The Final Boss Has Returned
Episode 1
The world's first, and currently the only, virtual reality game: Arde Saga.
In 2021, this innovative game released by Miracle Entertainment, a Korean game company that appeared like a comet, swept across the world immediately upon launch.
A virtual reality field where realism lived and breathed, indistinguishable from actual reality!
Countless NPCs equipped with AIs that had perfectly passed the Turing test, possessing intelligence and emotions so complete they were impossible to tell apart from real humans!
Waves upon waves of endless content, and infinite freedom to boot!
It was only natural that people across the globe fell deeply into Arde Saga, which had realized another world inside virtual reality.
Average concurrent users of 200 million, annual revenue of 100 trillion won, and record-breaking sales growth!
Having broken tremendous commercial records time and time again, Arde Saga had already transcended the limits of a mere game, carrying enormous popularity and buzz everywhere it went.
And among them all, the greatest star was none other than the Hero, Yujin.
A face so handsome it could have been carved from marble, handsome enough to make most celebrities weep.
An orphan who had lived a rough life, juggling high school studies and part-time jobs, who had happened to win second prize in a scratch-off lottery.
A user of the hidden class 'Hero' who had started Arde Saga after purchasing a capsule with his winnings on the recommendation of his friend MuscleMachoMan, a ranker in Arde Saga!
A humane man overflowing with a rare sense of justice and conscience in this day and age, who had fought head-on against the tyranny of giant guilds!
All of these were words used to describe Yujin.
Yujin was the undisputed, universally acknowledged supreme ruler of Arde Saga, the idol of innumerable users, and the very embodiment of a righteous hero.
But if there is a hero, there must also be a villain who stands against him.
If Yujin was the hero of Arde Saga, then the villain of Arde Saga was Drakan.
The Guild Master of the giant guild Iron Blood Alliance, which reigned at the top of the guild rankings!
A top ranker who had unified the continent and succeeded in the Conqueror Quest!
But behind the great feat of unifying the continent lay all manner of dark deeds.
Notorious control of fields and dungeons, monopolization of important information and quests!
Various heavy taxes levied exclusively on ordinary users rather than guild members!
Blacklists and endless extermination orders!
Drakan and the Iron Blood Alliance had ascended to the pinnacle of the world by building their so-called great feat of continental unification upon all kinds of these evil and corrupt practices.
Had they not said that power lasts not ten years, nor flowers stay red for ten days?
The era of evil dominance—created by the collusion of Drakan, the seemingly eternal Iron Blood Alliance, and the giant guilds—met its end in less than a year at the hands of Yujin, the Hero of Arde Saga.
The moment Voltaha Castle, the Iron Blood Alliance's final stronghold where they had desperately held out to the bitter end, fell to Yujin and his guild, Light Wing.
Yujin rose to the seat of supremacy in Arde World, a game with 200 million concurrent users, another world in its own right.
All of this had happened in merely one year since Yujin started the game.
Good is rewarded, and evil is punished. Finally, justice had triumphed and evil had been defeated!
At the textbook happy ending, at the realization of justice seen only in comics, novels, and movies, at Yujin's story that unfolded like a drama without a script—all the users of Arde Saga cheered and celebrated wildly.
But there was no place for the villain Drakan in that happy ending, and people erased the defeated villain Drakan from their memories.
The fallen villain, Drakan, was quickly forgotten in Arde World.
And six years passed.