Episode 5. The Unknown Man X (6)
Two months ago.
“Huff!”
“Wh-what in the world is this….”
Countless people who watched Ted’s video pinned on YouTube’s main page gasped in shock.
1. Movements bordering on art, as if choreographed.
2. And marksmanship so insanely precise.
3. A heavy charisma overwhelming everything.
Well, truthfully, Ted didn’t have much to say about the last one.
But anyway, overwhelmed by the first two, the hearts of netizens naturally bloomed with the third.
The video Ted uploaded held the power to captivate people.
The passionate fan culture of Ted that began at Paprika Broadcasting Station quickly spread throughout Korea.
Avid fans encountering him for the first time began editing and uploading Ted’s videos on their own.
Before long, countless people who watched these edited videos were shocked.
“Isn’t this… CG or something?”
“He’s seriously cool.”
[The day I want to see Ted. Tedbonal]
[T.E.D. Ted Verification Complete]
They began creating fan cafes. The number reached well over a hundred small-scale cafes on Korean websites alone.
In other words, a fandom centered around the name Ted had begun to form.
Ted consistently maintained an appropriate distance from them, keeping an attitude of “Thank you, that’s all.”
The appearance of expressing gratitude for the attention but not giving anything beyond that.
Some who loved Ted worried. Our Lord Ted should be riding the wave of popularity, yet he maintains such an attitude…!
“Whoa. Look at this person’s attitude.”
“Ha, really….”
“Isn’t he so cool?”
“I know, right!”
A man with living, breathing wildness, not obsessed with popularity!
Ironically, Ted was able to win the favor of even more people with that consistent attitude.
In merely three weeks, Ted’s YouTube subscribers numbered in the tens of millions, and Tesamo subscribers reached comparable numbers as well.
Countless people included Ted’s name in hashtags.
‘Aah, no! My Lord Ted! My Lord Ted!!’
However, while everyone rejoiced at the appearance of a new idol, there was one who suffered alone….
Nam Yunho.
He was none other than the Moonlight Hunter, Roan.
He had worked hard for five years since the game’s early days with the Musketeer and Taoist dual class.
But no matter how he looked at it, that class combination had clear limits. He couldn’t exert strength in close quarters, and at range, he couldn’t become the strongest damage dealer either.
‘Damn… Is Musketeer truly a class that can’t become the strongest… Huh?’
When he had fallen into despair and was wallowing in it.
He encountered a miraculous video.
‘Th-this is!’
It was none other than Ted’s gameplay video.
The Musketeer + Taoist dual class in the unedited video Ted uploaded was truly a divinely created class combination, capable of perfect play.
‘This person is the light, the salt, and the path of the Musketeer!’
A YouTube channel with 0 subscribers that no one knew about.
From that day onward, Nam Yunho had spent five years secretly engaging in Ted fan activities without telling a soul.
Nam Yunho watched and analyzed Ted’s play every day.
And he strove to understand the source of that perfection.
It was a kind of yearning.
‘I want to become like this too. I want to fight like this, I want to play like this!’
By now, everyone knew of him, and Ted was beginning to be forgotten, but even at that moment, he had not forgotten Ted.
With the heart of such a stubbornly devoted fan, he watched Ted’s videos and play for nearly five or six hours every day.
Videos he had watched tens, hundreds of times on repeat.
Now he could almost memorize them.
The scene where Ted jumps high—the angle, the height, the shape of the knees, the shape of the arms, the shift in the body’s center of gravity.
‘This is….’
That was why he could tell.
Ssauron Plains, Sector 4.
A human figure leaped out to the left of a giant tree.
The moment he did, he fired the accumulated
A huge orb of light gathered from the moon shot out from the musket.
‘If it’s this attack, even you, Bear Doll, will die in one hit!’
The moment the human figure touched the Moonlight Bullet, it vanished, disappearing into nothingness.
‘Huh! A goblin?’
But what disappeared upon touching the Moonlight Bullet was not a person but a goblin.
Then, from the opposite side of the left he had attacked—that is, from the right—Ted leaped out.
‘This bastard! A Musketeer summoning a goblin! Huh?’
The movement of the Bear Doll user leaping into the air.
Seeing it up close, he could tell.
‘What! What’s with this jumping motion?’
The only things identical between Bear Doll and Ted were body size and weapon.
Besides, since weapons could change appearance, any Ted fan could obtain the same appearance as Black and White.
But what he saw and was shocked by was not that.
‘That jump. That angle. That feeling… That hand motion spread during the jump….’
Even if several people perform the same jump, a true hardcore fan can tell.
The subtle difference in angle, the small bodily habits are visible to the eye.
‘Ha, ha, but that can’t be. The opponent is only level 150.’
He forcibly turned away from reality.
Roan, who knew Ted’s level and condition better than anyone, steeled his heart.
Right, it’s absurd. It can’t be.
He hurriedly twisted his body toward Ted, who was leaping out.
And raised the musket gripped in his right hand, confirming the Bear Doll’s head within the scope.
‘I’ll show you Inzoom!’
Inzoom. The patented technique Ted had created and spread.
Basically, a musket had to achieve targeting on the opponent through zoom to receive a 100% hit rate judgment.
If you simply fired, even a perfect gun would be caught by the system and generate an error.
That was the limit of the Musketeer, the weakness of the weapon called a musket.
Yes. Certainly, before Ted appeared, that was the case.
But Ted had used the technique called Inzoom to finish targeting in an extremely short time and shoot the opponent.
That scene had risen to fame through YouTube. Therefore, every Musketeer practiced Ted’s Inzoom.
But Roan was different.
While others belatedly practiced Inzoom, he had already been practicing it for five years.
‘This is a skill I’ve practiced more than anyone else all this time. If you’re a fake, die to this gunfire!’
Excited, he pulled the trigger without mercy.
He likely couldn’t dodge it.
His own agility stat exceeding 550 wasn’t slow enough for a mere level 150 to evade.
BANG—!!
And as if matching his will, the bullet Roan fired embedded itself precisely in the Bear Doll’s head.
But then, an anomaly occurred.
Shatter!
An effect like glass shards bursting from the entire body of the Bear Doll user was visible.
‘Indomitable? But what kind of Indomitable can block my attack when I’m over level 400?’
Roan, too, had a body that had rolled around the game world for nearly ten years. He recognized the superhuman ability
‘If this is the case, danger….’
But at that moment, Roan froze stiffly.
Because Ted, having blocked the attack with Indomitable, slowly turned his body toward Roan and raised the musket to his face.
‘Aaaah….’
From that moment, Roan felt a tremor run up his arms.
Ted, having turned, attached the musket to his face with machine-like precision.
And truly for an instant. In the short moment of a blink, he must have confirmed Roan in the scope.
That motion delivered a massive shock to Roan.
Countless people had uploaded videos imitating Ted. Roan, Ted’s only hardcore fan, had watched all those videos too.
But he had never felt this sensation in any of them.
‘Completely identical….’
What he had only seen in videos, he was now encountering in reality.
It came upon him as a miraculous experience.
At the final moment, he accepted death calmly, as if greeting a god.
‘Aah… X was Lord Ted all along… Even if I die now, I have no regrets!’
BANG—!
The bullet fired by the man in the bear costume, Ted, pierced through his head.
Killing a level 550 user brought in a lot of experience.
Generally, PK experience distribution is determined by how fierce the battle was.
This time, he had received nearly 100%.
‘What’s with this guy?’
Ted scratched his head and blew the smoke rising from the muzzle—hoo—.
The guy had used a skill roughly similar to his own.
‘Something like Thousand Li Path and all that… Skills are one thing, but there’s actually someone who uses Inzoom similarly.’
Before long, Ted shook his head.
‘Well, I won, so it’s fine.’
He had leveled up a whopping 2 levels, hadn’t he? Ted decided to forget about it. It was probably just one of those people who copied from YouTube.
‘If he’s just some guy copying from YouTube, it’s no big deal. His posture was awkward and he wasn’t even that good… Alright, I’ll log out and hunt again tomorrow.’
Ted smiled contentedly and logged out.
* * *
Nam Yunho, who had been forcibly logged out due to the death penalty, hesitated for a moment before calling Chalsu.
—Hello.
He reported the battle and related matters to Chalsu.
—What? So you’re saying you didn’t find out anything about X?
Of course, he didn’t report it exactly as it was and slightly twisted the contents.
“Yes. X was truly a strong being. I’m sorry, but even compared to me at level 550… So in my opinion, there’s no way Ssauron’s side scouted him; I think he’s just a super-high-level NPC who was in seclusion in the vicinity. There probably aren’t many users or monsters who could beat him even if we tried to provoke him.”
—Oh, I see… What a shame….
Chalsu’s sigh was heard. It was truly a sigh as if the ground itself were caving in.
“It’s fine.”
—Yeah… Hmm, hey. Then you’ll be bored for a month now. What are you going to do in the Netherworld?
“No… It’s okay. Something came up that I need to attend to in the Netherworld.”
—What? What is it?
Dead users receive a connection restriction penalty of 1 hour and 12 minutes per level.
However, precisely speaking, it was a restriction on connecting to the Face Continent.
Those who died gained access to a separate dimension, and that place was the Netherworld.
There, they could do everything except level up, earn money, and obtain items.
‘I need to get the goblin summoning skill.’
The new skill Ted had just demonstrated.
Goblin Summoning! He had to obtain it!
‘Because that person was the real Lord Ted!’
Nam Yunho was certain.
Ted was alive.
And what he had faced was Ted.
In the past, he had suddenly gone dormant on Paprika TV. And then his whereabouts were cut off.
But now he appeared at level 150?
‘Something difficult must have definitely happened to him.’
Nam Yunho involuntarily ground his teeth.
The one who had guided him, who had been a ray of light.
If such a person had encountered a difficult situation?
‘I must keep this fact completely secret. And I must do things that will help him.’
Nam Yunho finished his false report and headed to the manager’s office of his fan cafe,
“Oh, Yunho oppa is here?”
“Hyung. I heard your contract with Pateuk is over now? Good work.”
“Yeah. Thanks.”
The office of
There, three executives of Tesamo gathered were searching for something using over ten giant screens.
It was the
Walls and ceilings plastered with all kinds of Ted’s photos and posters!
Their slippers were slippers modeled after Ted’s shoes, and Ted goods were placed here and there.
Even in a corner of the office, a wax figure cast directly from Ted’s real body was placed.
Though Ted’s popularity had been waning recently, this place alone still maintained the exact same appearance as its heyday.
“Guys.”
These were people who had gathered solely for Ted, truly trustworthy individuals.
At the words of Nam Yunho, the senior, all the executives of Tesamo turned their heads to look at him.
“I have just witnessed a miracle.”
Nam Yunho spoke with solemn gravity.