Episode 6
[Combat] You took 2,005 damage from Retake’s damage-over-time effect.
[Combat] You used the Punishment of Longing skill and dealt 7,684 damage to Retake.
[Combat] You defeated Retake with the Punishment of Longing skill.
[System] You have defeated Retake, Commander-in-Chief of the Jeoba tribe.
[System] You have acquired 2,820 Fame.
[Race] Honeybun, Commander-in-Chief of the Bia tribe, has defeated Retake, Commander-in-Chief of the Jeoba tribe.
[Combat] The enhancement effect of the Corrupted Instinct skill has been removed.
Honeybun versus Retake, round one.
I won the first round with ease. Retake, unlike himself, tried an obvious mind game, misclicked a combo skill, miscalculated DoT duration and lost damage—he made so many mistakes that I could kill him as casually as I would any other player. He usually wasn’t this sloppy, but with the rankings coming out and the boards in such an uproar, he must have gotten a little worked up.
What was with him? He was the kind of guy who never got this worked up no matter what happened. From what I heard when he turned on his stream earlier, it seemed like he wasn’t all that interested in this whole thing, but maybe it was bothering him after all?
I was worried, but something about it felt off. Honestly… he was absolutely not the kind of person who would get agitated over something like this and let it affect his play. I circled Retake’s fallen body a couple of times. Why did this feel so unsettling? Forcibly ignoring that inexplicable, uncomfortable feeling, I diligently pressed my keyboard to provoke Retake.
[General] Honeybun : If you’re 11th, even when you split it in half you’re still 1st... congrats on being 1st twice^^
[General] Honeybun : Oh, you’re 1st in class ranking too, so is that three times?
[General] Honeybun : Congrats on the triple crown, 1st among Medics, 11th overall, 1st^^7
After leaving that in chat, I moved away from Retake’s corpse and wandered around the field in a somewhat troubled state of mind. Retake was human too, so of course he could get angry over something like this. Trying to shake off the uncomfortable feeling, I waited for him to revive at the return point and come back.
But even after I killed every Jeoba player I made eye contact with, Retake didn’t show so much as the tip of his nose. Normally, I would have assumed he’d run into a Bia player on his way back and was fighting them, then waited while killing more Jeoba. But today, a different thought occurred to me.
Did he rage-quit (*quit because he got pissed)?
He wasn’t the type to do that just because he lost one match, but… considering the weird level of skill he showed earlier, maybe he wasn’t in a state to keep playing, and he really had rage-quit?
While running into and killing a two-man Jeoba party, I came up with countless theories. Maybe Retake had shown signs of being in a bad mood on stream and I just hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’d played with his feet on purpose to give a massive middle finger to the bastards comparing us on the boards, and was laughing his ass off right now. Maybe some weirdo in the stream chat had picked a fight with him and he was busy trash-talking. If it was Retake, all except the first theory I’d listed were entirely possible.
It was around the time I’d dealt with the two-man party and checked my Fame out of habit. I was wondering if I should pop into his stream, even briefly, to gauge the atmosphere, when I saw a red triangle rushing over on the minimap and turned my screen. A very welcome nickname appeared. At the very least, it didn’t seem like he was sulking because I was his first loss today.
But for some reason, his character—who had always insisted on wearing that solemn white Commander-in-Chief uniform adorned with a string of luxurious accessories—suddenly appeared wearing a bright red fluffy mantis hat, a bright red fur sweater, and… bright red pants shaped like a pair of balls (ω). He was even barefoot, and on his back was a huge flag symbolizing Aihtetas, the anti-divine faction of the Jeoba tribe.
To give an overall evaluation: it was hideous.
Was the reason he’d been late all this time because he was putting together that outfit? I couldn’t adjust to it at all. In the first place, there were almost no players who went around wearing colors like that, in combinations like that. Who in an open-field PvP game would deliberately pick out only clothes in colors that stood out that much?
[Guild] Ceylon Tea : Wow, you’re the first person other than me I’ve seen dressed like that while PvPing
Aside from that bastard.
Ceylon Tea, that bastard Mun Seonhwa—I’d known him for over fifteen years, since elementary school, but even after all that time, I still couldn’t understand his bizarre tastes. And he was even a fashion design major.
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : What kind of m.d. bastard is it?
[Guild] Ceylon Tea : lol... m.d. bastard = Retake
[Guild] Honeybun : ?
[Guild] soloist : ?
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : Ah
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : Honored guild master haha
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : I didn’t mean m.d. as in mad ㅎㅎ
I’d sent that question mark to Ceylon Tea, though.
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : It
[Guild] Ceylon Tea : Let’s hear how you’re going to fix this
[Guild] Romantic Cat : An intriguing statement sprinkled over this boring fishing time
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : more charming
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : That’s what it means
[Guild] soloist : lol
[Guild] soloist : lol
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : more charming^^d
[Guild] Ceylon Tea : lolololololololololololololololololololololololololololol
[Guild] Summoner : lololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololololol
[Guild] Ceylon Tea : lololololololol^^; Damn, that save was insane
[Guild] Summoner : He definitely went scrambling through an English dictionary
[Guild] AllTheNicknamesAreTaken : haha oO(That was fucking close)
[Guild] soloist : Our guild almost became an adult shop and had to stock dildos
[Guild] Romantic Cat : Solo;
Guild chat was the same as always, so I decided to just ignore it.
Why was Retake, who had always dressed perfectly normally, doing that? Was he trying to claim he’d come back sharpening the blade of revenge? Or was it a way to indirectly express his rage? Or some advanced mental attack? Whatever it was, it was ridiculous.
The unusually strange and hideous Retake closed within twenty meters. Round two began immediately.
Maybe he knew very well that he’d lost earlier because he’d gotten all worked up; this time, he seemed calmer. However, one thing was different: he wasn’t managing Stress, the Medic’s unique penalty, at all.
When a Medic used certain attack skills or used healing skills consecutively, the Stress debuff would stack. When Stress built up, attack power, defense, and penetration each decreased by 2%, and because the amount of reduction increased with each stack, managing and calculating this penalty was essential in PvP, where every single stat mattered.
Retake was exactly the kind of player who never let that penalty go above three stacks unless it was unavoidable. Just as I was finding it extremely strange that someone like him wasn’t managing his Stress, that bright-red thing suddenly used an evasion skill and slipped sharply backward. He looked just like a cube of kkakdugi, deliciously coated in seasoning, rolling away.
I’d been hitting him with only my basic combo and no particular strategy because I was puzzled by the fact that he wasn’t managing Stress, but what was this? Had he been playing mind games on his own and measuring out his skills?
Whatever the case, I immediately pressed my capture skill, thinking this was a lucky break. He should already have at least four stacks of Stress, and the only evasion skill he had left that could dodge a capture skill was Emergency Evasion.
That was an evasion skill that added two stacks of Stress, one to be used literally only in “emergencies.” If he stacked more Stress here, his main stats, including defense, would drop by over 12%. Even if he dodged the capture, he would end up in even greater danger afterward.
That was why I thought there was no way Retake would decide to dodge with Emergency Evasion.
However, Retake used Emergency Evasion.
[Combat] Retake evaded the Executor’s Binding skill with Emergency Evasion.
[Combat] The Raindrop That Cannot Return was hit by Executor’s Binding.
[Combat] The Raindrop That Cannot Return resisted the effect of Executor’s Binding.
Because he used an evasion skill to dodge the capture, the elite monster behind him, “The Raindrop That Cannot Return,” got hit by the capture skill in Retake’s place. The mob that recognized me was, of all things, elite grade, so the stun attached to the capture skill didn’t work on it, and its health was so high that there was no way to deal with it right away.