4: An 'interesting' match [pt4]

Olivier watched the match play out in front of him. From the very beginning, the approach taken by Diantha's team had been wrong. And Olivier could see that the other team was quite proficient in this level of gameplay.

Even with a decent person on their side, Diantha's team had no chance of winning. Especially once the mage was fully charged up.

The person on the far right could not do anything once the mage decided to help her party level up early game. And soon it became impossible to win this match.

"Ugh, that was boring and so bad. I do not know what you people find fun in this game?"

Diantha threw her controller down in irritation.

She had only played one total game so far but her interest had been put out by a single match. The fun and excitement she had imagined while playing was not there.

"Diantha, it was only one match and you do not even know how to play this game. There was no chance of us winning from the start. If you want, we can start with playing against CPUs and the rank up slowly?"

This time, the speaker was a girl with pink highlights in her hair. She was sitting right next to Diantha and had played the berserk and spoke up. Olivier remembered her gameplay to be mediocre.

She had been neither brilliant nor too shabby. But she also seemed to not have the interest to improve at the game.

"Jun, I said I do not want to play. Can you all just play ranked and I will watch from the sidelines."

Diantha commented as she put her control down and sat on the couch. It did not seem like she would come back.

Echoes were either an individual game or a team game. And since Diantha had just quit the team, these three would have to find someone online to fill in the spot.

"Diantha, stop being a sore bitch and come take your place. But if you are not going to play, can we have the kid play instead? It would be the same result in the end."

Diantha's face went red at the indirect insult.

The last girl, the one with blond hair was the one who spoke. She had quite a mean tongue despite having a lovely face. But something about her presence made Olivier want to stay away from her.

"Are you insulting me, Kafka? You would prefer the kid over me? Well, fine then. You can have the kid play for your side. Let me see how well your team performs without my help."

Diantha agreed with wounded pride.

If her friends wanted to play with a kid they had never even seen before over consoling Diantha, then they can play.

She was sure that once her friends would be done with their losing streak, they would come back to beg her and take Diantha back. She just needed to wait a little more for that to happen.

"Hey kid, here. Pick up this controller and sit down. We are about to start the match. You do know how to play with a controller, right? Because a controller is all we have."

Jun handed the controller over to Olivier and it felt unfamiliar in his hands. Olivier had played a lot with a controller before, but it had never felt this huge and heavy in his hands before.

He looked at the screen in front of him and suddenly, he felt nervous.

'Oh god, I am playing Echoes again.'

Olivier's heart was beating a mile per second at the thought of being able to play his favorite game again. His hands were sweating as well.

"Alright team, we are here. Time for us to choose an avatar. I will go with my previous one."

"Me too."

"I guess I will as well."

Once again, the major core turned out to be a berserker, an assassin, and a sword master. It was an all-offensive core. It would be a good strategy for the heavy offense.

But it also lacked healing as a major resource. Olivier was sure that the better approach for him would be to take the healer role and play it safe.

A healer was an essential unit that had a low hit point but a lot of defense and stamina. If you leveled them upright, then a decent healer could make the whole team unkillable. That was how amazing healers could be.

But despite knowing all this, Olivier wanted to play a support role that could do a little more.

He did not know when he would get to play Echoes after this so Olivier wanted to make the best of this given opportunity.

"Hey kid, what is wrong? Are you unable to decide which character to choose? Do you need our help?"

Jun questioned and leaned over since she was the closest to Olivier. She decided to press play without considering much and Olivier watched in horror as the 'random' button was selected.

His breath was caught up in his throat as the wheel of character spun around once, twice before finally settling on the healer class.

'I-Is this luck? Or some kind of curse. But I guess that does solve my dilemma of what I am going to play as.'

Olivier picked up his control and got ready to enter the match. His character had already been selected for him after all.

"Ouch kid, I feel bad for you. Do not feel discouraged if you do not play well. It is your first game and being a healer is the toughest job for people."

The far-right aggressive girl consoled. She must be a regular player if she knew that healers had a massive learning curve when compared to other people in the same situations.

But it all fell out of Olivier's mind when the game finally loaded up.

Olivier, along with Jun was spawned in the most unconventional place they could - directly into the enemy camp and into the heart.

The only luck they had was that no enemy had spawned in their base. It made running away easier for their side before their enemy realized and retreated.

"Wow, what a lucky coincidence. Let us take a quick lead here so that we can gain the upper hand. What do you say, kid? Are you with me or not?"

Jun asked as she started to bash away at the other team's crystal. It all happened too fast for Olivier to compute.

And before he knew it, the other team was coming to kill them.

"L-Lady, we need to run away right now. We do not have enough levels to win this fight."

Olivier instructed Jun but Jun seemed unbothered by her lack of power. Her avatar continued to bash away at the crystal with all its might but it was not even making a dent in its HP.

"Hey, come and help me out as well. It will not matter how many levels below we are if we managed to break this crystal right now. But it is not showing any signs of being depleted for some reason."

Jun questioned as she took a small break from smashing. It was also time for the opposite team to come running and they killed Jun first.

Of course, a lone healer like Olivier would not be able to do anything. Especially with his low level and lack of skill. So, he quickly used the one out of two free base teleports he had on his avatar and ran away.

His avatar appeared right behind the newly re-spawned Jun's avatar.

"Ugh, I died. But at least I managed to get some damage in, right? Let us see, I did barely 10 points of damage. How was it so low?"

Jun questioned as she looked at her meter. She was wasting a lot of time and Olivier decided to leave her behind for now. She was not going to be of any use.

"Jun, what were you doing? You should have returned to their home base if you were surrounded by the enemies. That is why the emergency teleport is for."

The right-side lady spoke in a harsh tone. Olivier could see her leveling up fast.

"Huh? How do you do it Mirai? Wait, you can teleport back to their home base? You should have told this me before and-"

"You should farm those monsters on the right. They die easily and give us a lot of exp. You will level up faster."

Olivier pointed out to Jun. He could feel everyone else looking at him but Olivier refused to show any signs of nervousness. He was just focused on his game and he ignored the curious looks he was getting.

He was busy trying to level up his healer but it was so much tougher than he had expected it to be. He did not remember this map being this tough before. But it was difficult for Olivier to even be able to navigate the field right now.

'Darn, my young and small hands. What can I do to not lose this match outright?'

Olivier's avatar was missing a lot of crucial high-intensity strikes because of his lack of precision in his current form. It was tough for him to press 'A' and 'X' at the same time.

"Wow, the kid is so good. I think he is already past all our levels combined. Do you think we can win this match?"

Jun asked as she looked at Olivier's progress. He was doing far better than her now but Jun was not embarrassed at her lack of progress.

"Well, the kid is playing the game instead of opening his mouth to make useless comments. You would do well if you played the game, Jun."

Kafka's dry humor caused Jun to flinch and her face went red. At the same time, Jun's avatar stopped moving and she got killed by spawns.

"How embarrassing, Jun. You managed to die from something even a kid would have a hard time dying from."

These people were testing Olivier's temper right now. They were playing around with each other when they could be leveling up instead? Why did Olivier have to get these two on his team?

The other team was already outperforming them and the difference would only grow with time. If they did not pull themselves together, then there was no point in continuing this game anymore.

"Are you both going to play or not? I will not sit here and wait for you both to finish mocking each other. Either play or forfeit this match."

Mirai was not yelling but it was a near thing. But now even she was distracted now and her avatar had stopped moving.

And since Mirai was the highest DPSing member of their team, the enemy decided to focus on her instead of everyone else. Her avatar was killed off before she could blink and her exp dropped by a ton.

But of course, the three people who were arguing in real life did not notice this.

Olivier gave up at this point as well. There was no way he would be able to win this match from his current position.

As a healer, his dps window was short and very limited. He had to back down once his team did.

It did not take long for the sign 'Game over' to appear on the screen.

"See, I told you it would not help you much to have a kid replace me in your team. But then again, I cannot fault the kid for this loss. He was the only one who seemed to be trying."

Natasha finally interfered now that the match was over. The other three girls instantly looked back at the 'game over' screen behind them. They had not even realized when this had happened.

"Oh shoot, I was using my real account for this. My fans will kill me for ranking down offline."

Mirai sounded stressed and Olivier could only assume she was a streamer from her words. She was not a professional at least or Olivier would have remembered her.

"Yeah, good luck with your fans. You better level up fast because your stream for this game is today, right?"

Mirai cursed and Olivier inched away slowly from her. This girl did not seem sane to him.

Before anything else could happen, Adolf knocked on the room door and entered with a sober expression.

"My lady, if our young guest is free, then may I take him with me? Your parents are home and they would like to talk with this young man here."

Natasha agreed easily and Olivier took in a deep breath. He needed to get through this somehow.