The Final Boss Has Returned Episode 60
“Honorable? For a despicable pirate, you sure spew a lot of bullshit. If you’re that pissed off, why don’t you try swarming us with numbers too.”
At the Pirate King’s shout, Drakan answered with a sneer.
“Drakan, you son of a bitch!”
At Drakan’s mockery, the Pirate King let out a bizarre shriek and swung his cutlass to attack Drakan, but his attack was blocked by Queenhani’s shield, which had already moved to stand before Drakan.
“You damned bitch!”
The moment he spat curses at Queenhani, who had blocked his attack for the second time following the cursed magic bullet,
once again, an overwhelming number of attacks poured down on the Pirate King, so many that he could barely keep his wits about him.
“Tank, DPS, healer!”
There was no way the Pirate King could withstand such an organized dogpile that meshed with truly unparalleled synergy.
“Cowardly bastards…….”
It was such an overwhelming and thorough dogpile that opinions saying the Pirate King was too pitiful came up in the chat window!
Ravaged by that dogpile, the Pirate King left behind “cowards” as his last words and met his death on the spot.
The moment the Pirate King met his death!
A single line of message rose before the eyes of every user who shared the quest.
[Pirate King Drake has met his death.]
Naval Decisive Battle!
It was the moment the war to decide hegemony over the Eastern Sea ended in Drakan’s victory.
“Hoo.”
Drakan caught his rough breath and smiled as he watched the dizzying, endless parade of notification windows rising before his eyes after the quest completion message.
[You have completed the quest ‘Naval Decisive Battle’.]
[Your level has increased.]
[Your level has increased.]
…….
[All stats have increased by 68.]
[The Pirate Archipelago is incorporated into your territory.]
Following the always-pleasant level-up and stat increase notifications came the joyous notification that the Pirate Archipelago had been incorporated into his territory!
But the rewards didn’t end there.
[You have obtained the title ‘Hegemon of the Eastern Sea’.]
[Fame has increased by 18933.]
[Your tale of executing the Pirate King and dismantling the Pirate Federation spreads from Lawless Port throughout the entire Eastern region!]
[The residents of the Eastern region have begun to extol you.]
[The nobles of the Gasan Kingdom have begun to pay attention to you.]
Drakan!
It was the moment his fame soared, both in reality and in the game.
Drakan smiled as he looked at the last message, saying that the nobles of the kingdom were paying attention to him.
‘Gasan Kingdom. You’re next.’
* * *
Naval Decisive Battle!
A massive collaboration event centered around Drakan, a secondhand super rookie whose stock had been rising recently in both Arde World and Arde Live, with all major corporate streamers—not only JDG and Ignis but even those affiliated with Jeil E&M—participating!
An event that had drawn countless topics even before it began just from the participating streamer lineup concluded in a mega-success beyond mere success.
It was only natural that JGN, which held exclusive broadcasting rights for the event, enjoyed soaring viewership, and the streamers who participated in the event also reaped various benefits, such as higher viewer counts than usual, donations, and subscriber increases.
Moreover, whether online—including Arde forums and social media—or offline, wherever people interested in Arde World gathered, they talked about the Naval Decisive Battle, showing how high of a topic it was.
And thanks to the Naval Decisive Battle event, Drakan—who had been treated as merely a super rookie full of potential—was evaluated as having exploded with potential and firmly established himself as a star user.
Especially the Eastern users who had suffered under the Pirate Federation and the Pirate King came to support Drakan to such a degree that the word “absolute” suited them perfectly.
The new generation users were the same. They went wild for Drakan’s appearance of overwhelmingly pushing through everything from war to battle with refreshing momentum, and supported him.
Concrete support base!
The core fan base that formed the foundation of the fandom had finally properly revealed itself.
The best posts on Arde forums were plastered with Naval Decisive Battle stories, and the same went for social media and Arde Live.
Of course, not everyone welcomed Drakan’s victory.
Drakan!
He had risen from prospect to full-fledged star through this victory, which naturally drew the aggro of Yujin’s toxic fandom composed of old-generation users.
Until then, no matter how much of a stir Drakan caused, he was nothing more than a mere prospect, but after winning the Naval Decisive Battle, he had become a proper star user. And at an unprecedented speed at that.
Although he was still nothing more than the dirt under the toenails compared to top ranker Yujin’s standing, the problem was that this user happened to be Drakan.
Who was Drakan!
Was he not the only user who had fought Yujin head-on, and Yujin’s complete antithesis?
To Yujin’s hardcore fans, Drakan was an irreconcilable enemy who could never be forgiven no matter what he did, and the situation of such a Drakan rising was enough to evoke nightmares of the past.
Of course, Yujin had entered Drakan’s stream, donated ten million won, and even conversed with him, but to them, that fact wasn’t very important.
Yujin!
Because they were hardcore fans who knew better than anyone that he was kind—in other words, a pushover—they thought Yujin had been naively tricked by Drakan’s mask.
Therefore, some hardcore fans even left comments on Yujin’s official channel telling him not to be fooled by Drakan, or sent fan letters.
Thus, the hardcore fans collectively wavered at Drakan’s strides and expressed anxiety, and the streamers uploading videos on Arde Live were no different.
And this anxiety was no different for ‘Arde Encyclopedia,’ an issue creator with 1.5 million subscribers who usually claimed to be a fanatic zealot of the Church of Infinite Yujin, and Arde Encyclopedia eventually uploaded a video targeting Drakan to his own channel.
[“Drakan? Hey, I feel most sorry for the Drakan fanboys. I wonder if they know what Drakan did back in the day and still stan him? Man, back then, wow, don’t even get me started.”]
[“You get ripped off so hard in gold for dungeon entry fees, you think it’s just dungeons? They charge entry fees for mines too, and hell, they even decide the prices for weapons coming out of workshops. And who was that one guy? Drakan!”]
[“Our Yujin-nim beat down Drakan and made the world a better place, you know. Anyway, kids these days didn’t experience the Drakan era so they don’t know. Just watch. Drakan won the Naval Decisive Battle, right? Mark my words, soon he’ll collect Eastern Sea passage tolls even harder than those pirate bastards. I guarantee it.”]
[“Now, are there still bastards who stan Drakan after this? Those bastards are all concept freaks, concept freaks! Or just fucking newbies who haven’t played the previous game. Seriously, if there are bastards who genuinely stan Drakan? They need to go to the hospital. They’re top-grade black-cow bastards. Really, someone oughta crack their heads open.”]
A targeting video from an issue creator with 1.5 million subscribers aimed at Drakan!
As the video of a streamer with over a million subscribers, the Drakan-targeting video spread quickly, but the reaction was, predictably, cold except among the toxic fandom of the Church of Infinite Yujin.
This was natural in a way, because the majority of ordinary users who had seen Drakan and Yujin interacting this time harbored no hostility toward Drakan, if not goodwill.
Moreover, since Arde Encyclopedia himself was a representative fanatic of the Church of Infinite Yujin, he had already drawn aggro here and there. It was only natural that the likes on the Drakan-targeting video were overtaken by dislikes, and inevitable that hate comments flooded the video.
[“Let’s not feed the troll.”]
[“A bastard who can’t say shit to Drakan-nim’s face, yet his mouth lives on”]
[“He’s doing well so they’re trying to drag him down however they can, isn’t it ugly? Disgusting;”]
[“Doesn’t your master know he donated 10 million won on Drakan’s stream?”]
[“Guys, don’t press play on the video, just press dislike. If you play it, the views go up and that bastard makes money”]
[“For real, who is this Lucky Byeongshin TV wannabe who makes money stitching together issue scraps to be talking shit ㅋㅋㅋ”]
[“Black cow, black cow lol. If stanning Drakan makes me a black cow, I’ll gladly be a black cow”]
[“Black cow sounds good though. Isn’t it cute? Good, I’m a black cow starting today too ㅋㅋ”]
Of course, the video didn’t only have hate comments.
Black cow!
After this word from the last line spat by Arde Encyclopedia began to become a hot topic among a portion of Drakan’s fandom, the video spread across the internet in clip form, so naturally almost all of Drakan’s core fan base came across it.
If stanning Drakan makes one a black cow, they’d gladly become a black cow!
In that sense, Drakan’s fandom began calling each other black cows, and amusingly, the name of Drakan’s fandom was naturally decided.
Namely, ‘Black Cow’.
Of course, it wasn’t only Arde Encyclopedia’s targeting video that decided the fandom’s name that became a hot topic.
Although the targeting video became a hot topic, the issue that the majority of users were focusing on now was that Yujin had appeared on Drakan’s live stream.
Yujin!
The fact that he had personally entered Drakan’s stream as a viewer and donated a whopping 10 million won went beyond being an internet hot topic, causing such a huge sensation that gaming media outlets rushed to publish articles.
[Yujin Donates 10 Million Won to Drakan!]
[Drakan Exchanges Brief Conversation with Yujin During Stream.]
[Attention! A True Reconciliation Between Two Giants?]
Yujin and Drakan!
The contact between the two, who had waged war over the fate of Arde World in the previous game and were still drawing attention in the sequel, Second, was more than enough bait for the gaming media to miss.
Of course, it was natural in a way that Shin Ha-yeon’s influence had played a part here.
To Shin Ha-yeon, who had seized power in the Jeil Group, handling gaming media—which wasn’t even major media with formidable press power and influence, but at best covered internet articles—was as easy as eating cold porridge.
The gaming media outlets controlled by Shin Ha-yeon tied Drakan to Yujin’s image and were naturally changing Drakan’s image in a positive direction.
Of course, it wasn’t only the media. To the majority of ordinary users excluding Drakan’s passionate fandom Black Cow and Yujin’s passionate fandom Church of Infinite Yujin, this incident was more than enough to become a hot topic.
Yujin and Drakan!
When the two first met in reality to apologize and shake hands over the Church of Infinite Yujin scandal, most people interpreted it as a sort of political gesture.
Isn’t there a saying that in politics, there are no eternal enemies or eternal friends!
Just as that saying goes, in the world of politics, even those who denounced each other like sworn enemies could smile, shake hands, and take photos together as long as their interests aligned. Similarly, the political acts unfolding in Arde World were not very different from that.
That was why both Drakan and Yujin had shown a reconciling appearance in order to naturally get past the Church of Infinite Yujin scandal.
Especially Drakan doing such a thing is incomprehensible! People don’t change overnight! He must definitely have some ulterior motive!
Such opinions had circulated quite a bit at the time, but with this second contact between Drakan and Yujin as the catalyst, those words lost their basis.
Yujin, who had cheerfully contributed the huge sum of 10 million won, and Drakan, who had shown a reaction in the chat window for practically the first time!
Such actions from the two spawned countless topics, and Drakan’s previously negative image was buried under that sensationalism and was being gradually diluted little by little.
[“Drakan playing hard to get was so funny, I rewatched it 5 times at night ㅋㅋ”]
[“It would’ve been ugly if he ignored him after getting the money, but snubbing him once actually made him more likable”]
[“Actually, isn’t he a tsundere?”]
[“If he had needlessly held onto his pride and said he’d refund it, that would’ve been cringe, but he’s super chill”]
[“I thought it was more amazing that Drakan was reading the chat window? I thought he couldn’t read because he’s an old man”]
[“If he raids a boss together with Yujin later, that’d be insane”]
At the moment when all eyes were focused on Drakan!
A teaser video announcing that game-specialized broadcasting station JGN would conduct an exclusive interview with Drakan was uploaded to Drakan’s official Arde Live channel.