A village near the Great Forest.
The new hideout was a warehouse.
More precisely, it was an abandoned barn on the outskirts of the village.
There were holes in the walls, and one side of the roof sagged. It was a place no one came to.
By Jaewon’s standards, it was enough.
He turned over a bale of straw, flattened it out, and sat down.
“Good thing it doesn’t smell like animal dung.”
After plopping down on the straw bale, he spread the patch notes across his knees.
He picked up his pen.
He organized his thoughts once.
Fairy content. He had already said he would add it anyway. He couldn’t take it back, and there was no reason to. And although he had said he would write it roughly...
If he was going to add it anyway, it was better to write it well than to just add it.
Jaewon began writing.
A new race that would appear in the world of Arcana Online.
---
```
======================================
■ ARCANA ONLINE ■
Official Update Patch Notes
Ver. 4.3.0 — “Whispers of the Forest”
======================================
Hello, this is the Arcana Online operations team.
This patch is the trial introduction of the new small race,
“Fairies(妖精),” which we are presenting after long preparation.
Fairies are a race deeply connected to the natural ecosystem,
and they will naturally spawn and appear throughout
Arcana’s forests, caves, and waterside regions.
#Due to the nature of this small race, there was an issue
where some early modeling was applied in an unfinished state
during the trial implementation.
We apologize to users who experienced confusion
when they were displayed as basic rendering in certain environments;
this was a temporary state that occurred before the official introduction.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
```
Jaewon paused his pen for a moment.
‘We apologize for the inconvenience.’
If he wanted it to look as though the modeling was truly incomplete, then it actually had to be incomplete. Only then would it feel natural.
The fact that basic rendering appeared was also information already spreading among the Constellations.
The reason it had spread was because he had personally gone around scattering it at the Demon King’s Castle.
The design was solid.
The apology was sincere.
‘...Is it sincere? Probably.’
Jaewon carefully considered the interactions between sentences on the notepad in his mind.
---
```
▶ New Race — Fairy(妖精) Trial Introduction
The specific primary behavioral traits of fairies are as follows.
① Gathering Instinct
Fairies possess an instinct to automatically collect
items, plants, mineral fragments, and the like placed on the ground.
This behavior is designed as part of the natural ecological cycle.
```
‘Natural ecological cycle. How natural.’
Jaewon muttered inwardly.
The actual structure of the gathering instinct was like this. When a fairy approached an item, a collection judgment would occur.
The moment the collection judgment occurred, there would be a 0.2-second delay in transaction processing. Just before the item moved into the fairy’s inventory, the item’s ownership would appear as undetermined for 0.2 seconds.
‘It sounds complicated when written out, but just think of it as leaving open the possibility of illegal item duplication.’
The Glitch Hunter would definitely notice that.
They would test various conditions and attempt external access during the undetermined ownership state.
Item duplication. Or ownership interception. He would leave hidden code so that the moment they attempted it, a log would be recorded.
```
② Gap Movement
Fairies can freely move through
narrow terrain gaps and wall cracks
that ordinary races cannot pass through.
This is an ecological movement trait unique to small races.
```
Jaewon briefly tightened his grip on the pen.
‘An ecological movement trait unique to small races.’
It had the same structure as the mine glitch. Just like overlapping undead into a wall, fairies were officially a race that could cross terrain boundaries. However, there were conditions for crossing. There existed a standard for gap judgment.
That standard was very slightly ambiguous.
He had deliberately left it ambiguous. If this was abused too, it would be recorded.
```
③ Mischief Behavior
Fairies will rarely perform a “mischief” action
in which they take out and hide a small number of items
from the inventories of nearby players.
The removed items will reappear
after a certain amount of time in a nearby hidden location.
This feature was introduced to create
Arcana’s distinctive, vivid ecological presentation.
```
Jaewon’s eyes rested on “Mischief Behavior.”
An item came out of the inventory and went back in. In that process, a brief asynchronous interval occurred between the server and the client. In a normal flow, there was no problem.
If two requests were sent during that asynchronous interval.
The item would become two.
He quite liked the word “mischief.” It was mischief. Yes. If someone found that interval and played a prank, a record of the duplicate request would remain in the server logs. The IP would remain too.
The timestamp would remain too.
Jaewon continued writing.
---
```
▶ Fairy Habitat Region Notice
Fairies naturally spawn in the following regions.
— Northern area of the Central Great Forest
— Cave region bordering the Dwarven Autonomous Territory
— Coastal waterside reed region
— (Regions scheduled to be expanded in the future)
Jaewon was currently between the northern area of the Central Great Forest and the cave region bordering the Dwarven Autonomous Territory.
So that he could go there no matter which side the abuse occurred on.
▶ Cautions
Item loss or movement that occurs during interaction
with fairies is due to ecological behavior,
and it may be difficult for the operations team to provide recovery support.
We ask for your understanding.
```
Jaewon lifted his pen at the final sentence.
‘We ask for your understanding.’
It was the third apology.
He really was sorry to the diligent adventurers who would actually have their items stolen by fairies.
But it couldn’t be helped. A trap couldn’t look like a trap. A trap had to look like ordinary content. Ordinary content had inconveniences, and inconveniences were followed by apologies.
That was natural.
Jaewon skimmed through the patch notes.
```
— Gathering Instinct: Transaction delay of 0.2 seconds. Creates an undetermined ownership interval.
— Gap Movement: Ambiguous area in terrain judgment standards. Records expansion attempts.
— Mischief Behavior: Exposes asynchronous interval. Creates logs upon duplicate requests.
```
There were three.
If they touched even one of the three, they would be caught.
If they touched all three.
The corners of Jaewon’s mouth rose.
‘How kind of them to tell me exactly who they are.’
The letters glowed faintly, then vanished.
Application complete.
Jaewon closed the patch notes and leaned his back against the straw bale.
Stars were visible through the gaps in the barn roof.
Now all he had to do was wait.
---
The first to discover one was a child.
A small village clinging to the southern edge of the Central Great Forest. At the edge of the square where the morning market was held,
under the shade of a tree beside the well.
A seven-year-old girl was walking while holding a piece of bread when she stopped.
There was something there.
At first, she thought it was a dragonfly. It had wings. Its translucent wings caught the sunlight and spread into rainbow colors.
But it was too big to be a dragonfly. It was a little bigger than the palm of a hand. It had the shape of a person.
A small person was sitting on a tree branch, looking at the child.
The child reached out first.
The fairy tilted its head.
Slowly, it approached the child... achieving the historic first contact between fairy and human.
And then it took the child’s piece of bread.
The child burst into tears.
---
A commotion broke out.
Her mother came running. The child pointed at the tree with her finger. The fairy was sitting on the branch, eating the bread. The mother saw the fairy and screamed.
At the sound of the scream, people shopping at the market gathered.
The gathered people saw the fairy.
No one said anything.
The fairy finished the bread, folded its wings once, then spread them again. Then it looked down at the people.
Its eyes were large. They sparkled brightly.
A beat later, someone said,
“...It’s cute.”
“It is cute.”
“So cute.”
The child stopped crying and raised her hand again.
The fairy landed on the child’s hand.
The child tried to catch the fairy that had stolen and eaten her bread, and the fairy fled.
The village square fell silent.
---
One hour later.
Doran, a merchant who sold dried fish at the market on the outskirts of the village, tilted his head while checking his inventory ledger.
“...Huh?”
The ten pieces of hardtack he had definitely stocked in the morning had become six.
The lock was still locked. No one had touched it. Beside the empty space, a small wing-shaped trace
remained.
“No, what is this?”
Doran looked around.
Three fairies were sitting on the eaves, sharing the dried fish.
Doran set down the ledger and thought for a long time.
“...Mischief, you say?”
---
Constellation Lounge.
```
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[New Content] Fairies are out
— DawnFrost
💬 293 comments
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: They really came out lol The operations team keeps their word
ㄴ TreeFairy: Do I really have to change my name now
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: Change your nick to TreeElf
ㄴ TreeFairy: ...I’ll think about it
ㄴ SnowWhiteFirstSnow: Confirmed they have a wing-folding motion
They are very cute
ㄴ DawnFrost: As expected, FirstSnow is fast
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: Are we allowed to mention nicks here?
ㄴ TreeFairy: Of course, it’s a Constellation community, so of course we socialize lololol
It’s not like we can live for ten million years without mentioning names
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: Now that I think about it, true.
ㄴ PitchBlackCurtain: Are we sure the modeling quality was improved?
They got smaller than human size, but the wing shape is the same
and they still look awkward
ㄴ DawnFrost: The fairy wing update will probably come a bit later too
ㄴ PitchBlackCurtain: It feels like they’re somewhat unfinished
ㄴ DemonGod: They look different from the ones I saw before
ㄴ DawnFrost: Isn’t that obvious since one was the beta version and this is the official one?
ㄴ DemonGod: That’s true, but the human-shaped modeling I saw was way too weird
ㄴ FlameOfTheRedForge: They’re appearing near the cave region bordering the Dwarven Autonomous Territory too
The miners are making a fuss because they keep taking their tools
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: lololol Are the dwarves being invaded by fairies?
You said tools are more precious than life, but you’re total pushovers
ㄴ FlameOfTheRedForge: If you think it’s funny, I’ll cut my sponsorship
ㄴ WanderingStarlight: It was a joke, sir
ㄴ SnowWhiteFirstSnow: I’m curious how they take the tools
ㄴ FlameOfTheRedForge: They take them straight out of the inventory
while the dwarves are spacing out
ㄴ PitchBlackCurtain: They can access inventories?
ㄴ DawnFrost: It was in the patch notes, the mischief behavior trait
ㄴ PitchBlackCurtain: Oh, that
ㄴ DawnFrost: Read the content a little
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
```