A Hidden Gem Only I Knew

Unstoppable. Absolute freestyle.

Camilla tore across the battlefield without a single care in the world, enemies scattering like autumn leaves in a gale. Wherever she passed, not so much as a speck of dust remained.

The viewers cheered at the long-awaited sight of such clean, exhilarating Camilla play — but I, the one actually playing, couldn't hide my bewilderment.

And for good reason. The build I was running right now was the "stable Camilla" setup — the one that still leaned into dagger mobility. It was a scouting build, essentially. First game after the radical buffs, and I wanted to get a proper look at the new skin while carefully measuring the differences from before with a safe, familiar setup.

And this was the result? This… this was a serious problem.

"Camilla is… way too strong."

This build was never supposed to put out this kind of firepower. The weapon class itself was daggers — relatively low raw damage, chosen specifically to lean into mobility. To play the build the way it was designed, you were supposed to assassinate enemy heroes your teammates had already softened up, then use that speed to rotate and support struggling lanes. That was the whole point.

But look at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Camilla now.

The result had completely diverged from the designer's intent. Yes, the mobility — the build's actual strength — was still there. But instead of using it for support or assists, she was just sprinting around solo and murdering everything in sight. And as a bonus, she was ping-ponging damage at the absolute limit of what her characteristically fragile body should have been able to handle.

Sure, I'd snowballed hard off an early lead. But this still felt excessive. Last week, this kind of power simply didn't exist. If you wanted to one-shot people, you at least needed a two-handed sword or dual blades — not daggers.

If I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠was this thrown off as the pilot, I could only imagine how the enemy team felt. Something would zip past too fast to catch, and if you just left it alone, every single damage dealer melted. Once the tank got bullied, the entire formation collapsed.

This had gone beyond "strong" or "good performance."

Overpowered. OP, in plain terms. Camilla had finally broken past tier one and become a full-blown OP champion.

"This is dangerous…"

I wasn't in a position to just celebrate. The exact scenario I'd feared most while reading the patch notes had come to pass.

"If she's too strong, they'll nerf her into the ground until she never comes back! Ionicx, you bastards! Are you picking on our Camilla again?"

I slipped into the enemy backline, pulled off a three-on-one dribble, finally deleted their ADC, and survived the trip back to allied territory.

A flood of pings and chat messages from my teammates immediately poured in.

"It wasn't even me playing well…"

Of course, my share as the pilot wasn't nothing. The new buffs were buffs, but the ability to pull off plays like that still came from the mastery I'd built up over time.

Even so, I couldn't deny how serious the problem was. One peak-level specialist single-handedly nuking the entire game? And not by grinding it out the usual hard way — by making it look this easy?

At this point, a nerf was an unavoidable fate. And with that in mind, one compromise still existed.

"Hotfix. The answer is a hotfix."

A hotfix. An emergency mini-patch outside the regular schedule, applied when something introduces a critical bug or completely shatters the balance. Better to take the hit early. Heroes that got hotfixed rarely ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠got nerfed again in the regular patch cycle — and hotfixes tended to swing a softer bat than full patches anyway.

I was praying for exactly that. If she got dragged into a regular patch, they'd chop off all four limbs. A hotfix might leave her with just one or two arms missing.

"Please, please just hotfix her… Camilla is way too strong right now."

All I could do was clasp my hands and pray with everything I had.

And while I was at it, I kept queuing up, kept going godlike on Camilla — all to pad the stats into something so deranged that Ionicx would have no choice but to hotfix her.

But my efforts and hopes were met with pure indifference.

Today, tomorrow, and the day after that — there was no hotfix. And Camilla was still just as strong.

"Holy shit…"

The man muttered under his breath as he stared at the screen. The black-and-white display greeted him like a mockery. Not color — black and white. Meaning he was dead.

Not long after he died, the screen wavered slightly. The familiar animation that played when you lost a game.

One of his teammates sitting beside him, clearly watching, needled him.

"You actually suck, Choi Min-hyeong."

The man — Min-hyeong — started to flip him off, then stopped and instead pleaded his case.

"No, I'm telling you, something's actually weird about this."

"What is."

"Look at what this person is doing. It's off."

"What'd they do…"

His teammate, Hyeong-gyu, watched the replay Min-hyeong pulled up and fell silent for a moment.

He'd figured something was going on. The guy was a pro, after all — if he kept losing every time he ran into the same player, there had to be a reason. He'd assumed it was just bad luck: a terrible teammate, or a full squad of pros on the other side.

He hadn't expected this kind of problem. Hyeong-gyu asked, dumbfounded.

"You got completely stomped. Why do you die every single time you run into this person?"

"…Yeah, I got stomped. But that's not the issue — look closer."

Look closer at what, exactly? Hyeong-gyu found Min-hyeong mildly annoying, but if the guy was going so far as to pull up a replay, there had to be something. He studied the screen carefully.

And then he saw it.

"What the hell. The damage is weird."

"Right? It's weird. That item build should not be putting out that much damage, but I keep getting popped by a single tick. And there's no way I miscalculated the damage."

"…"

That wasn't all. Hyeong-gyu stayed quiet and rewound the replay again. It wasn't just the damage — the ping-pong ability, the tankiness, everything was exceeding average values across the board.

Yes. Just like Min-hyeong said, it was strange.

The character on screen — "Camilla" — was playing in a way that felt almost alien for the champion, and Hyeong-gyu found himself murmuring without thinking.

"Camilla was this strong…?"

Min-hyeong nodded along.

"I mean, that player is good, sure. But I think Camilla got buffed into overspec territory. We should test this."

"Yeah. Let's run some ranked together and try her out. If she checks out, we'll tell the coach."

And so two players, faces set with the look of men who'd noticed something was off, began testing Camilla.

Fusion Gaming. Currently the number-one team in the domestic Abyss League.

The moment they put their hands on Camilla had arrived.