City of Witches

1.

“Huh?”

The current state of the game shocked Diana.

Her magic cannon was broken.

The formation that she had been building over the course of fifteen turns was completely dismantled.

Siwoo’s runes, which he had been setting up since the start of the game, successfully disrupted the connection she had been building.

For the first time during the game, Diana raised her head to look at Siwoo’s face.

That was when she found out that he didn’t seem even a little joyful after his plan had worked. He also didn’t seem elated that he managed to beat her.

Instead, he calmly rested his hand on his chin and calmly scanned the board with his eyes.

As if he had expected this kind of outcome from the very beginning.

The attack that she had been preparing from the start of the game was stopped before it could even start.

This was pretty much a checkmate.

Of course getting one’s strategy being dispelled midway like this was something that commonly happened in the game.

But, the problem here was that he was using Dispel Pin to do it.

Not to mention that it was the Dispel Pin that he had been setting up from the start of the game.

Unless he got her dancing in his palm from the beginning, this result was something that should be impossible to happen.

Because he’d need to predict what kind of moves she would make.

All while calculating the next move that he needed to make himself.

The thing here was that he definitely had no way to know what she was trying to do so early in the game.

Impossible…

There’s no way…

This must be another fluke.

He just happened to pull it off because the situation was aligned in his favor.

“That was a pretty good move.”

“You flatter me.”

He’s just lucky…

Both yesterday and just now…

He can’t even play fairly, he just sticks to his dirty tricks…

Diana calmly examined her broken formation.

And she noticed that it wasn’t completely broken yet.

She still had a chance to turn this around.

If I were to give up the current formation, connect a pass to another one of my magic orbs, and utilize the runes at the top left of the board that I’ve previously captured, I could regain my footing in five turns.

And so, she discovered that the Dispel Pin was merely a check and not a checkmate.

Besides, Witch Board was a game where one needed to destroy all of their opponent’s mana orbs to win.

A single Dispel Pin normally wouldn’t be enough to win games.

In fact, Diana had already planned out her next steps.

She was now showcasing the versatility of the standard strategies.

Even if her strategy stumbled in the middle, she still had enough to regain her footing quickly.

“Ah…”

But after three turns, when she was about to rebuild her connection again…

The same thing happened.

As if he had already predicted this move, Siwoo’s Dispel Pin destroyed her magic cannon again.

But how could he build another one so quickly—!?

It didn’t take long for Diana to finally find the answer.

His three mana orbs that were clumping together.

Though at the first glance, it looked like an inefficient strategy, it perfectly supported the placements of all his Dispel Pins, allowing him to bust them out quickly.

Is this what he was aiming for…?

“...”

No, this is okay, I still have another chance.

I still had my mana orbs, I could still rebuild the cannon.

But…can I…?

I’d need at least seven turns to do that…

Also, even if I could do it, that meant it took me forty turns to build a single cannon. If he managed to destroy it again, there was no coming back from that…

I couldn’t work with anything else…

In Witch Board, dismantling an unfinished spell was a part of the normal strategy.

After all, one could take the resources off that spell and place it elsewhere to utilize those resources more effectively.

Considering Diana’s playstyle that prioritized stability over everything, this was a more than viable course of action for her to take.

Let’s just do it. I’ll win if I drag it into the late game anyway.

Though she decided on that, Diana still felt a subtle discomfort.

As if she was caught in some kind of secret ploy of his and she’d need to rethink her decision a little bit more.

She had this unpleasant feeling that if she were to drag it to the late game, even if she ended up winning the game, she’d still feel like she had lost to him.

“I changed my mind, it seems that you’re a little worthy of my acknowledgement.”

She felt foolish for not noticing it.

From the nature of his self-essence magic, it was clear that he was somewhat proficient when it came to dismantling spells.

But, will he be able to stop my next move?

Trying to boost her own confidence, Diana placed some decoys across the board, all while laying the groundwork so that she could set up another magic cannon.

“Tsk…!”

But, as she did that…

Siwoo dropped another Dispel Pin and dismantled her cannon again.

At this point, even if she tried to rebuild again, she’d have to sacrifice a lot. Not to mention that she had to bet on him not doing anything else in the meantime, so she was in a position where she was as good as lost.

She was too headstrong on sticking to her original plan and now she was stuck at the point of no return.

Her careless decision made her unable to recover her momentum.

The worst thing was that Siwoo utilized the situation well and carried on his own attack almost immediately, forcing Diana to lose her ground even more.

Since he was clumping his mana orbs together, his firepower was way beyond what Diana could handle.

It only took five minutes before every rune Diana had was taken away by him, while the defensive measure that she tried to build was rendered useless.

Then, he destroyed one of her magic orbs.

Maybe, if she hadn’t insisted on sticking to her plan, she’d be able to raise a counterattack earlier by sacrificing one of her orbs.

Or she could build just enough defense to protect her orbs and conjure up a new plan from there.

However, due to her greediness, the gap between them only widened over time.

Since the rule was a player could only make one move per turn, even a Grand Witch couldn’t steal the momentum back from Siwoo.

Eventually, her second and third orbs were destroyed in succession.

I…lost…

Those two words resonated in her heart strongly like a persisting echo.

Her shoulders started to tremble greatly.

“That was a fun game. I was lucky.”

Hearing those words, an annoyed smile appeared in Diana’s lips as she was about to explode in anger, but she managed to hold herself back.

Calm down, this doesn’t mean I’m less skilled than him…

I was just caught off guard by his Dispel Pins…

In retrospect, the main reason why she lost was because she stubbornly stuck to her failing plan, basically, she self-destructed.

Also, rather than exploding in anger in an unsightly manner, she figured that she should display the dignity of the heir of a Countess by readily admitting her mistake.

“I underestimated you too much.”

“It seems so. Honestly, when we were playing, I was bewildered that I could get that far at all, haha.”

“Tsk…”

While listening to his words that felt slightly humiliating, Diana reset the board.

“So, our current score is 2 to 1 with me in the lead, right?”

Diana knew that this was a lame move on her part.

The truth was, she was very confident that she’d never lose against him.

That was why she never bothered to keep tabs on their scores in the beginning.

But, she couldn’t accept ‘losing’ in this way.

And she figured that if she were to pretend that she had been keeping track of their score since the beginning, her pride could accept it.

“Ah, you’re counting yesterday’s games too?”

“What? Obviously!”

Siwoo blinked his eyes in surprise, as if he didn’t expect that she’d keep count on their games so far.

Seeing his attitude, Diana responded angrily.

“Alright. So, does that mean we’re going for another round?”

“Of course.”

With that the fourth game began.

2.

After that, Diana’s attitude changed.

There was no more complacency in her heart as she focused on the game.

Occasionally, she’d show her frustration or surprise, but her moves were always on point.

Meanwhile, Siwoo kept on pulling off strange moves, at least in Diana’s viewpoint.

-Tak!

This time too, Siwoo’s finger moved to make another bizarre move.

A move that caught Diana completely off guard.

At first glance, his move looked like it was a blunder, that was how bizarre of a move it was.

Her mouth was itching.

She wanted to ask him so badly, ‘What on earth are you planning?’.

However, asking for an explanation would be bad manners.

So, she just continued to do her things.

Before they realized it, 50 turns had passed and they had entered mid-game.

Advantage-wise, Diana was in the lead with the ratio of 70:30.

Every time Diana tried to hint for a fight for a rune, Siwoo always backed out without any hesitation.

Instead, he wasted his turns on meaningless things that had nothing to do with such fights.

By this time, she had completed her defensive formation, but Siwoo had done nothing about it.

“Hm…”

Siwoo avoided all fights.

Most of the passes were taken by Diana.

She was also ahead in the runes count.

Even the placement of her mana orbs was superior to him.

Still, Diana didn’t let her guard down.

If she hadn’t suffered from his unconventional strategy twice, she wouldn’t be like this, but she unfortunately had.

Besides, she knew that she could win this game as long as she didn’t rush in like a headless chicken.

She could envision it.

The perfect timing for her to end the game.

She calculated that if she were to take into account all the resources they had and launch a big attack on him…

I’ll win in 22 turns.

The moment she was about to set that plan in motion…

“Alright, I guess it’s time to start fighting back.”

Siwoo began his counterattack.

To describe it in a more understandable way, Diana’s formation was like full plate armor without any gap in defense.

The only way for him to do any meaningful damage to her was during a very brief opening when she was about to attack.

“Sure, whatever.”

Still, this wasn’t a problem for her.

Because she was already so far ahead.

But, she still checked out the board, just in case that there was something that she missed.

Because she completely expected him to pull off another bizarre move.

After calming herself down again, she made her move to prepare against Siwoo’s attack.

She was perfectly confident that if she were to block his attacks, she would easily win on the crackback.

At that moment, Siwoo deployed a Dispel Pin.

“Another one of these, huh…? But, I already knew you’d do that.”

A slight smile appeared on Diana’s face.

His timing was excellent, but she already built a countermeasure to his Dispel Pin strategy.

She knew that his speciality was to connect the haphazardly placed runes and cast a Dispel Pin with them and take her down in one fell swoop.

But, what if she were to split her formation and distribute her resources evenly among them?

In an instant, she split her magic cannon into ten separate smaller cannons.

This wasn't a difficult thing to do for her.

After all, she had been setting this up in advance.

With this move, the situation suddenly changed. Now he had to deal with ten different attacks instead of one.

Try to use your Dispel Pin against this if you can.

Of course, it's obvious that you can’t. Not in this situation.

Unless your level is far above me, there’s no way…

Just like before, unlike Diana who distributed her mana orbs all around the board, Siwoo clumped them together.

Now that it was like this, she could take him down in one fell swoop.

She continued her attack, fully prepared to lose one or two mana orbs in this attack, just to completely subdue him.

“With this… I won.”

After Siwoo destroyed one of Diana’s mana orbs, he said those words.

“What kind of nonsense are you trying to say?”

You just destroyed a single mana orb, what are you on about?

Keep dreaming. You can’t even stop my attack.

Diana opted to ignore him and continue to press on.

And then…

She realized the hard way that his words weren’t a bluff.

“N-No way… H-How…?”

Because he quickly dismantled all of her cannons.

Siwoo calmly cut off everything, one by one, as if he had expected from the start that she’d be using this strategy.

All the bizarre moves that Diana previously dismissed as meaningless were actually part of his preparation to block her attacks.

There wasn’t a single gap in his formation that she could exploit.

“...”

“Good game?”

“It’s not over yet.”

Though the attack that consumed a lot of her resources had failed and one of her mana orbs was destroyed, Diana still hadn’t given up.

There’s no way I’m gonna lose like this—!

She struggled to defend against Siwoo’s onslaught, but in the end, all her efforts were in vain.

I lost…

Again…

“I see, I understand now.”

This unbelievable result made a distorted expression appear on her face, but that didn’t stop her from resetting the board once again.

“Our score is 2-2, right? Let’s play another round.”

“I’m sorry, but we don’t have enough time. Anyway, that was fun. If you come again tomorrow, same time, I’ll be more than happy to play with you again, Ms. Diana.”

Before she realized it, her time had run out.

She couldn’t do anything but helplessly left the host club after that.