Escaping the Minerals
“You need to play games in moderation and come home, okay?”
“Yes...”
I answered carefully, gauging Yun Hyeon-mi’s expression.
After that, Yun Hyeon-mi left the PC bang without even offering any further advice.
Seeing her head back without so much as telling me to stay in touch, I figured this might be the moment I ought to feel a sense of urgency... but one more win and I would hit Master.
For a soldier with the high ground right in front of him, feelings like guilt or vigilance were unnecessary.
“Hmm...”
With the match already queued, I fell into a bit of contemplation.
In a game this popular, even a few seconds of wait time was rare, but now that my tier had climbed, the queue was starting to take longer.
Right.
Diamond was high enough that matching took a noticeable amount of time. By pure tier distribution, I was already inside the top two percent of players. That was something I could brag about without shame wherever I went.
At this level, I had met the bare minimum condition for starting the stream I had only been thinking about... but unfortunately, every single one of my proud internet friends sat at Diamond as their absolute floor. Their backseat coaching rivaled Legend, and anyone below Platinum got treated like a bug rather than a person.
...In truth, even Platinum put you inside the top ten percent—better than most people by a wide margin. At this point I no longer knew where the standard was supposed to sit.
The feeling I got watching top-two-percent players get roasted as “just minerals” was... well. That was why I had set Master as the absolute minimum bar before I would throw my hat into the ring.
Anyway, the reason I wanted to start streaming now was simple.
I was bored.
And more money was always better.
Tundra Mountain, a map defined by fierce cutting winds and the blizzards mixed into them.
Using a sheer cliff face as the dividing line, the two teams began their run.
According to the lore book I had briefly looked up, this battlefield had been created by the strongest being in the entire Rune Breaker setting. Maybe that was why every Rune Monster that appeared here was a pain to kill.
The monsters in the bottom lane were especially strong, so the established meta on this map was for a ranged character to head bottom early, take down the Snowfield Orc, and claim the attack-power buff.
This was the problem with playing Monk.
No matter how good your record or win rate looked, there was always a teammate who would slam the last pick without even checking.
...Damn mineral bastards.
I was starting to understand a little why some people lumped every Diamond player together and treated them like minerals.
I had already been running before the chat even appeared, so I did not bother changing course. Going alone to take the Snowfield Orc was technically an option, but it took far too long, and if the enemy showed up midway it would be a disaster.
Ah... I miss the days of monster parrying.
Not that I had ever experienced them myself.
Rune Breaker was not a traditional RPG where you just farmed monsters all day, so the developers had needed to simplify monster patterns to some degree. Make them too simple and players learned the timing and parried everything; make them too hard and newbies died while trying to clear.
Once enough data piled up, the company settled on a compromise: they removed Rune Monster parrying entirely and simplified the patterns. That massive patch had happened before I even started playing.
Because of it, having at least one ranged character on the team became mandatory.
The problem was that our team had zero ranged characters.
...We were screwed.
When thinking got hard, just running was also a valid strategy. I skipped the side path that led to the Snowfield Orc and charged straight toward the point where both teams’ Guardians would collide.
Since I had skipped the buff, I figured I might as well grab some other advantage, so I killed the enemy Guardians and happily started smacking the tower—until Robinmong, the archer character, showed up and forced me to pull back.
The guy who had taken the buff drew his bowstring with swagger.
“...Hoo.”
Parrying arrows was a little tricky and needed focus. I steadied my breathing and poured every nerve into my fingers.
A white plain blanketed in snow and ice.
After finishing the Snowfield Orc and heading into the bottom zone, the man found a Monk who had already wiped out the Guardians and was hammering the Rune Tower. Seeing every Guardian dead, he assumed the Monk had teammates nearby and scanned the surroundings... but his expectation was thoroughly wrong.
Alone?
Looking at the enemy composition, he had already decided the game was won. Even so, this was a lobby where Diamond was the floor and Masters were mixed in; he never expected the other side to play this mindlessly.
Must be my lucky day.
He would finish this one game and log off.
Robinmong carried nothing but a bow and arrows—no common secondary gear at all. His skill was not an escape tool but Triple Shot, which fired three arrows in rapid succession, making him a very straightforward character. Since the man himself had no escape skill while Monk had excellent mobility, he tried not to get careless.
What the hell?
Even so, he never imagined the Monk would simply stand still while facing him head-on. The guy had none of the distinctive aura that appeared after taking the buff. That meant even a single clean hit from a buffed Robinmong would be dangerous.
Was another teammate hiding nearby?
He held his shot and searched the area, even though he knew full well this map had no places to hide. The fact that the Monk was just standing there felt that bizarre.
......Just a troll, then.
Well, what kind of proper game could you expect from someone who picked Monk?
Thinking that, the man casually drew his bowstring.
Twang!
The buffed arrow should have produced a sickening wet sound as it punched through the Monk’s skull.
...Wait. Twang?
But the Monk on the other side of the monitor was perfectly fine. No—he actually took a step toward him.
The man told himself it had to be coincidence and drew again.
Twang!
The same sound made him doubt his own ears.
Was that crazy bastard deliberately batting the arrows aside?
If something like this was possible, Robinmong and every other ranged character lost their entire reason to exist. So that meant... this was just too absurd.
The man nocked his third and final arrow and drew once more.
Twang!
“No way...”
Yet the Monk casually swatted the arrow aside and took another step closer.
“Hah...”
My head was spinning. A light, floaty feeling, almost like I had been drinking.
“...No, that’s not it.”
I must have concentrated harder than I realized after so long without a real game. Even with good focus, batting away every arrow from a Robinmong who spent the entire match hunting only me was exhausting.
Still, the rush when I parried the entire Triple Shot skill was something else entirely...
Honestly, I could have closed the gap with Monk’s Mist Dash and killed him after only two arrows, but I had deliberately waited until he emptied the skill for a reason.
Robinmong was simply a character with excellent hand-feel, regardless of the player’s skill.
On top of that, I even received the opponent’s highest praise.
Anyway, the reward that came with a hard-earned victory was always more precious.
Mineral escape!
I wanted to share this joy with someone, but unfortunately none of the people around me played games. Lee Hye-yeon was the only one I could talk to openly, but there was a saying that bad habits picked up young lasted a lifetime.
I did not want to drag her into gaming out of my own selfish desire. If she got into it on her own before I did anything, that would be a different story.
In any case, I was able to shut down the computer with deep satisfaction while staring at the dazzling Master badge.
So I sent a Miscode message to Neo, the person among my contacts who knew the most about streaming.
His stream was off, yet he replied instantly, so he was probably lying down on his phone.
Had I gotten too casual just because we were friendly?
After we had run some casual games together, we kept up occasional contact and had become fairly comfortable.
Usually Neo was the one who messaged first, trying to keep using me because my NewTube views were solid and the live reactions were good. Still, I got to pick up some crumbs through mission-style collabs, so overall it had been mutually beneficial.
This time I properly asked whether he could give me various tips since I wanted to try streaming as a hobby at the PC bang.
After a brief silence, Neo sent a Miscode call request.
“Hiyo.”
“Hiyo... my ass, you idiot!”
And just like that, as if someone had hit his berserk button, Neo’s voice rose and he launched into a full rant about a streamer’s hardships.