“Oh, guess I’m in luck, I’ll get rid of one of you crows early on,” the boy smugly spoke.
Ludwig didn’t deem him with a proper reply and simply ignored him waiting for the time for when they’ll both start.
“On the side of the table you’ll see a clock, you all have fifteen minutes of time, use it wisely, each time your turn ends press the clock on your side so the timer start for your opponent. Please do note, if the timer hits zero, regardless of the state of the match, the victor is always the one with time remaining on their clock. As for who gets white or black, it will be luck based, please wait for the monitor to come to your side so you can get to pick which side you’re playing on, you can also have an agreement between yourselves to start early. You may start now!” she said.
Soon, most players chose to wait for a referee to pick their sides, while the crow in front of Ludwig asked, “You should take black, since you’re from the Black Tower and all,” he said smiling.
“Sure.” Ludwig replied and the whole board turned, allowing Ludwig to start on the black side, while the crow mask got his preferred white.
“From what I saw earlier…” he stalled and said, “F2 to f3” he said and the pawn on the board moved forward by itself, as would a person do then took the same stance with his spear.
Ludwig frowned, not from the surprise of the pawns moving by themselves, but because that’s one of the dumbest starts of a chess game ever…
‘Are they playing some strange chess game or is it something I don’t know about? I should be careful,’ Ludwig thought to himself.
The man continued, “You probably don’t come from a noble family, so I suppose you have no idea how this game is even played,” he finalized and pressed on the clock.
Ludwig didn’t reply, and grabbed his own king’s (E7) pawn.
“Hah, like I said, you definitely come from a commoner background, after all you grabbed it with your hands, they can move by voice commands! Voice commands!” he said articulating it. “What a vulgar way to move,” he added as he shook his head.
Ludwig ignored him and placed his pawn gently two squares forward (E5), and pressed the clock, giving the turn back to the crow mask.
“Classic move, I guess you must have saw someone moving from around you and decided to copy them,” he shook his head once again.
“You see, I’ve been trying to do this fancy play, but it would be difficult to set up against actual players, but you, I doubt you can see it, once I’m set up, I can assure you I’ll mate your king in five moves!” he said and called, “Pawn G2 to G4”
Ludwig was completely flabbergasted as he saw what just transpired.
‘What in god’s name is he doing?’ Ludwig asked himself as he saw the pawn moving to his inevitable doom.
“What? You look surprised? This is called the Torijan offense! It start slow but once all the pieces are in play, you’ll be cooked!”
“Offense my ass,” Ludwig said as he couldn’t help but wonder how idiotic this level of gameplay was, “Queen to H4, checkmate…” Ludwig said as he stood up from his place.
“Are you an idiot, you can’t mate me in two moves, there are… why is the queen moving?” the boy said as he saw the queen moving all the way to the corner.
The boy’s head began spinning and one could feel the gears in his brain turning and churning as he tried to find a way out of his mess.
One of the referee who just finished fixing the sides for a nearby table saw Ludwig standing up and approached him.
“Dear guest, do you need any assistance?”
“Not really, I’m done,” he said.
“No! that’s impossible! This isn’t… no, this can’t be!” the boy said completely unbelieving of what just happened.
“No, this isn’t right, let’s replay, I made a mistake, no, this…” he kept trying to find excuses.
“Let me see,” the referee said and then frowned. He pressed on the side of the table, and then said, “A mate in two moves… wait, this is actually unprecedented.” The referee said then turned to Ludwig, “What is this move called?” he asked.
“Euh…” Ludwig thought for a second looked at crow mask and said, “The Fool’s Mate,” he said and then left the area leaving crow mask trying to understand what the hell was going on.
“Make sure you’re back for your next round. It’ll start in half an hour.” He said.
Ludwig left the area where many players were too focused on their own games to even notice that he already ended the match.
A lot of questions were going on his mind, the first of, was how idiotically easy the first opponent was. It was too easy in fact that he was still conflicted.
‘How come he sucks that much?’ Ludwig could only ask himself.
Though he removed himself from the tables, he found no reason to leave the venue. So he just watched the rest of the players play. And only then did he soon come to a few realizations…
First thing was, most, if not everyone playing, were absolutely bad at this game. Most of them were moving using terrible openers, some were also leaving a lot of weaknesses on their defenses. And others had absolutely no idea what to do besides moving their pieces.
It was as if he was watching a full amateur tournament, where everyone had just dipped their toes in the game.
But the more annoying part was that when one of the competitors moved one of his pieces fully exposing his own king to a checkmate, the other completely missed the obvious win and decided to defend.
‘They don’t know how to properly play the game… it’s like they just learned how to move their pieces and that was it…why are they this bad? Most are nobles so they should have at the very least some semblance of experience…”