The moment I received the Gold Medal of Honor again.
VWOOOM!
The item’s unique golden effect lightly scattered around me.
“Huh? What is that?”
“I’ve never seen an effect like that before?”
At the golden glow, the gazes of the onlookers all gathered on my chest.
“A medal......!”
“He had one!”
“Gold?”
“That’s golden, isn’t it??”
“There was a gold Medal of Honor??”
The players who saw the [Gold Medal of Honor] on my chest began showing their confusion one by one.
“No, how did this......?”
“Silver wasn’t the end?”
“O-ohhhh!”
“Could it be a different item......?”
“The shape is the same!”
“It really does seem to be gold??”
“Isn’t it copper?”
“The color is completely different. It’s definitely not copper.”
“Wow, just how skilled do you have to be to get a real gold medal?”
While the onlookers were all exclaiming in admiration and approaching.
“Everyone, don’t be fooled!”
KingdomOldHand shouted and tried to stop the onlookers.
“He’s a hack-using bastard! He must have created an item that doesn’t exist! A gold medal doesn’t exist in the first place!!”
“Hmm......”
“Is that so?”
“Can hacks even do that kind of thing......?”
The gathered onlooking players seemed half-convinced and half-doubtful.
“But it’s not like there’s any proof that he’s really hacking.”
“Usually, only hardcore old-hand players get silver medals, right? If it’s gold, it probably seems higher than silver, so doesn’t that mean he might have the skill to do those consecutive parries from earlier?”
“No, but even pro gamer players from other games don’t talk about gold medals on stream. Maybe they really don’t exist?”
The players began arguing like that.
“Even with hacks, isn’t creating an item that doesn’t exist impossible? This is an online game.”
“Does anyone here have an Appraisal Skill?”
“Right. Rather than saying he created a fake with the same shape, it makes more sense that he earned it with skill.......”
“I’m a resident ghost on the community boards, and I haven’t seen any news about hacks going around the classic server yet.”
“Is it a rare hidden element......?”
“Honestly, saying it’s hacks feels forced.”
“Urgh, ugh......”
However, the atmosphere was the opposite of before.
In general, opinions gathered around the idea that I had obtained something unknown, rather than that I had used hacks.
KingdomOldHand’s first claim had been that I was hacking “because I was a player who had no medal in the first place.” That weak claim was coming back to poison him.
“Shouldn’t we look into it a little more first?”
“Does no one have anyone to ask?”
“Ah! Didn’t someone say Yang Pinpin was over there?”
“Miss Pinpin! Miss Pinpin! Look at that! A new hidden Medal of Honor appeared!”
“Wow, look at them going straight to tell a streamer.”
The other players, who had been carefully inspecting the Medal of Honor, soon concluded that my Medal of Honor was real and began making a fuss.
“Excuse me, can I take a screenshot? I don’t think anyone in the community will believe it if I talk about it without proof.”
“Is it that rare?”
When I asked that just to confirm, the surrounding players nodded repeatedly and answered.
“I watched at least thirty guides for the classic server before running the opening, but I never once heard anything about a gold medal.”
The armor player gave a brief explanation beside me.
“Right. Even for the route to get the silver medal here, Elysium specialist streamers kept emphasizing that you couldn’t do it unless you were an absolute expert!”
“It’s the third day since the classic server opened, and unless someone is really serious about playing, they can’t even reach this hidden area. And even then, most of them end at iron or bronze medals.”
The other players also added on after the armor player.
But wait. What did they just say?
“Even copper is hard to get?”
I asked back at that hard-to-believe statement. Really?
“Yes. The top 5%? No, maybe only the top 10% get it.”
“That person did speak a bit sharply, but.......”
“It really is hard to get.”
“Right. The people challenging this hidden on day three of opening are mostly old-hands who came after watching guides, and even among them, it’s a top-tier item.......”
“Hm......”
KingdomOldHand had not been showing off his Copper Medal for no reason. That was the opinion of the other players.
Originally, even getting a Copper Medal meant you were a user in the top 10%, and silver was an item that only specialist streamer-level players could obtain.
‘Well, I even received the Gold Medal of Honor for the first time today.’
If that was the case for me, a former ranked player, what about ordinary players? There seemed to be many newbies too. Some people might be encountering the information itself for the first time here.
“So, um.......”
“Can we take screenshots?”
In truth, I did not particularly like having my character recorded, but with the situation having turned out like this, I could not exactly refuse. I had also heard various explanations from them.
“Well, do whatever you want.”
“Yes!”
“He says we can take screenshots!”
“Oh!”
“I’ll take one too!”
Like that, for a while, the surrounding players crowded around and took screenshots, videos, and the like.
‘There sure are a lot of rich people these days.......’
Among them, I could see quite a few video recording icons. Just how many people with expensive VR capsules were there now?
“Wow, but even the gloss on the gold medal is different.”
“Right! It even has a light effect.”
“It keeps glowing faintly.”
“The effect is similar to Legendary grade or higher.”
“I heard only heavenly experts can get silver.......”
“If this is a higher reward than silver, maybe the effect is different too?”
Gamers were, by nature, the sort to drool over rare items. Even if the reward was only for honor.
In that sense, the appearance of an item even higher in grade than the Silver Medal of Honor, which they had thought was the highest grade, had probably become good bait for them.
However.
“So.......”
Bait was bait, and I still had something to say.
“Are you still going to report me?”
I asked KingdomOldHand again.
“Well, I won’t stop you if you want to abuse reports however you like and eat the penalty yourself.”
“N-no......! But......! Gold, there’s no way something like that exists!”
KingdomOldHand still tried to nitpick as if he could not believe it, but that nitpicking failed to take shape. He looked as if his fighting spirit had completely broken.
“Honestly, hasn’t that guy been too much from earlier?”
That was when someone spoke, tossing the words out.
“I know party recruitment took a while, but he kept picking and choosing people.”
“There were a lot of us he criticized because we didn’t meet the cutoff.”
“He doesn’t even know, but he says an item is manipulated and drives someone into being a hack user.”
“Isn’t accusing someone of being a bug user or hack user without evidence grounds for punishment?”
It was a backlash. The onlookers added their own words one by one and began criticizing KingdomOldHand.
“No, what does it matter if I’m a little selective with my party?! The problem is that your skills are lacking!”
“Wow, he’s really shameless.”
“Wouldn’t none of this have happened if you hadn’t criticized someone from the start?”
“This would be over if you just apologized.”
“Should we report him for bad manners?”
“Right. This is report-worthy.”
“Y-you damned......!”
When the other players tried to take extreme measures, KingdomOldHand spat out a curse.
“Just you wait!!”
VWOOOM!
Then he vanished with light in an instant.
Logout.
He had cut off his connection entirely and fled.
It was a magnificent declaration of defeat.
“Ah! He ran away!”
“It’s fine! I already reported him!”
“I also found out his nickname and ID code with skill! Do you want me to tell you so you can report him directly?”
“No?”
“Ah! Then should I put him on blast in the community as a bad-mannered user?”
The gathered onlookers offered to help bring the hammer down on KingdomOldHand.
“It’s fine.”
“Huh? Are you really okay with that?”
“If he disappeared from in front of me, that’s enough.”
Did people these days submit reports over arguments between players like this?
‘The world has gotten so boring.’
Back in the day, in situations like this, people would exchange all kinds of curses, draw swords, do PVP, and decide that the one who won was right.
Then the loser would neatly wrap things up by fulfilling one request from the victorious player as the price of defeat.
As a rule, in games, once you left the spot, you did not dwell on what had happened.
After all, not even tomorrow, but just an hour later, you might run into each other again in the arena.
“Are you really not going to report him?”
“No.”
“Wow, you’re magnanimous.”
“Am I?”
Why were they calling me magnanimous over something like this?
“Excuse me, expert.”
“Yes?”
“Would it be okay if I asked you something?”
“A question?”
“Um, about the gold medal.”
“Ah.”
Well, it did seem like most of the kids here did not know.
“That’s fine.”
“Ah! Thank you!”
“Wow!”
“He’s just revealing a hidden element. He’s really magnanimous.......”
“I want to get back to playing the game, so can we finish quickly?”
“Ah, yes, yes!”
When I showed signs that I wanted to leave quickly, the nearby players rapidly began pouring out questions.
“How did you get the gold medal?!”
“It seemed like you didn’t know the guide for this hidden quest, so is it a completely different method?”
“What exactly did you do?”
“Can we know the strategy you used, expert?”
“Hm......”
I did not know how to explain it. In the first place.......
“There isn’t really anything to call a strategy.”
“Huh?”
“Huh? Then how exactly did you......?”
“You just clear it.”
I had just cleared it with pure physical skill, so there was no strategy to teach or not teach. Truly, all I had done was clear it.
“What???”
“Huh??”
Then everyone seemed speechless, and their expressions were something else. The downside of VR games was that if you did not manage your expression, everything showed like this.
“No, no. No, no, no.”
One of the players shook his head furiously and spoke.
“What do you mean, clear it? Clear it? What exactly are you clearing?”
It was a strange conversation.
In the first place, even if you did not go as far as gold, obtaining the Silver Medal of Honor already required defeating the [Medusius Serpent].
Where was there any reason to feel strange about the phrase “clear it” here?
“I don’t really understand what you’re saying. I’ve earned the Silver Medal of Honor before too, and even the Silver Medal of Honor is something you get by clearing the hidden section.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you usually get the silver medal through farming?”
“I haven’t seen any guide get the silver medal in any way other than farming.”
“Farming?”
Wait, what was this about?
“Farming sounds strange to me. How did you all get your medals?”
“Well.......”
When I asked that, the other players began explaining one by one how they had arrived at this Eighth Supply Base.
“You clear almost all the way to the end of the tutorial. Around the final part of the tutorial, instead of completing it, once the level-up restriction is released, you hunt and farm nearby.”
“Until you reach level 10, the level for first class advancement.”
......From this point onward, something already felt unusual.
“Why would you level up?”
“Huh?”
“What?”
“Hm?”
At my question, the players once again could not hide their confusion.
“The cutoff for the Silver Medal is rescuing ten wounded soldiers, collecting ten deceased recognition tags, and seeing the [Medusius Serpent] boss event, right?”
“When escorting the wounded soldiers, there’s a battle with goblins, so raising your level first is the standard strategy.”
“Right? I followed that too.......”
“......”
This was also a strategy I truly had not known.
‘Was something new discovered?’
Had it been discovered separately after I quit the game? Back when I was digging into this hidden element, the only known method had been to kill the [Medusius Serpent].......
“So for gold, what do you have to do from there?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind, maybe some tips.......”
“It will be hard for me to give tips in that direction.”
Because I did not know that strategy route.
For these players to follow my strategy, they would have to progress until scenario replay opened, then redo the tutorial from the beginning.
At this point in time, it was safe to say there was no strategy to branch into my route at all.
“You have to clear it with a completely different method from all of you.”
“Huh?”
“What exactly does that mean......?”
Toward the other players looking puzzled, I explained the process by which I had obtained the Gold Medal of Honor.
The route where I killed the boss at level 1.
***
“Damn it, damn it!”
KingdomOldHand rose roughly from his VR capsule.
‘To think I got wiped by a hack-using bastard and even got reported!’
His luck was filthy. Far too filthy.
But.
‘Don’t think this is over.’
He did not know about the other players, but he could not be fooled. KingdomOldHand, who took pride in his own skill, blindly trusted his judgment like that.
‘It’ll be certain if I watch the replay.’
Then he played the video he had captured of his duel with Kylo on his desktop.
Kim Woo-jin=Kylo firmly believed that recording video of VR games was impossible without specialized equipment, but in reality, that was not the case.
While Woo-jin was serving in the military, a new codec for recording VR games had been developed, so now even budget VR capsules could easily record games.
Because of that, KingdomOldHand could review the duel between himself and Kylo so easily.
‘No matter how I think about it, something’s wrong.’
And while checking the recorded duel video, KingdomOldHand came to that conclusion.
‘Skill slashes aren’t at a speed you can receive normally.’
The skill [Slash], which Kylo had received as if it were nothing. Even that skill slash was extremely fast compared to a sword strike swung by an ordinary person.
It was to the point that someone unfamiliar with VR games could not even respond.
Each game also included concentration correction so ordinary people could adapt to that game speed.
The problem was the concentration correction.
‘[Elysium Online]’s concentration correction only activates when you’re in a skill standby situation.’
Naturally, a level 1 player could not receive that correction.
In other words.
‘If that bastard Kylo isn’t hacking, then he really received every slash with his naked eyes.’
But could such a thing possibly make sense?
‘Impossible.’
Like that, KingdomOldHand hardened his belief even further that Kylo was a hack-using player.
‘An in-game report probably won’t filter him properly.’
Investigations into misconduct through in-game reports were mostly carried out based on logs from the time of the report, or decided based on the results of surveys sent to nearby players.
At the time, all the gathered onlookers had been deceived into thinking Kylo was not a hack-using player.
At this rate, the one punished by the report would not be Kylo, but KingdomOldHand.
‘There’s a sure method for times like this.’
KingdomOldHand used his desktop to visit an [Elysium Online]-related community he knew.
Then he began writing a post on the community exposing Kylo.
Including the video he had personally recorded.
[Looks like there’s already a hack user on the classic server??]
[(Duel video clip)]
[A shell account named ‘Kylo’ is chain-parrying Slash in the tutorial zone and it’s fucking insane lol. Are they not catching hacks?]
Publicizing it to the community.
That was the final measure KingdomOldHand chose.
And that measure worked quite well.
Not only did the view count rise instantly.
[Hacks already?]
[Crazy lol. He really parries everything?]
[Trash game level lololol]
[They updated the original to develop a classic, and this is what we get???]
The reactions he wanted poured into the comments in an instant.
It was a great success.
‘The game just opened. They’ll try to catch it actively so the game doesn’t have issues.’
The end of the blazing hack controversy would ultimately head where KingdomOldHand intended.
‘And I revealed the name Kylo properly.’
Toward Kylo, the person performing consecutive parries.
If the hack controversy spread like this, even if he did nothing more, the measures Kylo deserved would be taken against him.
Because every Elysium Online game community would focus on Kylo.
‘Good. Yes.’
Satisfied like that, KingdomOldHand closed the community page.
KingdomOldHand’s prediction was only half right.
[Is the hack-using bastard still in-game?]
[What’s his nickname??]
[It’s in the video.]
[Kylo......?]
[The nickname sounds normal lol]
Kylo becomes the main character of the [Elysium Online] community.
[Kylo? I feel like I’ve seen this nickname somewhere???]
Only up to that point.