Character Balance Update
Hello.
This is [GM] Laon from Aurora, the fantasy world where ten thousand journeys unfold together.
The following changes have been applied through today’s client patch.
※ Patch Notes
Aurora had weekly maintenance once a week. And every two weeks, maintenance came with a small update.
Of course, what counted as “small” depended on the person. And this time, the update was definitely not small for some people.
The moment I read the patch notes, my mouth split into a grin. For once, it was a smile of genuine joy. I’d been about to queue up for another match, but without hesitation, I shut down Reohee.
My friends stared at me as I stood up from my seat.
“Hey, where are you going?”
“What? We just started. Why are you leaving already?”
Because you’re fucking terrible at the game.
I barely resisted saying it. Seriously, why the hell did you run off to save another player instead of running away? Two useless players deciding to “help” each other and then both dying together—thanks to that, we lost.
“Something came up.”
I needed to keep playing until I won to cool off, but the process would be hell. Time to escape.
“You’re going to meet your girlfriend, aren’t you!?”
“I said I don’t have one.”
I protested at the same accusation they threw at me every damn day, but of course, nobody believed me.
“That bastard definitely has a girlfriend.”
“Obviously. Come on. Even Mihee noona hit on him.”
Utter bullshit not worth replying to.
Rumors ranged from:
—my girlfriend is a senior in my department,
—she’s a famous model from X-Star,
—she’s a high schooler (are they insane?),
—to all sorts of other nonsense.
I’d never bothered correcting them (except the last one). Having a supposed girlfriend was actually useful whenever I needed a sudden excuse to disappear.
But the thing stealing my time wasn’t a girlfriend who didn’t exist—it was Aurora.
There were plenty of Aurora players around me, but I never let on that I played it. The reason was simple.
I was infamous in Aurora for shitty manners, but in real life, I lived like a clean-cut model student.
It would be troublesome if baseless speculation about my “personality” leaked into reality.
Honestly, I hadn’t done anything that terrible, but at some point, I’d become a named player known not only for skill but also for my “attitude.”
People claimed I cursed without thinking and beat people up impulsively, but that’s not true. I did hold back until I got pissed. My boiling point is just around forty degrees, so I hit that point instantly and start swinging.
I only tolerate less in the game than I do in real life. Because it’s just a game.
But players who lived and died by the game reacted as if I’d stabbed them in real life. Thanks to that, my notoriety had risen a bit.
In short: society was too uptight to appreciate a simple prank by a random user—so I had no choice but to play Aurora alone at home.
The moment I got home, I washed my hands and rushed to launch the game. As expected, the one greeting me was Sanchaek—foaming at the mouth and swearing in the guild chat.
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: Serity you fucking bastards
[Guild] kk1234: lol hi
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: I’m quitting Archmage, fuck
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: anyone wanna buy my gear
[Guild] KimMooni: oooooh
[Guild] KimMooni: buying for half price
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: I’m so pissed
[Guild] KimMooni: half priceeeee
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: not selling
[Guild] KimMooni: you said you were selling
[Guild] KimMooni: reporting for scamming
[Guild] kk1234: lol godrora
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: shut up
[Guild] kk1234: archmage dead class now lolol
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: fuck you
[Guild] KimMooni: he’s right tho
[Guild] KimMooni: archmage was a fucking broken class
[Guild] KimMooni: should’ve been nerfed ages ago
Mooni was right. Archmage could’ve taken two more nerfs easily. Complaining this hard over one nerfed skill was pathetic.
Sure, plenty of people had built their entire gear around Inferno, since it was basically the Archmage’s lifeline… but the situation where a single skill let you live and die was already absurd.
Meanwhile, Holy Knight had nothing but trash skills.
[Guild] kk1234: god patch...
[Guild] KimMooni: haha
[Guild] KimMooni: Serity should make lots of money and stay healthy~
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: ugh fucking hell
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: trash game
Honestly, Sanchaek wasn’t wrong—Aurora was a trash game.
The balance was garbage, fitting for a garbage game.
I cursed Serity out every time, wondering how long this bullshit operation could last. Meanwhile, idiots who only tasted the game for five minutes praised it as a masterpiece. They’d foam at the mouth if their class got nerfed, but sure, whatever.
And yeah, even though I called it a trash game, I still played it every day…
…Fine. Let’s be honest. It was a well-made game. The problem was the garbage management.
Is maintenance all you have to do? Every update made me terrified of what bullshit Serity had pulled this time. If you want to balance the game, then buff something. Why nerf to “balance” every single time? They definitely updated without testing. They’d understand if they actually played their own game.
But today, Serity wasn’t Shitty—they were God-rity.
Nerfing Archmage was nice, but the real joy was the rare Holy Knight buff. Seriously… when was the last buff? I shouldn’t be happy like a pushover. I should break their heads for this… but…
Maybe I was a pushover, because I was just happy. And since everybody else was mourning like they were at a funeral, my joy felt twice as sweet.
Not only that—they didn’t slap some useless damage bump on a trash skill. They buffed one of Holy Knight’s core skills, Inquisitorial Trial—shorter cooldown, longer stun. And while increasing the damage of Chains of Judgment was a very Serity-style random buff, well… it was extra, so whatever.
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: going to spam customer service
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: gonna send a hundred complaints a day
[Guild] KimMooni: you’ll get banned from customer service
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: ?
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: what kind of insane company bans customers in customer service
[Guild] KimMooni: this one—Shittyrity
[Guild] KimMooni: I got banned once
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: what, seriously??
[Guild] KimMooni: but I did use a macro to send hundreds of tickets
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: psycho
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: didn’t you get permabanned??
[Guild] KimMooni: I used an unused account
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: calculated psycho;;
[Guild] kk1234: if ur quitting just macro it
[Guild] IDontKnowIsSanchaek: fuck you
[Guild] kk1234: Mooni
[Guild] kk1234: wanna go arena? forget the peasant
[Guild] KimMooni: gotta gather quest items
Gathering quest materials, huh. Well, I needed them too. Not urgently, but eventually.
Aurora lacked content. Because they never updated anything new, lifestyle skills became the latest guild-wide craze.
I’d chosen Ancient Language. Occasionally needed for quests—not essential, but nice to have.
[Guild] kk1234: I should collect my quest items too
[Guild] KimMooni: what are you gathering
[Guild] kk1234: intermediate ancient lang
[Guild] KimMooni: ah
[Guild] KimMooni: then it’s fine
[Guild] kk1234: ?
[Guild] KimMooni: if you were gathering high-grade alchemy mats I was gonna kill you lol
[Guild] kk1234: nooo♡♡ not this
[Guild] KimMooni: then let’s gather peacefully in separate fields
Lifestyle skills—if Ancient Language even counted as a lifestyle skill—were easy to learn but required all sorts of random items.
And the items were untradeable, so you had to gather them yourself. The classic lazy developer move: padding empty content with grind.
I fell for it, and for the first time in a while, I went out to the field. Maybe I came too early. Hunting the monsters that dropped the quest items was mind-numbingly boring.
They either died in one hit or needed maybe three hits to go down—no tension, no thrill. I moved mechanically, treating it like manual labor.
Then someone appeared on the empty field. I was about to chase them off to another spot, annoyed—but then their name caught my eye.
『rainfall』?
That name stood out.
IRL, it didn’t matter what name you had. Whether there were ten thousand Kim Cheolsus or a million of them—whatever, personal freedom. …Though maybe a million might be enough for the government to step in.
But this was an online game. If another player had already taken a name, you’d get a pop-up saying “This name is not available” or “This name is already taken.”
That’s why I ended up slapping down “kk1234.”
A simple, short, common word like 『rainfall』? That was practically prehistoric. The kind of username you grabbed the moment the server opened.