Chapter 3
Chapter 3
A Master Never Backs Down
Click clack.
Slurp—.
“Hmmm….”
With an extremely serious expression, I stared at my computer screen while searching through information.
That information being the changes made to Abyss and how Camilla’s standing had changed alongside it.
[IfYouEmptyYourMindYouBecomeHappy(Ran): You seem like a returning player, Camilla. You should play something else. Nobody can use Camilla right now.]
The trigger for all this was the chat message I’d received from a teammate during my first game.
A user who kindly advised me that it would be better to choose a hero other than Camilla.
But I ignored his words and kept queueing for games anyway.
Because no matter then or now, Camilla was the only hero for me. And besides, I’d won plenty of games with poorly rated Camilla in the past, so why wouldn’t I be able to now? That stubbornness had also played a part.
And the result was three consecutive losses.
Only then did I finally accept reality.
Something major had changed, and understanding those changes came first.
So I accessed the Abyss official site and slowly began reviewing old patch notes one by one.
Like reading through a history book, I started from the final patch notes I had seen back when I actively played three years ago, carefully reading every single detail up until the present without skipping a word.
“I see.”
I reached my own conclusion.
There were two major reasons why I’d suddenly started losing like this.
The first was my changed body.
People naturally possess innate physical abilities unique to themselves.
In gaming and esports, that would mean things like reaction speed, dynamic vision, precision, and so on.
The original me hadn’t been bad in those aspects at all. I could at least react to enemy skills, especially slower ones, after seeing them.
As for fast skills or instant-cast abilities with almost no startup animation, there were even days when I could predict and avoid every single one of them if I was in good condition.
You could call that impressive, but honestly, that level was the bare minimum if you wanted to play Camilla. She was a character that absolutely required taking the initiative.
So then, what was the issue with my changed body? Had my physical ability deteriorated somehow?
No. Quite the opposite.
My new body, which resembled Camilla perfectly, followed the universal law of international TS beautiful girls and turned out to possess even greater physical ability than my original self.
I could vividly see every trajectory of the enemy’s skills, and instinctively felt that I could react to all of them.
The problem was my mind failing to keep up with this superior body.
I’d always enjoyed risky, edge-of-the-line playstyles, but this body possessed the physical capabilities to perform even more extreme maneuvers, causing me to hesitate for a split second with thoughts like, Can I actually do this?
In other words, while my old self played by pushing my brain to its absolute limits, now I didn’t even know where my new limits were, so I kept faltering.
And on a battlefield where a moment’s hesitation could lead directly to death, that slight hesitation inevitably became fatal.
To summarize, this tragedy was caused by my inability to properly understand the specs of my current body.
Eventually, it was something that would resolve itself with enough time.
I believed I’d one day adapt to the two giant water balloons that constantly shook around while gaming, weighed heavily enough to hurt my shoulders, and got in the way every time I moved.
“Ughhh….”
Thinking about those water balloons made my shoulders and neck start aching again, so I groaned and stretched.
Back then, stretching had been something I only occasionally did. Now it was practically mandatory.
If I didn’t stretch once every game, it felt like my shoulders and upper body stiffened up completely. It was almost like I’d received a curse in exchange for gaining superior physical ability.
Still, none of this was a major problem. My physical abilities hadn’t worsened, and once I adapted properly, I was confident I’d perform even better than before.
The real issue was the second reason.
This one was the truly critical cause behind my losses.
“What kind of patch is this….”
During the three years while Abyss transformed from a dead game into a god-tier game and the world itself changed, the heroes of Abyss underwent enormous transformations.
From small things like skill animations and controls, to fixing structural flaws in heroes, major buffs, and even complete remakes that entirely redesigned skills and appearances, heroes had changed one after another.
A kind of massive overhaul update. Honestly, it was the exact sort of patch Abyss should’ve received long ago if it wanted to become a god-tier game.
The old Abyss had been riddled with issues befitting a dead game, from clunky controls to countless bugs.
This patch from around two and a half years ago had essentially become the catalyst that propelled Abyss into god-tier status, making it a near-perfect god patch. Looking through old posts from that period, nearly every user praised the update and reacted positively to it.
But now, after reviewing every single patch from that major overhaul to the smaller updates afterward, I couldn’t smile.
“Why did only Camilla… not receive a single buff?”
Because throughout all those countless patches, Camilla had never once been mentioned.
As if the character herself had been forgotten, she received absolutely no benefits from any update.
Only then did I understand the source of the strange feeling I’d experienced while playing. Why enemy health bars barely seemed to move. Why Camilla’s health vanished so quickly.
It was all because of the changes that occurred during those three missing years.
No wonder public opinion surrounding Camilla was terrible.
The reason I’d immediately become the scapegoat in the last game, the reason my teammates subtly agreed through silence—it was all because everyone already believed Camilla was a bad character.
Bad characters were always hated subconsciously.
“Overall, the changes themselves aren’t even that huge….”
Camilla remained exactly as she had before, neither nerfed nor buffed.
But that wasn’t something that could simply be ignored. The heroes she once fought alongside had all received buffs, and some had even been reborn as entirely new characters.
For Camilla, who had already been considered trash before, that was devastating.
Especially for someone like me, who had memorized proper matchups against every hero.
Still, that didn’t mean there was no solution.
“I guess I’ll have to start over from the beginning.”
Having reached my conclusion, I closed the patch notes and launched Abyss again.
The easy answer would be to abandon the current useless Camilla and play stronger heroes instead, but I had no intention of doing that.
If I were going to abandon her, I would’ve done it long ago. I wasn’t some meta slave constantly switching picks according to patch notes. Honestly, if someone discarded their girlfriend, family member, or comrade just because they weren’t as good as before, that person would be human trash.
And whether then or now, Camilla remained incredibly weak. A hero people tried once because of her pretty appearance but never continued playing seriously.
In the end, she was still a 0.01% pick-rate hero that only I played.
“If I keep refining her bit by bit, eventually I’ll find the answer.”
Isn’t that the role of a master? To polish and polish a hero like that until they become usable?
Wasn’t that why someone had turned Abyss into a god-tier game and transformed my appearance into Camilla herself? My appearance, my looks, even my gender changing—it was practically an unspoken message telling me not to abandon Camilla no matter what.
I started queueing ranked games again.
This time with a completely different mindset.
Starting today, the Camilla Research Institute resumes operations.
“Alright, everyone. I finally reached Platinum! At this rate… I might actually make it to Diamond?”
[No you won’t]
[The world is seriously broken if Nikang made Plat]
[I’m Gold too wtf]
[She’s gonna hit the Plat wall and dive straight back to Gold]
[Ten minutes later: Guys I can’t do this anymore]
“No no. I’m different from you people. Plat, Diamond, maybe even beyond the mortal ranks entirely. So that’ll never happen to me. What do you mean what was I until now? Hmm… seedlings that grow through hardship always develop strong roots. Unlike all those fake Plats and fake Diamonds, I climbed while building solid fundamentals.”
A completely shameless expression, along with a tone and face that genuinely believed every word she said.
The moment the words left the woman’s mouth, chat began scrolling rapidly.
Bullshit, here she goes again, see you later lol, and similar messages flooded the screen, making the woman smile in satisfaction.
‘Good. A lot of viewers gathered too.’
It had already been three months since the streamer Nikang started playing Abyss.
She originally focused on FPS games before first getting into Abyss. She’d felt the need for fresh content.
Nikang sought change, and that change had paid off successfully. After all, she’d managed to attract a whole new wave of viewers this way.
‘As expected of Abyss.’
Currently, in the world of personal streams—especially gaming streams—the influence of Abyss was so massive that people practically said you had to play it no matter what. There were even viewers who exclusively browsed streams just to watch Abyss.
Because of that, streamers all started playing Abyss one by one, trying to capture those roaming viewers for themselves.
And Nikang, who had only recently begun building a stable viewer base, had naturally started playing Abyss too.
As the stream title [Plat Newbie Nikang, 3 Months In] suggested, people found it incredibly entertaining to watch Nikang slowly climb ranked games despite not having played Abyss for very long.
Of course, Nikang’s pretty appearance and unusually strong gaming mechanics for a female streamer probably helped attract viewers too.
‘This is an opportunity.’
An opportunity to grow her stream and climb the ranks.
And an opportunity to earn recognition from her viewers.
With those thoughts in mind, streamer Nikang grinned confidently.
Unaware of the shadow approaching her.