Back then, the one AFK in the guild hideout, standing and staring at the wall, was ScamMage. He slowly shuffled over. Then he swapped the black wizard hat he’d been wearing for a green one, planted his hands on his hips, and tilted his head back.
<‘ScamMage’ laughs arrogantly at ‘kk1234’.>
The effort of changing his whole outfit just to do that useless little performance, plus that shitty emote on top of it… he was going all-in just to make fun of me. If I cracked ScamMage’s head open right now, I’d get a unanimous “not guilty” verdict in court.
Unfortunately, you can’t kill members of your own guild, so my weapon just sliced through empty air.
[Guild]ScamMage: if you’ve got that kind of energy go hit rainfall instead...
[Guild]ScamMage: running away to the guild hideout just cuz you got beat up a bit
[Guild]ScamMage: you’re the shame of our guild...
[Guild]kk1234: shut the fuck up
[Guild]Rete: lolololololololol
Rete was laughing so hard at my misfortune he was practically rolling on the floor. I stabbed my sword right into where Rete’s stomach would be. He was probably doubled over laughing like that in real life, too.
[Guild]ScamMage: Rete, stop laughing...
[Guild]Rete: ?
[Guild]ScamMage: I get that mocking K is fun and pathetic and all
[Guild]ScamMage: but you’re dirtying up the chat so cut it out...
[Guild]Rete: sure lol
I thought he was stepping in to calm things down, but of course not. Why would there be even one person here who’s actually useful? I really should just quit this damn guild…
No, seriously though, they only talk like that because it’s not their problem. You think I’d be like this if 『rainfall』 had only beaten me up once or twice?
『rainfall』 came for me every day.
Not once a day either—he seemed to spend the entire day hunting me down and beating on me. That’s how obsessively he kept coming to PK me.
Sure, I could avoid 『rainfall』 if I went into a dungeon. Aurora uses an instanced dungeon system that generates a map for each entry. Once a party goes in, no other players can follow them inside.
Of course, that vicious bastard would just get someone to ping him my last known location and wait at the dungeon entrance.
If I really wanted to avoid him, I could clear the dungeon and log out right away, or immediately flee straight to the guild hideout.
But you can only dodge like that for so long. And in Aurora, field grinding, running into other players out in the open, makes up a huge chunk of the game.
Worst case, there’s always the option to check the setting that disables PK outside conflict zones. The problem is, I’ve spent years laughing at people who did that… as if I could stomach doing something that lame.
So yeah, it was basically impossible for me to avoid 『rainfall』 completely.
[Guild]kk1234: you guys are only talking like this
[Guild]kk1234: cuz you’ve never actually met rainfall, fuck
[Guild]kk1234: total psycho bastard
[Guild]ScamMage: tsk, loser...
[Guild]kk1234: fuck off
I swung my sword around with all my might, wanting nothing more than to turn ScamMage into the loser here. Sadly, carving up empty air did nothing to vent my stress.
[Guild]ScamMage: stop hitting me already...
[Guild]kk1234: big talker when you’re flaming, now you want me to stop swinging
[Guild]ScamMage: I wasn’t flaming.. I was just stating facts..
Should I actually kill him?
[Guild]ScamMage: but yeah he’s a psycho for sure
[Guild]ScamMage: not your average nutcase
[Guild]ScamMage: if it were me I’d get tired and give upㅇ.ㅇ
Before I could tell him to meet me in the arena, ScamMage read the room and said it himself. Yeah. 『rainfall』 was a crazy psycho lunatic bastard.
[Guild]Rete: that persistence is insane lolololololololololololol
[Guild]ScamMage: stop fucking laughing already
[Guild]Rete: yessir lol
[Guild]kk1234: instead of laughing, go hit that bastard for me
[Guild]kk1234: I’ll put up a ten-million-gold bounty
[Guild]kk1234: deal?
[Guild]ScamMage: no thanks what if he starts stalking me too..
[Guild]Rete: I get enough attention in real life
[Guild]Rete: I don’t need some guy chasing me around in-game, that’d just be tiring
Yeah, that obsessive side of him was exactly why everyone stayed away from 『rainfall』. If it were me, I’d leave some other poor schmuck to get hit, too.
It’s not that you avoid crazy people because you’re scared of them. You avoid them because they’re disgusting. Our ancestors never said a truer thing, and 『rainfall』 was single-handedly proving them right.
Rete, who’d been rolling around on the floor, must’ve sensed I was lining up a kill angle on him, because he sat his ass down like a good boy.
[Guild]Rete: hmm
[Guild]Rete: his gear’s one thing, but every piece is fully reinforced and all his runes are max rolled too..
[Guild]Rete: otherwise how the hell does an Archmage survive Barrier and Holy Spear
[Guild]ScamMage: an Archmage?
[Guild]ScamMage: are you sure K didn’t just unequip his weapon?
[Guild]kk1234: -_-
[Guild]Rete: K’s not that stupid
[Guild]kk1234: fuck off
[Guild]Rete: rainfall’s a rich kid who blew a fuckton of cash
[Guild]ScamMage: more than you, Rete?
[Guild]Rete: probably??
[Guild]ScamMage: well your weapon does suck...
ScamMage’s words hit Rete’s button. His pathetic weapon started spewing flames for no reason.
[Guild]Rete: you think I’m gonna spend real money on this trash game??
[Guild]ScamMage: listen to the excuses...
[Guild]ScamMage: you were calling it a god game when you hit +17...
[Guild]Rete: it broke in the end, remember, fucker
[Guild]kk1234: lolololol
[Guild]Rete: don’t laugh
[Guild]kk1234: lololololololololololol
It was true that Rete had money. My family’s doing okay, but I’m still just a student living on an allowance… Rete’s a rich unemployed bum. In terms of gear, he’s in the top tier of our guild.
But 『rainfall』’s gear put even big-spender Rete to shame. That kind of setup isn’t something you do with money alone. It costs both money and time. As much as me—or maybe even more.
Which is why what I really wanted to know was:
[Guild]kk1234: so why the fuck is some money-blowing trust-fund brat targeting just me?
If you’ve spent that much, go enjoy your life. Why are you tormenting innocent little me? If he were trash-talking and griefing everyone all over the server, I’d get it, but he’d picked exactly one person: me. Being suddenly hunted like this was so unfair I could cry blood.
[Guild]Rete: you seriously don’t know?
[Guild]ScamMage: I knew from the moment you started pulling aggro everywhere you went..
[Guild]ScamMage: that someday this day would come..
[Guild]ScamMage: sinner... receive divine judgment..!
[Guild]Rete: lolololol
[Guild]Rete: lolololololololololololol
[Guild]ScamMage: see, you should’ve lived as innocently as I do
[Guild]Rete: ?
ScamMage wasn’t wrong that I’d lived pretty wild in this game. But I’d never done anything that would make someone chase me all day long out of sheer hatred… okay, fine, I have. But that person wasn’t 『rainfall』. Someone like him would definitely have stuck in my memory.
It’s not like there’ve only been one or two people with grudges against me. And the worst any of them ever did was form little mobs and wage PR wars in chat. The only one who’d ever stalked me this obsessively was 『rainfall』.
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: think about it carefully
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: you’ve definitely seen him before
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: no one keeps up a bit like this just for the “roleplay”
[Guild]Rete: you literally live like that
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: excuse me, what exactly do I do;
[Guild]kk1234: I honestly don’t remember
[Guild]kk1234: really have no idea
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: he’s studying you and then beating you up.. it’s deliberateㅎ
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: he’s probably watched every video that has you in it at least once
Hearing Straight talk all serious like that was ridiculous. The one who’s been most diligently uploading videos of me to YouTube is him.
And he doesn’t just upload them. He runs his mouth over them like some analyst: you avoid this like this, you hit that like that… he’s practically studied me, and now he’s acting like it’s someone else’s problem.
[Guild]kk1234: you’re really the one to talk?
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: hehe want me to buy you dinner?
[Guild]kk1234: you think you can pay this off with one meal?
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: then I’ll take responsibility
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: wanna get married?
[Guild]Rete: a luxurious wedding with the server’s number-one trash-personality streamer!?
Yeah, if we got married he’d upload a video titled exactly like that. Slave to views. A freak who can’t even empathize with his own guildmate’s suffering…
[Guild]kk1234: stop with the hearts already
I’m the one I pity the most for hanging around this place.
I was so desperate I even submitted a one-on-one support ticket, you know? “There’s a specific user repeatedly attacking me and disrupting the game so I can’t play normally; can’t you take action?” and all that.
Of course they didn’t.
If they did, my account would’ve been permabanned long ago.
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: then just hang in there a bit longer hehe
[Guild]kk1234: are you fucking kidding me
[Guild]kk1234: I seriously can’t do anything right now
[Guild]kk1234: cuz that bastard keeps chasing me;
[Guild]ScamMage: roll an alt...
[Guild]ScamMage: wanna level a mage with me?
[Guild]kk1234: I’m not interested in weakling classes
[Guild]kk1234: fuck off
[Guild]ScamMage: says the guy getting stomped by that weakling Archmage..
[Guild]Rete: lololol
[Guild]kk1234: oh come on
[Guild]ScamMage: if you’d rolled a mage you wouldn’t be getting stomped right now...
[Guild]kk1234: shut it
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: then just apologize and say you were wrong
[Guild]kk1234: wrong about what exactly
[Guild]ScamMage: wrong about something, for sure...
[Guild]kk1234: this is fucking unfair
[Guild]kk1234: I’m an upstanding, law-abiding young man in real life, okay
[Guild]ScamMage: then I’m an idol on a world tour...
[Guild]Rete: I’m a rich NEET
[Guild]SignalOnAndGoStraight: that part’s actually true for you, Rete
[Guild]ScamMage: I’m telling the truth too
[Guild]kk1234: I’m telling the truth as well, thanks??
I only act like an asshole in games… and even then, it’s not like I’ve done that much serious personality-trash stuff.
…Not that anyone here was in any mood to listen.