Editing Rapid Fire King:Volume1 Chapter 3 (section)

===1===

Takamura had a lot to think about, but he ended up seated in front of his TV that night as well.

However, a while after starting the battle, he sighed after having lost a few times.

The sigh was directed toward the words “Game Over” on the screen.

He stared at them, but spoke to himself.

“I sigh, but I don’t quit. I’m more persistent than I thought.”

He could see his slightly raised eyebrows reflected in the screen.

…''I’ve got it bad.

That was the look of someone who could not dodge the bullets at all but still had no intention of quitting.

He could see his reflected face trying to figure out how to dodge them.

He once more realized how bad he had it.

He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the floor.

“When did I become such a nerd?”

He forced a joke to calm himself down, but the groaning of his heart would not stop.

He had picked up where he left off last night, but he was still having trouble. The game had returned to its title screen.

He sat back up and checked the clock to find an hour had passed since he sat down. He had spent al that time on the game.

But spending time on it did not mean he was getting any better.

“I can’t believe this.”

He really could not.

Yet again, he found himself unable to dodge the enemy bullets.

He could not get past wondering what he was doing wrong.

If he did not know that, he could not get any further.

If he did not know that, he could not correct his actions.

And if he could not dodge those bullets, he could not continue playing the game.

He kept losing over and over.

“I can’t believe this,” he said again.

His mind was filled with images from just before his ship died.

He had died in so many different ways over the past hour, but they all had something in common. Just as he had previously analyzed, he would suddenly find the enemy bullets right in front of him and then they hit him.

It was the same as the day before and the day before that.

That meant he had made no progress after two days.

He still could not dodge the bullets.

That said, he could dodge the obvious ones being shot straight on at him. He could see them coming, so he only had to move his ship out of the way.

But he could not do that with the ones that caught him by surprise.

All of a sudden, there they were.

When had they been shot? When had they gotten so close?

He did not know what was happening.

And it happened so unpredictably.

He felt like he could reach the third stage of this game if not for those unexpected hits.

He could tell that much after playing it for two days.

But those sudden and unexpected hits stripped him of any accomplishment he might have felt.

“And the extra lives are useless when I can’t recover from there.”

Recover.

He thought about that word.

When your ship was shot down in a shoot ‘em up game…

…''You lose all your power ups and have to start over from the beginning.

You could restart like that as long as you had an extra life and you got a game over once your lives were brought down to zero.

In the game he was playing, one power up item would shoot out from the exploding ship so you could get one level of power up with your next life.

But if you had powered your ship up to the highest level and then were destroyed, you still only started back at the second level.

“And that’s too weak to even matter.”

In this game, there were ten levels of power ups possible from gathering items.

That was the same number as in Super Rapid Fire.

And while your ship grew stronger, the attacks from the enemies grew fiercer in each consecutive stage.

If you were killed on a later stage, it had to be nearly impossible to recover even if you had extra lives. The enemy attacks would be too much by that point. You needed full power to take on the enemy, so the second stage of power ups was useless.

Of course, if a game was impossible to beat, it would be poorly received by players.

And since this game was on the market, he had to conclude it was in fact possible to recover.

It had to be.

“Please let it be.”

But for now, he could not pull it off, which left him with only one option: not dying.

That was his path forward. It was the only way if recovering was too difficult.

But to not die, he had to dodge the bullets.

And he could not do that.

So he was shot down, beginning the death spiral toward game over.

“Dammit.”

He knew he had to learn how to dodge and that meant figuring out why the hits caught him by surprise.

But…

…''I don’t get it.

“Dammit,” he muttered again while rolling down onto the floor and looking up at the ceiling. “I can’t believe this.”

He kept saying that.

And after sighing, he said something else.

“I want to get good at this.”

That was such an ordinary thing to say that he had never really thought about it before.

But a few seconds after saying it, his own words inspired a certain emotion in him.

“!?”

Surprise.