The Ascalah Season update.
Just adding a new region would’ve been enough to make people clap, but this was a new continent update.
Maybe they were worried people would suspect “new continent” meant a map the size of a rat turd, because Serity went ahead and revealed both Ascalah’s overall scale and its playable area in the patch notes.
A massive map the size of everything that’s been released so far. Sure, the regions we already have are stacked with stuff like undersea dungeons and sky islands, so the actual playable space is way bigger than the surface area—but the fact that the surface area is equal alone meant this was an insane-scale update.
On top of that, the level cap was going up. New dungeons meant new builds and new endgame gear, so it was a massive plus for a trash game that’d been dying for content.
The teaser video Serity released for the update absolutely reeked of money, and the new packages practically sizzled with naked hunger for cash.
One-line review: those cheap-ass Serity fuckers actually did something.
This one was a hit.
It was a batshit Serity dev special they’d clearly gone all in on. Even my guildmates who’d been chanting “Aurora is fucking dead, Serity go bankrupt” with me every day suddenly flipped and started praising “Godrity.”
Aurora might be a content-starved trash game for stagnant-water players… but it has never had a bad major update. Every update season, this trash game rockets back up into god-tier hype.
It was the kind of update that made your heart race.
Sadly, I wasn’t in a position to just be happy about it. Fuck, did the announcement really have to drop the exact moment I decided I’d cleanly quit for a few months? Unless Holy Knight suddenly exploded into S-tier, I’d planned to cut myself off cold turkey for a while. Of all things, Holy Knight got a modest buff too, so my motivation to play was boiling over.
So I stood blatantly in a conflict zone, waiting for 『rainfall』 to come find me. Maybe someone tipped him off, because he showed up in less than five minutes.
[General]kk1234: Hey
[General]『rainfall』: Die
[General]kk1234: I’ll die, just let me ask one thing
[General]『rainfall』: What
[General]kk1234: You see the update notice?
『rainfall』 didn’t answer, like he didn’t even want to talk to me. He didn’t deny it, though, so let’s assume he saw it.
[General]kk1234: You gonna keep doing this after the update drops?
[General]kk1234: You not gonna play the damn game?
[General]kk1234: You play just to hit me??
[General]kk1234: Go enjoy the new content, man
[General]『rainfall』: If your behavior changes just because your situation changed, you can’t call that a sincere action from the heart
[General]kk1234: ?
[General]『rainfall』: I’m saying you don’t have to worry, because it’ll be exactly the same as before
From the little I’d picked up talking to this bastard so far—
Not that we’d “talked” much; most of what 『rainfall』 said was just “die”—he had a habit of stretching his bullshit out into long speeches.
[General]kk1234: Hey, 『rainfall』 sir
[General]kk1234: You’re max level too, right
[General]kk1234: Level cap’s going up this time, you’re not gonna level?
[General]『rainfall』: Of course I am
[General]kk1234: I’m gonna be logged in all day, you know?
[General]『rainfall』: Then you won’t be leveling
[General]kk1234: 😂 Right, I guess it is about time we stopped this
[General]『rainfall』: I said I won’t be leveling
[General]kk1234: You’re not leveling and you’re gonna chase me around instead?
Is he fucking sane?
[General]『rainfall』: Yeah
[General]『rainfall』: I have to torment you when it matters most so you’ll actually suffer
Fuck, that gave me goosebumps…….
This one was real.
[General]kk1234: Hey
[General]kk1234: Let’s just do this by the book
[General]『rainfall』: If I could do it by the book, I already would have
[General]kk1234: What would you even do?
[General]『rainfall』: Report you
[General]kk1234: Even if someone files a report, that’d be me, dude;
[General]『rainfall』: Private punishment inside the game isn’t prohibited by law
I thought of RibulleMilkTea going on about his “dignity” and whatever. I could see why now. They’d obviously gotten sucked in like they were being converted by some cult, hypnotized by his big, fancy words that seemed to make sense on the surface.
If 『rainfall』 were in front of me right now, I’d snap his neck.
I’d never once wanted to know what someone was like in real life from a game before, but with 『rainfall』, I genuinely wanted to know. I wanted to meet him and see what the hell a guy who thinks like this actually looks like.
[General]kk1234: Hey
[General]kk1234: Where do you live?
[General]『rainfall』: Die
[General]kk1234: Let’s fight in real life;
[General]『rainfall』: No thanks, just die
[General]kk1234: Wait a second
Get a grip. 『rainfall』 might not have any grip on reality, but that didn’t mean I got to lose mine too…….
The guy I was dealing with was a maniac you couldn’t reason with. I had to talk to him from his level, like I was some famous dog trainer or psychiatrist.
Okay.
I’m a lunatic.
And because I’m a lunatic, I can understand another lunatic.
[General]kk1234: You’re having a rough time lately too, right
[General]kk1234: I get it, I really do
[General]『rainfall』: Don’t spout nonsense
[General]kk1234: Haven’t you done enough for your so-called revenge at this point?
[General]kk1234: You know… revenge doesn’t bring anything back
[General]『rainfall』: It brought us to you throwing this tantrum, didn’t it
Son of a bitch.
[General]kk1234: Look, whatever, aren’t you tired?
Please be tired. Hurling yourself at me all day every day just to kill me is a waste of energy. It’s a waste of the meals you eat from noon to one and from six to seven. A waste of electricity. A waste of the mom who ate seaweed soup after giving birth to you—okay, let’s not go there…….
Anyway, it’s a waste.
[General]kk1234: Blind revenge only gives birth to more revenge
[General]kk1234: Let’s free ourselves from petty grudges
[General]『rainfall』: You’re not in your right mind, are you?
Not exactly the kind of thing I expected to hear from the craziest person I know.
[General]『rainfall』: I’m not tired. And my revenge is over
[General]kk1234: Then why are you still hitting me?
[General]『rainfall』: To rehabilitate you
[General]kk1234: ??
[General]『rainfall』: I want you to understand how all the people you beat up every day feel and reflect on it
He must be insane……
This bastard really must be insane.
I knew he was crazy, but he was a full-on lunatic.
This wasn’t some “playing a character” thing. He was genuinely like this.
[General]kk1234: If someone saw this
[General]kk1234: They’d think I stabbed somebody in real life;;
[General]kk1234: This is a game, man...
[General]kk1234: Let’s not over-immerse and try to get our healthy lives back
You’re allowed to smack some people around in a game; the way he was going on, anyone would think I literally stabbed someone offline. Unfortunately, normal human words did not penetrate the lunatic’s skull.
[General]『rainfall』: You’re the one who needs to get your healthy life back
[General]『rainfall』: Die
[General]kk1234: Wait a sec
[General]kk1234: Wait, sir, please listen;
[General]kk1234: Just 5 seconds
[General]『rainfall』: 5
[General]『rainfall』: 4
[General]kk1234: Hey
[General]『rainfall』: 3
[General]『rainfall』: 2
[General]kk1234: I was wrong
[General]『rainfall』: 1
[General]kk1234: I said I was wrong
[General]kk1234: I’m sick and tired of getting beat too, I totally understand how the people I beat up feel now
[General]kk1234: I’ve reflected on my actions
[General]kk1234: I’m the piece of shit here
[General]kk1234: I’m really, truly sorry
『rainfall』 suddenly stopped dead. Even I knew he hadn’t been “moved” by my half-assed apology.
[General]『rainfall』: Not falling for it
[General]kk1234: What?
[General]『rainfall』: People have been showing me the callout boards. Everything you’ve been doing
[General]kk1234: Callout boards are literally there so people can shit on anyone they want
[General]『rainfall』: I saw the videos on YouTube too
[General]『rainfall』: I’ve seen exactly what you’ve been doing until now
Ah, that Straight bastard……. I should’ve twisted his arm off when he was filming me without asking.
[General]kk1234: I’ve seriously reflected now
[General]『rainfall』: You’ve “reflected,” huh
[General]kk1234: I’ve genuinely reflected, sir
Just let it go already.
Right then, something unbelievable popped up in front of my eyes.
<‘『rainfall』’ has sent you a friend request. Do you want to accept?>
Of all things, this was—
A friend request from 『rainfall』.
Aurora’s friend system… wasn’t that different from other games. Once you registered someone, it was easier to talk to them. You could see whether they were online.
It wasn’t anything special, but it definitely wasn’t the kind of access you hand over to a stalker. It was basically like installing CCTV inside your house.
But I couldn’t bring myself to just hit “decline” on a lunatic’s friend request right away.
[General]kk1234: What the hell? Friend fee’s 100 million gold
To my surprise, 『rainfall』 immediately opened a trade window. I canceled it out of sheer disbelief.
[General]kk1234: I was joking; why are you sending a trade, and why the friend request
[General]『rainfall』: I need proof
[General]kk1234: Proof of what
[General]『rainfall』: I’m going to check, by staying with you, whether you go around beating people up or not
Why the hell is this bastard skipping ahead to “staying with me” when I haven’t said a single word about that?
[General]kk1234: Who said anything about staying together?
[General]『rainfall』: Then keep living like this
[General]『rainfall』: I don’t mind
[General]『rainfall』: It’s not like I want to hang out with you or anything
From 『rainfall』, I could feel this unbending conviction. He really was rigid as hell. The only problem was that the direction he’d picked to stand firm on was stalking.
If it were anyone else, I’d just go, “Yeah, sure, keep it up,” and walk away. The problem was, 『rainfall』 actually would do it, just like he said.
[General]『rainfall』: I’ll wait a bit, so answer
Thankfully, 『rainfall』 didn’t start counting down from sixty or anything. The way he said he’d wait calmly made it clear how serious he was about the offer… which gave me goosebumps and also made me feel like I had to answer carefully.
This was 『rainfall』, someone who did what he said he’d do. Unless I ditched my main and raised a new alt, my answer was basically predetermined.
Still, seriously, “stay with 『rainfall』”?
Even ignoring the fact that he’s a lunatic, this guy is… a rich kid who dumped a stupid amount of money into his gear… an Archmage who got knocked down a bit from “broken-tier” but is still a top-tier grinder……
……Actually, that’s really not bad?
From the beginning, the thing Aurora advertised the hardest was its hidden quest system. Instead of revealing all the content from the start, there were dungeons that only appeared as quests progressed through player actions.
If you were the first to clear one of those hidden quests, you got some kind of reward. It wasn’t some earthshaking difference like in webnovels or webtoons, but for rankers whose positions were decided by tiny numbers, even a few digits mattered a lot. Plus, just being the first felt good, so if you played Aurora, you’d probably want to aim for a first clear at least once.
The more people you had, the more likely the story was to leak… Even if you ran it with trusted guildmates, our guild was big enough that someone could quietly sell off information, so nerves were always on edge.
In that respect too, 『rainfall』 was stable. He didn’t seem like the type to sell quest info anywhere. If anything, he’d probably hunt down whoever did. “Death to traitors,” or some shit. Not that I’d sell anything either.
It wasn’t bad. Easy confidentiality, strong party member. It really wasn’t bad. Efficiency-wise, anyway.
The problem was that the guy in question was a once-in-a-lifetime lunatic…….
[General]kk1234: Fine
[General]kk1234: I’ll do it
What choice did I have? The lunatic was basically saying, “Party with me or die.”
In the end, I got on the same boat as a madman.