Chapter 62
“That damn Heavenly Demon villain bastard.”
Baekho drew a throwing knife and raised his arm.
So he made a new ID and picked the Tang Clan this time.
“You’ve finally crawled out of that beginner zone you were stuck in for years. Congratulations.”
“Ha. Your smart mouth is really annoying. Yeah, I came to get you!”
His voice rose as he swung his arm sharply.
The throwing knife that left his fingertips traced a long parabola to the side, aiming for Seojun’s temple.
If there was one defining trait of the Tang Clan’s attacks, it was how the throwing knife’s trajectory changed with each technique.
It was also famous for the artificial corrections the game applied.
When those corrections kicked in, attacks always homed in right on the center of a vital point, which actually made them easier to block and impossible to throw with precision, so high-level players never used them.
Tang!
Seojun lightly brought down his sword and intercepted the knife mid-flight.
“You really do have a knack for batting them away. Crazy Heavenly Demon villain bastard.”
He had no idea why they kept calling him a villain.
- lololol from his perspective he really is a Heavenly Demon villain
- ‘I am a Heavenly Demon’ he’s done that how many times now? He’s totally villain-level lolololololololol
- Even we think the sect leader is villain-level
- But isn’t that guy who made a new account just to snipe him a villain too?
- He was a noob-stomping villain from the start though
While profound reflections on villainy were being shared in the chat window, Baekho drew throwing knives in both hands and hurled them.
“Then try batting these away!”
The knives flew with equally bizarre trajectories.
Seojun read the paths, twisted his body, and swung his sword.
Tang.
The knives lost all force and clattered to the ground.
“And this!”
As he evaded the two knives, another flew straight into his line of sight.
Beyond that knife, Seojun saw Baekho’s meaningful expression and felt a chill of unease.
* * *
One week ago.
The player with the in-game nickname Baekho, real name Lee Sangcheol, had his account banned from For Chivalry, a game he’d enjoyed for years.
The first emotion he felt when he was booted to the lobby was pure bewilderment.
“Is this a bug?”
It wasn’t.
“They let me be all this time, and now they’re banning me because of some low-rent streamer? Does that make any sense?”
How many years had he spent in the beginner zone?
“Fine. Let’s check exactly what grounds they banned me on. I didn’t throw games, and I didn’t troll.”
Throwing a game meant deliberately losing.
Going AFK, refusing to participate, leaving, that sort of thing.
Of course, the game company cracked down on that and treated it as a punishable offense.
But.
Clearly, the only thing he’d done was play the game diligently.
“If that’s a problem, then maybe they should have made it so you climb out of the beginner zone immediately in the first place!”
He went to the website and examined the list of bannable offenses.
Having checked, there was nothing about continuously playing in the beginner zone.
“Right. This is wrong!”
He immediately posted on the community forum.
[Reporting Mubi Soft for banning users without clear standards.]
===
Hello, fellow users of No Hyeop.
Mubi Soft banned me for playing in the beginner zone.
I swear I have never committed any bannable offense.
I am merely a casual player who occasionally enjoys For Chivalry, and I simply stayed in the beginner zone and played because I felt my skills weren’t good enough to leave it and honestly, I was scared of what was out there. That’s all.
The company never made an issue of it, and I’ve just played once in a while like that.
Then, in the middle of enjoying the game as usual, my account was suddenly terminated.
I’ve submitted an inquiry asking why I was banned, but I truly cannot understand it.
If what I did was a problem, why did Mubi Soft leave me alone until now?
And even if something I did was wrong, I question whether it deserved an immediate account deletion without even a single warning.
===
He thought he had written the post well.
He’d never written this kind of thing before, but he felt he’d done a decent job explaining his situation and the atrocities Mubi Soft had committed.
“Alright, let’s see the reactions now.”
After posting the article, firing off several inquiries, and even calling customer service, he returned to the post to find dozens of comments.
The first comment.
- Are you Baekho?
└ It’s Baekho lolololololololol
- What were you hoping for when you wrote this lololololol
└ You have no shame lolololol
└ What happened?
└ This little shit got banned
“What the? How do they know?”
The community people seemed to know him very well.
Baekho had never been here before and usually had no interest, so he didn’t know, but he had a certain notoriety in No Hyeop.
On top of that, the board he’d posted on was the Incidents & Accidents board.
If it had been the Free Board, maybe not, but the Incidents & Accidents board was where the oldest oldbies of this already-dead game hung out, and there was no way they didn’t know Baekho.
- You deserved the ban
└ Did you think you’d get off scot-free after tormenting our cute and precious newbies!?
└ Ugh
- As a Taoist of Mount Hua, I could no longer stomach such unrighteous behavior that even a marketplace ruffian would not stoop to. At last, Glory Soft is doing its job.
└ Not that kind of ‘Glory’ in hanja. And why didn’t you translate ‘Soft’? Can’t you stick to your concept?
└ A rebuking shout(喝)!
- If you make a new account, come to the Demon Cult. We can embrace you.
└ You’re from the Evil Faction, why are you trying to recruit that bastard into the Demon Cult wtf
└ lolololololololololololololololololololol
It was a total shitshow.
What he wanted was at least some sympathy, and a bit of righteous anger.
But the comments, busy goofing off among themselves, seemed to have not the slightest interest in what he wanted them to see.
“What is this.”
No Hyeop had always been that kind of place.
There were a few comments that focused on the content.
- It literally says in the rules that unsportsmanlike behavior can be sanctioned at any time, and this moron claims he never did anything wrong
└ If he had that kind of conscience, would he have been noob-stomping there?
- Hey Baekho, no, you’re not even Baekho anymore since you lost the nickname lolololol. Just join the Demon Cult. Even if your account gets deleted, you can make a new one once. But if you get banned again it’s a permanent suspension, so be careful.
└ I said stop tryna drag him to the Demon Cult ffs
As he read the comments, his eyes began to twitch, and he shouted.
“Oh, right! My nickname!”
A rare nickname like that was hard to come by.
Anyway, he deleted the post, seeing that public opinion was bad—no, there wasn’t even any public opinion to speak of.
Huu.
Then he took a deep breath and thought.
“Fine. Honestly, I always knew I could get sanctioned at any time.”
He had somewhat downplayed his faults ‘just a tiny bit’ when writing the post, but even he knew that what he had done was abnormal and unsportsmanlike.
So he had no real excuse for being banned.
The game was just a way to kill time anyway.
But.
Why was he so angry?
Why.
The moment he calmly delved into his inner emotions, he realized.
It wasn’t the ban itself; it was the fact that he had been completely played like a fool that enraged him.
That annoying face, that voice, came to mind.
[Surely the developers won’t just sit back and let a toxic user like this be, right?]
He immediately opened Trabble and went to that streamer’s VOD.
He was curious why, what kind of grudge would make him mock him and goad the game admins into a ban.
[Ah, that noob-stomper is really terrible. Thanks for the 10,000 won donation, ‘You Don’t Deserve the Newbie Slayer Title’.]
[Thanks for the 10,000 won donation, ‘Shame to Waste the Newbie Slayer Title’.]
Along with those words, ‘lololol’ scrolled through the chat.
And the most important fact:
No such donations existed.
“Heavenly Demon villain, you son of a bitch! Aaaagh! Fuck! Even that was a lie!”
He had been thoroughly toyed with.
Thinking that from start to finish they had turned him into a laughingstock and that thousands of people had watched and mocked him made his chest tighten.
Frustration boiled over.
He didn’t understand why, in a game meant to relieve stress, he had ended up getting reverse-stressed like this.
* * *
The next day, he came to a decision.
“I have to get revenge.”
Right.
If he didn’t pay it back somehow, he wouldn’t be able to sleep.
“First, let’s admit it. I can’t beat him with skill.”
The previous night, unable to fall asleep, he had looked up info on Jin Seojun, lain down, looked up more info, and stayed up the whole night.
That was his conclusion.
He couldn’t match him in skill.
So what should he do?
He had to know his enemy and prepare in a way that would let them meet.
[‘Jin Seojun’ has started streaming]
The next day, after watching his stream, he found a way to get revenge!
He logged into For Chivalry.
A game starting from scratch.
“Ah, shit.”
[This nickname is already in use.]
[Would you like to use ‘Baekho3’?]
[This nickname is already in use.]
“Who the hell is taking all these nicknames.”
[Would you like to use ‘Baekho5’?]
[This nickname is already in use.]
“That’s taken too. Argh!”
For a moment, he considered using a different nickname.
But if he was going to take revenge, using the same nickname as before would be more poetic.
He wasn’t planning to hide and take revenge anyway.
* * *
“This is my chance.”
After joining the Evil Faction’s Tang Clan, he waited for an opportunity.
And then the opportunity finally came.
A perfect one at that.
He figured he only needed to hand that bastard a single defeat.
The competition for the 16th individual rank was that fierce.
“Sniping him is totally doable.”
Other streamers had pulled it off. He still had three chances left.
“The game mode is perfect too.”
In Escort, even without winning the fight, he could make Seojun lose.
Today might be his only chance for revenge.
He watched the stream, timed it, then started the game.
“Did I get in? Did I? Please! You’re dead!”
The game started and the stream cut off, but there was a well-known way around that.
He immediately broke into a sprint.
The team members left behind followed him, grumbling among themselves.
“What’s with this lunatic.”
“Let’s just hurry up and go.”
“Yeah.”
It was fine if they talked weird—he had to go fast no matter what.
Because if the snipe failed, he needed to end this match quickly to aim for the next chance.
Fortunately, a game message came to steady his nerves.
[Looking at the timing, I think they met?]
A message from a friend he’d asked for help.
If he couldn’t watch the stream in-game, he just needed someone who could to relay info.
Only the most crucial bit.
[In the middle of the wagon, there’s a large brown chest. Right next to it, on the left side relative to the wagon’s direction, is the small chest that’s the objective.]
[Thanks]
Losing because the objective was destroyed would make Seojun’s defeat feel hollow and idiotic.
Now this was a proper snipe!
He slowed his pace and let his teammates go ahead.
He needed to confirm the objective’s exact location and calculate the trajectory to hit it.
‘Confirmed.’
He derived the trajectory and stepped forward.
“Did you miss me, you bastard?”
“Who are you?”
“Wh… what?”
“Hmm… That ID is new to me.”
“You son of a bitch.”
He nearly lost his reason for a moment, but he held back.
‘Your shameless confidence will be short-lived.’
The Heavenly Demon villain lightly knocked away the thrown knife.
Right. Of course he’d knock it away.
“Then try batting these away!”
He threw two knives simultaneously while setting up the most important strike.
The Heavenly Demon villain’s current position was slightly out of diagonal alignment with the wagon.
So he adjusted the trajectory: it would look like it was flying straight at the Heavenly Demon villain, then bend mid-flight and strike the objective.
Then the game would end immediately.
“And this!”
You’re dead.