After a game has been out for around ten years, players become so skilled that their enthusiasm often stagnates.
With no new content to explore, some players resort to peculiar antics, like equipping their characters with nothing but underwear and attempting boss raids. Others focus on setting new dungeon-clear records. A few even obsessively replay the same content until there’s nothing left to discover.
Among those players were those who even dared to go for the so-called ‘shit-tier characters’ that no one else would touch.
And that’s exactly the kind of player I am.
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 characters were easy to use yet offered excellent performance, while others were so flawed and absurdly difficult that even veteran players avoided them.
But I’m different.
I’m the kind of freak who spent ten years playing one of the hardest, most underperforming, flaw-ridden, and downright trashy character: ‘Baek Yu-Seol.’
In the fantasy world of Aether World, where magic governed everything and everyone could wield it, Baek Yu-Seol was the sole character incapable of using magic. As a result, he was completely unpopular, treated like a background character with zero significance.
Of course, it did not mean that Baek Yu-Seol couldn’t use any magic at all.
He could use one magic: Flash.
Flash was a basic skill available to all mages, but it had a long cooldown, drained a ton of mana, and left the user stunned for two seconds after use. Unsurprisingly, hardly anyone used it.
But that wasn’t all.
Flash teleported the user randomly, covering a distance between three and ten meters in a random direction. If luck wasn’t on your side, you could crash into the ground, hit a wall, or even phase through a ceiling, leading to instant death.
In short, Baek Yu-Seol was a character limited to a single, barely usable skill that everyone else ignored.
That said, there were some upsides. Baek Yu-Seol had trained Flash to its absolute limit. He could control the teleportation’s direction and fix its range, eliminating the two-second stun. Additionally, since he lacked any magic stats to begin with, he didn’t need to worry about mana depletion.
But that was about it.
In conclusion, the fact that he could slightly improve the trash skill was the end of it.
Flash worked by enabling extremely rapid movement, but the speed was so great that failing to control it often resulted in instant death from the recoil. In crowded areas filled with enemies, using Flash made you an easy target with no way to fight back.
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 other than Flash in a game where other characters could easily and efficiently use magical skills?
Numerous veteran players tried to conquer the challenge, but all of them gave up eventually.
While everyone else quit, I continued practicing Flash over and over again until I completely mastered it.
After coming to the realization that the trait 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 and cancel.
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 somehow ended up killing the final boss, a boss I hadn’t even known existed.
“What?”
I had been casually completing a quest to find the missing female protagonist when a massive black dragon with an ominous name appeared out of nowhere.
“A final boss?”
Wait, was there even supposed to be a final boss in a dating sim? Wasn’t the game supposed to end with the protagonist marrying the female lead?
“It’s my first time playing a game like this, so I don’t know.”
Though, I’d been stuck on this ‘first game’ for ten years.
Somehow, I had a feeling that I’m meant to fight the boss for a long time before it died. So I started equipping myself with legendary-grade artifacts one by one and maxing out my stats, but after all of that, I almost didn’t win. Fortunately, I did. I might have to suffer from the shame of losing to a boss as a veteran player.
“What the heck was this dragon?”
The Demonic Black Dragon, Thirteenth Onyx Moon.
Curious, I skimmed through its backstory since it was the final boss.
“Hmm…”
The story went like this.
Apparently, there was a sinister cult-like group in the game called the Dark Mages who had infiltrated various parts of the fantasy world. Their ultimate goal was to merge the world with the underworld known as Persona Gate. Once the Dark Mages enveloped the world with Persona Gate, the Demonic Black Dragon would appear.
Since I was more interested in alchemy and crafting with NPCs, I had ignored most of the game’s lore. I had no idea all of this was happening in the background.
“Wow. The entire worldbuilding is in ruins.”
Looking at the map, 90% of the continent had been consumed by the Persona Gate and reduced to ashes. Only the game’s main setting, Stella Academy, remained intact, but even it was stained red, and the situation seemed dire.
I had been so preoccupied defeating other players on the PvP integrated server that I hadn’t even noticed.
Curious about the community’s reaction, I considered taking a screenshot and posting it online. For the first time in ages, I headed 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.
[Title: Ah! This damn game! Suddenly that Black Dragon or whatever appears and all my game data goes to hell.]
[Title: What the hell is this Black Dragon thing? It shows that my character died and now I can’t even log in.]
[Title: 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 forums were flooded with posts from players complaining about coming back after a long time only to find their characters deleted.
“What?”
So, it wasn’t just me who got the final boss? Did the Black Dragon show up for everyone’s game data simultaneously?
“How weird.”
But there was one strange thing.
I scrolled through the forum for a while, yet I couldn’t find a single post claiming anyone had defeated the Black Dragon.
Baek Yu-Seol is undeniably a weak character, no matter how many legendary-grade artifacts I equip him with. Meanwhile, countless other players have far stronger and more efficient characters. It’s strange that I haven’t seen anyone posting about defeating the Black Dragon multiple times by now.
At that moment, I came across a post by a famous high-ranked player, and my eyes widened in surprise.
[Title: Hey, guys, wasn’t this boss not even meant to be beaten?]
[Content: F*ck! This damn Black Dragon has a 99% magic resistance passive, and can infinitely repeat magic absorption and magic release without cooldown. How the hell are we supposed to kill it? Seriously, what kind of bug/monster is this? It’s a bugged mob… I think we need to report it.]
“Oh right… There was something like that.”
It was blatantly unfair to introduce a boss that nullified magic in a world where magic was everything.
But it was different for me. Flash was just a movement skill for me, so I had no choice but to learn weapon techniques, which was truly unusual.
As a result, I became the only player to prioritize physical attack over magic.
Consequently, that might be the reason why I was the only one who managed to defeat 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 Play. Proof.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 an incorrect ending, 90% of Aether World has been destroyed.]
‘Wh-What is this…?’
The ceiling felt impossibly distant as my vision blurred and the world grew hazier.
[However, you are the player closest to achieving the ‘True Ending.’]
‘I was… supposed to show off… that I beat the Black Dragon…’
A bizarre, dissonant whisper brushed against my ears, distant yet oddly clear.
[Please, reach the True Ending.]
My world was plunged into darkness.
