Tank Monk Is Broken
It's broken.
Upon arriving at the PC room, a familiar face greeted me.
"Tada! I brought this just for you, A-yeon~."
Lee Yu-ri said as she handed over a prettily packaged case.
Inside were a strawberry muffin and a chocolate muffin.
What? Is today my birthday?
For a moment I even forgot to say thank you, just staring wide-eyed at the muffins.
"...Ah, thank you!"
"Puhuhu. Yeah~ Eat up and enjoy."
The thought that I'd shown a childish reaction for the first time made the back of my neck burn, but more than that, the simple joy of receiving muffins washed over me.
By the way, why do adults always use exclamations like "tada" when talking to kids?
I know it's to grab their attention... but from my perspective, every time I hear it I just think of a toast at a drinking party.
...Is there anyone else in the world as twisted as me?
I powered on the computer and checked the time.
Roughly calculating from the hours Lee Yu-ri had put in yesterday, I could comfortably burn about two hours over the weekend without any trouble until the next allowance day.
Casually putting on some music, I headed into NewTube to search for yesterday's incident.
I could have checked on my smartphone, but I was saving that for special moments like this.
As expected, no video had gone up in just a single day.
Flick streamer Neo suspected a Monk user of hacking.
The problem is that Neo is a total newbie who knows jack about Rune Breaker.
I'll give him credit for having some gaming experience, but honestly, wasn't that judgment way too hasty?
Anyway, the day after the incident they even went to a Misscode call, and it turned out this Monk user was a girl.
Honestly, at that point I thought it was a hack too, but then Dermang, a pro gamer active on the second team, showed up and declared it wasn't a hack—just insanely good play.
Still, it had enough firepower to briefly—just briefly—set a famous community site ablaze.
"Hmm…."
For some reason, the thought of receiving attention from an unspecified number of people sent a chill down my spine.
After that I checked the popular streaming site Flick, and Neo was streaming again today.
"It's Monk, hyung-nims."
Ah, I can't not react to this?
8/2/7.
Neo smiled as he looked at his own KDA.
There had been an unpleasant incident yesterday, but thanks to the other party's generous handling it never blew up into a major controversy.
That was why Neo planned to leave a separate message on Misscode and at least send a gift voucher.
...She's online?
To avoid getting sniped, the game window was already on the dual monitor, so he could send the in-game message without any pressure.
After that he planned to kill time waiting for her to check the message, but….
She checked the message in less than three seconds.
In truth, even if she accepted it would be awkward to use, and if she got caught using it explaining the source would be a hassle—so she simply refused. Neo had no way of knowing that.
...She's turning it down?
He couldn't help but jump to the wrong conclusion.
To think he had almost buried such a kind person.
Maybe he had been too focused on the chat; a few sharp-eyed viewers caught on.
They were only a handful of speculative comments.
Still, with something like this it was easier to just open it up confidently than try to hide it.
"Ahaha... well, the thing is, I didn't have any other way to contact her, so I was just apologizing again about yesterday."
The donor's words tempted him, but that would be far too much of a burden.
What right did he have to ask for a duo after already suspecting her of hacking?
But contrary to his expectations, Delent turned out to be far less concerned with appearances than he had imagined.
I wasn't originally like this.
Maybe getting younger had woken up some attention-seeking streak in me, because watching an unspecified crowd react to my actions turned out to be more fun than I expected.
That was why, after hearing someone's donation voice, I decided it was fine and sent the message right away.
...Or rather, since I had never experienced this much attention in the first place, maybe a hidden trait had simply woken up.
"Nice to meet you, noona!"
"Aaah... hiya."
The moment we made a room and started matching, a game popped.
First, instant lock on Monk.
Leaving Neo behind as he smoothly launched into stream banter, I—who had been researching various traits—opened the trait window.
Rune Breaker broadly divides into melee, ranged, tank, mage, and support roles.
Matching traits exist for each, and Monk falls under melee—more specifically, assassin.
Of course there are traits suited to a melee assassin, but always taking the same ones felt bland.
Tank Monk... this seems like a hit.
New metas always bloom from new attempts.
As someone aiming to master Monk, I had a duty to use every single trait with Monk.
"Uh...... noona? Is that trait right?"
And already the checks were coming in.
The path of a Monk master was long and treacherous.
Boom, boom!
War drums pounded through the arena in a lively rhythm that felt almost like a heartbeat.
Rune Warrior's Arena.
One of Rune Breaker's most popular maps—no guardians, no rune towers, no buff-granting rune monsters. Nothing but each team's heart, the Rune, and the player units themselves.
That meant no map gimmicks to create big variables; pure combat skill was all that mattered.
Some people loved how direct and snappy it was; others hated how easy and short the games felt. I was firmly in the first camp.
"Tank Monk is broken."
"……It says there isn't a single Tank Monk game in your match history?"
There was no need to live swayed by other people's gazes.
Whoosh!
I began circling the outer edge of the arena faster than anyone.
The rest of the team, completely writing off Monk's playstyle, started looping the opposite outer path—which was actually the correct strategy.
I pushed forward under my teammates' passionate "support."
Structurally the center was completely empty, but this map was famous for its fast respawns.
Once one side lost momentum and their respawn timers got tangled, they usually got rolled all the way to the end—so the enemy mirrored us and split their numbers the same way.
The moment of collision was almost here.
"Hmm…."
I had fallen into one serious dilemma.
"Neo-nim. Should I eat the strawberry muffin first, or the chocolate muffin first?"
"Muffins?"
The two luscious muffins sitting in front of the keyboard caught the eye.
"Hmm... since the chocolate flavor is stronger, maybe better to eat strawberry first?"
"That's true, but covering the chocolate's dryness with strawberry's freshness might be good too…."
The fact that even this conversation felt fun made it clear I needed more human interaction.
"Actually, if I eat both I'll get full, so I'll just start with strawberry."
"...What?"
Anyway, enough nonsense.
The one who greeted me the instant we met by swinging a scythe was the melee assassin character Arhan.
The cheeky bastard whose position overlapped with Monk's.
Whoosh!
I had relaxed too much to parry and my positioning was off, so I decided to dodge for now.
Right after his first attack missed he immediately slipped into stealth.
Arhan's skill was a five-second stealth, if I remembered right.
People often complained that stealth was too broken a skill.
I thought the opposite: if you could just react the moment they came out, they were nothing but an empty shell of a character with no real skills.
Ssshhh….
And now he was even kindly announcing the attack for me—how was I supposed to get hit by that?
I planned to side-step exactly as I had thought earlier.
But when I turned the camera toward the sound and saw the massive scythe filling part of the screen, for some reason I no longer wanted to dodge.
...Now.
Clang!
The scythe racing through a slowed world collided with Monk's claws and was flung high into the air.
Skill parry.
Among users it was treated as a kind of fluke technique.
Unlike basic attacks, skill attacks were faster and the parry judgment was terrible.
The system had implemented it, but it was basically designed so you were supposed to dodge.
In fact, after a famous pro gamer asked about skill parrying, the patch notes gained a new line—"Skills are there to be dodged."—and that anecdote was well known.
Arhan, hit by the parry, flustered and tried to back off.
If I stepped into the staggered Arhan's guard and finished him while his posture was broken, it would be over—but I didn't.
The hand feel is nice.
Bouncing that scythe had been more fun than I expected.
Once the parry stun ended, Arhan opened distance again and then came back in to continue the assault.