Chapter time.


The social gatherings of the Atlesian elite were hardly ever enjoyable ordeals.

They were full of people trying to trick each other into accepting a predatory contract, pretending to be friends, and acting as if the rest of the gathering was lucky to be able to meet them.

It was a miracle that anyone could willingly spend their entire evening attending such events.

Weiss knew she couldn't.

That was why, instead of going around and trying to promote her concert, which she was about to perform soon, she decided to simply sit alone in the quietest corner of the room.

She hoped it would allow her to survive this day without any issues.

"Ah, there you are, Miss Schnee!" A guest called out to her enthusiastically before starting to approach her with a confident smile on his face and her father by his side. "It's great to finally see you!"

A quiet sigh escaped her.

It seemed that her peace and quiet were about to come to an end.

There was no way she could just dismiss the man when her father was right next to them. The very fact that Father was willing to talk to them meant that they had to be important in some way.

Her fists tightened slightly in annoyance.

She put on the most diplomatic smile she could manage.

"It is an honour to finally meet you, too, Mister..." She paused, prompting the man to introduce himself to her.

"Gruner." The man extended his hand in greeting. "Winston Gruner, the sole owner of the Gruner Mining Company. We are currently in the middle of talks regarding the trade of mining equipment between our companies."

With the diplomatic and completely fake smile not leaving her face for a single second, she accepted the introduction and shook the man's hand.

In her mind, however, she couldn't help but scowl in contempt.

Was introducing the company they were the owner of really necessary in an introduction? It seemed especially pointless when the person they were greeting was only thirteen—nearly fourteen—years old, like herself.

Why should she care what sort of company that guy owned?

"It is splendid news, Mister Gruner. I hope we will be able to work well with a man as great as yourself." She praised with a tone so shallow it was practically flat.

It wasn't like that man would be able to tell the difference between genuine praise and the hollow words she spoke. All the praise those big company owners would hear in their lives were shallow words born of jealousy and spite, anyway.

"Yes, thank you for the praise, Miss Schnee." The man—Winston, she supposed—chuckled. "I hope this trade works out as well."

The urge to roll her eyes in response was strong, but she held it in.

There was no way she could do such a thing while being observed by her father. She was sure that he would notice any mistake she made, even if none of the guests would.

The Schnees had to be perfect.

If the only people who could spot all her mistakes were the members of her family, then it only meant she needed to practice more to actually be perfect and not pretend to be.

It was something she had been taught a lot.

"Is there a reason you wanted to talk with me, Mr. Gruner?" Weiss asked.

Whether she was invested in it or not, she still had the concert to give today, and she was pretty sure that the time for her performance was already approaching.

"There isn't one." Winston chuckled lightly, wasting her time. "At least, not a specific one."

Weiss frowned slightly in annoyance.

"May I ask why you decided to talk to me in that case?"

Her father faked a cough.

"Winston Gruner heard that you were going to perform today and became curious about you as a result." Jacques said. "I offered him a chance to talk to you, and he accepted. You might not know it, my daughter, but Mister Gruner is actually a father too, and he does have a son that's relatively your age."

Weiss's body immediately became tense.

Was this some sort of arranged marriage-type deal?

She knew that arranged marriages technically weren't a thing any more—at least when it came to the majority of Remnant's population, that was—but it rarely stopped the elites of the world from encouraging certain types of marriages, in spite of that.

Her father couldn't legally sign her off to marry the son of some other CEO to strengthen their company, but he could make some very convincing arguments to make sure it happened.

"Don't worry, I'm not about to propose something like a marriage between you and my son, Miss Schnee." Winston said, likely noticing how tense she was.

Weiss didn't trust him.

The man might be saying one thing, but his intentions could very well be the exact opposite. It was impossible to tell when it came to people as high up the social ladder as anyone in this gathering.

"I probably won't pass my company to him in the first place." Winston continued with a grumble.

Weiss and Jacques raised their eyebrows in surprise.

"Why is that, Winston?" Jacques asked.

Winston sighed.

Weiss noticed a tiny smile form on her father's face.

Was her father glad his future business partner appeared to be in a worse situation when it came to choosing an heir than him?

How could anyone be as petty as that!?

"You might not have such an issue yourself, Jacques, because you are lucky to have such driven and talented children, but I can't reasonably give my company away to my son because he's a useless idiot." Winston said.

Weiss glanced at her father, who was almost grinning by now.

"Is that so?" Jacques prompted further, happy to boost his ego at the expense of his prospective business partner.

"Yeah, it is." Winston slumped. "Unlike your daughter here—who is already preparing herself to perform in front of such an influential audience as this one at the age of fourteen—my son, despite being three years older, has lately been doing nothing productive except playing video games."

Weiss jumped a little in her chair at the mention of video games.

Was Winston's son a fellow gamer like her?

"I pity you, my friend." Jacques said as he took a sip of some wine he picked up from a table nearby.

Winston groaned.

"Please, don't even talk about it." Winston sighed. "I swear, if I hear about how it is better to stack one lane in that stupid old game of his, one more time, I will be cutting his personal funding. The boy doesn't deserve it."

In her head, Weiss couldn't help but agree.

Stacking all four players into a single lane in the Arena of the Great was a terrible strategy that should be punished as heavily as possible.

"I agree; that might be a good way to motivate your son. If Weiss acted like that, I would probably do the same." Jacques said before putting his hand on Weiss's shoulder. "Thankfully, my daughter would never waste her precious time on something as stupid as video games, now, would she?"

Weiss did her best to keep a straight face.

"Y-Yeah, I wouldn't."

If everything went well for her, she really would be the perfect daughter who had never touched a video game, in the eyes of her father.

"You have such a good daughter, Jacques." Winston said

"Obviously, there's no way a daughter of a Schnee wouldn't be perfect." Her father bragged, before turning towards her. "Speaking of which, I believe it's time for you to start your concert, Weiss, isn't it?"

Weiss quickly glanced at one of the expensive clocks on the walls of the room to check the time.

There were still about fifteen minutes left for her to relax.

A quiet sigh escaped her.

"It appears that it is." She said while standing up.

Regardless of how much time she really had, if her father was telling her it was time to perform, then it was time to perform. She couldn't simply refuse that man in public and let the guests think the Schnee patriarch was incorrect about something.

The Schnee family had an image to maintain.

She marched off towards the backstage, gathering quite a bit of attention while doing so.

In the end, the point of this whole gathering was to watch her perform, and the fact that she was currently walking towards the stage could only mean that her concert was about to start.

Whispers quickly spread through the room as she went through the door.

It would have been nice to think that the people were whispering in anticipation for her music, but she knew that wasn't the case.

The people gathered in that room couldn't care less about her performance. What really mattered to them was looking distinguished while pretending their testes were refined, and maybe praising her enough to get in the good graces of her family.

In all honesty, she didn't really mind that.

It wasn't like she cared all that much about her concert herself, after all.

She would much rather play some video games with her friends than perform in front of those snobs.

Unfortunately, it wasn't quite possible at the moment.

"Ah, Miss Schnee! What are you doing here?!" A staff member responsible for preparing her stage for the concert asked in surprise. "I thought you weren't supposed to be starting for the next half an hour!"

A wry smile appeared on her face.

"Father has decided to make me perform a bit earlier." She said with a soft tone. "I trust that everything's already prepared, and the slight deviation from the timetable won't cause any issues."

"I-I don't think so, Miss." The staff member stuttered. "J-Just, please make sure to not perform any songs with multiple piano tracks until at least a couple of minutes have passed. The layering still needs to be turned on properly."

Weiss nodded her head.

"Thank you; I will keep that in mind."

There was no need to relieve any displeasure on the people working for her. They were probably the least responsible for the way she felt, out of all the people present in the building right now.

"I-I will turn on the lights and open the curtain, in that case."

The staff member scurried towards the controls behind the stage.

Not a few moments later, she heard the click of the stage lights being turned on and watched the huge curtain unfold before her.

As the unfolding of the curtain revealed her to the room full of the most influential people in Atlas, she calmly grabbed the microphone prepared for her, took a couple steps forward, and began her concert.

It was only a pity that nobody present cared for it—not the guests, not her father, and certainly not her.

(...)

The comfort she felt in her room—after her concert ended and she finally had the chance to relax—was so great that she immediately felt herself loosen up in relief.

There was no need to stress herself out in preparation for her performance, nor was there a need to worry about any social gathering happening anytime soon. All the things had been taken care of for now.

She could finally relax.

With a content smile on her face, Weiss sat down in front of her desk, stretched her arms a little, and turned on her computer.

The calming hum of its fan quickly spread through the room as she impatiently watched the start-up sequence while sitting in her chair in anticipation.

It had been about a month since the last time she had the chance to log on and play with her friends online. That was one of the longest breaks she had from playing video games, and she was already getting restless.

A whole month had passed since the last time she talked with Knight and Chammy.

While she knew that realistically not much could have happened in a single month, she couldn't help but wonder if something interesting happened in their lives—quite a lot of things had happened in her life, after all.

She had her debut concert, was paraded at multiple high-class social gatherings, and practically mastered playing piano during the last couple of music lessons.

The excited expression on her face momentarily turned into a frown.

It was a shame she wouldn't be able to share any of that with her friends, though.

The instant she told them about even one of those things, her friends would realise her true identity with no problem at all. It was something she sadly had to accept about being as famous as she was; if she revealed anything substantial about herself, her anonymity would be immediately compromised.

Her mood soured a little.

She often wondered whether they would still be her friends if they knew just who she was.

The computer finally booted up in its entirety and was ready to start any game or program she had on it.

Weiss shook her head slightly.

Well, she would simply have to keep her identity a secret for a bit longer.

It wasn't going to be that difficult. She was hiding things about herself from other people practically all the time. The only difference here was that she was hiding things from the people she actively cared for now—a minor difference.

A hollow chuckle escaped her.

In order to prevent herself from destroying her rare good mood any more than it already was, she quickly opened the voice chat program to see whether either of her friends was online.

Both of them were.

She checked the active voice chats in the program.

Apparently, both of them were already talking and, most likely, playing something as well.

With a single click, she joined the conversation.

"Snow! You are famous!" Chammy said with excitement.

Weiss instantly became tense.

"W-Wha-?"

Had Chammy found out who she was?!

It certainly wasn't impossible. She didn't really bother with changing her tone of voice when talking to her friends, and her performance involved a lot of singing. It wouldn't be too difficult to deduce her identity if they'd seen her concert.

Tears started swelling in her eyes.

Did it mean that their friendship was over?

"No, she's not." Knight sighed, sounding as if he had been through similar conversations multiple times already. "Please don't start a conversation like that, Chammy. It will only confuse her."

Weiss breathed a sigh of relief.

Her friendship was safe.

What was that about her being famous, though?

"U-Uhm, what's going on?" Weiss asked.

"You don't know?" Chammy asked back, her tone suggesting that she knew something Weiss didn't.

"I-I don't." Weiss said.

Chammy laughed in excitement.

Unsure of what she should make of her friend's behaviour, Weiss couldn't help but become slightly nervous. She was pretty sure she didn't do anything that would warrant fame as her online persona, so she was really in the dark here.

"Knight, tell her." Chammy commanded after she stopped laughing.

"Why me?" Knight sighed again.

"Because you keep complaining that I talk about it, so get to it." Chammy said, in a confident manner. "Snow's been offline for the last month. She deserves to know what she missed because of her stupid exams."

Weiss raised her eyebrows in confusion slightly.

Had something actually important happen online when she was away?

There was hardly anything that could reasonably happen in a single month—at least from among the things she could think of—that could really make someone famous so quickly.

Although she might think that simply because she's not too familiar with the inner workings of the internet on her own. As far as she was concerned, as long as she knew how to use it in order to find new games for her to play, then it was more than enough.

She wouldn't mind some internet fame, though, especially since it was not related to her family at all.

As long as it was a good type of fame, that was. She doubted anybody wanted to have an actively bad reputation in the only place they could be anonymous. She certainly didn't want such a thing.

Whether her supposed internet fame was good or bad still remained a mystery, however, as both of her friends were too engaged in their bickering to tell her what actually happened when she was away.

"I still have no idea what you two are talking about." In the end, she decided to say, prompting the answer from her friends.

Her friends stopped their bickering at once.

"Ah, right. I forgot about that." Knight faked a cough. "Alright, I will explain it, then."

"Thank you." Weiss said with a smile.

Knight huffed slightly as she prepared himself to give an explanation.

"So, you remember how a month ago we were testing the networking for the 'Arena of the Great' for my sisters, right?" Knight asked. "It was meant to be the final test before the full release."

"Yes, I do remember that." Weiss nodded.

It was their last gaming session before she had to go offline to prepare for her concert. If she remembered correctly, Knight's sisters were supposed to take their feedback from it and finish the networking before the release of the full version in the future.

She didn't know when that full release was going to be, though.

"Good." Knight said. "The thing is, thanks to the last game we had and a couple other games from strangers, my sisters found out that the game mode was already working well enough to be considered a full version and released it a couple of days later."

"It's already out?" Weiss couldn't help but ask.

"It has been out for almost a month now." Chammy chipped in.

The very game mode she had helped to make had been available to play for the whole month, and she wasn't there to play it. She wasn't even present during its very launch, when it was probably the most popular.

It was a disgrace!

How could she call herself a real gamer if she committed such an error?

"Anyway, the game mode managed to gain quite a bit of popularity in that month." Knight swiftly returned to his explanation. "Right now, after a whole month has passed since the closed beta ended and the game was released, it is considered to be one of the ten most popular custom games in Sci-War."

"A-Are you serious?" Weiss asked.

Although she genuinely hoped that the game mode Knight's sisters created with their help was going to succeed and become popular, she didn't actually expect it to become a big deal.

At the very least, she thought it would take a couple of years until anyone would start talking about it.

"Yeah, I'm serious." Knight said. "In fact, it became so popular that someone decided to create a whole separate forum dedicated to setting up matches and talking about strategies for it."

"That's the place where you're famous, Snow!" Chammy added.

Weiss blinked a couple of times in surprise.

She never had the chance to actually get deep into any forum before. If there was one made solely for the purpose of their game mode, however, then she supposed that she could give it a try.

It would be quite a website to visit, as well, considering that she was apparently quite famous on that forum for some reason.

"I was getting to that." Knight faked a cough again to get attention back at him. "It turns out that the games we played—and more importantly, our perfect win/loss ratio—had managed to catch a lot of attention among all the players during the closed beta. There's quite a few people who have taken to referring to the three of us as the victory trio."

A wide smile appeared on Weiss's face.

Of course, a name like that would be apt for them; it was their game mode, after all!

In all honesty, it would have been embarrassing if they hadn't become known as the greatest current players with all of their prior experience. They were practically cheating when compared to all the other players.

"What's the forum called?" Weiss asked, curious about the website.

Chammy laughed.

Knight groaned.

"Don't tell me that you also want to stroke your ego by reading the posts about you." A tired sigh escaped her friend. "I've had enough of the constant bragging in the last few weeks from Chammy."

A barely noticeable blush of embarrassment appeared on Weiss's face.

"I don't want to visit this forum for something so shallow!" Weiss shouted a bit louder than she would have liked to before trying to defend herself. "What sort of person do you think I am?! I'm far beyond doing something as stupid as that."

"Sure, you are." Knight droned out, clearly not believing her honest words.

Weiss grumbled.

"It's called 'ATGMatches', Snow." Chammy helpfully provided an answer to her previous question. "I will drop you a link in a message later."

"Thank you." Weiss said with a small huff.

Knight and Chammy chuckled.

"Alright, stop that laughter." Weiss grumbled. "I have a game mode to get back to, and I can't do that without the rest of my victory trio. Are you two up for a game or two to get me back on track?"

"Of course, we are!" Knight and Chammy said as one.

Weiss grinned.

"In that case, let's get to it!"

They all opened the Sci-War and proceeded to form a three-player party. Despite the fact that her friends had played the game mode quite commonly while she was offline, they didn't manage to find anyone to play with them as a regular fourth teammate.

In the end, they still had to rely on random players for their team.

At least her friends didn't have to suffer through having half their team made of random people any more.

This time, she was with them.

With an excited smile on her face, she clicked the play button and let the game start searching for the five more people required to play the game. She just couldn't wait to teach some newbies how to play properly and show them who's the best.

It was going to be cathartic.

"Oh, a little bit of a warning before we start, Snow. The average player of the Arena of the Great is now way better than they were when you last played with us, so go all out from the beginning." Chammy warned.

Weiss nodded.

"I didn't plan on doing anything different."

If her friend was telling her to go all out, then she was going to make her enemies regret having her as an opponent. It didn't matter whether those enemies actually chose that fate or not.

A low chuckle escaped her.

They were going to destroy all their foes!

"Please, don't be too competitive, Snow." Knight groaned. "It's true that the players are better now, but they are still not good enough to actually defeat us yet. Chammy is just goading you right now."

Weiss didn't listen; she was too busy thinking about strategies for the game.

Chammy laughed.

Knight sighed.

"I should probably just give up on trying to make either of you any less competitive than you are right now, shouldn't I?" Knight asked.

"You might try giving up, Knight, but we both know that you aren't going to do it." Chammy said. "You are exactly as competitive as Snow and I are. You simply try to hide it for some reason."

Weiss snapped out of her thoughts to focus on the conversation between her friends. That was not a conversation she expected to hear from her friends right before the game started.

What brought it on?

"I'm not!" Knight protested Chammy's accusations.

"Uh-huh." Chammy didn't sound convinced. "Tell us, Knight, how is your huntsman training going?"

Weiss couldn't see the faces of her friends, but she imagined that Knight's smile immediately brightened upon the mere mention of his training.

It would certainly explain the momentary pause in his answers, as the only boy in their small group took a deep breath in preparation for an answer.

"It's going great!" Knight bragged. "Not a few weeks ago, I managed to convince one of the huntsmen protecting my village to unlock my aura, and since then, my training has advanced by leaps and bounds!"

"Which, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that I had my Aura unlocked a literal day before you did that." Chammy droned out.

Knight sputtered.

"Admit it, Knight." Chammy challenged their friend. "You want to become the strongest huntsmen out of all three of us, don't you? I'm certain that you secretly train even more on top of that, and then keep it a secret to make yourself seem more relaxed."

"I'm not!" Knight said.

"Sure, I believe you." Chammy answered before chuckling in a smug way. "In that case, you must be training so hard to impress Snow and me, right? I'm sure we are going to be smitten by your physique when we meet at Beacon."

Weiss's eyes widened a little as she listened to the conversation between Knight and Chammy.

Her friends might have sounded as if they were talking about their training very lightly, but she could tell that the two of them were genuinely proud of their accomplishments, and it could only mean that they were treating it seriously.

She nodded quietly with satisfaction.

Good, one couldn't become a proper huntsman or huntress without giving their all. The smallest of mistakes could result in the death of their entire group when it came to that type of job, after all.

A small shudder went through her at the thought of seeing her friends die.

That wasn't something she wanted to think about.

Luckily, before she could delve deeper into that line of thought—and have her friends start wondering why she became so quiet all of a sudden—the game had finally managed to find them people to play with.

Weiss sighed in relief.

"It looks like we have our opponents." She said, alerting her friends.

"So it does." Chammy answered happily. "Let's show them who's the best."

A grin that looked nearly bloodthirsty appeared on Weiss's face.

"Yeah, let's do it."

(...)

In the end, they managed to finish three matches that evening.

While the first one had caught her by surprise with how much more difficult it had been compared to their previous games, it was still pretty clear to her that the other players hadn't caught up to them yet.

She didn't reject the idea of finding solid opponents any time soon, though.

It would probably happen at least a couple of months in the future, however, possibly even a whole year, if the game mode's popularity wasn't going to stay the same as it was right now.

As it was, their game mode was still the best place for her to relax and talk with her friends about everything she had missed during the last month.

It turned out that surprisingly little had happened while she wasn't online.

Both of her friends started their training and managed to find people to teach them the basics. Those people were random huntsmen stationed in the village or further friends of the family who worked at mines.

When she listened to the recounting of the lessons her friends went through herself during their easier games today, Weiss had to admit that they were being taught rather well.

It didn't stop her from offering some of her own advice, of course.

Her friends' teachers might have been competent, but their teachings weren't exactly equal to the best education she was receiving as the Schnee heiress. She doubted that anything easily available to common people would have been comparable to it.

There was a reason her lessons were so expensive, and it wasn't only prestige.

She could only hope that they would treat her advice seriously.

It was the only thing she wasn't certain about.

Weiss sighed before shrugging a little.

If they weren't going to heed her advice, then she would simply have to correct their forms when they met at Beacon in the future. Either way, she wasn't going to let her future teammates be weak, not when it could mean their deaths.

With a small smile on her face, she left the now-empty voice chat.

Knight and Chammy had both already called it a day and gone to sleep.

She, on the other hand, still had one more thing to do this evening before the end of the day.

Clicking on a notification icon in the corner of the voice chat application, she opened the messages she received today.

There, she immediately noticed the message with a link that Chammy had promised to send her earlier. It supposedly led to a forum made specifically for their game mode and a website on which they were somewhat famous.

Not wasting any time, she opened the link.

Although her friends might not have believed her earlier today when she was trying to defend herself, she truly wanted to check this website solely out of curiosity and absolutely nothing else!

The website opened to reveal a bunch of posts about the game mode she helped create.

She couldn't comment or make any posts without an account, but that wasn't the reason she was on this site in the first place.

With an expectant look on her face, she quickly scrolled through about a dozen different posts before noticing one that immediately caught her interest.

It was made by someone who had been taught how to play the game properly by three other players during their very first game. The post talked about the tips they received and the game during which it happened.

Weiss preened slightly.

It was a post made about her.

She clicked on it.

Of course, she did it solely to satisfy her curiosity and nothing else!

No matter what her friends wanted to believe!


And Cut!

The gang is getting famous!

And now, the MOBA genre is becoming a thing on Remnant!

Also, some concert happened or something, I donno.

See ya!