When Ou Tao heard that, only five words flashed through his mind.

I've run into my own kind!

Three Level 12s had beaten more than a dozen fighters with roughly similar stats, plus an enemy whose actual combat power was about Level 17. And they hadn't just won. It was a complete victory.

Ou Tao guessed they were probably the same as him: professionally trained players from some company, sent into this world by a similar method.

Never underestimate the combat power of pro gamers in a world like this.

A lot of pro players, like Ou Tao, started professional training at eleven or twelve. Some started even earlier.

Ou Tao had lived through that kind of training himself.

Up at seven every morning. Full military-style management. Aside from eating and sleeping, there were only a few scattered ten-minute breaks in the whole day. Class didn't end until ten-thirty at night. By the time you got back to the dorm, it was already eleven. No breaks on Saturdays or Sundays either.

Every single day, all you did was play games.

And not in the ordinary way.

Every day, they went through cutting-edge specialized training, slaughtering each other on fully simulated bloody battlefields. Their only extracurricular subjects were mental arithmetic, geometry, space, and coordinates.

A simple example: Call of Summons 121 was the first fully simulated military game. The army used it for online combat drills. Soldiers trained their bodies during the day, then entered a "real battlefield" in full simulation at night.

An army trained like that was far beyond ordinary soldiers on an actual battlefield.

They only looked young. In truth, every one of them had already gone through countless brutal simulated wars in the virtual world.

These pro players were the same.

In real life, they might be timid and weak, the kind of skinny kid a street punk could knock flat with one punch. But the moment they entered a game, they became disciplined, calculating, and terrifyingly brave, with a will to fight that bordered on monstrous.

And those ordinary people of another world? Those swordsmen and knights from mountain villages? How many battles had they seen? How many times had they truly faced death?

Against three humanoid weapons forged under extreme pressure, they had no chance at all.

"I know you want to laugh!" Kai lowered her head, her eyes full of grievance. "But you really didn't see that scene. The three of them were like... like..."

"Like machines. Cold-blooded, ruthless, killing without blinking. And their teamwork was absurdly tight. They were precise, calculating, and could use the tiny bit of resources in their hands to pry down enemies far stronger than themselves," Ou Tao cut in at once.

Kai froze.

"Th-that's..."

She couldn't understand why this man, without ever meeting them, could describe them as if he'd dealt with people like them for years.

"Let me guess what they did." Ou Tao started building a model from the current situation. "After taking over your village, they used children as hostages. They forced you to wear iron shackles and lure the snowmen into the village for them. Otherwise, they'd kill innocent kids."

"How do you know that?" Kai found him even stranger now. Frightened, she took a few steps back. "Are you really with a dark guild? Or... are you a spy working for the church?"

"It's easy to reason out. The event appeared out of nowhere. Those three analyzed the situation and realized that without backup, they couldn't clear out all the snowmen on a mountain this big. So they occupied your village and made you lure the monsters for them. Much more efficient."

"This kind of cruelty... I almost miss it." Ou Tao looked up at the sky and sank into thought. White snowflakes drifted toward him. He held out his palm flat and let them land there, melt, and drip away as icy water.

The pressure from coaches. The pressure from fans.

Ou Tao, if you don't win the championship, then you've let down all of China and all the support we've given you.

That pressure had forced him to become stronger and stronger, and less and less like himself.

Just now, he'd almost forgotten the difference between another world and a virtual game. He'd almost cut this woman down with one slash.

But that faint light in his heart had never gone out. It had guided him back to himself.

His little sister's figure appeared in his mind.

That cute, tiny loli. Every night, she carefully cooked him virtual dinner and breakfast. She'd cling to him like a kitten and ask, Onii-chan, are you tired? Was training hard today? You have to keep it up tomorrow too!

That innocent smile. That sweet loli voice. That tiny figure that ran toward him every time he opened the door, no matter how many times.

He had to save her.

At this rate, if he kept going forward, all the snowmen would have already been pulled away by those people. He wouldn't be able to gather a hundred snowmen with white scarves.

So... was he going to have to fight those guys after all?

How desperately Ou Tao wished he didn't need the Blade of Supreme Might, didn't need to be any kind of pro gamer, didn't need a salary in the tens of millions.

He wanted nothing more than an ordinary, peaceful life. Going to school and coming home on time every day. Living a normal high school life with his little sister.

But fate refused to let this sixteen-year-old boy go.

With one cruel joke after another, it forced him to keep swinging the sword in his hand, to keep fighting without end. Ou Tao's brows tightened slightly, and his eyes reddened.

"Swordmaster!" Yami suddenly manifested and hugged him from behind. Even that silly donkey girl had put away her usual goofy grin for once. With her brows knit, paired with that clean oval face, she looked far better than when she smiled. She gave off the vibe of a melancholy beauty.

"I can feel the sadness in your heart. The unwillingness. And the anger!"

"Meow~"

"Gah gah gah~"

The sword spirits gathered around him. Through their mental link, they could all clearly feel the emotions in Ou Tao's heart. They cried out in fury, wanting to help him defeat that invisible enemy called fate.

Ou Tao closed his eyes.

The sword spirits merged back into the blade.

He was going to challenge those three pro players. He still didn't know what they were truly capable of, but tonight, he had to get the crystal he needed to save his sister.