Replay
I searched using keywords related to Rune Breaker and hacks, along with my game ID, Delent. It took less than a few minutes to find the reason.
Ah… so a streamer had been in that game.
And not some nobody, either — a mid-sized streamer whose viewer count wasn't particularly low. A quick look at NewTube showed his videos pulled solid numbers, too.
It brought back memories of the days when I'd queue snipe matches just for a chance to run into famous players. Back then, I'd never get the matchups I wanted. Now, when I could barely manage two games a day at most, something like this had to happen by pure coincidence.
Anyway, I hadn't actually used hacks, so there was no chance of my account getting banned.
…Still, just like how I'd screenshotted those "friendly" users' chat logs earlier, you never know how life is going to turn out.
I did a quick search on Rune Breaker hack-related incidents. The game hadn't been out all that long, but with its popularity came a hefty pile of cases. The most infamous involved someone getting banned for using hacks during a tournament.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
Even if it was a streamer-organized event, the idea of someone thinking they could run hacks in a tournament was insane. That was Rune Breaker for you — the more players it had, the worse its reputation for cheaters grew.
Still, that was an extreme example. The amount of attention I was getting would almost certainly die down in no time. In other words, just shrugging it off and moving on was a perfectly valid option.
But telling an elementary schooler whose every day was mind-numbingly boring to just ignore an issue like this? That was asking far too much.
Flick… here we go.
I headed to the streaming site and found Neo already live. Viewer count sat in the low thousands, and he was playing Rune Breaker, so I accepted his friend request right away and sent a message.
"Augh, if you die there, we're scr— huh?"
Watching Neo react in real time to an in-game message was a strangely novel feeling.
"Delent, are you watching the stream right now?"
"As it happens, there was a little issue related to you from yesterday's game… any chance you could spare some time?"
I checked the chat. The sentiment was overwhelmingly negative.
Neo finished his game right on cue, covered the game window on stream, and sent me a message.
Miscode. A voice chat platform beloved by streamers and people all over the world alike.
Judging by how smoothly everything was proceeding, Neo was probably buzzing at the thought of turning a suspected-hacker segment into solid stream content. I figured it'd be an entertaining experience for me too, and went ahead with signing up for Miscode.
Before I knew it, Neo's stream title had changed to Miscode Call w/ Suspected Hacker.
For a moment I worried this might take a while — but today's version of me was fine.
Lee Yu-ri for the win!
She'd loaded me up with a full five extra hours of PC time. So this was how the bourgeoisie felt.
Normally I'd have been scrambling to queue matches, putting on NewTube music, squeezing every last second for maximum density. Right now, though, I was completely at ease.
And if I ran out of time later? …I'd deal with that when it happened.
"Hey, ready to get started?"
Neo's voice came through the speakers from the shared Miscode channel.
At that point, a dilemma presented itself. Should I actually turn on my mic?
I still hadn't fully come to terms with being a girl, but I didn't feel any real aversion to it either. The problem was how young I sounded. Even with an adult mind in a child's body, and even if I tried my hardest not to let it show, that babyish voice was hard to hide.
"Hello?"
Then again — was there any real need to hide it? I wasn't revealing my face or personal info. At worst, it'd just add one more line to the story: the Rune Breaker player accused of hacking turned out to be a girl.
Neo had started to worry the other party might be bailing on him.
"…Ah. Ah."
Thankfully, the green light on Delent's mic lit up. Between the slow join and the poor audio quality, it was clear this person didn't have much experience with voice chat.
"Can you hear me?"
"Yes, man— wait. You're a girl."
Neo was briefly thrown by the young-sounding voice, but he'd worked alongside a few fellow streamers with unusual voices before, so he figured it was something like that.
It had only been a day, so the whole thing hadn't blown up into a major controversy yet — but the stream title was already drawing viewers in.
"Ahem… Delent. First off — are you aware that hacking allegations came out of yesterday's game?"
"I just found out."
"In that case, can you explain how you managed to dodge every single attack and skill?"
In fields like gaming, sports, and athletics, men tended to outperform women. That wasn't simple sexism — it was a scientifically established fact, backed by mountains of accumulated data. So Neo had already decided, deep down, that the person on the other end was a cheater, and expected this whole thing to wrap up rather anticlimactically.
"I just saw them and dodged?"
"Ah… right."
Honestly, this kind of response worked in his favor. Wanting more NewTube content out of the segment, Neo asked Delent if it was okay to bring in a pro for analysis. She agreed without hesitation.
Dermang — real name Kim Yun-seok. A second-tier professional Rune Breaker player who'd gotten friendly with Neo outside the game, and someone whose skill was solid enough that word of a promotion to the first team was already circulating.
"Hey, long time no see."
They'd already arranged everything beforehand, so Dermang jumped straight into reviewing the match replay in question.
"Start from here?"
"Yeah… that's the one."
The scene opened at the heart of the Frozen Mountains: a warrior gripping a sharp arming sword and a shield that partially covered his upper body, facing off against a single squirrel.
Delent was still on the Miscode call. Neo silently prayed she wouldn't bail, and watched Dermang's screen alongside him.
"Oh… huh…?"
Whoosh!
The fight opened at point-blank range with the warrior's counterattack after the squirrel slipped past a Mist Charge. After a brief wind-up, the greatsword came crashing down. It was the kind of attack that could look obvious — but the same move looked completely different depending on where you were standing. The two of them were far too close.
"Holy crap. Look at that attack speed."
But before the animation even finished, the squirrel had already rolled sideways, raking the warrior's leg one more time and slipping clean out of the hitbox. The warrior's health was already heavily drained. He started flailing, dumping attacks indiscriminately — short-animation swings with defense completely abandoned.
…She was just toying with me the whole time.
Neo hadn't realized it while playing. Watching the replay, it was obvious — Delent had deliberately chosen not to finish him off.
Either way, the outcome had already been decided. Without any real variables, the squirrel stood atop the warrior's corpse. Through the entire sequence, it hadn't shed a single drop of blood.
"Yeah, that's nasty…"
Dermang muttered briefly and kept watching. Neo felt like he was sitting through his own death montage, but telling himself the opponent was a hacker made it a little less embarrassing.
After killing the warrior, the squirrel monopolized the Rune Monster and started stacking buffs. There was no one left who could stop it.
"Insane."
Neo's Garland dying helplessly was one thing — but the way the squirrel weaved between the hitboxes of Hilda's Elemental Storm, a chakram user, left even Dermang stunned.
19/1/0. A catastrophic KDA. That single death had come from diving in for fun and eating a full focus-fire from the entire enemy team. If Delent had actually tried not to die, a clean zero-death game would have been trivial. At least, that was how Dermang saw it.
"So? What do you think?"
Neo asked, expecting the answer he'd already settled on.
But—
"…Just a ridiculously good player?"
The response was nothing like what he'd anticipated.
"Wait, you're saying it's not hacks?"
"Sure, the decision-making is a bit lacking relative to the mechanics, and the reaction speed is genuinely superhuman… but it doesn't feel like actual hacks?"
Neo figured Dermang was just being careful with his words because he was a pro. Then he heard the explanation that followed, and had no choice but to shut his mouth.
"This kind of thing, you have to analyze frame by frame."
"Uh… yeah?"
"Real hacks start moving the instant the animation appears. But looking at how this player either predicts and dodges, or barely slips out at the last second… how do you even do that?"
"Anyway, the enemy players were just so bad overall that it was genuinely a game where seeing and dodging was possible."
Those "enemy players" included a Diamond smurf and, well… me…
"I mean, if you throw skills like that, of course someone can react. You've got to weave them into your animations. I could dodge this much myself."
Dermang's scathing critique showed no signs of stopping.