“Oh? You’re…?”
The daughter of her mother’s friend, who always appeared as a supporting character when Lucy scolded Diana.
One of the only twin witches, the trainee witch of the Geminae family, was here.
“That lazybones?”
“That trainee witch who doesn’t listen to her mother?”
Diana, provoked by the twins’ strange assessment of her, flared up.
“Don’t call me that.”
As the Geminae and Yesod families had exchanges, she had met the twins before.
However, it was only to the extent of having met them, and there was no friendship between them.
Therefore, she had no idea why the twins were here.
The fact that the twins were suddenly here was one thing, but another scene that surprised Diana was that the twins were clinging to Siwoo on both sides.
If you could judge intimacy by the distance between two people, that was the kind of distance that only lovers would take.
One of them was even using a fork to feed the man a piece of fruit.
“I was going to introduce you, but it seems you know each other.”
“No, we’re not close.”
“We just know each other’s faces.”
Diana was dumbfounded by Siwoo, who was accepting the fruit as if it were natural and greeting them.
She didn’t know what was going on.
But she didn’t care why a trainee witch from another family seemed so close to this male witch.
The only things important to Diana right now were revenge and retribution.
Therefore, she declared confidently.
“I’m here for a rematch.”
“A rematch?”
“It’ll be a bother if there are other people, so move aside.”
Diana declared in a solemn voice, with her hands on her hips.
Even if they were trainee witches from the same count family, there was a difference in status.
The other was a trainee witch who had not yet completed the training to receive her mark.
On the other hand, Diana was a trainee witch who had advanced her inheritance ceremony training by three years.
She was also older and more skilled in magic.
She thought she had the right to make such a demand.
“Who are you? Why are you butting in? Are you close with our assistant?”
At that moment, one of the twins glared at Diana with blazing eyes.
“Assistant, you said you’d play with us today.”
The other twin tilted her head and held Siwoo’s hand tightly.
The two had different reactions, but what they had in common was that they were ignoring Diana’s words and exuding an atmosphere that suggested they would never get up.
“You’re just going to goof off anyway. The reason I came here is much more important than that, so I’m asking you to make way…”
“Oh? A position board. Assistant, you know how to play position board?”
“We’re pretty good at this. Would you like to play with us?”
“Don’t ignore me!”
But the twins seemed to have lost interest in Diana, who had suddenly barged in, and refocused their attention on Siwoo.
Diana turned her gaze to Siwoo and spoke passionately.
It seemed pointless to talk to the twins anyway.
“Play a game with me first! I came back because you asked me to!”
“I thought you wouldn’t come back since I hadn’t seen you for a few days…”
Diana was pressing him, and Siwoo was looking troubled.
Seeing that, Odile expressed her displeasure with a sharp voice.
“Hey, we made a reservation first, why are you cutting in line? Are you closer to the assistant than we are?”
“Did you just say ‘hey’?”
“That’s what people who have nothing to say do. They pick on words.”
“I’m not picking on words…! It’s just that my business seems more important, so I’m saying I’ll take care of it first…!”
“Important or not, we came first, okay? Why are you being so stubborn?”
“Assistant, why is she here anyway?”
“First, let’s not fight. I’ll explain it to you.”
Siwoo took the time to explain the situation to the twins.
After hearing that, the twins looked at Diana with strange eyes.
Their hostility had subsided a little, and their eyes were filled with relief and a sense of victory.
“Ah, so you’re not in a relationship? You just played a few games together?”
“Then it’s her who should move aside. To think she tried to break up our relationship with just that. It’s not going to happen.”
“Diana, I’m really happy you came back, but as you can see, Odile and Odette made an appointment first. I don’t think it would be right to kick them out as you said.”
Diana felt even more heated by the way the three of them seemed to be on the same side.
She bit her lip and plopped down in front of Siwoo.
“Then I won’t tell you to go out separately, let’s play a game.”
“Odile, Odette, my work is done today, and I’ll make time separately this evening, so would you mind joining us?”
The twins exchanged glances for a moment.
“If it’s okay with the assistant, then sure. We don’t mind!”
“Me too! I also want to see how the assistant plays!”
“Thank you.”
While glancing at the three of them, who seemed more friendly than she had imagined, with strange eyes.
Diana activated the position board and calmed her mind.
Actually, there were things she wanted to say and ask, but it was awkward to bring them up with the twins watching.
How could she reveal the fact that she had lost to a man in position board, and that she had studied because she was so upset about it?
“Let’s go first. And…”
“Yes.”
“…Let’s do it properly. I won’t be fooled anymore.”
With Diana’s warning, which was ultimately a roundabout way of saying it, the game began.
Diana took a small deep breath and calmly made her move.
She was different from before, when she only pursued rigid orthodoxy.
To create a clear either-or situation, she had to prepare various builds to make her opponent aware of them.
Diana was steadily taking control of the runes as usual, while also putting pressure on her opponent that she would attack at any moment.
Instead of blindly pursuing a stable game or pushing hard in the early stages, she was balancing in the middle and proceeding with the game.
“Hmm…”
Whether it was her imagination or not, she could definitely see the flow of the game better than before.
Diana’s rational tactics of discarding what should be discarded and taking what should be taken were accumulating small gains.
Whenever Siwoo seemed to be laying out a dispel, she would immediately chase after him and interfere, thus reliably blocking the variables.
But apart from that, it was amazing.
Siwoo’s mana source concentration arrangement was a type of early-stage strategy that lacked stamina in the mid-game.
But the mid-game was slowly coming to an end, and the game was still neck and neck.
If you were to calculate the advantage, it was about 5.5 to 4.5.
Even in a situation where he was constantly being pressured, he was somehow finding a way to break through and cling to the fight.
But no matter how wide the position board was, the number of moves each of them could make was limited.
Even if he writhed like a viper, if you kept pressing him down, he would eventually burst and die.
Diana calmly read the board and remained wary of dispel until the end.
-Clack!
When Diana made her move.
The twins’ chatter, who had become bored, could be heard.
To be more precise, it was not advice or anything, but a local broadcast of them whispering to each other.
“Oh, that’s not how you do it…”
“Why put it there?”
She ignored them.
They were noobs, so that’s why they were saying that.
She didn’t think it was worth responding to.
“If you put it there, you’ll catch the big piece.”
“They’re playing the game really strangely…”
“But the assistant is really good.”
“As expected, you’re amazing, assistant!”
It was something she could just close her ears to and ignore.
The big piece that had been flickering in front of her eyes a moment ago was an ambush.
It was a dangerous trap that would suck her in the moment she made a move.
Not knowing that, and even though the game was flowing in Diana’s favor, they were ignorantly saying such things.
Diana, unable to bear it any longer, opened her mouth.
“Hey, can you please close your mouths?”
“We came first and we’re letting you have a turn? Can’t we even talk among ourselves?”
“You’re really mean-spirited.”
“Ugh, seriously… Fine… Talk all you want.”
It wasn’t entirely wrong, which made her even more angry.
But it didn’t matter.
It was something that would be shown by the result anyway.
But the twins’ intermittent mental attacks put a dent in Diana’s mentality.
She made a stupid move that she would never have made normally, a so-called ‘miss’.
“Ah…”
Diana, realizing her mistake belatedly, felt a pang of regret.
And, as if her prayer to pretend she hadn’t seen it was in vain, Siwoo sharply dug into that mistake.
It was like limping in a tug-of-war that had been evenly matched.
“Ugh…!”
Diana tried to make up for her mistake by trying again and again.
Siwoo persistently pursued her and eventually succeeded in the dispel that Diana had been so prepared for.
The game had been turned upside down with just one mistake.
“As expected, there’s no way you can beat the assistant.”
“Assistant! You’re amazing as always!”
Diana hung her head low and her shoulders trembled.
Siwoo stopped the twins.
There was no need to add fuel to the fire.
“Odile, Odette, stop it. Diana, it was a really close match. If you hadn’t made that one mistake in the middle…”
“I know!”
Diana glared at the twins, grinding her teeth.
“You guys are so good at position board? Then play against me.”
Clearly, Siwoo had been the target of her anger until she sat down in this seat, but now she was more angry at the twins who had been nagging and interfering with the game from the side.
“Oh? You’re going to challenge us?”
“We’re good at games, are you confident?”
Odile, who had received the sudden challenge, raised one eyebrow and scoffed.
Odette also crossed her arms and faced Diana’s provocation.
“I wouldn’t have said let’s do it if I wasn’t confident. Instead, let’s make a bet. The loser moves aside.”
To get rid of those interferences and have a proper, serious match again, Diana threw down the gauntlet in a cool manner.
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Amelia made by Orcamission in 3D version.
How on earth did you do this…?
It looks so beautiful.
