After about 10 years of a game being released, the players become so experienced that they practically rot.
Due to the lack of new content, some players began engaging in peculiar behaviors like dressing their characters in only a piece of underwear and doing boss raids. Others focused on clearing dungeons and creating new record times. A few even resorted to replaying the existing content over and over again until they had sucked it dry.
Among those players were those who even dared to go for the so-called ‘shit-tier’ characters that no one else would touch.
And I was one such person.
The game was called Aether World. It was originally released as a dating simulation game marketed towards women, but thanks to its flashy combat style, infinite content, and myriad playable characters, this unique game had surprisingly attracted more male players.
Some of the characters were easy to play yet boasted the best performance, while others were complete garbage with a level of difficulty so extreme that not even veteran players dared to touch them.
That's right.
I was a strange person who chose to use Baek Yu-Seol, a character with an atrocious level of difficulty, the worst performance, and more weaknesses than advantages, for a whole ten years. To be honest, I couldn't even comprehend why such a character even existed.
In the fantasy setting of Aether World where everything revolved around magic and everyone could wield it, Baek Yu-Seol was the only one who couldn't. Thus, the character had no popularity whatsoever and was treated like an extra with almost no presence.
Of course, it did not mean that Baek Yu-Seol couldn't use any magic at all.
He could use one magical skill called Flash.
Flash was a skill that could be learned by any mage, but due to its long cooldown, excessive mana consumption, and two-second stun after use, very few people used it.
Was that all?
No.
Basically, Flash randomly teleported one a distance ranging between three to ten meters, and even the direction of teleportation was random.
If one were really unlucky, they could end up crashing into the ground or shooting through the ceiling or walls, leading to instant death.
In other words, Baek Yu-Seol was a character who couldn't use any magic except for the trash skill that no one ever learned or used.
Of course, there were some advantages. The character, Baek Yu-Seol, had trained Flash to the extreme. He could adjust the direction of movement and move within a fixed range while eliminating the two-second stun. Additionally, since Baek Yu-Seol didn't have any mana stat from the beginning, there was no need to worry about mana consumption.
But that was it.
In conclusion, the fact that he could slightly improve the trash skill was the end of it.
Flash was essentially a skill that allowed for extremely fast movement. It was so fast that if one smashed against a wall after failing to adjust the distance, they would die instantly due to the tremendous impact.
As such, when fighting in narrow spaces with many enemies, Baek Yu-Seol usually turned into a useless character.
For that reason, being able to control the range of the Flash was almost essential while also being extremely difficult. Therefore, the character wasn't very popular. After all, who would raise a trash character with no magic skill other than Flash in a game where other characters could easily and efficiently use magical skills?
Numerous hardcore players took on the challenge, but they all gave up in the end.
While everyone else quit, I continued practicing Flash over and over again until I completely mastered it.
After coming to the realization that the characteristic of Flash allowed for rapid advancement, I learned how to cancel the skill in the middle, allowing me to perform distance control.
That was easy to say, but in fact, Flash took around 0.1 seconds, so it wasn't something anyone could easily control.
I became deeply immersed in playing this single-skill character, and unlike other mage characters, I relied solely on precise control to overcome everything. I dedicated most of my time to PvP battles against other player-controlled mage characters.
After ten years of doing that…
[You’ve defeated the final boss, the Thirteenth Onyx Moon.]
"Eh?"
I ended up killing the final boss whose existence I hadn’t even known.
"What?"
I was merely performing a sudden quest to find the female lead who had suddenly disappeared. Why did a black dragon with such an imposing name appear out of nowhere?
"A final boss?"
Wait, was there even such a thing as a final boss in a female-oriented game? Wasn’t it supposed to end with the main character ending up with a female lead and getting married?
"It's my first time playing a game like this, so I don't know."
Of course, my real first time was already ten years ago.
Somehow, I had a feeling I’d have to fight the boss for a considerably long time before it died. Despite equipping myself with legendary-grade artifacts one by one and maxing out my stats, it was a close call. Fortunately, I won. It would have been a shame to lose the title of a hardcore player.
"What the heck was this dragon?"
The Demonic Black Dragon, Thirteenth Onyx Moon.
Still, it was the final boss, so I roughly read through its backstory out of curiosity.
“Hmm…”
The story went like this.
There was this crazy cult-like group called the dark mages, which had infiltrated and hidden themselves in various parts of this fantasy world. Apparently, their ultimate goal was to taint this world with the underworld Persona Gate. When the dark mages completely encompassed the world with a persona gate, what appeared was the Demonic Black Dragon.
I had little interest in the story and was simply enjoying alchemy crafting or whatever the NPCs were doing, so I had no idea that such things were happening in the background.
"Wow. The whole world has gone to ruin."
Looking at the map, 90% of the continent had been eroded and reduced to ashes by the persona gate, and only the main background of the game, Stella Academy, remained intact. However, it was stained red and the situation appeared grim.
I had busied myself with defeating other players on the PvP integrated server and was completely unaware.
I wondered about the reaction of the community if I took a screenshot of this and uploaded it, so for the first time in a long time I went to the Aether World forums. To my surprise…
The few remaining players' posts were receiving a surge of activity for the first time in a very long time.
[Thread: Ah! This damn game! Suddenly that Black Dragon or whatever appears and all my game data goes to hell.]
[Thread: What the hell is this Black Dragon thing? It shows that my character died and now I can't even log in.]
[Thread: Whoa! I just came back after a long time because my SNS was blowing up, and guess what? My character got deleted. What's up with that?]
The community was full of posts that revealed their grievances after finding that their characters had been deleted upon returning after a long time.
"What?"
I realized the final boss hadn't just appeared for me; it appeared simultaneously in all player consoles.
"How weird."
But there was one strange thing.
I scrolled through the lit panels for a while, but there was no post anywhere saying anyone had defeated the Black Dragon.
No matter how many legend-grade artifacts adorned my character, Baek Yu-Seol was still just a trash character at best. There were far more players who used loopholes and exploited characters equal to or stronger than mine.
The Black Dragon should have been defeated dozens of times already. At that moment, I came across a post by a famous high-ranked player, and my eyes widened in surprise.
[Title: Guys! This boss not meant to be defeated in the first place!]
[Content: F*ck! This damn Black Dragon has a 99% Magic Resistance passive, no cooldown on Magic Absorption, and keeps endlessly spamming Magic Release. How the hell are we supposed to kill it? Seriously, what kind of bug/monster is this? Gotta ask the devs, for real.]
"Oh right… There was something like that."
Of course, it was a bit unfair to have the ability to nullify magic in a world of magic.
But it was different for me. Flash was just a teleportation skill, so I had no choice but to acquire exceptional combat skills.
As a result, I ended up being the only player in the game who had raised his physical attack power rather than magic attack power and was consequently the only player who had succeeded in hunting the Demonic Black Dragon.
"Wow. Looks like I'm the only one who defeated it."
Filled with excitement, I was about to cast a wide-range aggro under the title [Black Dragon Solo Hunt Achievement.jpg] to the forum when—
Beep!
"Huh...?"
Suddenly, along with the appearance of the beeping sound that seemed to echo throughout the world, the strength drained from my body, and the world began to spin.
[Due to reaching the wrong ending, 90% of the Aether World has been destroyed.]
'Wh-What is this...?'
The ceiling became distant.
My vision blurred.
The world seemed increasingly obscure.
[But you are the player closest to the ‘True Ending’.]
'I… I defeated the Black Dragon... I should be bragging about it...'
A bizarre, eerie whisper reached my ears, but it felt strangely far off.
[I sincerely hope you reach the true ending.]
My world was plunged into darkness.