"Victory again? Not bad, not bad. You've positioned your pieces quite well for this game."

The woman's sincere praise did little to improve Han Xuhan's mood. Most of his major pieces were in the central area of the board. It was hardly a coincidence that those pieces would win repeatedly against the weaker pieces that would typically be advanced by the opponent.

Unless she played in a similar style, breaking most rules of basic gameplay, many of her pieces were going to be killed in the following moves.

And the game did progress just like that.

One after another, pieces began to clash in almost every move. The outcome was mostly one-sided. Although the visions were rather vague about which two pieces were involved in each battle, the sheer difference in combat power and the appearance of the avatars revealed enough clues to make educated guesses.

Gradually, Han Xuhan discovered some basic rules of this unfamiliar mode of chess.

To call it an entirely blind game reliant on luck would be wrong. Every time two pieces came into contact with each other and gave birth to the vision of a duel, both players could guess the approximate position of their opponent's piece.

Since the chessboard itself wasn't large, the room for error in their guesses wasn't large either. The defeated player would know that his opponent's piece has just replaced the fallen piece in a specific area of the chessboard.

They'd also know which piece it was, making it easy for them to pick up a stronger piece from their side to attack it before the opponent could move it away.

So, within one or two moves of any victory, there was a chance of having your victorious piece knocked out of the game by your opponent's Rook or Queen. There was no scope for a relaxed gameplay under the threat of having all of your major pieces assassinated.

This forced Han Xuhan to continuously move his major pieces across the Board, delaying his aggressive tactic of getting all the powerhouses in the frontline. After all, it might be unwise to lose this game too quickly.

Thankfully, his opponent seemed to be playing within the limitations of normal rules of chess. It gave him the freedom to shift his tactics unscrupulously.

About ten clashes into the match, both parties became vaguely aware of the approximate layout of their opponent's pieces. By this phase of the game, Han Xuhan discovered some more intricate rules.

When both sides were matched during a clash, for example, a clash between two pawns or two knights, the initiator held the advantage. In a way, this was pretty realistic and in line with the rules of chess.

However, if the clash happened between two pieces with a small difference in power, for example, a knight against a rook, the result turned out to be a bit unpredictable. It took Han Xuhan a long time, accompanied by a series of losses, to figure out what the working principle was in such a clash.

Firstly, if a slightly weaker major piece attacked a stronger major piece, holding the advantage of the element of surprise, then the victory could belong to either side. The chances seemed as divided as the result of a coin toss.

Secondly, when the stronger piece had the first move in such a clash, then it would be possible for it to gain a straightforward victory. A Bishop, initiating contact with a knight, could easily defeat it in the vision.

These two observations culminated in a single theory in his mind.

In this mode of chess, the advantage of having the first move in a clash didn't guarantee victory for most pieces, unlike regular chess, where even a pawn can take out a Queen. This rule made the battlefield around the major pieces extremely complex.

About thirty moves into the game, Han Xuhan's major pieces had eliminated most of his opponent's pawns. Three to four of her major pieces might have been eliminated as well, judging by some of the more evenly matched combats among the visions.

The cost of this achievement, however, wasn't low. Initially, Han Xuhan had won in every clash. The first defeat came after four victories in a row. After that point, he began to win every two out of three clashes.

And by now, after more than a dozen visions, he was losing half of the clashes. Even without much experience in chess, Han Xuhan was certain that his rate of losses was only going to increase.

His pieces were entirely exposed to the scopes of the opponent's major pieces, most of which she had kept stationary. The rows of pawns that typically work as a wall between the powerhouses of both sides were no more.

From this point forward, every move would end in a knockout of a major piece. And considering how many powerful pieces he had recklessly lost in the early phase of the game, his side would only be able to rely on the strongest piece—the Queen.

He quickly needed to devise a strategy that could allow his queen to move across the board without getting sniped by the opposition's Queen. But after thinking for a few seconds, Han Xuhan realized that his knowledge of the game was too narrow to generate anything reliable.

In the end, he came up with a rather destructive plan. He had a faint idea which part of the board his opponent's Queen might be hiding in at the moment. He was going to use a couple of pieces as baits to figure out where exactly it was hiding and whether his Queen had a clear shot at it.

The plan came to fruition without a hitch. In the meantime, one of his Bishops and a Rook got knocked out, the latter contest being the most evenly fought duel he had experienced so far in the game.

It was clear that his opponent was using her Rooks to their maximum potential.

In order not to alert her, Han Xuhan forwarded one of his pawns as bait to her Queen. In the vision that ensued following the contact between both pieces, Han Xuhan saw a stalwart figure towering over his avatar.

It was a soldier clad fully in gorgeously patterned seamless silver armor, with a distinct red crescent-moon insignia on its chestplate. A pair of glowing white eyes was visible behind its featureless visor.

The battle that followed really couldn't be called a duel. The giant figurine didn't even take out the axe slung on its waist. It simply lashed out with a straight, blindingly fast kick that landed on the torso of the avatar Han Xuhan was possessing, eliciting a sickening crunch.

Sounds of steel shattering, mixed with the noise of a ribcage cracking into innumerable pieces, sent Han Xuhan's consciousness into a painful orbit where the entire world around his vision trembled and spun slowly.

It was the first time he had felt pain inside a vision. Although the intensity was so dull that he could just wince through it, Han Xuhan still felt a spike of fear as his consciousness returned to the real world.

He wanted to ask the woman why he felt the pain of injuries in this duel in particular, despite having gone through so many similarly deadly duels earlier, where his pieces had lost.

But he was also afraid that drawing attention to the exchange might alert his opponent to his little scheme.

Digesting the strange experience, he silently advanced his Queen to the same spot once again. And this time, when the vision of the duel was generated, he was no longer inside a scrawny, awestruck pawn.

This time, their heights were evenly matched. In contrast to his opponent's silver armor, his Queen was wearing a very lightweight set of colorfully painted plates, barely covering the vital organs. The weapon wielded by it was also quite unusual—a rusty red sickle.

Both avatars let out a domineering battle cry as they began to rip into each other without a care for injuries. As the initiator of the duel, Han Xuhan naturally had the right of the first strike. He made the best use of it, leaving a massive gash in the opponent's neck.

Each slash of Han Xuhan's sickle was deadly, sinking past the armor plates and pulling out skin, flesh, and bones.

On the other hand, his opponent used the battle-axe with heavy hands, its movements slow, yet incomparably powerful. Whenever it managed to strike Han Xuhan's avatar, it disintegrated the armor plates there and left him momentarily paralyzed and numb.

Thankfully, this vision didn't produce pain. Otherwise, Han Xuhan would be screaming for help by now. Both Queens were too tenacious to die from a few deadly strikes, it seemed. The battle kept going on despite getting their limbs chopped off, spines broken, and skulls caved in.

In the end, perhaps due to the advantage brought by his first strike, the opponent's Queen lost its momentum and began to weaken, leaving openings so obvious that even someone as untrained as Han Xuhan could see the opportunity.

The battle concluded with his sickle slicing off the entire neck of the opponent's Queen, as his avatar let out a roar of victory.

When his consciousness returned to his own body, he heard polite applause coming from the other end of the chessboard.

"Not bad, not bad. You figured out enough of the basics to know that ambushing my Queen would work wonders for you..."

"I was just taking a gamble, senior sister. I didn't even know that it was your Queen," Han Xuhan said, lying instinctively.

"Is that so? Then, can you guess what piece this one might be?" she said. The noise of two pieces coming into contact came from the chessboard once more, and Han Xuhan sank into a new vision.

He was still inside the giant avatar of the Queen. And standing some distance away was a soldier half of his height, gripping the handle of a small saber with both hands.

The armor worn by the soldier was identical to the pawns. So Han Xuhan couldn't help but wonder why his opponent had sent it to its death by ambushing his Queen.

However, as the soldier began to approach his giant avatar with slow, deliberate steps, Han Xuhan noticed something new.

The helmet worn by this soldier was different from the rest. A row of small, gleaming white stars was embedded on top of the helmet, forming a circular design that gave it a regal aura.

Was that a crown?

Was his Queen facing the enemy King?