‘More gunslingers again?’

This battlefield had been anything but smooth from the start.

Gunslinger decks that were clearly targeting Chasey Einthoven.

She hadn’t anticipated so many players running the same deck, and struggled to find a countermeasure.

She found stability after crafting her core item, but not before losing significant health in the process.

“Live combat really is different.”

Had her father ever imagined five gunslinger decks would overlap like this?

Still, surviving meant something, and she remained confident she could secure first place.

Of course, there was still one variable.

The image that surfaced in her mind was a player named Hans, with a thickly grown unkempt beard, who ran an assassin deck.

“I need to change my formation.”

She’d been too preoccupied with completing her deck to notice, but once things stabilized, her father’s teachings came to mind.

“Gunslingers, please move to that side!”

Chasey swiftly repositioned her champions.

“It’s that man…!”

Battle commenced, and upon confirming her opponent, Chasey cheered.

She clenched her teeth, recalling previous fights where she could only watch helplessly as her gunslingers fell powerless.

‘This time will be different.’

As the battle began, the assassins immediately concealed themselves.

Their targets: the gunslingers positioned in the rear.

Due to the assassin trait of moving to the farthest enemy backline, the old formation would have taken heavy damage from their first strike.

‘Just as expected!’

Her preparations were flawless.

She abandoned the single-file formation that maximized efficiency and clustered her gunslingers in one corner.

She even pulled her frontline druids back one tile, creating an airtight champion formation.

As a result, several assassins found no opening to infiltrate and had no choice but to attack the druids protecting the gunslingers.

Allowing assassins only minimal space—that was the essence of the Box Formation.

The ensuing battle was effortless.

No deck could match gunslingers and druids in a war of attrition.

Once they weathered the assassins’ initial assault, they seized the upper hand in an instant.

To think the assassin deck, which she’d considered a counter to gunslingers, could be this powerless.

Chasey now truly understood the importance of formation.

‘So this is Diamond Tier…’

Her father’s Silver Tier teachings had much to offer, but the Holy King’s Placement Method was on another level entirely.

For someone to disseminate such knowledge so freely—how deep must the Holy King’s hatred for assassins run?

“No more problems now.”

Through this battle, Chasey could sense her victory approaching.

With the assassin deck—the one remaining concern—neutralized, nothing seemed likely to stand in her way.

She continued her winning streak with ease in subsequent battles.

The early struggles aside, since they were running the same deck, Chasey’s deck power with multiple core items was inevitably higher.

Even if she encountered another assassin deck later, this formation seemed unbeatable.

That is, unless something changed in Hans’s deck.

There’s a saying about Columbus’s egg.

It refers to a brilliant idea that seems obvious in hindsight—something no one thought of until someone actually did it.

***

Chasey Einthoven.

She couldn’t easily accept what had happened to her.

“What in the world…”

Defeat after defeat.

Her health reached zero, her Crystal Orb completely shattered, and she couldn’t comprehend the situation.

At first, she thought her opponent had made a mistake.

After all, the formation defied all her common sense.

In the rearmost position where a sniper or gunslinger should have been, a single shieldbearer sat inexplicably.

‘Did they give up?’

Only two players remained on the battlefield.

It seemed like her opponent was content with second place and trying to end the match quickly.

Disappointing, yet understandable.

‘I suppose even that man couldn’t find a counter to the Box Formation.’

She felt a twinge of shame.

The formation she’d learned from her father was essentially cheating.

‘At least I held onto first place.’

Chasey knew. The fact that an Item combination formula was offered as the first-place reward meant her father believed in her.

Despite the setbacks, it seemed she could repay her father’s faith.

But the battlefield hadn’t ended yet.

The battle unfolded slightly differently than she expected.

As combat began, the assassins concealed themselves.

Following their class trait, they moved toward the enemy’s rear.

Chasey couldn’t see them.

Assassins only revealed themselves when initiating their first attack.

She hadn’t paid much attention to this fact.

Battlefield rules dictated that attacks occurred at fixed intervals, after all.

Every battle ultimately operated within the overarching framework of battlefield rules.

The assassins would be blocked by the druids due to the Box Formation, and the battle would play out exactly as before—or so she was certain.

But the crack in this solid formation came from a single shieldbearer.

Chasey couldn’t have possibly imagined that one misplaced shieldbearer would create such a massive fissure.

When assassins conceal themselves from view, who do the champions target?

The answer to that question decided the match.

“The target is over there—!”

The moment the assassins concealed themselves, the druids began moving toward the shieldbearer in the rearmost position.

That was when Chasey sensed something wrong.

“The battle formation…!”

Champions prioritize units within their attack range, and if no unit is in range, they move toward the closest one.

Druids had an attack range of one tile. Ranged gunslingers had varying ranges of three to four tiles.

To engage in combat, they had no choice but to approach the shieldbearer!

Which meant the gunslingers also had to move to attack the shieldbearer in the far rear.

One or two steps taken to close the distance for attack range.

Those one or two steps created the space for assassins to infiltrate.

Whizz-!

The exact same formation as before she’d changed her positioning.

‘He found the counter in a single instant?’

Impossible. The creator of this formation was the Diamond Tier Holy King.

If the counter could be found this easily, the assassin meta wouldn’t have dwindled to its current state.

Rather, this was…

‘He knew.’

It was as if he’d anticipated the Box Formation she would choose and prepared the answer in advance.

Without prior knowledge, such fluid adaptation would have been impossible.

It wasn’t entirely implausible.

The Box Formation Chasey had employed.

The formation itself was incomplete knowledge.

Information accessible to a player was limited by their tier, and what her Silver Tier father could access was only a fraction of the whole.

It was a variable she hadn’t considered until now.

If that man also had a high-tier player feeding him knowledge from behind—

A ‘patron’ who surpassed even her father’s abilities—then the situation made perfect sense.

‘What should I do?’

Chasey had ample talent as a player, but she still lacked experience.

‘Revert the formation? Or change my deck even now?’

She’d learned that switching deck direction in the late stages of a battlefield was tantamount to foolishness, so her mind could only spiral into confusion.

She had to make a decision, but time flowed mercilessly onward, and another battle erupted.

Another defeat.

Crack-

Her Crystal Orb began developing larger and larger fissures.

‘My health…!’

The difficulties from the early rounds. The damage accumulated from poor health management had been slowly etched into her Crystal Orb, and finally—

Fizzle-

The Crystal Orb shattered completely.

Chasey stared vacantly at the empty space where her Crystal Orb had been.

Experiencing defeat for the first time, tears involuntarily welled in her eyes.

***

“I apologize.”

“…”

A small cathedral located in the outskirts of Luteran.

Beneath it lay a hidden chamber.

A dark space where no light penetrated.

In this secret place unknown even to the cathedral’s congregation, two figures sat.

“So, you failed to retrieve it.”

A man whose face was concealed by black cloth.

Above it, the number three was painted in red dye.

He tapped his index finger with evident displeasure.

“I was under the impression you were confident…”

The Item combination formula offered as the reward.

Its value was considerable, and he needed it.

But the result was failure.

If the tournament registration period hadn’t been so short, headquarters would have dispatched personnel directly.

Einthoven had cunningly set a brief four-day window, forcing him to deploy personnel from the nearby Luteran branch.

A rare opportunity that could serve as a stepping stone to headquarters.

Unable to reveal his identity freely, he’d needed someone he could entrust with the job.

After careful deliberation, he’d chosen Yuki Beta.

“There was an unexpected variable.”

Raised among assassins since childhood, she was someone he’d deemed sufficiently competent.

Her work was clean and mistakes were rare, which was why he’d trusted her with this task.

And what was the result?

The man couldn’t conceal his disappointment.

“If you can’t provide a proper explanation…”

Her past record wasn’t enough to overlook a failure of this magnitude.

If word spread that they’d failed to secure the Item combination formula, his position as branch manager would be in jeopardy.

Too many wolves were eyeing his seat.

The man racked his brain.

He’d assumed the Einthoven child would show inexperience in her first battlefield.

He’d believed Yuki Beta’s skill and the combination formula he’d provided would be sufficient.

But was the Einthoven family’s future truly that bright?

‘I knew she had talent as a player, but to this extent…’

However, his eyes shifted at Yuki Beta’s next words.

“Einthoven didn’t take first place…”

“Yes. The one who claimed first was a man named ‘Hans,’ a staff member at the shieldbearer Guild.”

Unexpected. Since Yuki Beta hadn’t won, he’d naturally assumed Chasey Einthoven would take first…

What followed was enough to make him doubt his ears.

“And the deck he used was none other than an ‘assassin’ deck.”

“…!”

First place with an assassin deck.

This wasn’t something to evaluate on that fact alone.

He’d taken first place with an assassin deck, ‘surpassing Chasey Einthoven.’

Which meant—

“Did Einthoven use gunslingers?”

“Yes. As expected, but… due to that man named Hans, her health management…”

“Enough.”

Whatever followed would be mere excuses.

Not worth hearing.

What he needed to do was clear.

“I’ll go myself this time. Disciplinary action will be decided later.”

“You’re going in person, Branch Manager…!”

This might actually be a better opportunity.

Romaro Vatican. The despicable man who had diminished the assassins’ standing.

As the child of the Silver Tier Einthoven family, she would have known about the Box Formation.

That he’d overcome it meant…

‘He found the counter to that formation?’

This could become a new turning point to revive the assassin class.

If only he could extract this information from the man named Hans, it would be an achievement that dwarfed any Item combination formula.

Item combination formulas could be obtained another time.

But this matter was different.

This was something that had to succeed.

That day, beneath the Luteran Cathedral. The Assassin Guild, operating in secret to evade the Holy Kingdom’s wanted listings.

The Luteran branch manager and 3-Cost Assassin champion.

‘Jake Spencer’ set out in person.