Pen and Paper Translations

If it were an ordinary person, you could chalk it up to nostalgia goggles: they felt a tug toward a game they once enjoyed, tried a brief return, then bailed because it wasn’t the same fun as before… but the other party was Ignis. Would that legendary game fiend really have had a change of heart after raising just 5 levels? The fact that a mere salaryman in this fine nation has to fall asleep as soon as possible so he can avoid waking up cursing in the morning was not something Hae-in, who had only just turned twenty, had any way of knowing.

Anyway, that character whose customization was so obviously identical to Ignis’s main that there was no way to pretend he didn’t know it was the same person—he quickly added him as a friend too. So from here on he could watch when he logged in and at least guess what he intended to do… Hae-in mulled it over for a long while and then, ah, let out a short exclamation.

Come to think of it, his gear looked like a mess. Did he get hacked or something? As far as the login info for Ignis that he had been watching, there had been no updates. But it wasn’t like he’d stared at the friends list 24 hours a day; there could have been a timing he missed.

“Was he uncomfortable with being recognized as the Ignis while his gear was wrecked because of a hack…?”

That was a perfectly plausible guess.

“Hm…”

Hae-in immediately hit the Tab key to switch to crafting mode and began making melee DPS gear that an 80-level Flamer could equip right away. Next time he logged in, it might be the newly made level-5 account, or it might be the Ignis account; either way, if he kept playing Flamer, he would need the gear. He prettied up the set with unnecessary mod options and gems as well, and when he was done, his character name was shining handsomely at the bottom of the item description.

[Creator: Dohaesal]

Ah. I should have picked a prettier nickname. A nick he’d made without thinking suddenly started to grate on him. It wasn’t as if he could change it now either; someone could snipe the original and cause impersonation issues. Ahem. Hae-in wrapped up the crafting and switched his character state back to combat mode.

It did seem like he had made a new character because returning as Ignis felt burdensome… if that were true, then he had basically driven Ignis-nim, who had just returned, away at the door, which made Hae-in a little sad. Anyway, a user who had once hit cap when the max level was 80 would, with high probability, be unable to endure the newbie period. Even if it was that Ignis.

Because, as with many games, newbies could not ride a movement pet. The riding skill unlocked together with class change, so many people counted the pre–level-20 stretch, where you could change class, as Eraha Online’s accursed zone. Until you learned how to avoid monster attacks, it felt like, why does that bastard dodge my attacks so well when I’m the one getting pummeled like this; sometimes that state stuck. First of all, traveling between towns was just too inconvenient. As if they had cordoned off the starter town saying, “Newbies, don’t leave; just quietly level up here.”

If you used the mentor bond system provided in the official newbie tutorial, you could borrow your mentor’s movement pet and ride it… but would Ignis-nim really use the mentor bond system? With high probability he had clicked “what is this” and skipped it. This was someone who had even created a new character because being recognized bothered him; there was no way he would ask a randomly matched stranger for help.

Should I approach naturally on an alt and pretend to scoop up a newbie I met on the road… Hae-in was hesitating when an alert popped up saying there wasn’t much time left until the start of the defense match scheduled for 1 a.m. Normal people would be drifting off by now, but for a college gamer with time to burn, night was just getting started.

“Tch, what a hassle.”

Hae-in checked the opposing guild’s name for the defense, then casually scrolled down to read chat.

[Guild/MidlifeHunter: Who’s on the roster for tonight’s defense?]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: MidHunter-nim and the guildmaster, me, Pla-nim, Patient-nim]

[Guild/MidlifeHunter: 2 ranged, 1 melee, 1 tank, 1 healer then]

[Guild/MidlifeHunter: ok ok]

[Guild/Planaria: yap yap]

[Guild/MintTroters: fighting fighting]

Eraha Online had various types of PvP content. Among them, the very combat content that had made Ignis’s name as a hero ten years ago was the guild defense. As the name implied, it was a battle for a guild’s castle; from the side that had to protect, it was called a defense match, and from the side that had to take it, it was simply called a siege.

The basic format was a 5v5 base war, so only guilds with at least five members could occupy a castle. Unlike ten years ago, when you declared war on the fly and the lord had to decide within a time limit whether to accept, now the mainstream was that every Saturday evening, out of all the guilds that applied for siege during the set period, the lord chose just one guild, and the defense proceeded against that one.

Of course, if you wanted, spontaneous declarations of war were still possible… but only in the sense that they were possible; no one used the feature. In the interim, manners had changed and opinion-shaping had succeeded. The gist was, now that a new lord was seated and you don’t even know the PvP availability schedules on the lord’s side, isn’t it bad manners to say “if you don’t accept the declaration within the time window you pay a fine,” even if the function exists.

Naturally, Hae-in did not agree at all, but as someone who had eaten his way to the next lordship, it wasn’t a system that particularly disadvantaged him. Hae-in was no longer in the position of taking a castle; he was on the side that had to defend.

Within the guild there were no special conditions other than the five-person limit, so the rule was that whichever five had time at the moment signed up in the group chat in advance, and unless something special came up, Hae-in was a fixed member.

What counted as “something special” here? When “PleasePunishThem,” who had been forcibly taking the role of Hae-in’s buddy DPS for years, was absent. There were moments when you missed the synergy DPS Storm Haste—which, if the attributes lined up, was called a sail before a fair wind—and that was when the party lacked a Fire-attribute DPS. Eraha Online’s basic setting was that elemental attributes mattered.

Fire was weak to Water, Water was weak to Wind, Wind was weak to Earth, and looping back, Fire was weak to Earth as well. Light and Darkness were each strong and weak against the other. On top of that, there were synergy effects: Fire with Wind, Water with Earth, and between Light and Darkness. Because even the same buff showed differently in tooltips when given to a Fire DPS versus a Water DPS, a Storm Haste could only show its true value if there was a Fire-attribute DPS in the party.

It was truly, purely a job he had chosen while dreaming of the day he would play with Ignis, so he did think, with Ignis gone, is there any reason to keep playing StH… but who knew when Ignis would return, and he could not lightly hand over the top spot in the Storm Haste rankings, where he was the most likely candidate to become Ignis’s buddy DPS. Until the day someone slammed the gavel and declared, “Eraha Online is shutting down,” that spot had to be his.

[Guild/AuroraPatient: I’m at the guild castle]

[Guild/MidlifeHunter: Who’s there right now?]

[Guild/AuroraPatient: Just me;]

[Guild/MidlifeHunter: Discipline’s gone slack]

[Guild/AuroraPatient: Was that your self-introduction?]

[Guild/Planaria: sry sry]

[Guild/Planaria: Sorry, I’ll come after I open one more kit]

Hae-in, skimming the chatter of guildmates who, as always, would show up with about a minute to spare, moved to the guild castle. He paid the portal fee and entered the guild castle, where AuroraPatient was standing there, waiting for him.

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: Pla-nim, what did you get from the kit?]

The guildmate who arrived at the castle then, whoops, opened a door that should not be opened. Yeon-hwa’s guild chat began to be spammed without end.

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Stamina Potion]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Movement Speed Increase Potion]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Royal Jelly]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Cooking Quality Increase Potion]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Plain Cloth]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: ah]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Chocolate]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Garnet Raw Stone]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: I get it, I get that it bricked]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Beginner Tunic]

[Guild/Planaria: (Item Link): Intermediate Net]

[System: Planaria slaps PleasePunishThem’s cheek.]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: sry sry sry]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: It’s not bricked]

[Guild/PleasePunishThem: It was a sacred donation to the fate of the game]

[System: Planaria slaps PleasePunishThem’s cheek.]

[System: Planaria slaps PleasePunishThem’s cheek.]

Hae-in casually checked Planaria’s kit results, as unfailing as ever today, and felt reassured that our Saber would be ripping through the enemy team with vigor in this defense match too.