Chapter 1312 – ##14_Sicilian Defense (5)
##61
1.
Diana said her piece and left.
Siwoo was quite taken aback when Diana suddenly requested a surprise position board match.
He didn’t know the exact circumstances.
But, according to the dark casino rule where the loser has to grant any request, if he refused the match, she wouldn’t cooperate with the irregular succession.
Wasn’t the Yesod mother and daughter the ones who desperately wanted the irregular succession more than anyone else in the first place?
It was practically a threat that wasn’t even a threat.
Anyway, Erelim, who had been carefully observing Siwoo’s bewildered reaction, chimed in.
“I’ll call Lady Yesod and try to reason with her.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“She’ll understand if you talk to her nicely.”
“No, please don’t do that.”
That person didn’t even notice that Diana had been intimidated the moment she saw him.
If I were a novice witch and had a one-on-one conversation with Erelim?
Just imagining it is terrifying.
Basically, Siwoo was very lenient towards novice witches, so he didn’t think what she did was particularly rude.
“Hmm, a position board…”
Come to think of it, he hadn’t played it much lately.
It was partly because he was busy with official duties, but strictly speaking, he had lost a lot of interest compared to when he was having a lot of fun.
That was because he had already defeated the strongest player in the position board world.
It ended up with him breaking their head, but anyway, he won, right?
Anyway, Siwoo, who had faced Rosie, who was even using the position board with magnetic magic, and her insane obsession head-on, had lost a lot of interest in the position board since that day.
It was like he had burned out from playing too hard.
But now, after several years, hearing about the folk game that had once really entertained him, Siwoo wanted to play it again after a long time.
It would be fun to gather his wives and hold an event tournament.
“Head of the Academy, do you like position boards?”
“Like… I don’t know if I like it, but I used to play it often. Would you like to play? We have some time to spare.”
“I’d like that.”
Siwoo took out the position board to revive his old senses, and Blanche was happy because she had a reason to stay with the Head of the Academy longer after work.
“Blanche, have you played this a lot too?”
“Yes.”
That was a bit unexpected.
If she was a natural-born witch, he thought she wouldn’t be interested in such trivial games.
“I was the one who created the rune placement algorithm when the 11th Jemena made the position board.”
“Ah…”
The 11th was about his mother-in-law’s teacher’s teacher.
And she was the one who created the witches’ folk game.
Every time, he realized that the cool beauty in front of him was an old witch who had lived for a thousand years.
It was kind of awe-inspiring.
“To play against the developer. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’ll let you go first.”
“Are you sure? I’m pretty strong.”
Blanche’s lips loosened at the sight of Siwoo looking somehow excited.
In the past, Siwoo was the savior who had saved Erelim from going down the wrong path, but after seeing his boyish appearance last time, he looked a bit different.
He wasn’t a superhuman who could solve everything, but rather a child who still needed care.
“Then I’ll take the first move.”
In fact, Blanche was confident in her position board skills.
Magic power wasn’t always proportional to physical strength, but it was true that it required a lot of thinking and calculation.
Moreover, Blanche was a co-developer of the position board.
She had been a tester countless times since the demo version, and she still remembered the rune placement algorithm and knew the optimized strategy that went with it.
She should go easy on him.
It wasn’t the way of an elder to mercilessly crush a spirited younger man.
Of course, she didn’t intend to give him the victory for free.
Blanche was the type who didn’t want to lose to anyone, and that was the same even if the opponent was Siwoo.
“Please take care of me.”
“I’ll be in your care.”
1 hour and 35 minutes into the match.
“……”
Blanche stared blankly at the position board.
Siwoo, who, like Blanche, used orthodox techniques, also placed his pieces almost orthodoxly.
As befitting a clash of Gehenna’s unique styles, the match progressed smoothly without a fierce battle.
There weren’t any particularly memorable events.
A large-scale rotation in the center.
Or a tenacious fight to occupy the variations or the main runes around the variations.
There was none of that.
They had just quietly done their own thing.
If there had been a point where the momentum had shifted or a fight had broken out, she would have remembered, but even after reviewing the moves, she couldn’t tell when the victory or defeat had been decided.
But the game was naturally lost.
As if that was the proper course of things.
“Wow, you’re really strong. I learned a lot.”
Siwoo had praised his opponent as a formality after the match was already decided, but Blanche could tell.
Throughout the entire match, he had felt no danger, no sense of crisis, and not a single possibility of defeat.
At least, it had been a pretty close game from Blanche’s perspective.
“What are you, Head of the Academy…”
After thinking about it for a while, Blanche was able to reflect on the match.
He hadn’t been greedy.
He had only made calculated moves, completely excluding emotions.
During the match, he had gained a small advantage that only he could notice, and he had slowly rolled that advantage.
The gap, which had been only half a move, became two moves in a row, and by the end game, it had solidified into a solid gap.
A normal witch might have thought, ‘Oh, that’s a shame,’ but Blanche was skilled enough to feel the difference between her and her opponent.
Even this gap of only two moves was according to Siwoo’s plan.
If he had wanted to, it could have grown even more, but with the mindset that he would win if he kept these two moves, he didn’t get greedy and went into solidification.
Erelim felt a blazing aura from him as he rested his chin comfortably.
The aura of an absolute being that could not be dared to approach.
“I had an impressive match with someone in the past, so I tried to imitate it.”
Why hide it?
The enlightenment gained from a single life-or-death situation surpasses tens of thousands of sparring sessions.
After his match with Rosie, Siwoo had become a god of the position board, incomparable to what he had been before.
2.
Diana also knew that she was being unreasonable.
She also knew that her unreasonableness was a cowardly act that was exploiting the soft side of a man named Shin Siwoo.
In the first place, how could she take the irregular succession hostage when she would be separated from her mother if she couldn’t do it?
But her mother’s wedding was a major issue, and at the very least, Diana could no longer watch her mother being played by Shin Siwoo like that.
If she could gloss over her weak logic with momentum and force a match, all that was left was to win the bet.
After winning, she would say, ‘Take proper responsibility for my mother!’
This was the Yesod way of filial piety.
“Okay.”
But the aftermath was not easy either.
He was the one who had given Diana a bitter defeat in the position board.
From all sorts of cheap builds to unconventional tactics, and in the second half, he had even crushed her mercilessly with orthodox methods.
He was an opponent she couldn’t guarantee victory against if things went on like this.
Therefore, Diana went into special training.
Every day was a grueling one.
From morning to evening, she played matches with the strongest players in the Mikhail Salon as a matter of course.
“Diana, aren’t you sleeping…?”
“Yes. I’m okay.”
“Don’t overdo it. Do you want some fruit? Your mother peeled it.”
“Leave it there. Thank you.”
From evening to late at night, she would tie a white cloth around her forehead and review the day’s matches.
-Swoosh
“Phew…”
“My daughter! You’ll catch a cold if you stay like that!”
“Ugh…! I’m okay… Pfft! I am!!! Glug!”
“Dianaaaaa!!!!”
She would also get swept away while meditating in a cross-legged position in the waterfall pool of the Levana Grand Bathhouse for mental training.
“We came for a picnic with Mom after a long time, but why are you just looking at the sky…”
“That cloud looks like a position board.”
“……”
She poured every moment of her life into the position board.
In the first place, Diana was a player whose operation was theoretically complete, and as she said, she was a prodigy.
She filled her lack of match experience with random opponents and exploded her potential.
And finally.
“Oh ho ho ho, Miss Diana is truly brilliant.”
“You flatter me.”
“Are you leaving already? Don’t go, let’s play one more match.”
“Ah, my teacher is worried about me.”
“Is that so? Then I’ll walk you home. How about another match while we’re at it, since it’s been a while since I’ve seen Count Lucy’s face?”
She even defeated Tia Caliostro, the Grand Master of the Mikhail Salon, with a rating of 2830 points.
“Ugh… that guy… his rating is… 2870?”
“Everyone, be careful. The moment you let your guard down, you’ll lose points.”
“That young lady. She challenges anyone.”
“Excuse me. I’m going through.”
“Y-yes…!”
“This way… please be careful…”
Despite being only a novice witch, she had reached the pinnacle of the Gehenna position board.
At that point, after reviewing her past match with Shin Siwoo, Diana had gained confidence.
She was far beyond Shin Siwoo’s skills at that time.
But why couldn’t she be sure of victory, even though the back that had seemed like a mountain was now so close?
Was the impression she had received when she was an ignorant rookie so strong that she couldn’t properly face reality?
The promised day came in an instant.
The location was the position board room of the Yesod Count’s family.
-Tap tap
-Click clack
A man and a woman approached each other.
The cold tension seemed to frost the glass windows.
“It’s been a while since we played together, Miss Diana. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
Shin Siwoo, with his legs crossed and a relaxed smile.
Diana’s first enemy and her last enemy.
“Shall we see how much you’ve improved?”
“Okay.”
The curtain of an unavoidable duel had been raised.
