Eleven years ago
At twenty, Yeon-jun was young and bursting with energy. There was nothing to fear and nothing he lacked. His life felt perfectly complete.
His parents, both executives at a major conglomerate, kept the household rock-solid and affluent.
His older sister, a flute major at a prestigious conservatory, was a point of pride that made Yeon-jun square his shoulders.
Yeon-jun himself never fell behind: with little effort he earned top grades and entered one of South Korea’s most renowned universities.
Wealthy parents, elite schooling, a quick mind that solved everything with minimal work, and more free time than he knew what to do with. Crowds never stopped gathering around him; truckloads of nameless classmates did everything they could to befriend him.
His life seemed to be made of concentrated luck.
With all that spare time plus killer reflexes, insane control, and razor-sharp game sense, it was only a matter of time before he became popular in-game as well. PvP, raids, tower climbs — people gaped: Is that level of control even human? Yet they still clung to him.
The game that rocketed his popularity to its peak was launched as Korea’s first “stylish-action” MMORPG.
Promising the thrill of tight controls, movement, and damage-cycle tactics within classic MMO combat, Eraha Online exploded in popularity. Beyond RPG die-hards who “taste-test everything,” even casual gamers tried it at least once. In classrooms nationwide, kids joked you risked becoming an outcast if you didn’t play Eraha. It was that much of a national craze.
But where there is strong light, shadows grow just as strong. As Eraha boomed, people targeting Yeon-jun multiplied exponentially.
[Server Board : (Nacht)]
┌─── Title : Ignis < Does this bastard play all day long? ──┐
│
│ I’ve been camping Shal’s Base for almost 3 weeks now,
│ trying to snag it even once, and I’ve NEVER seen it fail
│ a defense.
│
│ Dude, do you even have a job? Unemployed? Even
│ students can’t no-life like this, right?
└────── ─────────────────────┘
[Comments]
– Best to assume Shal’s Base doesn’t exist unless Ignis steps out himself.
ㄴ Why’s he holding it so long? Bum?
ㄴ Who knows. But since it’s personal ownership, not a guild thing, it’s even harder to take.
– He’s held it ever since that area opened, never lost a defense.
ㄴ Wow… that means he’s basically owned it a full quarter.
Plays all day? Half true, half false. Except for 4–6 hours of lectures and time spent sleeping, most of his day really did go into the game. He didn’t only eat and game, but the game dominated a hefty chunk of his routine.
In-game, the most basic crafting resource was Essence of Mana, and there were exactly three ways to get it:
- Run instances (instanced dungeons) and scrape together the tiny default drops.
- Collect small amounts from daily-quest rewards.
- Capture one of only three “Bases” on the entire server — contested zones that paid out Essence proportional to how long you held them.
For higher-tier gear, the Essence required to craft or repair skyrocketed, so every named player with any reputation chose the Base-capture route. But with only three Bases, demand dwarfed supply and fights were constant.
The moment Base-defense areas were patched in, Yeon-jun snagged the prime location. Guilds rushed to wrest it from him and ran into an unexpected message:
“A Base captured as an individual can only be recaptured by an individual.”
In short, anyone already in a guild couldn’t challenge his throne. Most top players belonged to guilds, so to steal his Base they had to quit, then issue a 1-on-1 duel. Because the Base could change hands only through solo duels, every so-called hotshot bent the knee to Yeon-jun one after another.
[Server Board : (Nacht)]
┌─ Title : Ignis-nim pls f***ing let me hold Shal’s Base once ─┐
│
│ Bro you’ve had it for three months straight
│ Can I just taste it once? You can take it right back
│ I even quit my guild for this, man
└────────────────────────────┘
[Comments]
– If you were him, would you hand it over? Better I keep it for life than
record a loss to some scrub.
ㄴ Language, please. You try quitting your guild and see how easy it is.
[Server Board : (Nacht)]
┌─ Title : Recruiting joint assault on Shal’s Base ─┐
│
│ ATK ≥ 500
│ DEF ≥ 300
│ 1-on-1 win-rate ≥ 55 %
│ Item-lvl ≥ 90
│
│ If you trust your 1-on-1 skills, DM me.
└─────────── ───────────┘
[Comments]
– Why not just form a full raid at this point?
– lolol Now that he can’t win solo, he wants to turn 1-on-1 into 1-versus-many.
– How can someone play this scummy?
ㄴ Game forces 1-on-1, so he bends rules to make it 1-on-crowd, lmao.
– Ignis must be exhausted; guys like this are everywhere lol.
With pests like that piling up, Yeon-jun grew tired of dealing with challengers. PMs and guild-recruitment spam grated on his nerves.
Maybe I should just found a guild and accept duels one day a week.
He always brimmed with confidence that he wouldn’t lose. Though he preferred solo play, soaring notoriety had made lone roaming more bothersome than convenient. Using the network of contacts he’d casually farmed while solo-clearing hard-content, he floated the idea of founding a guild. Soon an extra word appeared above his character’s head:
[Flammer]
[Heir of Flame]
[Ignis]
He chose “Flammer” as the guild name simply because his class was Flamer. Eraha classes were divided into Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Light, and Darkness, then subdivided into physical, magical, ranged DPS, melee DPS, healer, tank, and so on.
The Fire-attribute magical melee DPS Flamer used a magic blade for close-quarters damage but could launch fiery slashes for mid-range bursts, making it a hybrid DPS.
With a guild master (Yeon-jun) whose dueling win rate was insane, plus one vice master and only three other members, that five-man guild became a legend in less than three months.
[Server Board : (Nacht)]
┌─ Title : Are the shaved-ice punks’ consciences frozen too? ─┐
│
│ I get that you’re IRL-selling (making real money off in-
│ game gold), but you maniacs jacked the market tax to 50 %
│ Who the hell’s going to use the auction house now?
│
└─────────── ─────────────────┘
[Comments]
– True, they went way too far. No cap, they pushed it to 50 % and GMs
say it’s “normal gameplay.”
– They probably don’t even know why they’re hated.
– If it bugs you, take a castle yourself, lol.
ㄴ Is that a guildie popping up?
ㄴ Cry more ^^
Castles (unlike Bases) didn’t interest Yeon-jun. Only one existed in the current Pharrel region; more were planned for future zones. He was an ordinary college kid, not the type to start needless wars. He preferred taking on incoming challenges, pushing himself faster and stronger.
So what dragged him into siege warfare was a trivial yet crucial trigger.
[Guild/Emu]: ?
[Guild/Emu]: Guild-master, guild-master!
[Guild/Ignis]: Yes?
Panting guild-chat pings made him tilt his head. Disaster awaited.
[Guild/Emu]: Guild-master, did you list something on the Pharrel AH?
…Yes, he had. For once the castle-holding guild had lowered the tax, so he’d tried it. He’d even seen the warning that they took five percent and thought, What could go wrong?
[Guild/Ignis]: I did.
[Guild/Ignis]: Some kind of problem?
[Guild/Emu]: Hul……
[System]: Emu pays respects.
[Guild/PolarBear]: omg;;;;;;;
[Guild/PolarBear]: Check who bought it, quick!
[Guild/Emu]: I’m losing my mind here.
[Guild/Emu]: The shaved-ice guild-master posted too.
[Guild/PolarBear]: You saw? That’s straight provocation.
[Guild/RIPMMO]: ???? What’s up
[Guild/RIPMMO]: I’m going to look too.
?
With a bunch of question marks hovering over his head, Yeon-jun opened the incident-report board—and discovered, for the first time, that mere text could make one’s blood run this cold with rage.
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