The entire venue fell silent in an instant, everyone's ears perked up.
"This privilege is..." Norton waved his hand, and on the giant screen behind him, an enormous tournament bracket appeared.
There, Cloud's team portrait had skipped all the preliminary rounds and been placed directly at the "Round of 16" position.
"—Direct advancement to the Round of 16!!"
"WHOA—!!!"
The venue was briefly silent before erupting into a tsunami of discussion.
"Holy crap! Seed player treatment!"
"Makes sense—having Cloud fight in the preliminaries wouldn't be a competition, it'd be a massacre. It wouldn't be fair to other competitors either."
"So jealous! Think of all the hassle this saves!"
Most fighters and spectators expressed understanding.
After all, having a max-level boss go fish-bombing in the newbie village was indeed a bit unsporting.
Cloud nodded with satisfaction.
Not bad. This was standard King of Fighters champion privilege—it would save a lot of trouble and give him more time to observe and strategize.
Nakoruru also breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't like excessive fighting, so fewer matches was the best possible outcome for her.
However, just as this harmonious atmosphere settled in, a discordant voice exploded like thunder from a clear sky.
"Wait a minute—!!!"
Yun Ying shot up from her seat with a "whoosh," her Blazing Prairie Spear slamming into the ground with a "clang" that left a crater in the expensive alloy flooring.
She was furious, her pretty face flushed bright red. One hand pointed at Norton on stage, the other at the "Round of 16" position on the screen, as she bellowed in a voice loud enough for the entire venue to hear—grief and indignation intertwined:
"What's the meaning of this?! Who are you looking down on?!"
Everyone: "???"
Norton: "Huh?"
Cloud: "..."
It's over. My CPU is about to fry.
Yun Ying completely ignored the stunned looks from the crowd. She felt as though she'd suffered an unprecedented disgrace.
"What do you mean 'direct advancement to Round of 16'?! Isn't this just saying we're not worthy of participating in the earlier rounds?!" The more she spoke, the more agitated she became—like a three-year-old whose lollipop had been snatched away.
"You think we're too weak, that we don't deserve to fight those competitors, so you just eliminated us straight to the back, is that it?!"
Cloud nearly spat blood.
My dear young lady! Did your PE teacher teach you reading comprehension?!
This is a privilege! An honor! A perk others would beg for! How did it become "looking down on you" in your interpretation?!
"Yun Ying, calm down, you've misunderstood..." Cloud tried to push her back into her seat.
"Don't hold me back!" Yun Ying shook off his hand, her fighting spirit blazing as she shouted at the main stage.
"I am Yun Ying! Where my spear points, I sweep all directions! I don't care about your Round of 32 or Round of 64—I want to fight from the very first match! Fight my way through! Until every single one of you acknowledges my strength!"
"Not letting us participate in the earlier matches is looking down on our Three Clouds! I won't accept it! I demand the bracket be changed immediately! Put us in starting from the open qualifiers! No—from the qualifier preliminaries! I want to fight ten people!"
Her impassioned "accusation" left the entire venue in stunned silence.
Everyone was looking at her with an expression like they were watching "the village idiot."
On stage, Norton's brain blue-screened for three seconds, then he shot Cloud a look pleading for help.
That look seemed to say: "Bro, your teammate... which psychiatric ward did you summon her from?"
Cloud felt like Yun Ying had just tossed his face into the Pacific Ocean.
In a flash, he appeared behind Yun Ying, one hand covering her mouth, the other around her waist, forcibly dragging her from her seat.
"Mmph mmph mmph... (Let go of me! I'm defending our dignity!)"
"Sorry everyone, my teammate... she's a bit... not acclimated to the local environment, plus pre-match syndrome, her emotions are running high. Please, carry on, carry on..."
Cloud offered awkward, apologetic smiles to the surrounding competitors who were giving him strange looks, while dragging the still-struggling Yun Ying—under the sympathetic gazes of Nakoruru and Mamahaha—and making his escape to the backstage lounge.
...
Backstage lounge.
"Let go of me! Cloud! You coward! Faced with injustice, you choose to run away!" The moment she was released, Yun Ying stood with hands on hips, puffing her cheeks angrily as she lodged her complaint against Cloud.
Cloud felt his heart grow weary.
He felt that communicating with Yun Ying was more mentally exhausting than fighting Orochi.
"My dear Lady Yun Ying," he explained, utterly drained. "That wasn't looking down on us—that's seed player treatment. It means we're too strong, so we don't need to fight in the preliminary rounds and can advance directly to the higher stages."
"I don't care about seeds or peanuts!" Yun Ying wasn't listening. "Back home, this is called getting a bye—a free win! Only people without real strength who get lucky get byes! Only cowards want free wins! True warriors fight their way up one match at a time! You're tarnishing my martial way!"
"This isn't a bye—this is an honor!"
"This is an insult!"
"This is a privilege!"
"This is discrimination!"
Just as the two were about to fall into an endless loop of talking past each other, Nakoruru, who had been standing to the side, finally mustered her courage to speak up softly.
"Um... Sister Yun Ying, Mr. Cloud... please stop arguing." She walked to Yun Ying's side, looking at her with those pure, limpid eyes. "I think... we can look at it from a different angle."
"Hm?" Both Yun Ying and Cloud turned to look at her.
"It's like... the mightiest eagle in the forest doesn't compete with sparrows for worms on the ground." Nakoruru used her unique way of speaking, full of nature's philosophy, to make her point.
"Its battlefield is the higher sky. Its opponents are other kings who soar through the heavens. Those... earlier matches are like the worms on the ground. And we are the eagles. Our prey... awaits us in the later rounds."
This metaphor...
Cloud was momentarily stunned, then cast an appreciative look at Nakoruru.
Well done—cultured people really are different. She can even make insults sound elegant and refreshing.
...
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