Meanwhile, Anna who sat on the other side of the table could be seen having tension sipped away from her body, starting to feel confident with her own position. She glanced at her opponent for a moment, feeling a little bit complicated. On one hand, she was disappointed since Sheva didn't know anything about the opening at all. The opening that she used, the English, was one of the most standard openings besides the 1.e4 in a high-level tournament, so this basically told her that Sheva was a beginner through and through.
However, on the other hand, she was also impressed with Sheva's understanding of chess. The way he moved his pieces would always ensure two things: he would be safe, and he would try to aim for a counterattack. It was a good, aggressive style, and while there were still several mistakes that Anna saw as avoidable, the fact that Sheva himself was just a rookie was enough for her to see his potential.
'Unfortunately for him, I will not go easy here.' She picked up her rook, ready to make a move. As the girl glanced at her opponent one last time, she clenched the piece tightly, trying to show her determination. 'Sorry, but I need to win this game and go to the next international tournament with Master Irfan!'
Tak!
Sheva was taken aback by the sudden aggressiveness shown by Anna. He thought that she would be like her little sister, waiting patiently on the back for him to make a mistake before trying to capitalize on it. However, Anna caught him off guard by suddenly marching her pawns forward, abandoning her king's protection for the maximum effect of the attack.
'Oh! That's it! Anna is going to exert her dominance!'
'This is her true style, aggressive and suffocating!'
'Now, the newcomer is going to be pushed back to his own side!'
'This is going to be over soon!'
Indeed, Sheva also started to feel the pressure here. He who always liked to play an attacking chess was pushed to be defensive. Hell, he even had to maneuver his own pieces back to their original squares to avoid getting trapped in the middle of the board. He was like a wounded prey, trying his best to hide from the ferocious hunter, not knowing that he was bleeding and leaving an obvious track for the hunter to hound him down.
'No, I cannot let her push me back like this.' Sheva gritted his teeth, racking his brain to think of a solution to get out of this situation. 'Since she had already pushed this far, the protection toward her king is pretty weak. Once I can get out of this pressure, I will be able to knock her back. But how to do that?'
Irfan who watched his struggle from the sideline could only shake his head at Sheva's futile effort to save the game. 'It is good already that he could win the first four games. However, his lack of experience really cost him this game. There is no way Anna would let him get out of this situation easily.'
Of course, Irfan still remembered he had said the same thing when Sheva played against Claudia before. However, he still believed that it was just a fluke, and Anna's skill was definitely way higher compared to her little sister. So, he had already deemed that this game couldn't be saved, not even realizing the glimpse of light in Sheva's eyes.
'Wait a second!' Sheva widened his eyes as he realized something here. 'The anchor of her attack is her knight on the F3 square, so what I need to do is to remove it from that place, right? Besides the E1 square, it has no place to jump anymore, so once I knock it to the backrank, her offense would collapse. Her queen couldn't do everything alone, and her bishop that seemed to snipe from afar would only meet the blockade I created to push back her knight. Is this alright? Can she do anything else here?'
His mind kept simulating every way possible, not even caring that he burned down his own time. The other players who saw this from the sideline shook their heads, thinking that the game was a dead loss for Sheva. Hell, even Anna started relaxing here, sipping the bottle of water she put down on the floor. She could also see her little sister, Claudia, smiling smugly at Sheva as if it were she who won this game.
Out of everyone else in the room, only Bagas knew that this game was still far from over. He might not know a lot about chess, but in terms of his best friend, he could confidently say that, besides Sheva's mother, there was no one on Earth who knew better about Sheva than he. He could see Sheva's eyes shining brightly, and he knew that the counterattack from his best friend was about to come.
'Come on, Shev! I know you haven't given up yet! Show them what you are made of!'
After spending a full four minutes thinking of his plan, Sheva finally started to make a move. Everyone just brushed it off, though, with Claudia scoffing as if this was his last attempt to make trouble. After all, even if somehow, Sheva managed to save the game from this position miraculously, he was still down by almost five minutes, and without the additional time per move, it would be hard for him to recover once his time was about to end.
What everyone didn't expect, though, was that slowly but surely, Sheva started crawling from his deepest hole, trying to get himself basked under the sun. He started to improve his position slowly, and before Anna could notice about it, he had already made a chain of three pawns, all of them marching forward to pressure her knight.
'What is going on here?' Anna couldn't help but frown.
She spent a whole minute trying to get a better look at this position. In the end, she concluded that while Sheva's position got better, her advantage was still here, so even though her gut felt something was wrong here, she decided to ignore it and follow her original plan.
However, Sheva smirked, knowing that she had already fallen into his trap. Right when both were trying to race on whose attack would land first, Sheva suddenly made a surprising move here, pushing the pawn that was on the front of the chain, sacrificing it, and potentially another two to force the knight to fall back.
Tak!
Seeing this, everyone gasped, knowing full well that Sheva had already flipped the table here. Anna also widened her eyes, not expecting the sudden sacrifice. As for the main protagonist himself, Sheva just smirked, thinking inwardly, 'Now, it will be me who is going to chase you down. Get ready, girl!'
Not only that, but the bishop on the G2 square was also under the threat of getting locked down. Suddenly, Sheva flipped the table here, waking up from the coffin and pushing Anna back to the death door.