Demon Princess and Yasha. A pair of twin "Red Name" PK (Player Killing) players who took the philosophy of "while others hoard food, I hoard guns" to heart and actively put it into practice.
Among the massive demographic of rookie players, their absolute favorite type to hunt were those whose tutorial dungeon had been Super Mario Bros, and who had just scraped through their first official monthly trial.
The Mario tutorial simply did too good of a job guiding players. It was so effective that newcomers could grasp the basic operating rules of the Heaven's Selection Space without needing a veteran Guide. It was so good, in fact, that it often left players with a fatal misconception:
They began to believe that the dangers posed by the Heaven's Selection Space were nothing more than mere child's play.
The biggest reason for this was Mario's exceptionally well-designed player guidance and dungeon layout. Furthermore, World 1-4 explicitly featured a mechanism trap that could instantly kill the fake Bowser with zero effort.
While this clearing method drastically increased the survival rate of rookies, it also completely bypassed a proper Boss Loot chest. Thus, players surviving this tutorial usually only walked away with some Gold Coins, a Super Mushroom, or a Fire Flower. They had effectively traded away power growth for a guaranteed safe clear.
Consequently, this resulted in the player's "Hidden Rating Score", a metric known only through the Space's internal review mechanisms, being exceptionally low.
If a player languishing in this low-rating bracket was overly cautious, or simply craven enough to turtle in the real world instead of seizing opportunities to improve themselves via Bounty Missions, they would be forced to enter their first official monthly trial in an incredibly weak state.
At that point, whether they lived or died was entirely up to fate.
But if they somehow managed to survive that first monthly trial out of sheer luck, PKers like Demon Princess and Yasha, who specifically preyed on the weak, would catch their scent and swarm in.
The probability of such players holding onto unspent stockpiles of resources was exceedingly high.
They didn't know the market prices for equipment and items. They didn't know the most efficient ways to spend their Heaven's Selection Coins. They might even be paralyzed by indecision regarding which skills or gear to invest in, choosing to hoard their resources "for now." Because of this, their combat power remained stagnant, leaving them with practically no ability to resist.
Having luckily survived twice, their initial naivety would undoubtedly be stripped away. They would inevitably start exploring areas like the Player Market, Equipment Reinforcement facilities, and the Mission Hall.
And it was here that the duo, Demon Princess and Yasha, operated. They would camp out in the Player Market and the Mission Hall separately. Under the guise of enthusiastically offering "free guidance" to rookies, they pumped them for information, isolated their prey, picked an appropriate joint mission, and finally, executed the PK.
Once they had tasted the sweetness of this incredibly lucrative scam, people like Demon Princess and Yasha could never go back to normalcy. Much like a hardcore gambling addict who had experienced the intense thrill of gaining or losing hundreds of thousands in a single second, a mundane salary of 3,000 bucks a month could no longer stir even a ripple in their hearts.
Truly, murder and arson yielded a belt of gold.
Under normal circumstances, Chris absolutely did not fit their hunting criteria. A freak who had clawed his way out of a cesspit like Ghosts 'n Goblins held far too many possibilities; he was an extreme variable.
But as the saying goes, people die for wealth just as birds die for food. The sheer allure of the [Knight Armor] ultimately drove them to act. They even unhesitatingly deployed the lifespan-limited [Scoutflies]. Before they even laid eyes on their target, they had already paid a considerable sunk cost.
After entering the dungeon, they spent the whole time praying that Chris wouldn't unceremoniously die at the hands of a random NPC or another player before they found him.
Therefore, when the Scoutflies confirmed Chris's identity in the alley, their joy was palpable.
Their standard procedure for dealing with rookies was simple: brutalize them with overwhelming strength without saying a word, beat them to the brink of death, and then leverage the absolute terror of obliteration to force them to hand over everything they owned. If they resisted? Kill them and loot their chest.
Demon Princess and Yasha absolutely never allowed their prey to leave a dungeon alive.
However, in this exact moment, their eyes had been completely blinded by greed for the [Knight Armor]. It hadn't even crossed their minds to question why Chris was standing in the middle of a deserted alleyway, completely alone and completely unconcealed.
The distance between the two sides rapidly closed. Yet, mid-leap, both women's eyes bulged in shock as they saw the incredibly iconic paint job of the shield that suddenly materialized in Chris's hand.
Captain America's Shield!?
Wasn't he a fresh rookie from the Ghosts 'n Goblins tutorial? What kind of absolute moron would sell an item like THAT to him?!
Or had he managed to find a high-level Guild to back him in such a tragically short time frame? A Guild rich and generous enough to casually gift a Main Tank's "Protagonist Weapon" to a newbie?!
...Dammit! Don't tell me he traded the Knight Armor for it?!
Instinctively arriving at the exact same horrifying possibility, Demon Princess and Yasha exchanged a split-second glance. In each other's eyes, they saw the identical reflection of anxiety and rising fury.
Because if that were true, it meant their initial investment had just been completely flushed down the toilet. Even if they killed Chris, the [Knight Armor] was gone.
Should they retreat and pretend nothing happened? Or should they press the attack, kill Chris anyway, and forcefully recoup whatever losses they could from his corpse?
However, Chris had no intention of letting them endlessly deliberate. Under the "chimera" uniform, the muscles in his arm instantly locked tight. A split-second later, the highly aerodynamic shield violently rocketed straight toward the twin on the right!
Bolstered by [Shield Master]'s 100% throwing speed increase and his staggering 24 points of Strength, the twenty-plus meter distance was crossed in the blink of an eye... Yet Demon Princess, the one Chris had targeted, managed to execute an extreme, millimeter-perfect limbo backbend, smoothly evading the strike.
Demon Princess utilized a standard high-Agility build. Relying on her combat suit and complementary miscellaneous gear, her baseline Agility exceeded 22 points.
However, while she was still holding her extreme evasion posture, she watched in horror as the shield she had just dodged slammed violently into the alley wall, bounced directly off, and careened straight back toward her face!
[Shield Master]! Double Ricochet!
At that precise moment, a vicious, heavy kick slammed into Demon Princess's ribs, sending her tumbling away like a rolling gourd.
Yet it was exactly this utterly undignified kick that successfully pulled her out of the path of Captain America's Shield's lethal second ricochet.
The kick had, naturally, been delivered by the other twin: her younger sister, Yasha. It was an incredibly outstanding piece of emergency crisis management... However, in the very next second, Yasha's hand bypassed her fallen older sister entirely, reaching straight for Captain America's Shield, which had just embedded itself into an abandoned dumpster.
As long as she touched the shield, this seemingly masterless thrown item could be instantly shoved into Yasha's inventory. Whether viewed as an act of disarming an opponent or purely for profit, securing the shield took a far higher priority than helping her sister up.
Yasha's fingers made contact with the supposedly masterless shield, but her inventory system completely ignored the command. Instead, a tiny notification floated directly above the shield's surface: "You cannot forcibly loot another player's equipped items."
...Soul Bound?!
An expression of utter disbelief crawled across Yasha's face.
"Look out!"
Just as Demon Princess scrambled off the ground and screamed a warning, Chris had already closed the distance in an instant. The brutal, jagged horn jutting from the Cyclops Head shield thrust mercilessly toward the twin Yasha, whose attention had been fatally captivated by Captain America's Shield,
[Flash Charge]!
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]