The Final Boss Has Returned
Episode 27
The Battle to Retake Lawless Harbor!
Before the war—the big event everyone had been waiting for—began, the users all shared the same prediction.
Either Drakan would screw Zach over with a truly brilliant strategy, or if not that, he'd show overwhelming prowess in urban warfare!
But when his strategy was revealed during the real-time stream, it overturned every prediction anyone had made until now.
[Crazy lol. Who would've thought that selfish Drakan would burn the whole city down LOL]
[Rlly, it's beyond my imagination. Is Drakan insane?]
[Wow, cathartic! It's definitely bold. But how's he gonna handle the aftermath? The restoration costs are gonna be insane??]
City destruction!
It was because Drakan had made a choice no one could have predicted.
Of course, anyone with half a brain knew that the best strategy against urban warfare was to not engage in urban warfare at all.
And because the Pirate King's overwhelming naval power and Lawless Harbor's nature as a port city made complete encirclement impossible, it was also a well-known fact to anyone who analyzed both sides even briefly that forming a siege to starve the city—the best strategy against urban warfare—was impossible.
But even so, burning the city to the ground!
If one recalled that the purpose of waging siege warfare in the game was to occupy castles or cities and reap profits through territory management via taxes, quests, and various other means.
This was truly an outrageous act that destroyed common sense, something no user could have imagined.
To turn a city he would have to rule after the war into ashes!
The immediate victory gained that way might be sweet, but considering the enormous reconstruction costs needed to revive an ashen city, it was a choice one couldn't make unless insane.
Truly, penny wise and pound foolish!
A mad act that one couldn't commit without being blinded by the victory right before their eyes!
And it was only natural that people's attention focused on Drakan—known as an egoist who hated taking personal losses—for such a mad act.
[If it's the Drakan I know, he's the kind of guy who'd shove all the users into the city? Is he really crazy?]
[Drakan, who did more siege warfare than anyone in the previous game and hates losing more than anyone, making this stupid choice? It makes no sense unless he got shot in the head;;]
It was because they couldn't believe that he, of all people—extremely selfish and concerned only with his own wellbeing—had made such a choice.
Who was Drakan?
To achieve his goal of continental unification, he subjugated massive guilds through war to form a guild alliance, exploited ordinary users through heavy taxes, dungeon entrance fees, mining fees, and all sorts of miscellaneous charges to fund his wars, controlled hunting grounds and dungeons, and was the founder of all kinds of malicious practices where only old-timers reaped the benefits—was he not the final boss of egoism!
If it was that Drakan, of course he'd shove users into the city as arrow fodder to be sacrificed while he took only the sweet fruit of victory!
Unlike the users gathered at the retaking scene who had been driven by their grudge against the pirate alliance that tormented them and mob mentality, the users watching the situation had unconsciously thought so, but that prediction had been completely destroyed.
At that very moment when countless users were each voicing their opinions on the Lawless Harbor Retaking!
A video was uploaded to Drakan's official channel.
The video title was 'Lawless Harbor Retaking: Behind the Scenes'!
Unable to resist the title, countless people clicked the video, and finally, it began to play.
Appearing in the video were Ignis and Drakan, and besides them, Eastern rankers who had answered Drakan's call and executives from JDG and allied guilds!
Truly, the video showed all the core executives on Drakan's side gathered together.
An operational meeting video uploaded out of nowhere!
In that video, Ignis and Drakan were engaged in a fierce debate over the strategy for the Lawless Harbor Retaking.
[Just turn the city into ashes.]
[Into ashes?]
[If the urban environment works to their advantage, is there any need to keep it? Just flatten it.]
[But war costs money, and destroying the city like that will cost even more to restore. In that case, not only will the cure be worse than the disease, but even if you win, you'll only suffer enormous losses from your perspective. You might grasp a victory that's nothing but scars—a victory worse than defeat.]
In the video, Ignis argued from a thoroughly common-sense standpoint against the reckless strategy Drakan was pushing!
But at Drakan's subsequent words, the viewers watching the video literally flipped.
[Of course, that might happen. But you haven't forgotten that our main force consists not of NPCs but of users, have you?]
[Though it should go without saying, every user here has only one life. Unlike the previous game, there's no resurrection. If you die, everything that user has built just flies away.]
[Moreover, the enemy's main force consists not of users but of NPCs. If we, whose main force is users, engage in urban warfare where casualties are especially high against an enemy whose main force is NPCs! What the users will think of us, well, I suppose I don't need to say more?]
[A city turned to ashes can be restored as much as you want if you spend money. But the hearts of users? Even with billions, they're hard to move.]
Drakan—he had chosen the strategy of burning the city to minimize the damage the users would suffer!
At that unbelievable fact, everyone who knew even a little about Ard Saga Second-related content—including Ard Live and Ard Forum—literally exploded.
[Does this make sense? Is this staged? It makes no sense—that Drakan burned down a city for the users???]
[Drakan did this? That Drakan? Wow, fuck, is the sun gonna start rising in the west tomorrow or something?]
[Ignis: This event was really fun, and thank you for your hard work managing it, Drakan-nim. If we get the chance next time, let's do another collab.]
[Omg it's really Ignis!]
[Insane lol, fr Ignis has appeared]
[What, it wasn't staged?]
[Yutkues who claimed Drakan-nim's video was staged, ready to flee with your tails between your legs? Disgusting, right?]
[Daebak LOL]
Though there were those who didn't believe the unbelievable truth at first, the atmosphere completely reversed when Ignis personally left a comment on Drakan's video using his own Ard Live account.
Drakan had truly taken the loss and burned the city for the sake of the users!
[Kya~ a destroyed city can be restored with money, but you can't win users' hearts even with billions! What a legendary quote, insane LOL]
[No but what happened during those 6 years?]
[As expected, King God Emperor Next Generation Drakan is on a different level from 'that hero,' right?]
[At this level I'll admit he's reformed. Agreed?]
[I'm from the East and honestly I was prepared to die in this battle, but because Drakan set the city on fire, we just watched the flames and hunted pirates running out, got exp and fame, totally a jackpot event LOL]
[Honestly, this is because Jeil E&M is behind Drakan. They're covering all the reconstruction costs, right? Honestly if that were me I'd do it too. Jeil and Drakan planned this to target user sentiment;;]
[Look at the Yutkues trembling with rising blood pressure lol. The fact is, Drakan really cared about the users~ while Yutjin fled when Easterners asked him to subjugate the pirate alliance~]
[No, seriously, you guys are being played by Drakan and Jeil right now. This is all a conspiracy, conspiracy;;;]
[Talking about conspiracies lol. Yutku bastards, your master's public image is turning bad so now you're resorting to basement-dweller delusions like conspiracy theories?]
[Damn, Drakan fanboys are unreasonable;;]
And finally, the users' public opinion toward Drakan, which had been moving favorably even before the war, began to form a solid foundation based on the explosive response to the behind-the-scenes video.
And what sealed the deal on that shift in public sentiment was a notification window that popped up for every user logged into Ard Saga Second.
[A new class, 'Black Mage,' is now available.]
[Granado, the Lawless Harbor and former stronghold of the Black Ring Society, has been recaptured by Drakan, contractor of the Demon God. However, the Black Ring Society has not regained its former glory. Kalid, the leader of the Black Ring Society, has opened the doors of the Black Ring Society to outsiders for the first time since its founding, in order to regain its former glory and spread the great gospel of darkness.]
[The Black Mage is a specialist in debuffs and destruction, armed unlike ordinary mages with curse magic using dark mana and powerful dark-element attack magic unbound by the four major attributes.]
[You may begin the Black Mage class-change quest in Granado, the Lawless Harbor, stronghold of the Black Ring Society.]
.....
The appearance of the new Black Mage class!
At this new content added to the stagnant Ard World after a long time, user sentiment exploded in an instant.
Moreover, the fact that this new class was the Black Mage, an NPC-only class whose class-change method hadn't even been revealed in the previous game, caused users to fall into a crucible of frenzy.
Of course, across both the previous game and Second, countless diverse classes had existed in Ard World.
From common classes one thought of when playing RPGs—Warriors, Mages, Priests—to production classes like Blacksmiths, Tailors, Chefs, and Farmers, and even classes one wouldn't think existed like Painters or Gardeners, and even Hidden Classes that only users with good luck could obtain!
The number of classes existing in Ard World was as numerous as stars in the sky, but among them, there was one class line that was uniquely scarce.
That was the darkness-type class!
From Black Mages to Necromancers and Dark Knights, there was almost no way for users to class-change into darkness-type classes.
At best, the only darkness-type classes available were thief-type classes like Thieves or Assassins!
This was all because of Yujin.
Hero Yujin!
Thanks to him seeing the ending of the previous game while under the protection of the Goddess of Light and the Pantheon, the forces of light had dominated Ard World for over a thousand years, and because Ard Saga Second began with the setting that another thousand years had passed since then, with Yujin still holding hegemony, the power of darkness-type classes in the current Ard World had weakened enormously.
But that didn't mean everyone playing Ard Saga Second preferred light-type classes like Paladins or Priests.
There were plenty of people who yearned for darkness-type classes that wielded dark mana and brought curses and destruction, and the newly opened Black Mage class was more than enough to satisfy their desires.
Not just on the internet but inside the game as well, public opinion about Drakan was gradually changing.
"Wow, a new Black Mage class? Should I delete my character and reroll?"
"You thought that too? Same here. I've wanted to play Black Mage since the previous game, so I'm deleting and rerolling this time."
"Hey, I'm going to Lawless Harbor to class-change into Black Mage right now. Don't stop me."
"Drakan's Lawless Harbor Retaking this time is totally amazing? Honestly, I see him in a new light."
"That's what I'm saying. It feels like he went off somewhere for closed-door training during the 6 years he was gone. The man's completely changed."
"Honestly if you're from the East you gotta sing his praises!"
Thus, starting from the opening of the new Black Mage class, the supportive public opinion toward Drakan became not a temporary shift in sentiment or antipathy toward the Infinite Yujin Church, but a substantive movement of public opinion, and at the center of that substantive movement were users who supported Drakan.
A fandom!
After signing with Jeil E&M, the fandom for Drakan that Team Leader I had mentioned needed to be created during the first meeting with the dedicated support team was finally beginning to slowly take shape.