Episode 1

[You have died in a contested area. Resurrection wait time: 0 seconds.]

[Would you like to move to the Atelliena Wishah base and resurrect?]

Base Resurrection | Resurrection Wait

The screen, draped in black and white, was cracked in places like a broken mirror, and between the cracks, my game character—nothing but a lump of light after running out of health—looked slightly distorted along the fissures.

Staring blankly at the realistically cracked screen to the point where I wondered if the monitor cracked every time I died, I quietly closed my eyes and placed a hand on my chest. Had I truly killed a newbie with such sinister intent that I deserved this vengeance?

The answer was no.

My eyes snapped wide open from the sheer injustice. I could proudly shout that I had truly killed the newbie without a shred of ulterior motive, purely out of a desire to help. What would a top-ranked player with full gear be doing killing newbies?

A newbie who had wandered to the wrong dungeon entrance, circling around and around it. A cute newbie who, in desperation, was even jumping to try to get through the portal and enter the dungeon.

It made it seem like I had killed them with malicious intent and was now facing karma. It was so unfair. I had only killed them because they absolutely needed to be killed.

In the PvP MMORPG 《Dusk》, the system was built so that different races couldn’t communicate through chat, leveraging the faction conflict feature. At least, until you ‘died.’

After dying, if you looked at the opposing race’s speech bubbles, the chat that had been filtered into gibberish was surprisingly visible. In other words, unless the condition of being incapacitated was met, even if you typed in chat, the other party couldn’t tell what the hell you were saying.

In that situation, what else could I have done?

Kill the newbie first, of course.

Communication was only possible if one side died (one-sided, yes), and I was the one who had something to say, so killing the newbie was simply the natural order of things. Afterward, I had added a very, very kind explanation: “This dungeon entrance is exclusive to our Bia race, so Jeopa race members can’t enter.”

If it hadn’t been me but another user, especially a heartless user who showed no mercy to newbies, and they had killed them without a word and vanished, the poor newbie might get lost without knowing anything and then get massacred, thinking, ‘Ah, this fucking trash game,’ and quit right then and there. I had only left after very, very kindly informing them that they couldn’t enter here to prevent that in advance.

To cool my burning chest from the injustice, I downed the ice water beside me in one shot, crunched the ice cubes in the cup with loud crackling noises, and flung the door wide open.

I passed through the quiet, dark living room and went into the kitchen, refilling the cup with water and ice. In the meantime, I tried to mentally talk myself down with thoughts like, “These things happen,” but there was no sign of my anger subsiding.

I wasn’t angry over the petty reason that a top-ranked player like me got beaten by a mere newbie. That kind of thing happened occasionally when wandering the field with low health.

But you see.

Your benefactor who helped you survives with low HP after fighting a three-man party, and then you land the last hit and kill them? Isn’t that way too fucking much?

I gulped down the freshly poured ice water and replayed the recent situation. After kindly explaining to the opposing race newbie who had come to the wrong place, I escorted them safely back to base before returning to the field. I hadn’t been running around areas likely to have people for long when I spotted a three-man Jeopa party…….

My class was the Holy Knight Guardian—a class disadvantaged for solo play due to low personal DPS in exchange for high defense—so I struggled a bit, but with the experience of being rank one for the class, I managed to put them all down with only three-digit health remaining after a battle that was short if short, long if long.

Usually, when a fight broke out to this degree, users wandering the field would flock in one or two at a time, turning it into a group fight or zerg, but perhaps because it was the dead of night, no one interfered.

Because of that, I hadn’t paid much attention to recovering my health and was leisurely preparing to leave while wondering when I should sleep today.

And then,

[Combat] Jaesugang’s Virus I has hit you.

[Combat] You have been hit by an enemy and entered combat.

[Combat] You resisted Jaesugang’s Virus II.

[Combat] You took 122 damage from Jaesugang’s sustained damage effect.

A DoT skill had come flying from somewhere. It was a skill of the Military Doctor, a debuffer-type support class.

Normal attack skills could be nullified or mitigated through defense skills, but as if by design, the Military Doctor’s skills were debuffs that slowly chipped away at your health from the moment of application until the duration ended. And debuff skills that couldn’t be removed by ‘status abnormality’ cleanses, at that.

In the end, with my health in the triple digits and all my healing potions on cooldown, I could do nothing but watch my HP gradually get whittled away.

Before long, my character’s health quickly hit zero. I became incapacitated and scattered into a lump of light, and the screen cracked apart with a shattering sound before fading to black and white.

I could have let it go with a ‘just bad luck up to here.’ Judging by the DoT damage barely exceeding 100, I figured I had just run into a passing newbie while lacking health.

But the moment I saw the username of the player who killed me in the combat log and system log tabs, and then saw that user approach me and type ‘Thank you ^^’ in chat, I felt the back of my neck stiffen.

Jaesugang. It was the username of the Jeopa newbie I had helped just a dozen or so minutes ago.

Did they force their way all the way to the center of the Bia-dominant area just to say that one ‘thank you’? How would they know where I was roaming? Or maybe they weren’t a newbie at all?

All sorts of questions swirled in my head. Maybe it was a sub-character. But…… the memory of them making such a ridiculous spectacle at the Bia dungeon entrance came to mind, so I couldn’t definitively say it was just a sub-character.

“…….”

I pulled the cup from the water dispenser before it overflowed, and a crisp sound effect rang out; at the same time, my chaotically spinning thoughts came to an abrupt halt.

Right……. What did it matter whether they were a real newbie or a sub-character? Either way, I just had to go find them again.

I took a sip of the cold water that had filled the cup to the brim, entered my room, and sat in front of the computer. I leaned back against the reasonably soft chair back, caught my breath, then grabbed the mouse and pressed the Base Resurrection button.

“Jaesugang, Jaesugang…….”

Muttering the cute newbie’s name so I wouldn’t forget, I moved my resurrected character at the base. I spoke to the healing NPC to remove the resurrection penalty, took out a base transfer scroll from my inventory, and moved to the base closest to where I had died. Then, the moment loading finished, I pressed the W key twice in quick succession to activate sprint.

After carefully checking the minimap for any Jeopa and arriving at Base 42, I found only six Bia members preparing to enter the dungeon. Hoping that perhaps those people hadn’t killed the newbie, I stopped near the dungeon entrance and hit Enter.

[General] Kkulppang: Hey guys

[General] Kkulppang: Anyone seen a Jeopa named Jaesugang around here?

[General] oniy: ? no

[General] Geomjeong: no no we just got here

[General] Kkulppang: thx thx

Judging by the chat, the probability that they had already left this place had increased.

If the newbie who had achieved their goal of killing me was going somewhere, it would be Base 26, located in the Jeopa-dominant area where the dungeon they had originally wanted to enter was…….

After reorienting myself and entering the Jeopa-dominant area where Base 26 was, Jeopa members who had been barely visible until now started slowly coming into view. Some users turned tail and snuck away upon seeing my rank, while party-formed Jeopa groups that weren’t outnumbered spotted me and charged.

While pondering where to go next after killing all those Jeopa bastards if Jaesugang wasn’t at Base 26 either, I spotted a familiar Jeopa character entering Base 26 from afar.

“Found you, you bastard.”

I don’t know why the three letters forming the name Jaesugang—a name I had never welcomed even during university—felt so welcome now.

Perhaps Jaesugang had seen the minimap too, as their character turned toward me. Level 44. Just one level away from the level cap. Their class was Military Doctor. Their stance…… judging by the academic tome and quill pen they held, they were in the Harmonizer support stance, meaning they were a healer.

I approached Jaesugang, who was hurriedly buffing themselves, while glancing at the other nearby Jeopa. Two priests and one warrior. There were four Jeopa including Jaesugang, but I ignored them, entered Base 26, and passed right by Jaesugang.

Then I used a charge skill to rush the clustered two priests and one warrior. Checking the three’s levels, the priest was level 43, the warrior was 44, and the remaining priest was max level, 45.