The Final Boss Has Returned — Episode 23
That he possessed a brilliant scheme to break through this crisis.
In a way, it was only natural that every user in the meeting hall focused their gazes on Drakan, who had asserted as much.
Because the current situation was utterly hopeless to that extent.
As Drakan said, unless the Pirate King was a fool, he had surely sent reinforcements—substantial ones at that—and if the enemy forces joined up with those reinforcements and forced urban warfare, even a victory might not feel like a true win.
Drakan lightly brushed off the gazes fixed on him, looked straight at Shin Ha-yeon, who was smiling, and spoke.
“We just have to reduce the city to ashes.”
What sprang from Drakan’s mouth was a strategy so absurd and preposterous that it was far, far removed from anything ingenious or brilliant.
Burn the city down!
At that nonsensical notion, the users in the meeting hall began to murmur among themselves, and Ignis, as if representing them, looked at Drakan and retorted in a bewildered voice.
“To ashes?”
“If the environment of the city works to their advantage, is there any need to leave it standing? We just have to raze it.”
Ignis answered with a slightly surprised expression upon hearing Drakan’s words.
“I never expected you of all people—who values your own interests above anyone else’s—to say such a thing.”
Ignis was surprised.
Burn the city? If one only looked at immediate victory, it was certainly a viable choice.
But the objective of the quest Drakan had accepted was reclamation!
In other words, once the quest was completed, dominion over the lawless port of Granado would transfer to Drakan himself.
But what good would it do to receive dominion over a city destroyed and reduced to ashes?
Rebuilding the lawless port would cost astronomical sums, and with every metric hitting rock bottom, calming the agitated hearts of the shaken populace would be no easy task.
Moreover, war cost money.
Not just money, but an enormous amount of it.
And yet they would spend all that money to destroy the city, then spend even more to rebuild it?
From Drakan’s perspective, this was a choice where the navel was bigger than the pear—a choice one couldn’t make unless they were insane.
If one thought not only of immediate victory but also of what came after, it was something that should never be chosen.
It would be better to resign oneself to bloodshed and push the army into the city.
And who was the man before their eyes?
Was he not Drakan, the infinite egoist under heaven who would be second to none when it came to selfish play!
The fact that Drakan’s playstyle was extremely selfish was common knowledge—ever since the previous game, when he had ruled by exploiting users under the pretext of waging war. It was practically a given.
That such a Drakan would make a choice where he clearly stood to lose was unbelievable to Ignis, so he questioned again.
“Why did you make such a choice?”
“The enemy will think the same way you do. ‘That Drakan, that egoist who only knows himself, that man who hates losing more than anyone—surely he wouldn’t bear a loss and burn the city down?’ That’s what they’d say. The foundation of strategy has always been striking at the opponent’s blind spot.”
Drakan answered with a smile.
The foundation of strategy is striking at the opponent’s blind spot!
It was a very fundamental, yet effective, point.
But that alone couldn’t explain why Drakan had made this choice, so Ignis continued speaking to Drakan.
“But war costs money, and destroying the city like that will cost even more to restore. If it comes to that, the navel will be bigger than the pear, and even if you win, you’ll only suffer massive losses from your standpoint. You might grasp a hollow victory, one worse than defeat, nothing but scars.”
Drakan replied to Ignis’s explanation.
“Of course, that might happen. But you haven’t forgotten that our main force is not NPCs but users, have you?”
At Drakan’s words, Ignis’s expression smoothed out as if he had realized something.
Because he had caught the hidden meaning behind his words.
Looking at Ignis’s face, Drakan smiled and continued.
“It goes without saying, but every user here has only one life. Unlike the previous game, there’s no resurrection. If you die, everything that user has built up just flies away.”
At Drakan’s words, the users began to murmur again.
In Ard Saga Second, a user’s life was only one!
That absolute truth had resurfaced anew.
That was right.
If they died in this war, it was simply over.
Their character would be permanently deleted.
The weight of death was different from the previous game.
It was a price on a different dimension from the previous game, where one merely dropped some items, lost some experience, and couldn’t log in for two days.
Of course, even so, the more than fifty thousand users gathered here had come all the way to Argan Village while accepting even such penalties—believing in the power of the massive guild called JDG, convinced that they had a chance to win, to enjoy fun and thrills they couldn’t taste in reality, or because their grudge against the Pirate Alliance was that deep and profound.
Of course, among them were users who thought they could somehow scrape up some bean crumbs by riding the coattails of the quest with such a massive army gathered, or users swept up by mob mentality, but regardless, that was the case.
“And the enemy’s main force is not users but NPCs. If we, whose main force is users, and the enemy, whose main force is NPCs, engage in urban warfare where casualties are already high, what the users will think—well, I don’t need to say more, do I?”
But even so, if too many casualties occurred, it was obvious as fire that public opinion would turn.
Ignis looked at Drakan with a smile.
Urban warfare!
Urban warfare inevitably accompanied many casualties.
And as Drakan said, their main force was users while the enemy’s was NPCs.
When the two forces clashed, it was clear which side would take the loss in public opinion.
“A city reduced to ashes can be restored as much as you want if you spend money. But the hearts of users? Even if you spend billions in gold, they’re hard to move.”
Drakan smiled.
He had known for a while what the users around him expected from him.
A miraculous stratagem so brilliant it would make even Zhuge Liang weep—they must have wanted that from him!
But unfortunately, Drakan had no intention of leaving the easy path to take the difficult one.
Burning the city was the easiest and fastest method, so why bother agonizing over another way!
If you lack strength, your head suffers.
But if you have strength, your head has no need to suffer!
And right now, Drakan had strength, so there was no need to make his head suffer unnecessarily.
Moreover, Drakan knew his own image very well.
An extreme egoist who wouldn’t share even a single bean, a man who would suck the marrow from a flea’s spine!
That was precisely his image, and the enemy Zack was surely misjudging that Drakan would never burn the city down, based on that image of him.
The foundation of strategy is striking where the opponent doesn’t expect.
Drakan was fully prepared to painfully pierce Zack’s weak point.
Burning the city was a measure derived from exactly such calculations.
And if he could minimize user deaths and turn public opinion to his side.
If he could make this event a “successful event” in doing so!
Drakan could burn down as many mere cities as he pleased.
The destructive power of public opinion’s strength, the fact that one needed the backing of the people to rise to the summit of the Ard World and maintain that position for long—Drakan knew all too painfully through the defeat he had suffered and Yujin’s victory in the previous game.
“You shouldn’t be too bound by the game.”
Hearing Drakan’s words, Ignis nodded impassively.
“I see.”
Ignis closed and opened his eyes.
Ignis realized that Drakan had changed.
Unlike in the previous game, he was mindful of public opinion, and instead of thinking only of in-game variables, he was considering the repercussions his decisions would have in the real world.
If Drakan had been the same person he was six years ago, he would have pushed the users into the city without hesitation.
‘Drakan, I thought you were a washed-up has-been, but you were a sleeping dragon.’
Ignis thought this to himself.
Ignis felt the need to revise his evaluation of Drakan as a forgotten legend and a loser of the past.
Drakan.
He was no longer a forgotten legend, nor a fallen villain.
A sleeping dragon and a top-class prospect who had adapted to the present to a frightening degree, and was aiming even beyond that!
That was precisely Ignis’s current evaluation of Drakan.
‘I think I understand a little why the executive treats Drakan so well.’
Ignis admitted it.
Because he had felt from their conversation just now that Drakan was a user qualified to receive such treatment from Executive Shin Ha-yeon.
Drakan looked at Ignis and continued speaking.
“Yeah. Good that you understand. And, well, thanks for worrying about the city’s restoration costs just now, I appreciate it, but that’s not something we need to worry about.”
His gaze turned back to Shin Ha-yeon.
Drakan pointed at her and spoke.
“To our third-generation chaebol, that’s just chump change. Right?”
Reconstruction costs.
They would certainly be astronomical.
But that was by gamers’ standards; to Shin Ha-yeon, a third-generation chaebol, that money was no different from pocket change.
Hadn’t he formed an alliance with her, a chaebol scion, and signed a contract with Jeil E&M precisely for this from the beginning?
Therefore, it was only natural for Drakan to ask Shin Ha-yeon for reconstruction costs.
No, if she couldn’t even invest to this degree, there was no need to join hands with a chaebol in the first place.
Drakan thought as much.
However, unlike Drakan’s attitude of so calmly and unhesitatingly pointing at Shin Ha-yeon, all the users there, including Ignis, were shocked.
Because all the users present knew that Shin Ha-yeon was the third generation of the Jeil Group and the successor who would become its next chairman.
No, to begin with, everyone gathered in this meeting room knew that the reason so many users could gather here now was entirely thanks to Shin Ha-yeon.
Third-generation chaebol.
Managing Director of Jeil E&M.
Successor to the Jeil Group.
The pressure exerted by these three titles of Shin Ha-yeon’s was truly heavier than Mount Tai, and even Ignis the Flame King, an over ranker, couldn’t treat her carelessly.
No matter how much Ard Saga Second’s status had grown to be incomparable to the previous game, it was still just a game.
No matter how well one played, the limits one could reach with that alone were clear, and even an over ranker couldn’t match the power of chaebols who held real-world wealth and political power.
Yujin!
He had even received a prize of one hundred billion won as the previous game’s ending reward and reached the pinnacle of the Ard World, yet even the power he held in the real world was at a level that couldn’t reach the toes of the establishment, including chaebols and politicians…….
There was no need to even mention users below him!
Moreover, Shin Ha-yeon was not some delinquent third-generation chaebol who relied solely on her wealth and behaved without an ounce of shame.
She was the unquestionable successor to the Jeil Group.
And she hadn’t simply risen to the position of successor.
She was a figure who had established her position by removing her older brother and younger brother through covert struggle and sending them abroad, and even breaking the will of the current Jeil Group chairman—who was so patriarchal that he wouldn’t acknowledge a woman as his successor even if dirt got in his eyes—to seize the position with her own hands.
Looking down on all beneath heaven with absolute arrogance!
That phrase suited Shin Ha-yeon perfectly, yet Drakan’s attitude—daring to speak casually to her and behaving arrogantly as if he had entrusted her with the reconstruction costs of the lawless port—was enough to induce shock beyond mere astonishment.
The mouths of the users, who had been murmuring about his notorious reputation, shut all at once.
A chilling silence pervaded the meeting hall.
‘Drakan, does that bastard have no eyes?’
‘H-how could he say such reckless nonsense to Director Shin!’
The atmosphere suddenly turned icy!
In the midst of it, the users rolled their eyes and inwardly cursed Drakan’s stupidity.
Regardless, Drakan smiled and looked at Shin Ha-yeon.
Shin Ha-yeon looked at Drakan and smiled broadly.
She found this entire situation amusing.
After removing her older and younger brothers, and finally even toppling her father to seize the position of successor to the Jeil Group, there existed not a single human in this world who dared to stand as her equal.
That was right.
She had finally reached the summit.
The summit she had so desperately wished for.
But the scenery of that summit was more boring than she had thought, and unimaginably lonely.
Perhaps that was why she became even more obsessed with the hegemony of Ard World, with the future of content and media.
Ard World!
That beautiful world was the only world she had yet to conquer!
And if she grasped the hegemony of that world, it was no different from the future of content and media falling into her hands!
Therefore, she had initially offered an alliance to Yujin, a top ranker, but not only was she refused, she was given a lecture full of needless idealism and fantasy, then shown the door.
And she realized.
Yujin. He and she herself were like oil and water—polar opposites who could never compromise.
And to grasp the hegemony of Ard World, to seize the future of content and media in her hands, she had to defeat Yujin without fail!
Therefore, to end Yujin’s era, to conquer the last remaining unexplored territory, to seize the future in her hands, Shin Ha-yeon had drawn in rankers and named players using the funds and power of Jeil E&M.
Ignis and JDG were also forces recruited at that time.
But the rankers she had scraped together were all unsatisfactory.
As Shin Ha-yeon herself said, they were gluttonous pigs.
Their outward specs were flashy, but their spirits were pathetically weak—incompetents who weren’t even prepared to rebel against the world Yujin ruled.
Shin Ha-yeon was disappointed, but she didn’t give up her desire to seize the hegemony of Ard World.
Ever since she was young, if there was something she wanted, Shin Ha-yeon would obtain it by any means necessary.
She had seized the position of successor to the Jeil Group in exactly that manner, so she could never give up on Ard World.
No, it was precisely her nature to burn with the desire to compete even more when something seemed impossible.
The user who caught such a Shin Ha-yeon’s eye was none other than Drakan.
He was a former top ranker who had even boarded a deep-sea fishing boat because of Yujin, a user tightly bound by a desire for revenge against Yujin.
And the moment she met Drakan at the Jeil World Tower’s sky lounge, Shin Ha-yeon realized.
Drakan. He was the first formidable enemy Yujin had met and the last user to fight him head-on. He was Yujin’s antithesis and rival, and truly an icon who had dominated an era before Yujin.
Even though Yujin had ruined his life, he had desperately caught tuna on a deep-sea fishing boat to pay off his debts, earned money, and returned to Korea. And yet he had started again the very game that had ruined his life. Truly.
At his meeting with Yujin, he hid no hostility and revealed it openly, mockingly retorted right to his face, and even refused to shake his hand. Truly.
She realized that he was the only user capable of inciting rebellion in the world Yujin ruled.
Shin Ha-yeon smiled.
It was from the joy of finally meeting a companion whose interests completely aligned with hers, and the perfect man for the job of rebellion.
After meeting Drakan, Shin Ha-yeon no longer felt lonely.
She didn’t feel bored either.
Every day was a joy.
Because she no longer had to stand alone at the summit.
Drakan!
Because he was now with her at the summit.
Therefore, Shin Ha-yeon didn’t care much whether he spoke casually or acted arrogantly as if he had entrusted money to her.
No. On the contrary, she thought that if he was her companion, and the perfect man for rebellion she had set her sights on, he ought to have this much ambition.
Therefore, rather than putting on a stern face at Drakan’s words that had shocked the assembly just now, Shin Ha-yeon smiled brightly and, in a gentle tone that those around her had never heard before, looked straight at Drakan and spoke.
“Drakan-nim is right. That much is just gum money to me.”
All the users present were astonished by Shin Ha-yeon’s unimaginable reaction, but Drakan didn’t bat an eyelash.
Looking at Drakan’s demeanor, Shin Ha-yeon slowly approached him and spoke in a sweet voice.
“So don’t worry about useless things like money and just win no matter what. Understood, Drakan-nim?”
Hearing Shin Ha-yeon’s words, Drakan burst into wild laughter.
He had no confidence.
He had no confidence that he would lose this war!
After laughing for a while, Drakan looked at Shin Ha-yeon and spoke.
“Lose? It seems you’re the one worrying about useless things.”
At Drakan’s words, Shin Ha-yeon covered her mouth with one hand and laughed.
He was always like this, and that was why Shin Ha-yeon liked the way Drakan was.
Looking at Shin Ha-yeon’s smile, Drakan clenched and unclenched his fist.
Now, finally, it was time for war!
No, it was time to herald the full-fledged revival of the Steel Sovereign, Drakan.